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Five Years of Blogging

Almost exactly five years ago (the actual anniversary is technically two days from now), I published my very first blog post. I was 17 years old at the time and weeks away from graduating high school. Since then, a tremendous amount has changed. I mean that was literally the before times, as in pre-COVID. In terms of my life outlined in that post, I no longer live with my parents, we lost one of our dogs (Hank), and we sold the farm. 

At the time I planned to pursue a B.S. in engineering and take several computer science and French classes. I ultimately received my engineering degree in May 2023 having double majored in engineering science and computer science. As for French, I only took three courses during college, decided against studying abroad, and haven’t spoken the language in three and a half years. While language learning can be fun and it would be cool to be fluent in another language, I wouldn’t exactly say it’s something I’m passionate about. 

Things that I enjoyed at the time were “audiobooks, science history, technology news, guitar, tennis, and macaroni and cheese.” While I still technically enjoy all of those things and would like to get back into listening to audiobooks and playing guitar, they are no longer core parts of my life. My current main hobby is bouldering. Macaroni and cheese is still one of my favorite foods along with pasta carbonara, ramen, pad thai, and fried chicken. 

If you’d asked me where I’d be in five years, five years ago, I would have probably said pursuing (or graduating with) an M.S. in computer engineering. Where I actually am now, is 10 months into working as a software engineer on the Microsoft OneNote team. Had you told me that I’d have posted weekly blog posts for the entire five years, I would have been shocked. This is the 261st post and taken together the posts total 81,869 words!

While I haven’t 100% made up my mind about the future of this blog, this may well be my final post or at least the end of the weekly posts. Realistically though if I do decide to stop writing weekly posts, that will mark the end of the blog. There are still moments when I enjoy writing posts, but what’s kept me going is the momentum and my internal commitment to the weekly posts. I have no idea what the next five years will look like but I am excited to find out! Five years is a long time so undoubtedly things will change. That said, my honest prediction is that my life will remain largely unchanged and that I’ll just be more settled into things. That is, I may well still be working the same job (hopefully with some promotions of course) and regularly bouldering. Regarding being more settled, I’ll perhaps own my own place by then. 

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Visiting Climbing Gyms in MA and VT

In a recent post titled My Best Purchase of 2023, I told you all about my annual membership to my home rock climbing gym (Edgeworks). Being away from home has further illuminated how amazing it is to have a home gym and membership. While visiting Western Massachusetts, I had the opportunity to check out two of the nearby climbing gyms: BrattCave and Central Rock Gym (CRG). While this was a lot of fun and better than not climbing at all, paying for day passes was a bit hard to stomach. Furthermore, I did miss seeing familiar faces and climbing with folks I’ve gotten to know at my gym. On the flip side, the gyms I visited weren’t nearly as busy as my home gym which was a nice change. 

I’d been hoping to primarily climb at BrattCave as the day pass cost is significantly lower but found it to be better suited to a stronger climber. Furthermore, the staffed hours are quite limited and the space is very small. Rather than having dedicated colored holds for each route, it’s a spray wall with member-set routes that are marked with colored tape. Because most of the routes were too challenging and I had the place to myself, I mostly just traversed and created my own bouldering problems. While not a great fit for me, it was still a very cool gym to check out. 

After passing by CRG on numerous occasions while taking the B43 bus to/from Amherst, it was neat getting to finally climb there. I’d wanted to check it out back when I was a student, but it was hard to justify when the Smith climbing wall was within walking distance and free. CRG is similar to my home gym in that it is a full-fledged climbing gym with bouldering, top roping, lead climbing, fitness, and yoga. While I generally prefer bouldering, I had fun using the auto belays for some top-ropping. As compared with my home gym, I liked how much more spacious CRG felt. The gym was pretty empty at the time and it’s nice that they keep things clean, but I was a bit annoyed that they were vacuuming the mats while still open as it was quite loud. In terms of grading, I found CRG to be softer than my home gym. While I didn’t do any V4s, I was able to flash three V3s and complete all of the V2s. One other random thing that I didn’t like was that the down-climb holds weren’t textured which made them harder to hold on to. Not sure about this, but I think that the mats are softer at my home gym.

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Back to Campus: Spring 2024

I spent the past week back at Smith College to spend time with college friends and watch them graduate. In addition to seeing friends, I also had the opportunity to reconnect with Smith faculty and staff members. It’s only been a year since I graduated, so the campus was still very familiar and largely unchanged. The one noticeable difference was that different areas were closed off for the geothermal energy project. The weird part was being a visitor and not a student living on campus. My visit also coincided with the first week of reunion, but as I’m not from a reunioning class year, I did at times feel like I was just awkwardly there. That said, I know I wasn’t the only one as I did run into a few other members of the class of 2023. I do envision going to one of my reunions at some point, but as it happens most of my college friends are members of the class of 2024. 

In addition to attending commencement and some engineering department events, I also got to attend an outdoor illumination. Due to rain, it had been moved indoors my year which took a lot of the fun out of it. That said, I was lucky enough to have an outdoor Ivy Day, commencement, and have seen an outdoor illumination back in 2022. This photo doesn't do it justice, but illumination is such a beautiful tradition we have. 

