"Oh, The Places You'll Go!"

     Last Thursday, the editorial staff of Portland Monthly took me and my fellow interns out to what turned into a four-hour-long happy hour -- the happiest of happy hours -- at a classy French "Brasserie" downtown.  There were plenty of fancy cocktails and deep-fried frog legs to be had, and all I ended up paying for was a $5 bowl of gourmet mac-and-cheese.  That may not be all I should have paid for, if that slip of paper handed to me at the end of the night was actually a receipt telling me how much I needed to pay for my beer, instead of what I (wishfully) thought it was: a receipt telling me how much  my supervisor had paid for my beer.  I learned that I should really go for speed instead of duration if I want to get the most out of Portland Monthly happy hours and don't end up buying -- or not buying -- myself my 2nd drink while everyone else has already had four covered.  But happy hour also reminded me that a) being a fact-checker is totally worth (my parents may disagree) the two parking tickets, consequent trip to court, and several-hundred-dollar cell phone charge I ran up during the first month of my internship, when I was too self-conscious to make phone calls from my desk, in front of other people, like a normal human being, and also that b) I still belong in the intern world.  I think the fact that the first words out of my mouth after I took my place at the table were, "Well, I ran into a tree on my way over here," goes to show that I have a long way to go before I become, say, a sophisticated magazine editor.
      Speaking of becoming a sophisticated magazine editor, while I was at said happy hour, a woman from the advertising department of our office asked me what I would do with my life career-wise if I only had two months left to live.  If I could do anything, what would it be?  Disregard money, training, what have you.  My first answer was a very non-committal, "..I don't know. Maybe publishing? I could read manuscripts," to which she responded, "No." Wrong answer.  Since then I've been thinking a lot about her question.  I think it's an important one, but I'm also not sure if I have the experience or knowledge to answer it yet. I feel like there are so many jobs out there that I don't even know exist, and since I've basically spent most of my time in the classroom the past few years instead of out in the workforce, I haven't even explored the ones I know of, like being a sophisticated magazine editor.  That said, I have come up with a few more options that may have a little more to them than my initial response:

1. Jodi Foster's job in The Silence of the Lambs.  I used to think that when I grew up I might be a forensic scientist, or whatever you would call someone who goes to a crime scene and pieces together how the crime happened based on what's there and how it all looks.  Now I think interviewing a serial killer takes the cake. How could you not be intrigued by someone who describes eating a man's liver like it was a pork chop?  If only I had Clarice's double major in psychology and criminology under my belt. So close.
2. Working in a flower shop.  Because arranging bouquets is the most obvious runner-up to hanging out with psychopaths.  But really. I would love to work in a flower shop. Specifically, this flower shop:

Sammy's Flowers. A week or so ago I went into the shop and pleaded my case as a desperate college grad who was willing to do anything and everything, whatever it took, to fulfill her dream of arranging flowers  They actually let me throw together a bouquet for what I hope will not be the first and last time. Really, I'd do anything.
3. I would write. Something. Something awesome. Probably not books, although the one about aliens I started in middle-school had serious potential. In the meantime, I write this blog. That's what this is, by the way. Practice.
     For this last one, I might take the cue of another Alisha Gorder. Yes, there's another woman out there with my name, and she is living one of my possible lives.  According to her LinkedIn profile, the first hit when you Google search my name, Alisha is the editor of a health newsletter in New York City and has also worked as a freelance reporter for the New York Times. But there's more. Her mother-in-law's name is Gordeen Gorder.  My mom's name is Gayleen Gorder. If the Twighlight Zone music isn't playing in your head right now, something is wrong. So, while I'm trying to figure out the answer to the question posed to me at that fateful happy hour, why not create a LinkedIn profile and try and connect with my namesake? The College Career Center has been telling me to make a profile for months. I just haven't had a good enough reason to do so until now.

