I just posted two essays that I wrote for work.

I’m not a writer at work. The only writing that I must do for my job is writing emails, that’s it. I never wrote anything for work nor shared any of my personal writing to anyone before, besides this little blog of mine.

So, this is a first for me.

How this came about was a few weeks ago, while helping the assistant in the HR department, our HR VP stopped me and told me that she heard that I bake and was wondering if I would mind writing an essay on baking or an essay about why I bake. It doesn’t have to be complicated or simple and I thought, okay, I’ll think about it.

The more I thought about it, I realize that I couldn’t write the baking essay without having to write one about cooking first. I ran into her a few days later and told her my plan to write two essays for her and then I went on thinking and then writing the weekend after.

The cooking essay was easy. It’s been inside me for so long that I was genuinely surprised that I hadn’t written or blogged about it before. I love to cook and it’s such a part of me and my identity and that’s what I wrote about. I wrote a little about my family history, my father being a cook, and how food and cooking is a part of my culture. I wrote about how now cooking helps me relax and Zen out.

Again, it was an easy essay. Took me roughly three to four days to write it and then I shared it with some of my friends at work and they all loved it. One even thought that it would be a great introduction to my future cookbook. She also said that I wrote like how I speak, from my heart and that it was me. They are too kind.

I turned it in and the HR VP praised it also.

These essays will be on my company’s newly revamped website. People First. I still don’t know when it’ll launch.

With this essay done, it was now time to write about baking.

I had the most trouble with this one. Maybe it was my hubris again and the expectations of my audience and their love for the first essay. I also wanted to make it personal like my first one and a little more fun.

I would start and scrap it over and over again. I think I had about four or five different starts on it before settling for what it is now, a treatise on baking and learning patience.

Originally I wanted to tie in patience in a different way, about how I know that it is my fatal flaw and that I have a scroll hanging up in my apartment to remind me that I need to be patience in all things in my life and how that ties into baking and where I am now in my life.

It would have been great, but as I wrote it, it didn’t feel right. It felt very self-indulgent and I was smashing together the two thoughts when they didn’t want to fit in.

So, I scraped that idea and started again. Scraped that other idea and just made it simpler, made it about the process of learning and failing and learning and failing and learning and failing and the patience that I had to have for learning something new and different.

It worked, but not the way that I wanted it to work. I was happy enough and just so done with the essay that I gave it to the same friends to read and they thought it was good and different from my other one.

So, I turned it in and the HR VP enjoyed that one also.

Now, I am finished and these essays are just an afterthought and it is now back to my normal routine.

The HR VP thinks I should write more.

Maybe I should. I think I write enough, which I told her, but I never formally wrote essays before like these. Maybe it’ll be something I’ll do, or starting a cooking blog. Who knows.

We shall see.

I’m not a patient person. A lot of frustration comes from my impatience. To many, that may be a bad thing, but for me, the best primer for learning is frustration. There’s nothing that gets my brain going than being frustrated because I don’t understand something. I love figuring out why something is the way it is, learning about it. This applies to all aspects of my life, from my dog and cat, Pickles and Relish, to my interactions with people, my day to day in the office, and to new experiences and things that I come across. What makes it tick? Why does it behave like that? Why must Relish attack my hand when I’m pointing at her? Why does Pickles insist on sniffing everything on our walks when he knows I’m late? That frustration doesn’t go away until I get answers to the problem. Then I’d get a sense of peace. My recent obsession of baking sourdough bread stems from frustration.

Throughout my years of cooking, I’ve only baked a few number of times and they were mostly cakes. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I made my first attempt at baking bread, French baguettes. I was craving bánh mì, the humble Vietnamese sandwich, and decided to make my own from scratch. To say my baguettes turned out to be less than stellar was an understatement. The crust wasn’t crispy and thin, but hard and thick. The crumb was dense and dry. It was a failure.

I made it again and again. I failed again and again. My ego was deflated like the damn loaves that kept coming out of the oven. My hubris as a cook made me frustrated with the results. I went on a learning binge, devouring everything I could about bread making. I read blogs and articles, books, and searched YouTube for videos. I’d watch videos on how to knead the dough, on the stretch and fold method, and then I’d watch videos on how to shape the dough into a loaf, and finally on how to bake it. I watched these little tutorials until I had a better grasp of the whole process and feeling a little more confident I thought to myself, this looks easy enough. I tried again. Failed again. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I screamed a long and exasperated “Why?” to the kitchen gods as I dropped to my knees in frustration. Not really. I am being overly dramatic, but there was a lot cursing.