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My Grocery Stores

My primary grocery store is Trader Joe’s. I typically shop there once a week. The convenience and prices for the quality are the key reasons why it’s my go-to grocery store. Regarding convenience it’s well within biking distance, easy to bus to, and walkable if necessary. Another thing I really like about Trader Joe’s is that it’s small and significantly less overwhelming than a traditional supermarket. The drawback of course is that it can be difficult to shop there exclusively. Trader Joe’s is well known for various specialty products, but for the most part, I stick to the basics. In the future, I’ll perhaps share my grocery essentials and some of my favorite Trader Joe’s products. Other than a few problem items namely the store-wrapped cheddar cheese and individually wrapped American cheese slices, I’ve had great luck with the products. 

My secondary grocery store is Whole Foods. I shop there approximately once a month to stock up on specific items. While Whole Foods is generally more expensive than Trader Joe’s, it occasionally wins out on price and benefits from a larger selection. Specific essentials I’ve found to be cheaper at Whole Foods than Trader Joe’s include organic frozen strawberries and tofu. I will note however that I’ve found 365 by Whole Foods products to be a little hit or miss. One product to stay clear of is their boxed mac and cheese. It’s so bad that I literally threw out the packet of cheese powder when I made the mistake of buying multiple boxes of it back when I was an intern. I haven’t had boxed mac and cheese in forever, but Annie’s will forever be the boxed mac and cheese brand of my childhood. As for the store-brand cheddar cheese, while not bad, it’s not particularly flavorful. My favorite cheddar is Cabot (from my home state of Vermont), but as you’ll read in the next section, Tillamook is what I currently buy. I no longer buy it because it is too high in carbs, but I’m otherwise a fan of their Pad Thai. While not comparable to what you’d get at an actual restaurant, it’s quick, easy, and pretty tasty. The written version of my tofu spinach salad uses apple cider vinegar, but I’ve been trying out different vinegars for the vinaigrette. I’ve recently been liking wine vinegar (both red and white), but Trader Joe’s doesn’t sell them. The other note on price is that Whole Foods typically has great weekly deals.

The next grocery store I occasionally shop at is QFC which stands for Quality Food Center and is a local Kroger supermarket. While cheaper overall, the items of more comparable quality to Trader Joe’s / Wbole Foods aren’t actually cheaper. While I don’t particularly like QFC, it’s open late and within minutes of my climbing gym. Additionally, like Whole Foods, there are always items on sale. QFC has become my go-to place to buy cheddar cheese because they sell two-pound blocks of Tillamook for a dollar cheaper than Whole Foods. Not only is the base price better, but the cheese has also been on sale for a while. While Trader Joe’s has some good cheeses, I had issues with their cheddar back when I was an intern. And if I’m remembering correctly they don’t even sell two-pound blocks. 

The final grocery store I’ll mention is the local food coop, PCC Community Market. I’ve only been a small handful of times, but included it on this list because I do envision going again in the future. While it’s a nice place to shop, it’s by far the least convenient for me. While I found good prices for my polenta and Better than Bouillon roasted chicken base, it’s generally pretty expensive as far as I can tell. Not totally sure though about the prices though as my least favorite thing about PCC is that their website doesn’t allow me to search through their products and compare prices. Cool things about PCC are that they have weekly wine tastings and offer cooking classes. 

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My Best Purchase of 2023

My best purchase of 2023 was an annual membership to my climbing gym. I of course had a number of more important purchases, but in terms of quality-of-life improvement, my gym membership takes the cake. As I’ve shared in earlier posts, rock climbing, bouldering specifically, has become my main hobby and such an important part of my life. It’s just so much fun and genuinely has such an amazing ability to make my day better. Furthermore, it even works its magic on long days and when I’m tired. 

The main downside of this hobby is that it’s expensive. Around here, day passes cost $24-$25 (pre-tax)! You can get this per-visit cost down to ~$21 by purchasing punch passes, but that’s still a lot to pay and adds up quickly. Without factoring in the annoying $50 start-up fee, a membership is the more economical option provided that you climb at least five times per month. An annual membership cuts the cost down even more and at my gym is better than the punch pass route if you climb at least three to four times per month. I climb at least that much in a given week and recently even more so for me a membership is well worth it. Granted, the calculation isn’t quite that simple as I wouldn’t climb nearly this much if I had to pay $20+ per visit. As for my gym’s annual membership, it results in ~23% savings as compared with the monthly membership. (That also doesn’t even take into account the nearly $30 in cashback I was able to get back by putting the membership on the right credit card). 

I know it’s not actually free but it’s nice that paying up-front makes it sort of feel that way. It’s just so freeing being able to just walk in and scan my membership card. I also love that having the membership allows me to stay for whatever length of time guilt-free. Furthermore, if anything I’m incentivized to climb more because each visit lowers the per-visit cost. My annual membership technically started in December of last year and I’ve already reduced the per-visit cost down to $11.55. Another nice benefit of having a membership is having guest passes. In just five months, these guest passes have allowed me to save other people over $168 (pre-tax). On the flip side, annual costs like this do have the adverse effect of giving me a deflated view of my monthly expenses when looking over my expense tracking spreadsheet.

