Work and Arroz Chaufa

Well, today was another one of those days of misplaced accomplishments. I woke up and said to myself, “What an eventful weekend! I better start writing up my notes for that right now.” And instead, I spent the day working on some official email correspondence, collating the various rental documents I’ll be needing to rent an apartment in Paris, doing some much-needed maintenance on my laptop, paying bills and updating my financial records, and so on.

Later in the evening, I decided to make myself some arroz chaufa [Note: the recipe on this link isn't quite the same as mine], since I had a couple of huge bunches of green onions sitting in the pantry that needed to be used. I still needed rice, eggs and meat, so off I went to Karstadt to get what I needed. Rather than buy a cut of pork, marinate it in a soy-ginger-sugar solution and then slowly grill or roast it, I decided to find the German equivalent of lardons and improvise from there.

I have to say, it actually turned out really good, even though the taste was a bit different from what I’m used to. For each batch of fried rice, I put about a quarter of my available lardons in a dry frying pan and let them brown on medium heat (about 5 minutes per side) until they had rendered all of their fat. Then, I added finely chopped ginger and hot pepper and let that flavor the fat. From there, I did the usual thing of adding a quarter of my rice and coating it, then a quarter of the chopped green onions and some soy sauce, then I made a little omelet in the center of the pan with the egg and mixed it into the rice as the top of the omelet started to go opaque. Delicious.

Ironically, this would be the moment to mention that I'm pretty sure I've been losing weight since I got to Berlin. I especially notice it on the Monday after a weekend out on the town, since I eat less when I'm partying and I probably lose more liquids from all the dancing. Nonetheless, even after packing myself full of arroz chaufa, most of my clothes are still fitting me loosely. Yay! Apparently the "Berlin Diet" works for me, although I'll have to think of a different weight-loss strategy when I get to Paris. For one thing, the food is far too good there; for another thing, the kind of partying I've been doing here is impossible in Paris for a whole series of reasons.

As is always the case with arroz chaufa, I had WAY too much food left over, so I pushed as much of it as I could onto my roommates and then put the rest into the fridge.

I had been waiting to hear from the Irish lad (of Friday night fame), in the hopes that we might go out tonight, but he backed out, claiming fatigue, so I put myself in front of my computer and spent the rest of the night writing up my blog entry for Friday.