I’m a good cook, but why can’t I bake a good loaf of bread? One of the first lessons on this little sourdough bread baking adventure was to stop thinking like a cook and start thinking like a baker. One may think that they go hand in hand and are the same thing. No. Cooking is like art. It’s jazz with variations and flourishes of improvisation. You can follow a recipe or you can play it loose, adding different spices and ingredients and flavors to suit your personal style and taste. You have total control. All you need is to understand the foundation of a recipe and then you can improvise your way to the end. You can’t mess it up too much.

Baking on the other hand is an alchemy of science-y voodoo magic. Mix together flour, salt, yeast, and water in a bowl and a chemical reaction happens. With time, manipulation, heat, more chemical reactions, an unbelievable amount of more time, and a lot of “Abracadabra!” while you wave a chicken foot around like a wand, you have a loaf of bread. You have no control in baking. The heat, yeast, and time have all the control. There is no improvisation. Baking is about precision. It’s a hard science. If any of the measurements are off, your bread is off and you’ll be cursing the bread gods again. Plus, it requires a large amount of patience, which I don’t have.

As a new student, I had to learn from doing. I set off practicing everything I learned from the videos and articles that I read. They can show and tell you everything there is to know about baking bread, but it can’t show you how the dough should feel after kneading or getting your dough shaped properly. That’s something you need to learn through practice and patience and more practice. It’s a tactile learning experience.

I’d start on a Friday night, filling five mixing bowls with some measured flour, water, and my sourdough starter, and then I let it sit overnight. In the morning, the mixture would turn into a bubbly and foamy goop. I’d then add more flour, water, and salt and I’d had to wait more. After an hour, it’d be time for the first series of stretch and folds. Then wait. More stretching and folding. Wait. Stretch. Fold. Wait. Repeat. Then after the fourth or fifth series of stretching and folding, the dough is ready for the bulk proofing – more waiting.

For a person who doesn’t have much patience, baking bread beats that into you. The waiting and letting the dough sit is as important as the ingredients that you are using. It’s an important part of the process. I’d learned to be very patient. I had to just let the dough sit and trust that the chemical reactions and the yeast are doing its necessary job in fermenting the dough and getting it ready for baking. If I’d rush it, then I’d get another bad loaf and more frustration. I learned to be patient real fast.

After forgetting about the dough for a few hours, it would be time to start shaping. I would do loaf after loaf, getting a feel of the dough in my hands as I wrestled it into a boule. When I’d get it into shape, I’d then doubt myself, and I’d start again. I’d flatten out the dough and then wrestle it into a round ball again. Over and over, with each loaf, I’d do the same thing. Once shaped, I’d placed them in a proofing basket where it’d sit for a few more hours until they were ready to bake. Then I’d clean out the mixing bowls and start a new batch of dough and start the whole process over again.

I’d bake loaf after loaf after loaf. As one would come out of the oven, I’d put another loaf into the Dutch oven and back into the oven that would go. They’d come out with varying degrees of success. Some would be flat; others would be burnt. Then the later loaves would come out more successful until the last few loaves looked all the same. Consistency is a good sign of getting something right. Even after they come out of the oven, the loaves are still not ready. You wait, let it cool down for at least an hour or two before you can finally slice into it to see how’d it turned out.

At the peak of my baking obsession, I made 15 loaves over a weekend. There were many failures, but there were also many successes. Many of the loaves were given away to my neighbors, some to the man living under The 10 underpass on my walk to the Expo Line, and many showed up in the kitchens at RPA.

I don’t bake as much anymore. I bake a loaf or two a month. Baking doesn’t give me as much frustration as it did before. I understand it a little bit better now. I know how the dough should feel. I know that if it is particularly humid, I’ll have to add a little more flour to the dough. I have a better idea of how long to let the dough rise based on the temperature of the room. I’ve learned all of it through a lot of practice, patience, and failing. My loaves don’t all come out good or great every time. There are still a few flat loaves, but at least now I understand why. Besides, I’ve been cooking for almost 20 years and I’ve only been baking bread for the past few months. I’ve learned to be patient and give myself a break and not expect greatness every time. With more practice and more time, maybe I’ll get there.