Finally, while I don’t like thinking of it as exercise, it’s undeniable that climbing has improved my physical fitness. In addition to just getting my body moving it has been cool noticing how much stronger my arms have gotten. Additionally, I feel that climbing indirectly improves my diet and general awareness of what I’m eating. 

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Meal Planning: Benefits and Challenges

I love meal planning and genuinely find it to be so useful. I first tried it nearly two years ago back when I was a software engineering intern. I documented my overwhelmingly positive experience in a post titled why I meal plan. Upon returning to college, I was back on a different, and worse, kind of meal plan. While I miss other aspects of living at Smith, one of my favorite parts about moving into my first apartment has been having my very own kitchen and getting to cook for myself. You can read more about my kitchen essentials in the linked post. While I do enjoy cooking, meal planning, meal prep, and simple meals are the foundation of why I can sustain and enjoy preparing the vast majority of meals for myself. This still isn’t the post I’ve alluded to in the past about my actual meal prep process. The goal is instead to highlight the benefits and address some of the challenges I’ve run into more recently. 

The main reason meal planning is invaluable to me is that it allows me to front-load and consolidate the decision-making. While I wouldn't literally starve without it, I'm significantly more likely to skip a meal when I've not planned one out. I know it sounds strange, but even if I'm somewhat hungry, I don't always have the mental energy to figure out what to eat. 

The most practical benefit is that it streamlines my grocery shopping which in turn saves me time at the grocery store and money. The cost savings come in a few forms. First of all, when done strategically meal planning can eliminate food waste. More significantly, meal planning cuts down on impulse spending at both restaurants and grocery stores. A good meal plan still allows you to eat out if that’s something you value. The difference is that it’s with more intentionality rather than desperation and hunger. 

A side benefit is that it makes me more aware of what I'm eating which presumably helps me to be a bit more health conscious. While I don’t have scientific proof of causation, there’s absolutely a correlation at least for me. 

Now on to the challenges. The problem is that you can’t always perfectly stick to your meal plan. That in of itself is okay. For instance, say there is some free food opportunity or you get invited to go out to dinner with a friend. In that case, a good meal plan simply adapts. A meal plan isn’t meant to constrain you and should simply be updated as circumstances change or if you simply change your mind about what you want to eat.

The actual challenge is when external factors impact your meal plan. Here are a few examples from this month. First of all, a few weekends ago I got a cold. This directly impacted my meal plan because I didn’t have the energy to cook. Besides, it made me want something like chicken noodle soup. Fortunately, I do keep an emergency can of chicken noodle soup as well as some instant ramen! And while I did recover in time, it did almost impact my ability to go grocery shopping and do meal prep for the next week. 

The following Friday, I prepared two servings of my polenta with sausage and peppers but managed to drop and break one of the bowls. I was thus forced to come up with a replacement meal for Saturday night. A similar but less extreme mishap was accidentally leaving my blue cheese in my grocery backpack. After being unrefrigerated for two days, throwing it out seemed like the prudent decision. In this case, I just had less yummy tofu spinach salads for the rest of the week. 

The challenge today and inspiration for writing this post was needing to replan on the fly due to there being no ripe bell peppers at the grocery store. This is a problem because peppers are a core ingredient for both of the meals I just mentioned. Fortunately, the frozen peppers were finally back in stock. While this unblocks the polenta meal, frozen veggies don't exactly work in a fresh salad. Thus instead of my normal baby spinach, I opted for frozen so that I could still make my spinach omelets. The good and bad thing is that I’d already done my usual meal prep of tofu for the salads and rice/tempeh for my rice bowls. Because the tempeh freezes well, the new plan is to use my salad tofu for tofu rice bowls. It should be okay, but I would have cut and cooked the tofu differently if I’d known it was going to be used for rice bowls. As for the tempeh, the plan isn’t fully set. I'm hoping to develop an alternate meal, but may end up simply making more rice next weekend.

I want the main takeaway to be that meal planning is incredible and can be as flexible as you need it to be. I’ll also leave you with a few learnings from the recent challenges I’ve encountered. First, always keep a few emergency meals on hand. Freezer meals can work here but ideally, you also have some shelf-stable options. Canned chicken noodle soup is perfect to have around in case you come down with a cold. I’ve also learned that grocery shopping is best done before meal prepping just in case items are out of stock or otherwise not to your liking. That being said, I probably won’t fully take this learning to heart as changing up my Sunday routine seems worse than the occasional forced adaptation.

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Easy Workday Breakfasts

Throughout much of high school and college, I rarely ate breakfast. This is primarily because I’ve never been much of a morning person so waking up any earlier than strictly necessary didn’t seem worth it. I’m also not a huge fan of typical breakfast foods. In college, I always hated the weekends because rather than providing a proper lunch most of the dining halls only served brunch. And while I do like some breakfast foods, buttermilk pancakes for instance, in general, I don’t consider them to be real food. I do consider eggs to be real food, but for roughly a decade I couldn’t stand the taste of them. As of January of this year, I’m now able to eat eggs and in a typical week make a spinach omelet for dinner two nights a week (with the leftover spinach from my tofu spinach salads). I hope to share the full recipe soon, but the secret for me has been adding cheese directly to the raw eggs. 

