Saturday, February 5, 2011

Vegetarian ginger curry

It's been a while since I did a food post, so here's what I had for dinner tonight: homemade ginger curry (vegan and gluten-free).


Heat about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok, add chunks of chopped onion and pressed garlic, then stir fry. Add sliced carrots, pieces of bell pepper (I used red), slices of yellow squash and zucchini, chopped shiitake and brown button mushrooms, about 1 tsp. of grated fresh ginger, baby spinach leaves, and pineapple chunks. These happened to be the vegetables I had on hand, but you can add or leave out whatever you like. Stir fry everything for about 10 minutes, add ginger curry powder or another curry powder of choice (mine is from 1001 Gewürze), coconut milk and some pineapple juice. If you don't have ginger curry powder and still want a ginger flavor, just add ginger powder to taste. Add a sprinkle of freshly ground sea salt. Make sure everything is well blended. Do not overcook, but make sure the carrots are still a little crunchy. Serve over rice (I used Trader Joe's frozen brown rice, which is ready to eat after microwaving for 3 minutes). Enjoy!



Thursday, February 3, 2011

Translator networking

While I was at the ATA Conference in Denver last October, I got to know several people from my local translators' association and promptly became a member. Tonight was the first of their quarterly networking events and of course I had to go. We met at a bakery/cafe in Durham where many of us had dinner (I had a wasabi salmon wrap, which was very reminiscent of a jumbo sushi roll) and got to know each other better. I was pleased to see such a large turnout with multiple languages represented. There were three other German to English translators, all of whom also do other languages into English, particularly Dutch, Russian, and other Slavic languages. The other languages pairs were Spanish <> English, English > Chinese, and Portuguese > English. Overall there were about 15 of us in attendance. It was great hearing about other people's experiences - especially stories about the days of translation before the Internet (and even fax!) when source texts made a long journey around the world by postal mail and translations were hammered out on manual typewriters. Believe it or not - that was only about 30 years ago! How exponentially things change! I am so fortunate to live in such a multicultural area where it is possible to get together with other people in my line of work. In a profession that can, at times, be rather isolated with communication being done almost completely online, it is so important to get together with other translators (where possible) and share our experiences more frequently than just once a year at the annual conference. I had a great time and am already looking forward to the next get-together! For now it's time to call it a night. Gute Nacht!

A potpourri of things going on lately

After over a month off the ice, I finally laced up my skates again yesterday morning and hit the rink for an hour workout with my skating buddy. We caught up on things going on in our lives and did several practice routines. Thanks to muscle memory, I hadn't forgotten any of my moves and I didn't fall once. I'm looking forward to going again on a Friday morning when I can enjoy the absolute freedom of skating to my heart's content on a virtually empty rink that seems to be there just for me. No other feeling in the world compares to having an entire rink to yourself where you can blast your music of choice over the loudspeakers and just skate!

Speaking of music, I've been listening to quite a lot of new music lately - and not just listening but also singing. I recently discovered Kate Nash and created a Pandora station with her tunes. The songs by Kate and other female artists on the station are great to sing along to, which I did quite a bit of over the weekend and now still have a bit of a hoarse voice. Sunday night my next-door neighbor came over for an art and wine night where we talked about our lives and drew pictures of our "perfect planets" over a delicious bottle of red zinfandel. The Kate Nash Pandora station was on in the background and we frequently found ourselves singing along.

Last Saturday night my other neighbor and I went out to a bluegrass concert by an awesome local band (Kickin Grass) that I had heard about the night before on the Local Beat segment on a local radio station. I particularly love the song "Run Away", which can be heard on the website. It was great being out downtown for the first time in a few months as I haven't gone out a whole lot since colder weather set in. But this weekend was actually quite mild, with temps on Sunday reaching near 70 F (20 C). After the concert we weren't quite ready to head back home, so we decided to go dancing. The club we went to had no cover and featured an awesome blend of very danceable world music and jazzy beats. Towards the end of the evening the two guys who had been keeping a casual eye on our coats let us know they were about to leave, but then started dancing instead. The one guy was quite possibly the most amazing and entertaining dance partner I have ever danced with! He had the best moves and really knew how to spin me around the dance floor. It was a blast! My new dancing friend and I exchanged business cards and agreed to meet up at the same place with our friends on Friday for another round of dancing. Since it will be First Friday, there should be a lot of people out and about. I can't wait!

Last night a friend invited me to go to an all-girls Wednesday night small group and I decided to go. All of the girls were around my age and extremely nice. Since I've been looking to fill my life with more quality, genuinely nice people, this seemed like a good place to find them. The group is currently working through lessons that examine the sources of problems in our interpersonal relationships and how we can resolve them. I really enjoyed last night's discussion and getting to know the girls. Next week we are planning to go somewhere to watch the big match between arch-rivals UNC and Duke.

I've also got some great follow-up news to add to last week's shopping experience. Last night before small group I went back to the Express to see if I could return two unworn items and repurchase them using one of the $25 off coupons I got with last week's purchase. The girl at the register said it wouldn't be a problem at all. Instead of just giving me the discount on the two items, she did something amazing: she returned everything on the receipt and rung it all up again since almost everything had gone on sale. I ended up getting back nearly half of the money I had spent! Sometimes when you ask you end up getting even more than you ever could have expected!

Time to go back to sleep for an hour, then hit the gym, have some breakfast and start on the day's work. I'm really excited about a networking event tonight to meet other local translators and interpreters. Oddly enough I've never met another translator from around here, so hopefully tonight some other linguists will come out of the woodwork. As diverse as this area is, I'm sure there must be a good number of us. Should be a good night!