Many people go to a yoga studio when they want to relax. Some lounge out by the pool, while others just find a quiet room. I go to my kitchen. The sound of click-click-click-whoosh puts my mind at ease. The burst of warmth from the dancing blue crown burns away my stress. The up-and-down rocking of a sharp knife slicing through vegetables is my warrior pose. The sweet fragrant smell of cooking garlic and ginger is my aromatherapy. Cooking. It’s my therapy and my meditation. Cooking is Zen.

Food and cooking have been ingrained in me since I was born. It’s a part of my cultural identity. The Chinese have an informal way of greeting family and friends. It isn’t “How are you?” but “Have you eaten yet?”. It’s our way of showing love. My father was a cook and so were many of my uncles. Having given up everything in Vietnam, we made it to the States as refugees a few years after the fall of Saigon. Poor with limited skills and almost no understanding of English, being a cook at a Chinese restaurant was the only job available to my father and uncles. Day in and day out for what seemed like 12 plus hours, my father went to work and I hardly saw him except for a couple of hours a week. That was life for most of my childhood.

So as a young impressionable child who idolized a father who was always at work, I found a way to get a better understanding of him. I hovered around my mother or grandmother in the kitchen while they cooked dinner. When we would host large family get-togethers, my father cooked for them. I stood by his side, watched everything that he did, studied him. It was like ballet. He flowed with such confidence and grace. I spent weekend afternoons in front of the television watching cooking shows on PBS. Along with my father, mother, and grandmother, my cooking teachers were Julia Child, The Frugal Gourmet, Jacques Pepin, and Martin Yan.

My relationship with cooking changed from being a passive observer to being an active participant when I was in college and more so when I moved to Los Angeles. It was no surprise that cooking came naturally to me. It was easy but that didn’t mean that everything I made was great and delicious. I liken my first couple of years on my own to a cooking boot camp. I put what I learned to practice and made many mistakes and failed along the way but I always learned from them. These real life cooking lessons literally kept me alive because eating out every night wasn’t cheap nor healthy.

Then cooking wasn’t about surviving anymore. It was personal. It was about reconnecting with my father. I was an independent adult, truly on my own. The biggest life lesson that my father, my parents, instilled in my brother and me while growing up was to be independent and to never rely on anyone. I never got to thank him for all that he did. He passed away a few years after I moved away from home. I never got the chance to show him how much I loved him. I never got the chance to cook for him. So I cooked to be closer to my father because I wanted to be like him, a cook. Each dish I cooked was a dish for him and I hoped that it made him proud.

Cooking brought me back to my roots. I thought about the days of my youth and the many dishes that my mother and grandmother cooked for dinner and these conflicting warm feelings of joy and longing for simpler times came rushing through me. Nostalgia was a bitch like that. I cooked these humble Chinese and Vietnamese dishes from my childhood. I struggled to get the perfect crispness on my bánh xèo or the right curry flavor in cà ri gà. Every dish, from simple Chinese peasant food like stir-fried cabbage with eggs and pork belly, congee, eggs with tofu, or a whole steamed braised stuffed duck, to phó, bò kho, and bún riêu, were all done over and over again until I could no longer perfect it. But no matter how much I perfected each dish, it never tasted as good as my mom’s.

After many years of cooking and perfecting my craft, I came full circle with my cooking. It was now my turn to show my love to my family. I was the one that cooked for them when I went home for the holidays. Whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would wake up early and cook a smorgasbord of dishes for our early afternoon dinner. I’d never been a stickler for tradition and so many of my dishes weren’t either. I cooked dishes that my mom, aunts, and uncles don’t know how to cook or never had. Dishes like Shrimp Monica, lasagna, braised short ribs or lamb shanks, spaghetti aglio e olio, Korean fried chicken wings, creamy jalapeno polenta, creamed spinach, standing rib roasts, or racks of lamb. It was a lot of work each time, but I enjoyed every single minute of it. It was worth it. I was showing my love.

Now, cooking is about control, being healthy, relaxing, and just trying to be a better person by learning and growing. On average, I cook five or six nights out of the week. With each meal, everything would be cooked from scratch using whole ingredients if possible. I’m not a health nut, but I do like to know what goes into my body. Cooking from scratch allows me to do that. It gives me a peace-of-mind to know that the egg noodles that I used in my dan dan noodles were made 30 minutes ago using just flour and eggs.