Now that I’m working a full-time job, I typically eat breakfast (during the workweek that is). To make my mornings easier, I tend to gravitate towards meals that I can prepare the night before and eat at work. I tend to eat the same breakfast every single day for a few weeks or months after which I’ll mix it up. In this post, I’ll go through the weekday breakfasts I’ve enjoyed over the past ten months as well as some commentary on why I started or stopped eating it. 

Yogurt with Granola

This was my go-to breakfast during the first two months of my job. This breakfast can be made the morning of by simply spooning yogurt into a bowl and topping it with a handful of the granola of your choice. The granola simply provides flavor and a crunch. To enjoy it in the office you’ll need a container for the yogurt as well as a separate smaller one to keep the granola dry. (Alternatively, you could store the granola in your office as it doesn’t need to be refrigerated). My storebought granola of choice is the Kind Peanut Butter Whole Grain Clusters. I’ve also successfully made my very own peanut butter granola by combining rolled oats, peanut butter, maple syrup, and avocado oil on a sheet pan and baking. (I made this as a snack for my hike up Mount Si, but unfortunately don’t have an exact recipe). If I remember correctly, the yogurt I used to use for this breakfast is low-fat vanilla. It would also work well with a higher fat and/or plain yogurt with a little bit of maple syrup. As for why I stopped eating this breakfast, part of it is that I stopped eating breakfast in my apartment. Additionally, the store-bought granola was a bit pricy and it wasn’t until this spring that I tried making it myself. 

Peanut Butter Overnight Oats

This is one of my absolute favorites! It’s somewhat similar to the previous breakfast but has a different texture and ratio of ingredients. To make my overnight oats I simply stir together half a cup of rolled oats, half a cup of milk, two large spoonfuls of peanut butter, and a splash of maple syrup. The oats then sit in the fridge overnight to absorb the milk. The next morning the oats can be enjoyed cold straight out of the fridge. Milk as compared with yogurt has some pros and cons. The pro is that I could get free 8oz milk cartons from work. The con is that I had to remember to grab milk when leaving the office. As for why I didn’t just buy milk at the store like a normal person, the reality is that I’d end up wasting a lot of milk as I only needed two and a half cups per week. (I don’t drink milk and would only cook with it on the very rare occasion to make mac and cheese). 

Oatmeal with Dried Cranberries 

In the winter, it can be nice to have a hot breakfast. Thus for a time, I turned to hot oatmeal instead of overnight oats. The easiest way to make a single portion of oatmeal is in the microwave. Simply combine half a cup of rolled oats, one cup of water, and a small pinch of salt in a deep microwave-safe bowl. Cook on high for two minutes, stir, and cook for an additional 30 seconds. To serve, add a splash of maple syrup and a handful of dried cranberries. The one downside to hot breakfasts is that they to be eaten at home or prepared in the office. For that reason, this breakfast only really stuck for about two weeks. That said, I think it’s still worth recommending.

Peanut Butter Toast or Rollup 

I don’t have a toaster so the toast version of this was just a sad piece of bread that I thawed overnight. Yeah, doesn’t sound great, but peanut butter is delicious and pulled its weight. I can’t exactly remember why I started eating this breakfast, but I think part of it was that I was missing peanut butter but not ready to return to something fridge-cold. One downside to this breakfast is that it isn’t particularly filling. That said, at the time I was eating a very early lunch with folks on my team so a filling bowl of oatmeal was overkill. Over Thanksgiving, I ate store-bought yogurt cups. After Thanksgiving I, by and large, reverted to being a no-breakfast person. I guess part of this was due to those early lunches and all of the rich holiday meals. In mid-January, I temporarily returned to eating peanut butter for breakfast this time spread over half of a flour tortilla and rolled up. 

Strawberry Yogurt

By the end of January, I returned to having a yogurt-based breakfast. The motivation for this breakfast was to incorporate fruit into my diet while also being more conscious of the amount of carbs I was consuming. Despite being for health reasons, I genuinely do look forward to this breakfast each morning. To make this breakfast, I start by making a maple yogurt base by adding four tablespoons of maple syrup to a quart of plain whole milk yogurt. For the strawberry part, I finely chop or grate frozen strawberries. To make a single serving, I combine ⅕ of the yogurt (just over ¾ of a cup measured as three serving spoon-sized spoonfuls) and ⅓ cup of the strawberries. I’ve not yet tried mixing all of the strawberries directly into the quart of yogurt, but don’t think it would come out as well. For starters, the yogurt container is already full to the brim after adding the maple syrup. More importantly, once fully thawed the strawberries add a bit of water to the yogurt which could mess with the texture. Finally, I don’t know how long the thawed strawberries would last in the fridge. 

