Growing Experiences -- Ninetieth Post

First off, the new blogger format where you can't tab quickly from the title to the body of the post is really annoying. I don't know if I said it before, but it's worth saying again.

Second off, I just had a growing experience and hated it thoroughly. I actually had it a few months ago, but I've been too busy to post the perfectly viable draft that I wrote right after it happened. The problem with this one was the extended stress levels. I moved to another state with hotel reservations for the parents and brother for three nights; this was after graduate housing fell through (they contacted me today saying they would have a place in September; thanks a heap, Coyote Ugly). I had a few meetings set up to look at apartments, and made a lot more as the days went on and I couldn't find anything. I don't think I encountered too many craigslist scams, but I saw a few kind of awful places, didn't sleep well due to snoring in the hotel room, had a couple places get snatched out from under me, and eventually ditched the whole "my future-roommate can move in later" plan as living on the street became more of a possibility. Finally, I decided to look for rooms to let in established places; i.e., I would become a new roommate in a house full of strangers who already knew each other. As a quick recap, junior year fall was great because no one knew anyone, but junior year spring was awful because everyone but me was already established. Still, it would better than being homeless. 

I hated this growing experience. I had to make phone calls and put my phone number on the internet (via craigslist emails) and meet lots of new people. 

This clip from Despicable Me 2 sums up how I feel about making phone calls.

And, while I hate the way my stomach still hurt from the stress as I wrote this three days after moving in, I feel pretty good about this whole endeavor again. For a few weeks, I was wondering if I was even supposed to end up in grad school, given the way housing was working out (or not working out, as it were). I was so stressed that I was getting tension headaches because my stress apparently settles in my shoulders and neck. Once we started the trip over here, I started not being able to eat a whole lot; you'd be amazed by how unappealing most food is when your stomach is twisted up and you feel like you could dry heave at any point. I mean, water made my stomach hurt. Breathing made my stomach hurt. 

Anyway, I found a place where I could move in immediately with nice people, two dogs, a flight of stairs between me and the kitchen, a washer and dryer, a monthly lease (nice if things don't work out), a nearby bus stop, and the cheapest rent I've ever seen in a four-person home. It's a mere ten dollars more expensive than my last place, with its unfinished basement and six people, and almost a third of the average rent in the area. 

Bam. 

Now I'm free to stress about (in approximately this order): 

1. Orientation

2. Preliminaries (have been too busy moving and stressing to study)

3. Teaching 

4. Teaching

5. Teaching

6. Class

But hey, this is what I signed up for. If I can meet someone and move into their house the same day, well, I can teach three labs of probably-won't-be-science-majors-after-this-semester undergrads. 

Also, I bought a bike for $80 and spent almost twice that much fitting it out with fenders, lights, grips, a kickstand, and a helmet. And I still have enough money to pay rent next month. And I can pay utilities.

Once I figure out how this house works, life will be pretty good. I've already almost forgotten the bone-crushing, vomit-inducing stress that comes when you have to be out of the hotel TOMORROW and school activities start in THREE DAYS. In the meantime, I'm still working out whether or not to use the dishwasher and how long the dryer takes to finish drying my sheets so I can go to bed. It seems a lot better than worrying about where I'll be sleeping tomorrow.

UPDATE: It's been a few months since orientation now, and I can hardly remember it. I've made friends, I've make mistakes, and I've made good choices. As far as I can tell, grad school is like having a teaching job, with all that stress and work, smashed in with having serious classes in school and a part-time job in a research lab. So, like real life but more stressful.
I regret nothing. 

