apropos of anything

Chocolate. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, probably because I’ve been craving it, which means I’ve been combing through my cookbooks and various online recipe sites, looking for chocolate concoctions I’d love to make except they’re not practical for a household of two. Thirty-six chocolate cupcakes, for example, only last for so long before they go stale. It’s a good excuse for me to throw a dinner party — or better yet, a dessert party — but lately I’ve been juggling birthdays and baby showers and lost weekends (and yes, you CAN lose a weekend), so I haven’t had time to do one.

Mmm, chocolate.

If I can’t cook with chocolate, then I might as well write about it. I’m never going to be a food blog; I don’t cook enough, I don’t experiment enough, and I don’t have the time to do it well, so I’d prefer to leave it to the experts, but that doesn’t mean writing about chocolate is verboten.

(Also, if people are going to be Googling me to secretly try and get the scoop (and let me just say right now if you’re here because you Googled me, I KNOW THAT, so instead of pretending you know certain things because I mentioned it in conversation, you might as well ‘fess up that you’re reading the site because doing anything else makes you look like a giant lying ass… I’m just sayin’), I might as well talk about something important.)

There are camps among the chocoholics. Some love the milk, some love the dark, some love the white. I’m a dark chocolate girl myself, which is funny because I grew up picking all the special darks out of the bag of Hershey miniatures. Of course, these days I tend to avoid Hershey’s for the most part anyway. It’s not that I have anything against mass-produced chocolate (I love Dove and Cadbury), but the chocolate from Hershey’s tastes like second skimmings off the good stuff. It’ll do in a pinch even if it’s not ideal.

I don’t think chocolate should be too sweet. Dense, yes. Rich, yes. Sweet? Somewhat. And chocolate desserts, with the notable exception of brownies because I am a sucker for brownies, should be the same. A sliver of good chocolate should go a long way.

A few years ago, back when I lived in Vinings, I hosted a small Iron Chef party with chocolate as the theme ingredient. It was the second Iron Chef party I’d ever hosted, and I hadn’t yet figured out how to add some pressure to the process (in later battles, guests were given a list of possible ingredients a week in advance and then called four hours prior to the party with the actual ingredient), so everyone had a full week to work on their contributions. To a person, we all picked out the richest recipe we could find: flourless chocolate cake, chocolate and raspberry mousse, a chocolate pecan pie, triple chocolate cookies, chocolate brownie trifle, etc, etc. I shopped for the (dessert) party like I would any other, stocking up on paper products, cheese and crackers, chips and salsa, soda. I did not think to buy milk.

I will never make that mistake again.

Chocolate ice cream isn’t the same thing as chocolate. Most chocolate ice cream actually tastes a little chalky and not much like chocolate. Again, for me, the darker the chocolate, the better the ice cream. The best chocolate ice cream I’ve ever had was in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was so dark it looked like the sludge at the bottom of your coffee pot. I think it’s because they used good cocoa, probably the Dutch processed kind, so the ice cream wasn’t the least bit grainy and every spoonful was packed with deep chocolatey goodness. Doesn’t hurt that we were in dairy country either.

When I first read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid, I thought it would be the best thing ever to own a chocolate factory because really, what could be more fun? Especially if the chocolate factory were anything like Willy Wonka’s, even if I never did believe in (or want) Oompa Loompas. Then in college we took a day trip to Helen, where they have a store that makes most of its candy right in front of you, and it did seem like so much fun, making chocolates from nine to five. It would have been a great summer job in high school.

The thing about chocolate is that it’s magic, with or without the Oompa Loompas.

I didn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy Sunday night because I got a phone call around nine that I didn’t want to cut short; I taped it instead as ABC hadn’t yet announced that they will be re-airing the episode on Thursday, and after last week’s cliffhanger episode that left Meredith’s hand in a bomb, I simply had to know what was going to happen.

	George helping Bailey through her labor was one of the best, most moving parts of the episode

I liked it. I really liked it, liked the tension, liked the pacing, liked the character development, liked all of it, right up until they (spoiler-tagged on the homepage, but not on the permalink or in the archives) blew up Kyle Chandler’s character Dylan. Actually, it’s not the explosion itself that bothers me so much as the complete lack of reaction to it. I can forgive Meredith because she had enough personal trauma going on, and her shell-shocked behavior was a reaction in itself; I can forgive Christina and Izzie and George somewhat because the only time we saw them, they were with Meredith and obviously focused on her and what she needed. But everyone else? How did the Chief not know a bomb went off on the OR floor? Why did nobody else care that a man died? I know they have more of a personal connection to Burke and McDreamy, but there was an explosion and a man died trying to save the lives of the men you care about. Surely, surely, that warrants more than disarrayed milling about in the lobby. Surely somebody would be going to see if anyone else were injured, and if they, as medical professionals, could do something to help.