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First Eight Months at Microsoft: Loop in OneNote

As you may already know, I’m a software engineer at Microsoft working on the OneNote team. While I don’t typically write about work, I wanted to finally share that for the past eight months, I’ve been working with my crew to integrate Loop components into OneNote Web. 

For those unfamiliar, Loop components are collaborative pieces of content that can be used across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to help facilitate ideation, creation, planning, and more. As for how they integrate into OneNote, users can now create them directly in OneNote via the insert ribbon or by pasting in existing ones. If you’re a programmer like me, I’m sure you’ll love the code block component type! For more about Loop in OneNote, do check out this blog post written by my project manager! 

As for why I’m sharing this now, we’ve recently rolled our feature out to 100% GA (general audience) which means that you can now start using Loop components in OneNote Web! Refer to this support article for more information, but note that you’ll need to be logged into your work account and that your organizational admin must not have disabled Loop components. The other purpose of this blog post was to share this personal milestone of having my code out in the world! It really is so cool knowing that real users can now use this feature that I’ve been working on for months. As for what comes next, I’ve actually already started working on my next project: Copilot in OneNote. This one is a bit different in that the feature is already publicly available, but it’s still a new and exciting space to be working in. I know this post was pretty high-level and re-directed you to official articles, but if you are curious do check out this post about how I used OneNote as a student. Despite no longer being a student, I do still use OneNote in my personal life and hope to eventually write a post about that. 

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April 2024 Rock Climbing Update

I finally have a real answer to the hobby / what do I do for fun question. Spoiler, it’s rock climbing. I know it’s meant to be an easy question, but it’s one I’ve struggled with in the past. While I don’t feel the need to be super interesting and try not to care too much about what other people think, it is also true that don’t exactly want people to realize how boring my life is. And to be clear, I like the way I choose to live my life and don’t personally find it to be boring. Unfortunately though, having one hobby doesn’t seem to satisfy the people who ask, so there’s often still the follow-up question of what else I do for fun. The most truthful answer right now is not much or listening to music and podcasts. There are other things I enjoy doing but I don’t presently make time for them (playing the guitar) or my primary motivation for doing them isn’t enjoyment (cooking). Part of me wants to have more hobbies, but if I’m honest with myself it’s more just that I feel like I should as opposed to being something I truly want. 

As for the rock climbing update, while I still can’t put into words why I enjoy it so much, I am thoroughly obsessed and would be climbing every day if I could. In addition to it being a ton of fun, I also like how it gets me out of my apartment and moving (without it feeling like exercise). And in all seriousness, climbing has the power to turn a bad day around. Part of how I know I truly love climbing is that it’s something I’ll happily do on my own. That being said, I have more recently started getting to know other climbers at my gym. While I don’t love that I’ve found an expensive hobby, the fact that I’m willing to spend money on it is a real tell that it’s something I genuinely care about. In my November 2023 bouldering update, I mentioned that I’d been climbing on average 2.78 times per week. Nowadays four times per week is pretty normal for me. Despite injuring myself two weeks ago (minor ankle sprain), my love of climbing has only grown and I’ve ironically been climbing more than ever. I’m not yet fully back to bouldering, but have been doing a fair amount of top roping and am now able to warm up on easy boulders. Regarding my current bouldering grade, I’d still consider myself to be a V3 climber but have now successfully climbed two V4s. As for my top rope climbing grade, I’ve been primarily sticking to the 5.10s (including the pluses and minuses).

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Polenta with Sausage and Peppers

In this post, I’ll be sharing the recipe for another of my go-to quick and easy meals. As with most of the meals I prepare, this one is simple enough not to require an actual recipe. That said, I’ve been finding it fun writing up these recipes and doing the ingredient price breakdown. If you missed it, I shared my tofu spinach salad last month. From start to finish, this polenta with sausage and peppers meal comes together in under 25 minutes. It’s very easy to prepare, but do know that bringing it together so quickly involves multitasking and that it’s pretty much all active time. (Therefore it’s a particularly good idea to fully read the recipe before starting). Note also that the end result will be slightly better if you take a little extra time to brown the sausage and further cook down the peppers. Regarding the quoted time, I did actually time myself making this meal on Thursday night. I started the clock the moment I stepped into the kitchen and stopped it after serving, taking photos for this post, and putting all of the ingredients away. As for clean up (not included in the time, sorry), it’s easy enough provided that you let the polenta pot soak while you eat.

While tasty enough to enjoy year-round, I will note that it’s best suited to the winter months when you’re looking for something warm and comforting. This recipe makes two servings, which makes it perfect for dinner and a workday lunch the following day. To reheat, simply microwave a portion for 60-90 seconds. The polenta won’t be quite as creamy the next day, but it will still make for a very satisfying meal. (I don’t recommend freezing it though and as I’ve established it’s quick to prepare fresh). As with most simple homecooked meals, it’s relatively affordable with the per-serving ingredient cost under five dollars. 

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 sweet Italian (or apple) chicken sausages

1 red bell pepper (frozen peppers also work well)

¾ teaspoons Better than Boullion roasted chicken base, divided

½ cup yellow corn polenta

4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese 

1 tablespoon salted butter 

Preparation:

Add 1 ½  cups of water to a small pot, place over high heat, and bring to a boil.

