Feel-Better Greek Soup

Tim feels like crap today so I made this modified Greek soup which has a little bit of everything a sick person needs. And it's really satisfying and filling.

Greek Lemon and Orzo Soup with Spinach

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
3 cloves chopped garlic
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1/2 cup orzo
3/8 cups fresh lemon juice (1 and 1/2 lemons, juiced)
3 eggs
1/2 cup fresh spinach, cut into thin ribbons
parsley
black pepper
salt
olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat chicken breast with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper and ground or chopped parsley. Bake chicken for 25 minutes (this gets rid of some of the fat and gives it a better texture in the soup).

While chicken is baking, heat 2 tbsp olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot. Add chopped onion and let cook for 2-3 minutes, then add chopped garlic and 1 tsp salt. Cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Add chicken stock and water to the soup pot and bring to a low boil over medium-high heat. Add 1 tsp ground parsley. Add the orzo when there is about 10 minutes left of cooking time on the chicken.

When the chicken is ready, remove it from the oven and cut it into bite size pieces. Add it to the pot.

In a bowl beat together the lemon juice and the three eggs. Take 3/4 cup of the hot broth out of the pot and slowly drizzle it into the lemon/egg mixture while beating it swiftly (this tempers the eggs). Then stir this mixture into the soup. Continue cooking and stirring until the soup has thickened slightly. Stir in fresh spinach.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Feel better soon!

Sex! Gambling! Gossip! Killing! Rabies! Hurricanes!

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
By Mary Roach

Wheeee! Fun! A book about sex! Yay! Oh wait, you know what's amazing? How scientists can ruin anything under the pretense of making it better. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't read this book, because it is fascinating. But it is a little bit like reading an exposé on the beef industry. Do you really want to know how that hamburger is made? No. You may not want to admit this, but much of the hamburger's deliciousness is actually predicated on mystery.

Good thing Mary Roach has a healthy sense of humor. Exhibit A: chapter seven is called "The Testicle Pushers: If Two is Good, Would Three Be Better?"

I would recommend: reading this book aloud on a long car trip, so that everyone is equally embarrassed. If you weren't close friends before. You will be now.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
By Charles Yu

I was so excited about this book. Let me repeat: SO EXCITED. How excited? I bought it in hard back, at full price. Which I NEVER do. I think I thought it was going to be like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao only on Science Fiction. News flash: it was not.

This is a book about time travel, but before you get too excited (Amber D.), it's mostly a book about daddy issues. And not in an awesome, space battle, cyber sexy, defeat your father and take over the death star kind of way. In an Ezra Pound, generation X, lonely guy in a broken time machine with a holographic dog sort of way. It is a story where nothing happens except to repair the main character's wounded psyche, which I HATE.

This book does mega cool things with language and form. Ok. And... Yeah....

I would recommend: well, don't read this if you're really tired, is all I'm saying.

China Boy
By Gus Lee

Opposite end of the spectrum from the Charles Yu. China Boy is about a 6-7 year-old boy named Kai, whose family flees China during the Chinese civil war. They end up in San Francisco in the 1940's and 50's. At first, Kai is sheltered by his mother, but when she dies and his father marries Stepmother Edna, Kai is shoved out into the streets. Kai becomes the recipient of daily beatings and as a result, his father sends him to the YMCA to learn to box and defend himself.

If we're talking about Asian American literature here, personally, I found this book 750,000 times more enjoyable than the Joy Luck Club. Lee writes with humor but he's presents a really nuanced vision of the way African American, Latino, and Chinese people get along in San Francisco at this time. But don't get me wrong with all this race-y culture-y stuff, this isn't Grad School talking here, I chose this book independently (yes, it has boxing in it, sue me) and I couldn't put it down.

I would recommend this book to: anyone who thought the Joy Luck Club needed more Fight Club.

Their Eyes Were Watching God
By Zora Neale Hurston

"Oh to be a pear tree--any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!"

The first time I read this book (I know I'm singing a familiar song here) was freshman year at Centenary. I liked it ok, but pretty much only absorbed that it was about a sexually independent black lady who talked in dialect. I didn't learn very much, obviously.

All I'm going to say is that if you've already read it because you were forced to, it's so much better when you do it for fun. Holy smokes. This book is so much better when you're not a stupid freshman in college distracted by... being a freshman in college. It's got sex and gambling and gossip and killing and rabies and hurricanes!!!

So much better the second time. Period.

I would recommend this book to: Tim, who didn't make it past the first page when the book was assigned to him, and to all my female friends who need something in between a bodice ripper and god-forsaken Wuthering Heights.

Thunderdome

I keep talking about my Oral Exam like that's a normal thing we do in America--at least not in the "dental technicians" and "insurance premiums" sort of way.

Before Georgetown, the only other place where I have ever encountered oral examinations as a regular sort of thing was France. And France was a silly place.

Well, as I have mentioned, in the English graduate program at Georgetown, we're required to pass an oral exam in order to graduate. It's sort of like defending your thesis before you write one, essentially proving that you can perform research independently. I took mine on Friday. I got a "high pass," which is above a "pass" and below a "pass with distinction."

Either way, I walked out thinking, "oh, I am TOTALLY done with graduate school for.ev.er."

I came home and immediately played video games for six hours and drank a six pack of Red Stripe (HOORAY BEER!). However, as Tim and my professors so rudely reminded me, I am actually currently enrolled in three classes, which I also have to complete in order to graduate.

Puh. uhShhuh.

So, yes, I don't have to think/read about boxing anymore except when I want to. But I do have to finish the semester alive, which just got harder because Tim somehow talked me into buying an iPhone, which is a life-sucking soul-terrorist because it is the epitome of all shiny objects.

Homework÷Shiny Objects=FAIL

The Want Bone

The Want Bone

By Robert Pinsky

The tongue of the waves tolled in the earth's bell.
Blue rippled and soaked in the fire of blue.
The dried mouthbones of a shark in the hot swale
Gaped on nothing but sand on either side.

The bone tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing,
A scalded toothless harp, uncrushed, unstrung.
The joined arcs made the shape of birth and craving
And the welded‑open shape kept mouthing O.

Ossified cords held the corners together
In groined spirals pleated like a summer dress.
But where was the limber grin, the gash of pleasure?
Infinitesimal mouths bore it away,

The beach scrubbed and etched and pickled it clean.
But O I love you it sings, my little my country
My food my parent my child I want you my own
My flower my fin my life my lightness my O.

(© Robert Pinksy 1990)