Cooking from scratch is a lot of work, but I don’t mind. It’s how I relax. There were weekends where I would do nothing but cook, especially after a long and trying week. Depending on what I planned on making I would start bright and early Saturday or early afternoon. I’d pour myself a glass or two or have a bottle of wine and start my cooking adventure. My focus would be on nothing but the task before me. I’d chop vegetables, sear meat, gather spices and other ingredients, prepping the mise en place. Nothing else would be in my mind but this meal; not what happened at work that past week or what I have to do next week. It would just be mincing garlic, dicing the onions, understanding the recipes so I know when and how I can change it to match my tastes and creativity, and figuring out the timing so all of the dishes would be ready around the same time. This is how I practice mindfulness. I meditate through cooking.

Even though I’d been cooking for so long, there’s still so much to learn. Like with most things, the more I do and practice, the better I get and the more I learn. Doing things that are outside of my comfort zone or new are great ways to really learn about myself. The past two years I started a cooking project where I had to cook at least 30 dishes that I never cooked before. They can’t be some variation of something I had already done. It had to be completely new. The project challenges me to cook different cuisines, use unfamiliar ingredients, learn new cooking techniques, and most important, it forces me to fail so I could learn from it. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing.

I love cooking. It is such a personal thing to me. Cooking is such a large part of my identity and shaped me into who I am that I can’t imagine never cooking again. It keeps me centered and helps me relax, along with connecting me to family and where I came from. I’m never more Zen then when I’m cooking, plus I get to enjoy a delicious meal afterwards. Even before I get to work, I will be thinking about dinner. If you see me roaming the halls of the office humming some unfamiliar melody with my perpetual RAF scowl, don’t worry about me or be intimidated. I’m not in a bad mood or mad at someone or stressed. It is just my “What am I having for dinner?” face.

I’m a lovefool.

Love me. Love me.

Chicago. My Beloved.

I did something that I never did before at work, which was to go to Chicago to do my day to day in the office because I wanted to visit Chicago.

That’s what I did. I wanted to go back so much, that I couldn’t wait for the next trip and decided to just go. Of course, I got my boss’s permission to work in the office and I did it.

One of the reasons was that I didn’t want to take any more vacation days. I have about 8 days remaining and I wanted to save them for the possible European vacation next year.

So, I took a personal day on Wednesday and flew out and worked in the office through Monday. It was spectacular.

I had a great time in Chicago like every other time that I had in Chicago. Surprisingly it was just my second “vacation” trip but probably my 7th or 8th trip there.

I love that city.

I didn’t do much, but just ate, explored, and worked. I walked around the city exploring parts that I had never been. I checked out the popular hipster Wicker Park and wasn’t too impressed with it.

Walking down their main street, Milwaukee, I was just taken back by the gaudiness of it. I think it was just trying too hard to be cool. Sure, there were many restaurants there that I wouldn’t mind trying, but I don’t know, wasn’t too impressed with it. Maybe if I spent more time there and maybe have something to eat, my opinion might change.

Then I checked out Logan Square, which was a few stops away. It was quieter and more run down with the hint of gentrification that was starting to happen. The hipsters are moving in. I liked Logan Square because it wasn’t trying to be anything but just what it is. No polish.

Maybe Selena was right and that I should have made my way to Ukrainian Village. I might like that better. I know that I was quite intrigued by that area during our Uber ride to Beoufhaus last year with my bro for dinner. I was a quaint unassuming area to me and I loved that.

Next time I know I’ll be exploring some more of the city, like Lincoln Square and others I’m sure.

* * *

Besides exploring parts of the city that I haven’t been, I also wander my old stomping grounds. I went to the Field Museum and explored their new exhibits. They had a Terra Cota Warriors of China and Ancient China exhibit about the first Emperor of China and a fascinating exhibit about Tattoos.

They were both great, but I found the Tattoo exhibit so fascinating.

I’m not a tattoo guy. I don’t like it on me, but I can appreciate it on art if I see a great one. To many today, tattoos are an expression of oneself, a way for them to be individual and to stand out. But it was fascinating to see how tattoos were used in the past, as a cultural and tribal identity, to brand criminals or prostitutes, gang affiliation, or even a sign of being a warrior.

I love the anthropological significance of tattoos. Very fascinating.

After the museum, I had to get my Chicago dog and I just relaxed and walked. I walked through Lakefront trail, through the parks, back to Cloudgate/the Bean and then made my way to the updated Navy Pier.

