Thank you.



To all the women who have contributed wisdom, love beauty and wonder to
our lives, 

To our aunties for being amazing. 

To Nancy for listening and loving us.

To Mimo for bringing Momo in the world and for guiding us to a place of enlightenment

To Momo, for bringing us into the world; for giving us one another; for giving us endlessly 
of yourself; for making us work and love and try and pray harder than we knew was possible, 

Thank you for sharing a vast array of woman hood . 
You have made us who we are today. 

We love you. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Room



My time here at Yale has had its ups and downs. It has also had its neither-ups-nor-downs. Its many strings of slow dull moments. Those hours in between meals and after assignments have been turned in. Long afternoon walks alone. 1am sitting indian-style on the floor of Woolsey Rotunda, staring up counting light bulbs and listening to a lone organist practice through locked concert hall doors.

I've spent many of those spans of uncomplicated contentedness in my room. Reading. Listening. Watching. Strumming. Cleaning by shoving things into places I can't see. Dancing in front of the $5 Ikea wall mirror. Falling asleep on the couch instead of the bed for no good reason. I've organized and arranged and acquired this room. I like it in here. I think I've grown to love it a little.

Most underclassmen left campus a few days ago. During move-out, I caught glimpses of empty rooms hastily swept out of all the things which made them one person's and not another's. It's sad to think I'll be doing that same sweeping in a few days. My sacred little space will revert to four clean cream walls, a closet door, an empty bookshelf, and a cold-to-the-touch floor. Any indication that I ever ate or sang or slept or wrote here will be oversights -- careless residue leftovers where I neglected to scrub myself out of the whitewashed woodwork sufficiently. A cleaning crew will come in over the summer and wipe any old receipts or strands of hair I forgot to take with me into the irrecoverable yawn of a black plastic trash bag.

No, I don't want to stay in this one-room kitchenless fourth-floor walk-up with a bathroom shared by too many boys forever. Even I'm more ambitious than that (and also the university won't allow me to live in the college after I've graduated).  But I've appreciated all the space I've found in this minute number of square-feet. Next semester, another student will turn a key in the lock of A41. They'll see how awkwardly the unsentimental desk, chair, chest of drawers, and bed-frame sit in its center, a big mess of blonde wood elbows. I hope they're able to find room for themselves within these clean cream walls. I hope they're able to find home for a little while.



















Because, why not?

It's not often that I have a fleet of professional photographers following me around and taking my picture. That said, it does happen occasionally...

These are photos snapped at my company's big conference this year, and while there was no Bill Gates this time around, I did get to hang with Ben Bernanke, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and Colorado Governor (not to mention my numero uno political crush) John Hickenlooper.

I desperately hope I didn't come off as this cloying in person
I have no words for the awkwardness I'm exhibiting in this photo
Ahh! Much better!


The easy, sexy cousin

No, I'm not dissing on one on my relatives, though that would be interesting.

I'm talking about sticky mango rice. The easy, sexy cousin of rice pudding. If you're worries it tastes weird, that's silly. It's delicious -- thick and creamy with a salty sweet yum thing going on. It's made with coconut milk, but it takes entirely different from the sticky-sweet coconut concoctions we're used to in the US.

 A friend of mine convinced me it was "the easiest thing ever" telling me that she made it "all of the time." Since she wasn't Thai, I didn't believe her -- on either count -- until yesterday. I bought a box of about 20 champagne mangoes from one of my favorite stores pretty much ever. When I was buying my favorite noodles when the sweet rice across the isle caught my eye. It was a fat, short grain rice and I wondered if this was the holy grail of rice -- if this was the rice used to make what is perhaps, my favorite dessert ever. I whipped out my smart phone and looked up recipes for Mango Sticky Rice and sure enough, this was it. In my euphoria, I decided I had to improve on this practically perfect dessert. I opted for the short grain brown rice over the white stuff. Most recipes called for 6 ingredients: Water, salt, coconut cream, rice, mangoes and sugar. So I loaded up on the coconut cream. The results were delectable. While coconut cream is a high fat food, I don't see why this is much different from having oatmeal for breakfast. It also makes a super impressive dessert.  I added some ginger to mine, just because I love ginger and opted for brown instead of white sugar to match my brown instead of white rice.





Choni's Gingered Mango Brown Sugar Sticky Rice
I used a few recipes for this recipe. You can find them here, here and here. If mine doesn't fit your liking, try augmenting it with recommendations from the other recipes! Some call for more or less liquid. It depends on how sticky versus how porridge-y you want it to be. The less liquid you use, the less long it will keep. I suggest reducing liquid for dessert and adding more if you plan to eat this treat for breakfast.

3 champagne mangoes
2 cups brown sweet rice
2 cans coconut milk
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp grated ginger*
Water (about 3 cups)

Place rice in pot and cover with water. Let sit in water. I let it go for 4 hours and that is the general consensus so I would do it. People say it's fine if you let it sit for and hour or even 30 minutes.

DO NOT DRAIN! Add a can of coconut cream and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt and turn heat to medium high until water and cream come to a boil. Cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until rice absorbs all liquid.

Meanwhile, on stove stop, mix 1/2 teaspoon salt, second can of coconut cream brown sugar. Boil together making a coconut syrup. Once rice has absorbed all liquid, add half of the syrup and mix. Slice mangoes (a good tutorial here). Serve sticky rice along side mango and topped with the syrup.

*optional

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