Add the olive oil to a cast iron skillet and preheat over medium heat.

Dice the sausages and pepper. Add to the skillet along with ½ teaspoon of the roasted chicken base and stir to combine. 

Cover and allow to cook, stirring occasionally.

Once the water comes to a boil, add the remaining ¼ teaspoon of the roasted chicken base to the water and stir to dissolve.

Add the polenta and cook over low heat for five minutes stirring regularly at the start and occasionally after that. 

While the polenta is cooking, grate approximately ½ cup of cheddar cheese. 

Once the polenta is cooked, turn off the heat and stir in the butter and cheese. 

Divide the polenta into two serving/storage containers and top with the sausage and pepper mixture. 

Ingredient Price Breakdown:

Extra virgin olive oil, $11.99 for a 33.8-ounce bottle at Trader Joe’s

Sweet Italian chicken sausages, $4.29 for a package of four at Trader Joe’s

Organic red peppers, $3.49 for a pack of two at Trader Joe’s

Better than Bouillon roasted chicken base, $8.39 for an eight-ounce jar at PCC

Bob’s Red Mill organic yellow corn polenta, $3.89 for a 24-ounce bag at PCC

Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, $13.99 for a 32-ounce block at QFC

Kerrygold butter, $4.49 for 8-ounce block at Trader Joe’s

Calculation: $11.99/67/2 + $4.29/4 + $3.49/2/2 + $8.39/38*3/4/2 + $3.89/15 + $13.99/32*4 + $4.49/16/2 = ~$4.27

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Why I Eat A Predominantly Vegetarian Diet

Tofu and tempeh have become staple ingredients for me. Accordingly, whenever I talk to people about the food I make, I almost feel the need to explain how I’m not actually a vegetarian and do enjoy eating meat. While I by no means aspire to be a vegetarian, as it happens only a small fraction of my meals contain meat. The main reason for this is that I do not like cooking meat. And while there are ways to eat meat without cooking it, I generally prefer making things from scratch with simple ingredients. Some fully cooked meat products that I do buy from Trader Joe’s include sweet apple or sweet Italian chicken sausages, Italian-style beef meatballs, and pork gyoza. Additionally, on the rare occasion I eat out, I typically order something with meat in it. 

Another reason I don’t eat a ton of meat is that I don’t fully trust the meat at the grocery store as I was arguably spoiled growing up on a small family farm where we raised our own grass-fed beef and chicken. While I somewhat wish I had meat more often and should get more comfortable cooking meat I do genuinely enjoy the food I eat and have found that it saves me a lot of money. Regarding cost, it’s always a consideration, but not the end-all deciding factor. For instance, I choose to buy organic items most of the time and will pay more for products I deem to be of higher quality. At the same time, I actively price compare within and between stores and strive to stick to a defined shopping list and budget. I’m still optimizing how I create my shopping list each week, but will share more as I learn more. 

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Mount Si

The past few days Redmond has had the most beautiful weather. Between that and the beginning of daylight savings time, it has been incredible to see the sun again and feel it on my skin. I’ve done simple things like eating outside at work and just sitting outside on my mini patio. And today, I went on my first hike of the year. Specifically, I hiked Mount Si which is located roughly 40 minutes away and is eight miles round trip. Bouldering roughly four times a week likely has me physically stronger than I’ve ever been, but turns out hiking is a totally different kind of workout. And yes, I’ve been hiking plenty in the past and did know this, but still. Despite having my calves burn during the first part of the hike, overall the climb up was fantastic. We really lucked out with the weather as it was sunny enough to brighten my day but still cool enough to be relatively comfortable (which isn’t to say it wasn’t a sweaty experience). The view from the top was another highlight. The hike down on the other hand was quite rough on the knees and honestly not very fun. 

Going on the hike was a very last-minute plan, so figuring out what to eat was a bit of a challenge. For starters, none of my regular meals are particularly hike-friendly. Specifically, the cold meals I eat are yogurt with frozen fruit and tofu spinach salads. Furthermore, as you may know, I’m all about meal planning and would typically spend part of my Sunday doing some basic meal prep for the week. I ultimately decided to do my meal prep late Saturday night between returning home from the climbing gym and going to bed. The planned prep was baking tofu for my salads as well as making rice and baking tempeh for my rice bowls. However, I also ended up baking some of the tempeh in a slab form to make an experimental sandwich for my hike with Colby-Jack cheese and a cheese bagel I got from a work event last week. Honestly, a bit of a strange combination, but it worked out well enough. The other addition to my planned meal prep was making a simple granola as a snack for the hike. I eyeballed everything, but essentially just combined and then baked rolled oats, peanut butter, maple syrup, and avocado oil. It turned out to be delicious, but as it happens granola is sort of difficult to eat on a hike. 

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Post Graduation FOMO

I’m still very much a new grad, but with 2024 commencement rapidly approaching I’m suddenly realizing how far removed from college I am. I know I always say that I can’t believe how much time has passed, but seriously I’m genuinely floored by the fact that I graduated college nine and a half months ago. 