It’s a tourist trap, I know, but it’s a place for me to walk and get a great view of the city. It was then that I decided to do the Architecture Boat Tour again. It was my third time and it had been six years since I’ve done it. I did it the last time I was there on vacation, like the last time I went to the Field Museum back in 2010.

I was being a typical tourist, since I was there on vacation.

It was a great day. It was a beautiful day.

* * *

Food.

One of the many reasons I love Chicago is the food and one of the many reasons why I love traveling is food. This trip was no different. I made a conscious effort to not go to any restaurant that I had already been.

Every meal would be from a different restaurant.

Brindille was my first meal in Chicago, a little French small plates restaurant that is so popular with the hipster crowd. It was great. The other standout from the trip was GT Prime, a different type of steakhouse. I loved their Shishito Peppers and Corn in a Parmesan sauce so much that I’m attempting to make it tonight. It was also my first experience with venison and it was great. Unfortunately, Trina, who went the week before, wasn’t too impressed with it. Maybe if I tried other dishes, I might come to the same conclusion, but it was good.

I also got a gourmet risotto in porcini and truffles at Mama’s Boy. That was a chef special and thinking about my risotto, I can see where I go wrong at times. It’s not wet enough. I need to make it a little wetter and it’ll be there. Practice practice practice.

The most surprising place that I went to was a simple fried chicken sandwich joint, Leghorn Cafe. It is literally just outside of my hotel and boy did it fucking blew my mind. I went there twice, because it was that good. E told me about it, so I got it coming back from the office on Thursday night and was just wowed. I got it Sunday morning and now I want to make my own.

Come to think of it, this trip was a great inspiration for my cooking. So many dishes that I want to try and remake.

* * *

I stopped watching and following sports for years now, ever since I moved down from Washington.

Now, I’ll keep tabs on the Seahawks and see how they are doing, but I don’t follow religiously. I don’t even know if the Mariners are good or not. But growing up in the PNW, I’m a PNW sports fan. But, while I was in Chicago, I was so excited for the Cubs.

They were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS and I went out to watch all the games at the bar. The first night it was them tying the series 2-2 in Chicago, the second night I was out with Tia at Bar Louie in South Loop and watched them take the lead. Then on Game 6, I was at my favorite dive Snickers again to watch them make history and get back into the world series since ’40s.

It was magical and to be in the city while that happened was awesome.

* * *

A great great trip and I hope there would be more to come, assuming I don’t move there first.

Wow.

So tired.

This week.

This fucking week.

I don’t even remember what it was that made it so long, but it was just super busy and long.

The first thing that made it longer is that I’d gone into the office around 7:10-7:15ish. I’d caught the earlier train and it is all because of Relish.

Thankfully she’s doing fine after coming home from the emergency vet. But every morning I had to get up a little earlier to get Relish her medication. It wasn’t like it takes forever to do it or that it takes all the extra time that I woke up early for, but by 5:30 or so I am up and ready to start the day.

Monday was just a really off day. It was a hangover of sorts from the fucked up weekend with Relish and I was PMSing. Tuesday was a blue. The only thing that I remember doing is trying to figure out the whole MS Surface thing and trying to lock it down along with setting up multiple new users that were starting and other things.

These other things, no idea.

It was just a lot of MS Surface figuring out and I was almost constantly busy.

Ridiculous.

For the most part, Friday had been a much better day. Slower, less busy.

Oh, to the fucked up week.

To the fucked up week.

* * *

I had plan to do a whole weekend of cleaning, but now I’m not sure.

My body just needs rest. I can feel it, the heavy weighing of ickiness creeping up on my body. I just need to rest and eat and rest and eat and rest.

I think that might be the plan.

I’ll do some cooking, continuing my cooking project for the year with something new today.

Hopefully it’ll turn out well.

I think it will.

It should be interesting.

Taiwanese Scallion Pancake Beef Rolls.

Just relax.

I already did half of the cleaning that I was planning on doing.

The bathroom is done, or mostly done. I just need to mop, but that might just be tomorrow while I rest up today. Might take some Theraflu to help me relax.

No idea.

* * *

My brain is tired.

It doesn’t want to think as this post is just lacking.

I haven’t written anything creative in a while. The writing prompts haven’t been added to.

But I think for the time being, I have enough to work with, to get a decent story from, especially a selection of shorts, which is the idea of it.

But eh. Time to just research and call this little post over.