Vegan Apple Pumpkin Quickbread -- Sixty Ninth Post

I've taken to cooking lately, my dear reader(s). I want to bake all the time. Homework? No, baking. Organizing recipes. Finding new recipes and trying them out right away.
One day, I found myself totally out of butter and eggs and desperately wanting to bake bread.
The problem: no breads, yeast or quick, can be made with the ingredients I have on hand. If it's not calling for butter and eggs, it's calling for 15 cups of flour or a bread machine or a loaf pan or something ridiculous like that. Yeah, my communal kitchen is understocked in some respects. We have five muffin tins, but no loaf tins or cheese graters. We have fifteen knives, but none of them for bread.
So, I turned to quickbreads, my preferred drop biscuits being out of the question due to their 5 tablespoons of butter.
Most quickbreads take freaking eggs.
My alternative eventually became apparent to me when I googled "quickbreads no eggs no butter" and pulled up a lot of links with "egg" and "butter" and about two that said "vegan".
AH!
I am not vegan, although I am vegetarian, but I'm a butter-and-eggless vegetarian at the moment, which renders me a cow-milk-consuming vegan for the time being. Not that I'm opposed to vegan milk options; soy, rice, and almond milks can be stored in the cupboard until opened, my friends with no fridge space and erratic milk-drinking habits. They are also quite tasty, although they are best, in my opinion, in cooking rather than in cereal. Soy's a lot thicker than skim. Rice and almond are more skim-y, and a mix of rice and soy makes for great box-bought mashed potatoes.
Anyway. I found this "vegan" apple bread recipe that didn't have applesauce (also not in my kitchen) or pumpkin (technically, the stuff in my fridge isn't mine, but I'm the one storing it, so I didn't want to use it). It called for an egg (goddamnit), but the Cook's Thesaurus provided me with a whole heap of egg substitutes. I used the cornstarch (1:3 with water) and added a bunch of oil and heaped my spoons of baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
It was super dry since I chopped the apples instead of grating them (it was about two of my favourite itty bitty apples that remind me of the ones I got in England and that are the perfect size for cutting and eating straight off the core), so I frantically added the last two tablespoons of my soy milk, a massive glop of raspberry jam (sounded better than plum in this context and is way cheaper than my other jam), and, in desperation, what was left of my friend's slowly going bad pumpkin puree. I then added a handful of dark chocolate chips.
Here's the recipe as I wrote it down:

Vegan Apple Pumpkin Bread
1.5 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
cinnamon and cloves, and other spices to taste
At least 1 cup shredded apple
1/2 cup raspberry jam (but any fruit jam would do, probably)
1/2 cup pumpkin (apple sauce or any other fruit puree would do)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp vanilla
squirt lemon juice
1 egg: 1 tbsp cornstarch, 3 tbsp water, glug (probably about a tsp, up to a tbsp) olive oil
2 tbsp milk (enough to moisten batter)
Handful chocolate chips (or more)
If you use less jam, add more sugar, or less sugar if you use a sweeter fruit puree (applesauce, for instance).

Preheat oven to 350 F; grease pan. I used olive oil and it worked okay.
Mix up dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately. I added the "egg" mixture last to the wet ingredients.
Gently, gently mix wet and dry ingredients just until there's a thick batter. Any more stirring and it might get tough.
Fold in chocolate chips (gently!)
Pour into pan with same capacity as a shallow 9" pie tin.
Bake for about an hour, checking periodically, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Let it sit in the tin for about 10 minutes to cool, then tip it out onto a cooling rack. Flip it right-side-up when it's cool enough; no use having it break now when you've done so much work to keep it pretty already.
Not that it would be any less delicious if it broke.

The cornstarch egg worked well. The bread is fairly light, not tough, and flavourful. It's a little sweet, as I followed the original recipe and put in a full cup of sugar, but it's okay in small amounts. It's also incredibly rich; I believe that adding more fruit puree and less oil makes it lower calorie, but I don't know about richness. The chocolate chips probably don't help that, either. Using banana or zucchini might have improved the richness problem, but I really like the flavour without those. Again, any jam would probably work; whatever strikes your fancy. It would probably be good with cranberry, blackberry, apricot, peach, cherry, plum, or strawberry; but don't limit yourself. If anything sounds unappetizing with the pumpkin, swap it out for something else, like applesauce. Applesauce would be delicious in this (but I don't have any). There is definitely a nice pumpkin background to the whole bread, but it's not too overwhelming. The apple and raspberry are definitely present. I happen to love pumpkin, but banana would work as well. Also, mine is incredibly sweet because I followed shannonsrunning's recipe (which does not include mostly-sugar jam) and put in a whole cup of sugar. This was too much, at least if jam is used.
I would photograph it and post the picture for you, but my camera's batteries are dead and I'm too broke to buy eggs and butter right now, let alone batteries.
Just trust me, it's delicious looking.
According to my housemate's boyfriend, it smells like heaven. After eating a piece, he informed me that I was "doing the Lord's work". I've decided he can stay around; anyone who compliments my kludged up recipes is a friend of mine.