I’ve been told that the first summer break hits particularly hard. And while I can see how that may be true, if like me your closest friends are a class year younger, their senior spring hits very hard. Even though I’m less stressed than I was in college and I do enjoy my work and the new life I’m creating, I really miss my college friends and have recently been feeling a lot of FOMO as my friends make the most of their senior spring, plan a fun spring break trip with some of their new friends, and figure out their post-grad plans. 

Fortunately, I will get to spend time with them in just over two months as I’ve decided to visit for senior week. However, I can’t help but feel a bit nervous about how things will have changed in a year and that I’ll realize how much I did miss out on. Things aren’t this simple as I almost certainly wouldn’t have made the same friends or had the same great experiences, but part of me does wish I could trade away my sophomore year to be a senior now. I know it’s not at all helpful to dwell on this, but I also do think that being honest and capturing these feelings is generally a good thing. 

At the end of the day, I am grateful for having made the friends I did during college and that I’m able to call them friends today. I also recognize my great fortune in having a college degree and an incredible job straight out of school. Finally, two of the best parts of my post-college life have been cooking for myself and bouldering regularly. 

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Initial Digital Minimalism Experiments 

As mentioned in recent blog posts, I don’t love how much I’ve been using digital technology in my day-to-day life. I’m required to be on a computer all day for work, so limiting my use of technology in my personal life just makes sense. In general, I’m looking to be more intentional about the way I spend my time. Not sure what I’d like to be doing with whatever time I get back, but the current priorities are rebuilding a reading habit, continuing to make time for rock climbing, and getting better about going to sleep on time.

I’m proud to say that I’ve never had a FaceBook, Instagram, or TikTok account. Obviously, I have this Tumblr account, but it’s not a problem for me as I don’t scroll through Tumblr. Even when I don’t have much to say, I benefit from writing blog posts as it allows me to be a creator not just a consumer of content. Content has become a bit of a cringy word, but that’s what it is. I will note, however, that procrastinating these blog posts does impact my sleep. While it would be cool to engage with readers, I’m so glad it’s a one-way interaction. Additionally, I do have a LinkedIn account, but I rarely check it and spend at most ten minutes scrolling through posts when I do.

For me, YouTube is a real-time suck. I genuinely enjoy most of the videos I watch and often just listen to the audio so it’s not always real screen time. Even so, it’s just too much. The changes I’ve implemented thus far are unsubscribing from several YouTube channels, disabling YouTube on my phone, and putting a 0-minute timer on the website itself from the web browser of my phone (via the Digital Wellbeing app). While they weren’t necessarily time sucks, there were several other apps I deleted to further declutter my phone. I’m still working on a full overhaul of my phone’s home screen and various settings but will be sure to keep you all updated. One thing I've done in the short term is add the screen time widget to my home screen for awareness. If you are curious, you can check out the what’s on my phone post I wrote during my sophomore year of college. 

Here’s a sneak peek into some digital technology that plays a positive role in supporting my hobbies and goals. First of all, I get my books through the Libby app to either read on my Kindle or listen to directly. (If you haven’t heard of Libby it’s an amazing app that allows you to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your local library). I also use Goodreads to keep track of the books I’ve read as well as my want-to-read list. These climbing apps are less critical but fun to share. The KAYA app enables you to log climbs and watch beta videos. I also just downloaded the Kilter Board app which is used to control my gym’s new light-up climbing board and to log attempts/accents. While these climbing apps are cool to have, the most useful one is the simple habit tracker I created in Google Sheets. Speaking of Google Sheets, the other key digital tool is my expense tracking spreadsheet.

In thinking through where/how/when to use my various pieces of technology, the other big change I’ve made is moving my computer and its charger out of my bedroom. The plan is to only use my computer at my dining room table (the only table I have). While I may let myself use it on my couch from time to time, I’m hoping to have that space to be primarily dedicated to reading. Moving my computer is something I should have done a long time ago and I’m hoping sticks.

[addierose444]

Rebuilding a Reading Habit 

In last week’s post, I reflected on the misalignment between my current day-to-day life and my core identity of being a lifelong learner. I also lamented that I’ve been spending too much time mindlessly on my computer. Upon further reflection, I’ve determined that rebuilding my reading habit would be a great place to start. 

I hate to admit it, but I only listened to six audiobooks in 2023 and didn’t read any physical books or ebooks. Let’s rewind the clock to the summer before college (2019) during which I read a total of 25 books. (Note that this figure includes books read on my Kindle, audiobooks, and one physical book). While my initial motivation for reading so much was that I expected to be super busy in college and therefore not have the time to read, the experience led me to the realization that reading was something that I needed and wanted to prioritize in college. Accordingly, I set up a 30-day reading challenge of reading a minimum of 20 pages per day. Over time, I by and large stopped literally reading books but listened to audiobooks pretty much every single day. With this daily habit in place, I averaged a book a week in both 2020 and 2021. I was on track to do the same in 2022, but then senior year happened. I ended the year having read a total of 41 books but had only made it through six books during the fall semester. As I reflected on this in my post about my 2023 intentions, numbers only tell you so much; the real tragedy was that reading was no longer a daily habit nor something that I prioritized. At the end of that post I wrote “in terms of media consumption, I look to reprioritize books and podcasts and be more intentional with my use of YouTube.” Well, I managed to incorporate podcasts back into my life but I utterly failed to rebuild my reading habit and wasn’t nearly intentional enough with my use of YouTube. 