In the writer’s blog, Shonda Rhimes goes on and on about the technical aspects of that plot decision. She doesn’t once touch on the emotional side of it. For her, the whole thing is a plot twist, a series of special effects, the part she wants to have over so she can “pay attention to the other stuff, the estrogen stuff, the fun stuff like Bailey and George giving birth and Derek describing that kiss to Meredith…” This part of the story is only important because filming the scene took so much effort.

Except that by not showing any of the characters react to the twist, Rhimes divides her characters into classes, the important ones and the disposable ones. And while I understand tertiary characters are by definition disposable, a story that treats them so shabbily and insignificantly is weak and lopsided. You cannot go around reinforcing the idea that some people are less important than others.

This type of creative decision happens in television and movies all the time. I spent almost the entire two hours of Air Force One yelling at the screen, not because the movie was bad (it really, really was), but because the movie didn’t care who died so long as it wasn’t the President or his family. Yes, the President is the protagonist of Air Force One, but it shouldn’t be too much to ask to show some empathy for the poor no-name who just got sucked into the left engine. Ignoring him is lazy storytelling.

I would be equally as irritated by the omission if it had been in a book. The problem here isn’t the medium or the acting. The problem is the sloppy writing, which is actually hard for me to say since overall, it was a very strong episode. I actually cared about McDreamy and Meredith for the first time in a long, long while. I loved the parallel shower scene, all of the George scenes, and the general portrayal of people reacting to a traumatic situation. My only gripe is that nobody seemed to care when something bad happened to someone who wasn’t of their ranks.

So many of my recent posts have been in the this-time-last-year vein that I feel like 2005 must have been extraordinarily eventful. It’s probably more that the events hit me so much harder, absorbed my thoughts and emotions so completely, that they’ve left a mark I’ll revisit year after year.

This was me a year ago today.

Aasif took this photo of me and Amal the evening of Mumanijan’s funeral. We’re in Mumanijan’s room, which looked strangely bare, having been stripped of the bed and oxygen tanks it no longer needed. I wonder how big Amal’s gotten now.

The thing about Nishat Mumanijan was that she always got it, no matter what “it” was. She never judged you, not ever, and if she didn’t necessarily approve of what you were doing, she made it clear the disapproval didn’t extend to you as a person. She heard the things you said. She heard the things you didn’t say. And she definitely brought everybody together.

More and more people came to visit as she got sicker. For myself, it got to the point where I was spending four days a week in Chicago and only three in Atlanta, consecutive weeks at a time. I remember saying here that I pretty much felt one of the rooms in Naperville was mine, I was in it so much. Other people flew in from all over the country, or drove in from just down state, and we’d sit up and watch movies or have Scrabble competitions or just talk where Mumanijan could hear us and sometimes participate. Amal was a fixture; we loved her. Those are good memories for me. There’s a certain sadness to them, but when I look back, I think more about how we were all there, the entire family, and less about the reason why.

When he dropped me off at the airport the Tuesday after the funeral, Sami Mamujan told me not to stop visiting just because Mumanijan had died. I didn’t plan to, but things were already different. We’d packed up her room, her clothes. She wasn’t there anymore. It actually took me eight months to go back, and even then I had a hard time adjusting to having only one home in Chicago. To seeing the yellow vase in Naperville instead of Wheaton, where it belonged.

In the year that she’s been gone, I can’t even begin to count the number of times I thought, Mumanijan would have understood this. She would have.

Y’all know the drill… if you’re tagged, you gotta do it, especially if you’re just sitting up waiting until it’s time for you to take your parasite pills, so here it goes:
Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life…

Receptionist/secretary/assistant in a doctor’s office
News editor at the Technique
TA for the introductory CS classes at the CoC
The one I have now that I don’t want to elaborate on too much

	Like they say on TNT, the original is still the best (well, except for Empire, but I’m going to blur the line between the original movies, up until the point they leave Tatooine in Jedi

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have

Star Wars
Bend It Like Beckham
The Sound of Music
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Four Places I Have Lived

Chicago
Houston
Augusta, GA
Atlanta

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Gilmore Girls
Veronica Mars
Grey’s Anatomy

I am such a girl.

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation

Mumbai, India
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Disney World!
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Four Books I Love

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The High King by Lloyd Alexander
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

This was a hard one; how do you pick just four? Most of these are one of a series, and I would have put the whole series if I could. Instead, I put either my favorite of the series or the reason I found the series in the first place. Also, religious books were not eligible as that wouldn’t be a fair fight!

