For those of you who knew me through my undergrad, I never found joy in cooking.  After I ditched the meal plan at FSU mid-freshman year, I didn’t have a kitchen and found the microwave to be my savior for cooking.  Mmmm…just thinking of Hot Pockets, Easy Mac, and Chef Boyardee brings me back.  Starting my sophomore year, I had an apartment and a REAL kitchen!  I could use the stove to make spaghetti and the oven for frozen pizzas.  Julia Child was jealous, I’m sure.  Nothing much changed the rest of undergrad.  I usually took advantage of those expensive frozen stir fry dinners, bagged salads, and other prepared dished that were easy and quick to make.   Oh, and I ate out a lot!

Then I came to Milwaukee for grad school.  My roommate was nice enough to teach me how to make an omelet and scrambled eggs.  It’s true, I had never made  eggs before this point in my life.  That was at least a start, and the next year I made even more of practical use of the kitchen, but never cooked anything really substantial.  So now, I’m out of school, poor, and have a lot of free time to be interested in things other than music.  I really shouldn’t be eating out as much and I should be eating more healthy anyway.

This brings me to the all the fun I had the other night with figuring out how to make coconut curry chicken.  I love Asian food and this is my favorite dish.  I researched and found two recipes online: one for the curry preparation and one for the rice. (Click on highlighted words for the recipe).  A note about the rice prep:  I found that I had no idea how to make rice that wasn’t mushy or undercooked, and so this recipe helps to make really sticky white rice.

This whole experiment took about 2.5 hours.  This is because I didn’t multi-task on anything since I was trying this out for the first time.  It took me an hour just to rinse the rice, drain it and let it sit, and then soak it.  After the wait, all it took for the rice was the right amount of time for boiling, and simmering.  As for the curry prep, I used all of the ingredients in the recipe.  I used the “Patak’s” brand for the curry sauce and used their Korma type which is a mild curry.  I also added some ground ginger and cayenne pepper, which added to the overall flavor.  I neglected to use the potatoes because I couldn’t find a peeler…oops.  Then I chopped up a boneless skinless chicken breast, a green bell pepper, and an onion.  This was fun because I have no idea how to chop a bell pepper or onion, which was cause for watery eyes.  Anyway, I sauteed the chicken, added the veggies, and then the sauce.  I put it together with the rice, and Voilà!  Amazingness!  Add to that  a glass of Semi-Dry Riesling from Old Oak Cellars, a local winery, and the dinner was awesome.

Last week I spent some time in Indianapolis, and the last night I was there, I was invited to a concert at Conner Prairie to see Time for Three.  This was an outdoor concert that provide endless lawn space for people lay  blankets and some beach chairs and enjoy the live music.  I did not know what to expect other than this was a trio of classically trained musicians who were going to play nonclassical repertoire including covers of various pop tunes or bluegrass, jazz, and folk songs.  Whenever I hear that a string group is playing pop covers, I instantly become skeptical and wonder if I’m going to waste a perfectly good 2 hours of my life.  My skepticism went out the roof once they started playing and I was impressed from beginning to end.  After all, these guys (two violinists and a bassist) attended the Curtis Institute, which means they definitely have the technical and musical facility to play (that’s an understatement!).  Not only that, but they have a lot of soul and groove to their playing, which seems rare with classical musicians.  Posted on top is their rendition of the Bach Double, all jazzed up, and below is their cover of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.”  One final thing: Chris Brubeck, son of Dave Brubeck, has written a concerto for Time for Three and orchestra, which I look forward to hearing.

Do you remember when you were little and practically all of your friends were part of a little league soccer team?  If not, do you at least remember all of those minivans on the road with license plates that may have read something like “SOCRMOM”?  My mom told me a few weeks ago that she apparently put me on one of those teams, but I quit after the first practice because I was overwhelmed and cried the whole time, or was afraid of the ball, or something like that.  I don’t remember that event, but it is true that if I see a ball flying at my face, my natural reaction is to cover my head, scream, and run away as fast as I can.

Now I want you to imagine a boy, named Johnny.   Johnny starts playing soccer on a little league team when he was 6 or 7 and decides one day that he will grow up to be one of the greatest soccer players in the world!  Of course,  Johnny’s dad loves to watch Monday Night Football and has a Superbowl part every year and Johnny gets interested.  They don’t watch Major League Soccer, and besides, they don’t get ESPN3, just basic cable. Middle school rolls around and Johnny decides to be part of the football team.  Now he tries to emulate his favorites players like Payton Manning,  Tom Brady, or God forbid, Brett Favre.  By now soccer is just distant childhood memory for Johnny.  What happened?  Why couldn’t Johnny be like all those great American soccer heroes like Landon Donovan and…uhhh…who else? ::scratches head::

Why is soccer not popular in the US?  While the World Cup was going on I asked people why they didn’t enjoy watching soccer and the answer I got was that it was a low scoring game with a lot of nothing happening in between goals.  I’m not going to doddle on this issue since I don’t have stats to back it up, but I will address how the US should become more of a soccer country.  I think that in light of this World Cup, we are going in that direction…a little bit.

I recently viewed the MLS game between the New York Red Bulls and Chicago Fire.  The final score was a draw, 0-0.  At first thought, you might think, ‘how boring, nobody scored!’ And actually, it was a rough game.  New York made the most shots, but missed every time.  The commentators even mentioned that these players don’t need to make fancy moves, they just need to get the ball in.  So, there was a lot of sloppy playing going on, but the crowd watching the game was really into it.  This was at the Toyota stadium in Chicago, and there was a sea of red constantly chanting and routing for their home team.  The enthusiasm made me want to be there and the commentators said that people wanting to see the game had to be turned away.  Wow, what a great sign!

Yesterday there was a ‘friendly’ game that happened between the US and Brazil in New Jersey.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch this event, but Brazil undoubtedly won 2-0.  Brazil outshot the US 20-7, ouch!  Okay, so we still have a lot of work to do, but maybe one day soccer will become a popular sporting event, and maybe we’ll even make it past the quarterfinals in the next World Cup, maybe…

After being in school for 20 something years, I’m finally out and I have come to the awful realization that I have free time, hence the blog. It’s not really geared towards anything specific, but I figured I would post random happenings in my life and cool things that I wish to share with the world!! (or the less than five readers I will likely have).

So Iet’s start with the reason for the name Lizbit. Well, there’s not really a reason, but it’s one of the many endearing names I’ve come to identify myself with over the past 25 years. Other than the obvious Elizabeth or Liz that I go by, other names have included Lizzy, Bizzy, LizzyBizzy, Little Bit (from my grandpa), Elizagirth (from bro-in-law), Lizardbreath (that’s what my sister called me when she was angry and couldn’t think of anything else to say), Elspeth, Eliza, Ellie, and Margaret (Don’t ask). The one name I refuse to go by is Beth. It’s just not me.

So there you go! Hopefully I can figure out more stuff about this blog to make it better!