Back to the present. This week I re-listened to Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and started two new books (an ebook and an audiobook). Having two books going at once may not be sustainable, but I like the idea of having an ebook to read before bed and an audiobook to listen to while doing tasks that don’t require much mental attention. I also began the process of decluttering and reorganizing my phone, but that’s a topic for another post. I may need to put some systems in place to help facilitate the rebuilding of my reading habit, but the past few days have already reminded me why I love reading and listening to audiobooks. 

[addierose444]

Reflections on Being a Lifelong Learner

What I miss most about college is my friends and how easy it was to spend time with them. But believe it or not, I also genuinely miss taking classes. What I don’t miss is the homework, exams, and resulting stress. Well before graduating college, I determined that being a lifelong learner was a core part of my identity. And while I’m constantly learning new things at work and just through navigating adult life, I’ve come to realize that I miss learning for learning's sake. 

Maybe not the best example as this is a practical skill, but this weekend I had so much fun working on my finance spreadsheet in part because I got the opportunity to learn several new-to-me functions in Google Sheets. Also, I’m just nerdy like that and love spreadsheets and personal finance. You can read more about the expense tracking part of my spreadsheet in the linked blog post. 

While I’ve been careful to avoid falling into the trap of needing to “be productive” outside of work, the reality is that since graduating college I feel like I spend too much time mindlessly on my computer and could direct some of this time/energy to more fulfilling things like learning. Bouldering three to four times a week has been incredible and does have mental aspects to it, but I’d also like to challenge my brain in new ways on the days I don’t climb. I don’t yet know what it is I want to learn next, but this is something I plan to actively think about and reflect on in the coming weeks. 

[addierose444]

Tofu Spinach Salad

To incorporate more vegetables into my diet (and fewer carbohydrates), I’ve recently incorporated salads into my regular meal rotation. I’ll be the first to admit that for the longest time, I didn’t consider salads to be a real meal and just saw them as a side. On the rare occasion I did eat a salad during college it was simply because there was nothing else I was willing to eat. In other words, salads were my absolute last resort. And while I still don’t exactly crave salads, I’ve genuinely been enjoying eating this tofu spinach salad for lunch. The crispy tofu serves as a source of protein and also sort of acts like croutons. While a recipe isn’t really necessary for such a simple meal, I’ve been having fun trying to document my meals and meal planning in this way.

Speaking of meal planning, I make this salad four times a week. And that’s an exact number because part of my whole meal planning thing is all about preventing food waste and knowing exactly how each purchased ingredient will be used before buying it. In the case of this salad, one package of tofu is enough for four salads, the red peppers I buy come in a pack of two, and the blue cheese is enough for the four salads with a little extra. As for the spinach, two bags is significantly more than I need, but that does force me to make another two meals per week with spinach. Still developing the recipe, but one meal I’ve been using extra spinach for has been a spinach omelet. Sidenote, but even with predominantly organic ingredients, each salad costs me less than $3 to make. I didn’t do a price breakdown for the vinaigrette or the tofu ingredients, but the other ingredients total $2.46 (see price breakdown at the bottom of this post). 

Ingredients:

2 ounces baby spinach

½ red bell peppers

1 ounce blue cheese 

For Crispy Tofu (4 Servings):

14 ounces extra firm tofu

1 tablespoon cooking oil (canola, olive, or avocado) 

1 tablespoon tamari

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

For Apple Cider Vinaigrette:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon maple syrup

Preparation:

Make the Crispy Tofu:

Drain the tofu and press out excess moisture with paper towels.

Cut the tofu into small cubes. (As shown in the photo below, sixths in the x-direction, eighths in the y-direction, and quarters in the z-direction).

Add the cooking oil, tamari, and tofu cubes directly to a quarter-sheet pan. Move the tofu around to coat each side with the oil/tamari and then spread it into a single layer.

Broil the tofu on high for 20 minutes stirring every five minutes. Before the final five minutes, drizzle over the sesame oil.

Prep the Rest of the Salad:

While the tofu cooks, you can prepare the rest of the salad.  

Cut the red pepper into thin strips and then quarters. 

Combine the vinaigrette ingredients in a small leakproof container.

Add spinach. 

Crumble the blue cheese over the top of the spinach.

Top with a quarter of the cooled tofu. 

Ingredient Price Breakdown:

Organic baby spinach, $1.99 for a six-ounce bag at Trader Joe’s

Organic red peppers, $3.49 for a pack of two at Trader Joe’s

Organic extra firm tofu, $1.69 for a 14-ounce package at Whole Foods

Blue cheese, $7.99 per pound at Trader Joe’s

Calculation: $1.99/3 + $3.49/4 + $1.69/4 + $7.99/16 = ~$2.46