Tempeh to Toothpaste

If you don't have Heidi Swanson's cookbook, Super Natural Every Day, you really should get it.  I have never really used cookbooks before, and I don't mean that in the 'I don't need a recipe because I throw things together and it always comes out fabulous' kind of way.  I just don't really use them.  I use my mom's recipes, do a Google search for whatever I'm craving, or snag the occasional recipe from a cooking blog, but I've never really had a go-to cookbook.  Enter Super Natural Every Day.  My cousin got me it for Christmas, and it's my favorite thing.  It's lived in -- there's some dried split pea dust in the creases of one page, some water damage, some soup splatters, and post-its marking my favorite recipes.  I've found my housemates curled up with it in a chair in the corner of our kitchen. Even the house-owners' 16-year-old-daughter, whose meals usually come from the freezer, has been caught in the chair red-handed, her eyes pouring over pages of recipes for lemon-zested bulgar wheat, macaroon tart, wild rice casserole, and green lentil soup. Take away the drama, and the cookbook's still good. Promise.
   Last night I turned to this trusty gem of a cookbook and made maple-glazed eggplant with tempeh.  I had never had tempeh before I tried this recipe, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, tempeh-wise.  Still, I think it's pretty tasty.  The recipe actually calls for pomegranate molasses, but it notes that you can use maple syrup instead, which is what I did since I had maple syrup on hand.  The recipe also calls for cilantro, which I didn't use, because whenever I buy cilantro for a particular recipe, I never know what to do with whatever is left over.  But, I just saw this great sounding recipe http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/buttermilk-asparagus-salad-recipe.html, also by Heidi, that calls for cilantro. I just might have to remake the tempeh dish, this time with the cilantro, and finish off the pesky herb by having the asparagus salad for lunch. 
Recipe: Pomegranate or Maple-Glazed Eggplant with Tempeh
Ingredients
1 long, thin Asian eggplant cut into chunks
8 oz. tempeh, cut into cubes
1 cup peeled and diced winter squash or sweet potato (I used sweet potato)
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or use smoked paprika instead)
1/3 cup pomegranate molasses (or maple syrup)
1/3 cup olive oil
 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup crumbled ricotta salata or feta cheese

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mound the eggplant, tempeh, squash, and lemon zest onto a baking sheet.

 2) Make the glaze: Sprinkle the salt over the garlic. Chop and smash the garlic into a paste. Combine the garlic paste in a bowl with the red pepper flakes and pomegranate molasses (or, in my case, maple syrup). Whisk in the olive oil.
3) Drizzle 3/4 of the glaze over the mound of delicious things on the baking sheet and arrange in a single layer.
4) Bake for 45-60 minutes, tossing everything at the 35-minute mark.  Cook until the eggplant and squash are soft and starting to caramelize.
5) When everything is finished cooking, drizzle with the remaining glaze and sprinkle with cilantro and feta. Or just feta.

6) Buy Heidi Swanson's book.

 And now, perhaps as you are waiting for your squash and eggplant to begin caramelizing, here's a little bit about what's been going on in my little life these past few days:

My Job Search:  The other day I went to an interview for a mac n' cheese food cart.  One of the first things they asked me was, "What do you know about Herb's Mac n' Cheese?" What could I say?  Before I got to the interview, I wasn't even sure that it was Herb's Mac n' Cheese I was interviewing for.  I just knew I was interviewing at a picnic table next to Herb's Mac n' Cheese.  I could only assume, since the owners had responded to me using an anonymous Craigslist email address, and I hadn't bothered to ask exactly what food cart I was interviewing with.  Obviously, I was very prepared.  But it's a food cart. Anywhere else and they would have been happy I had all my teeth.  But, I live in Portland.  And so, when I glanced over at the mac n' cheese vessel and said, "Well, I know you guys are a food cart...that serves mac n' cheese," I was fairly certain that whatever the woman was writing down on my resume was probably not a comment on my astute observational skills.  Good thing my dad had talked me out of describing myself as 'detail-oriented' in my cover letter.  But hey! They did ask me to work at their other food-cart, Herb's Hawaiian Shaved Ice.  I respectfully declined. 

My Internship: I'm an intern at Portland Monthly Magazine.  I do a lot of fact-checking, which involves calling back sources and making sure everything is correct before an article goes to print, but recently, I have been assigned a few short writing assignments.  One of them happened to require (I required it to require) going to the fire station Downtown, where I was given my own private tour of the station.  I felt like I was in elementary school, except when you're touring with your Girl Scout Troop or 3rd grade class, you usually don't see eight or so firemen strip down to briefs, change into gear, and rush off to do a water rescue. Or, if you do, you don't enjoy it as much.  At least not for the the same reasons.  But, I did learn things.  Like about some tool called "The Nibbler," and that, on average, the men at Station 1 go through about 120 pounds of meat each week.  Not exactly the target audience for Heidi Swanson's purely-vegetarian cookbook. 


My Love Life: The boyfriend moved home to California so my mother sent me a Shakespeare action figure, because she thought I could use 'a little man in my life.' I'm lucky she sent one who is good with a quill.  Thanks, Mom. You're the best.

My Rose: I mentioned the firemen, didn't I?
My Thorn: Getting a glob of toothpaste in my eye due to an overenthusiastic flick of the wrist.  It was the worst.