Four Websites I Visit Daily

CNN
Television Without Pity
the BBC
My friends and strangers

Four Favorite Foods

Fish biryani with eggplant raita
Curry — not what most westerners consider curry, but the creamy yellow sauce that desi people call curry
Chicago-style deep dish pizza
Ice cream

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

Mumbai: At the moment I am going through a horrible bout of homesickness for a place that isn’t technically even my home.
San Francisco: It’s beautiful and there are people I want to visit.
Medina: I love it so much the only reason I could bear to leave was because I was going to Mecca for the first time.
Spain: I want to see it!
Italy: Ditto!

Nowhere. East, west, hame’s best. Yes, I know that’s more than four.

A few months ago, I talked about how I don’t really talk about myself much here on my personal blog, and how I should work on that and learn to open up more because that was the whole point of the blog. This post is me opening up. It might be gone tomorrow morning if I decide it’s too frank, too… exhibitionist, but for the moment, here it is.

There was a baby at tonight’s Superbowl party, a darling little three-month-old, and for a while I was playing with her and talking to her mother instead of watching the game. There were other women there as well, and in the middle of our conversation, one of them abruptly asked, “Do you ever feel like you want a baby?”

The question was addressed not to the childless married women but to me and the other single girl in the room. We both said we didn’t and changed the subject, but the question, it rankled. It left a nasty taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with metallic medicine. Because, really, what kind of question is that to ask somebody in a crowded room? What kind of question is that to ask at all? What’s up with your condescending commentary on my single status?

I know she didn’t really mean anything at all by it, but I wanted to kick her in the gut as hard as she’d verbally kicked me in mine. I’m not sighing over a baby. I don’t feel my biological clock speeding up. But even if I were, it’s not a topic I’d like discussed in public, and it’s none of your damn business.

Tonight was also the umpteenth time I was told I didn’t know what tired was since I didn’t any children to show me. I’ve heard this particular sentiment before, and the bald audacity of it never fails to shock me into speechlessness. I’ve never been kept up by a cranky baby, but I have been kept up by a cranky server. I don’t get the spa days, or the shopping sprees, or the long leisurely birthday lunches. And if I’ve just spent twelve hours holding hands with my colleagues, doing my job and helping them do theirs, surrounded by footage of people digging bodies out of a subway tunnel, how dare you tell me I shouldn’t be tired because I haven’t spent the day chasing after children. I should be tired, and I am tired, and also horrified and numbed and saddened.

I’m not saying being a parent is easy because it’s not in the least. But in the same way that I do not denigrate what you do, I’d like you to respect that I too am busy, that I too am fulfilled. Our experiences shouldn’t have to be alike to be considered equal.

(Click on the image to see a larger version.)

Somebody, I can’t remember who, once told me that anger was about control, or more specifically, about losing control. If somebody makes you angry, you’re ceding control to them because they are causing you to be angry. I don’t think the theory necessarily applies all the way across the board, and even if it does, I think there are some things that are worth being angry about. Genocide. Human rights violations. Famine. Racism. The destruction of our environment. So many things merit passion and activisim and standing your ground because you just can’t take one more minute of it. Too many to list, really.

But insults towards Allah (SWT)? Somehow, I think Allah can handle Himself, and the strongest insult man can offer is not even as noticeable as a mosquito bite.

Last year, The Sane One did a post partially about extremism in religion where she said everyone is talking about extremism, but nobody is actually defining what’s “extreme”. And then she said, “Extremism is going beyond [or below] the Prophet (S).” So following allowing that line of logic, and borrowing from an over-marketed Christian slogan (I think the Christians would agree with me here), in this situation, what would the Prophet do?

I don’t even have to wonder about this, actually, because I know what he would do. When people threw trash at him, he did nothing. When they hurled insults in his face, he did nothing. When they threw rocks at him, when they ran him out of town, when they tried to starve him, he did nothing. Even when Allah, through the angel Gabriel, asked the Prophet if he would like the people who treated him so cruelly to be destroyed, he refused.

The Prophet was about kindness and gentleness. I do not think he would have approved of the kidnapping threats or the death threats.

And there’s always the basic truth that if we had not allowed the cartoons to make us so angry, if we had not ceded that control, millions of people would never have never seen them in the first place. We did their work for them. They waved the red flag, and we charged. I don’t disagree that it’s hurtful, but not to this extent, not to the point of threatening and committing violence. Marches and rallies, sure. Boycott the newspaper in question, by all means. Let’s get ‘em where it hurts most: in the pocketbook. Protest as much as you want, but don’t wave a gun while you’re doing it. The only way we can defuse the cartoons’ claim that Islam is all about violence is to react firmly, strongly, and peacefully.

On another note, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf mentioned a hadith that says if somebody has wronged you, then you have the right to revenge… but if you choose to forgive instead, Allah will forgive one of your sins for you. These cartoons, they are hurtful and cruel, and they were meant to be so, but we should try to forgive and let Allah decide the fate of those who drew them. He is, after all the, best of judges.