Jennifer J. Chow's Blog, page 16

Wordless Wednesday: Optical Illusion

Tips on Virtual Speaking

Whew! I just finished my first virtual reading last Thursday. It was a fun time with other great authors (see flyer below). Plus, it even raised much-needed money for a Minneapolis nonprofit & an amazing bookstore.

After this speaking experience, I tweaked some advice for typical real-time readings and learned to:

1) Look at audience
When speaking to a live audience, it’s definitely good to break contact from the page and visually connect with listeners. A few of the other authors did a great job reading from their story and making sure to pause and look at the audience. I tried it as well, but got a little thrown off because when I looked up…I saw myself on the screen!

Final verdict: If you can glance up once in a while without getting distracted by your online self, go for it!

2) Enunciate
Since people aren’t reading the page along with you, it’s always best to enunciate and slow down in presentations. I definitely tried to do this, particularly since there’s no feedback from the audience during a virtual reading. I want to make sure they’re able to understand all my words.

Final verdict: Go slow and go bold! Make sure to have headphones or earbuds, too, since they’ll help with the sound.

3) Do the voices
Act like it’s storytime at the library. It’s important to be able to differentiate between characters. I tried to do this by varying speech pacing, word vocabulary, and complexity of sentences.

Final verdict: Let the inner actress shine! It’s hard enough to convey emotion on a stage, but with extra tech bumps and glitches, you must differentiate the dialogue. At the very least, it’ll look like you had fun, and that positive impression will stay with the audience.

Do you have any other tips/observations for online events, casual conservations, or formal presentations?

Foodie Friday: Muddy Water Iced Tea

Muddy water: Sweet tea and lemonade

If you don’t already know, I’m a tea aficionado. However, I haven’t had a chance to try out a muddy water drink until now. After locating a Black-owned restaurant from the L.A. Times list and ordering some food, I also added on a beverage.

I really enjoyed this muddy water, which was described as a mix of sweet tea and lemonade. It wasn’t too sugary, which I appreciated, and just had a nice refreshing feel to it. Perfect for summertime.

Any refreshing drinks you’d recommend?

  

Wordless Wednesday: Homemade Berry Pie

Making Do Around the Kitchen

I’ve been trying to space out my trips to the grocery store. Instead of running to buy something if I can’t find it in my pantry, I’m opting for substitutions.

Here are a few examples from around the kitchen:

1. Swapping ingredients

Instead of using eggs, I added applesauce to a baking recipe. Yes, you got me! It was banana bread, which is apparently the essential COVID comfort food: https://www.delish.com/food-news/a31931597/coronavirus-banana-bread-baking/

Also, since I ran out of green onions, I decided to use the onion tips I’ve been growing to add a little flavor to a main dish:

2. Ingredient transformation

Another thing I’ve been doing is changing the initial food to a different version of itself. For example, I didn’t have tortilla chips, but I did have tortillas. Voila!

3. Creating a food

But when I ran out of flour tortillas and couldn’t find all-purpose flour, what did I do? Used cassava flour to make them!

P.S. I didn’t realize how often I use chopsticks as serving utensils until now!

Wordless Wednesday: Ducks in a Row

Foodie Friday: Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed tomatoes: tomato cups filled with savory bread mixture

I love oven-roasted tomatoes—or fresh ones in my salad. To make a prettier version of baked tomatoes, though, I decided to stuff them. I think they look like cute edible tomato presents.

Ingredients:

¼ cup bread crumbs

¼ cup Parmesan cheese

1 clove garlic, minced

Olive oil

Ground black pepper

Salt

Directions:

Scoop out insides of tomatoes (I used Campari tomatoes, to make them more bite-sized).Heat oven to 400oF.Mix seasoned bread crumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, and garlic.Place mixture in tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for twenty minutes.Drizzle olive oil on top before serving.

What variations of cooking have you tried to keep things fresh?

Wordless Wednesday: Growing Scallions

Mother’s Day

“You are kind-hearted, hospitable, cheerful and well-liked.”

I’ve never celebrated Mother’s Day while staying in place before. It’s definitely different. What should I expect–backyard flowers? (Not to knock those. In my childhood, I used to cut our backyard roses and place them in a vase for my mom.)

As it turned out, no backyard blooms for me. (This, though, may have more to do with the fact that I have a black thumb when it comes to gardening.)

My family did an amazing job of gifting me with…no cooking and cleaning ALL DAY long! Which felt amazing!

I woke up to some happy balloons.

And more balloons on the breakfast table! (Yes, for some reason I had these random oddly-shaped balloons lying around the house.)

I got to wear my book launch dress for the day because I figure I should get some use out of it! (Note the design.)

Pasta was on the menu for lunch, and I did consider changing my clothes. But since I didn’t actually have to cook it, I thought the chances of getting splattered with red sauce extremely low. (The dress made it through the meal intact.)

Dinner turned out to be a sushi fest!

How was your Mother’s Day?

Foodie Friday: Easy Spinach & Bacon Quiche

Easy spinach and bacon quiche: pie-like egg dish

I really enjoy those mini appetizer quiches, but it’s been a while since I made my own egg dish (especially since eggs were scarce in the grocery stores earlier on). Anyway, I figured this would be an easy put-in-the-oven meal to make. Plus, I already had frozen spinach and bacon bits lying around.

Usually quiche is made with cream, but I didn’t have any in stock. My pantry, though, did have some coconut milk (yay for pre-stocking because of my love of curry).

My family really enjoyed this dish (see below for recipe).

Bacon bitsSpinach bits (frozen spinach, defrosted, maybe ¼ c) 6 large eggs1¼ c coconut milk¼ cup water½ teaspoon sea saltGround black pepper

Whisk eggs, coconut milk, water, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Stir in half of spinach and bacon into the mixture; then sprinkle the rest on top.

Bake in cooked crust* at 350ºF for about thirty minutes.

Let cool.

*I didn’t have all-purpose flour, so I substituted cassava flour to make the crust. The dough was made from butter, cassava flour, sea salt, sugar, and water.

Happy cooking!