All posts by Chuong Nguyen

Food

So You Want to Throw a Dinner Party

July 25, 2014 Chuong Nguyen Leave a comment

My friends and I are entering the period of our lives where we have spaces with significant others, few to no roommates, and the horrible decision of owning a dining table for more than three people and a pile of books. Dinner for two or four isn’t such a big hassle, but when everyone wants to come over, eat, drink, and play games it can start to get out of hand.

The Guests

How many of your friends can you comfortably seat? Whether it’s around your dining table or apartment, it’s better to be able to provide a chair so that everyone can eat at the same time. Are these people who will get along? Will they hover in the kitchen? Consider who makes a great guest for eating—they’re not always the same people you want to have over for drinks or dancing. Keep the number of guests reasonable for noise too. It can be hard to yell over people, and too many people can make that a challenge. Start small!

The Table

Put all your leaves in. Adding the extra space in later for plates, napkins, glasses, platters of food, finished plates, and assorted elbows will be a godsend when you’re in the middle of cooking and entertaining. My boyfriend and I like placemats, as they’re easy to clean (throw them in the wash with your clothes), and they give a visual space for where everyone should sit and put all their eating crap. Set out dishes in advance too, along with flatware and glasses. It’s nice to not have to scramble for everything at the last second, or have to direct guests where to get their utensils and plates while you’re finishing up the meal. I like to not assign seats, because two of your guests might be having a great conversation that you would’ve never considered, and now they want to talk all night about it (but no one else does).

The Food

What’s easy for you to make? Can you do a lot of it? Sometimes I get into the trap of thinking that Dish A would go really well with Dish B, with a side of Dish C. But all of these plates are hard work or require recipes I’ve never really done before—and when everyone is waiting for their food, scrambling to make sure that your food is edible (and hopefully tasty) is probably the worst thing to worry about. So, keep it small and easy! I’m guilty of generally not following this on a day-to-day basis: I like to look up recipes that sound delicious, try to make it for a few people, and fail miserably. When I’m going to entertain, I definitely try to keep it simple.

Start with an appetizer that takes a very little preparation, maybe something you can do in the morning or the night before. Salads are an easy choice: throw some mixed greens with a relatively neutral dressing or even serve the dressing on the side. Add tomatoes, fresh fruit slices, or nuts to add texture to the salad. Alternatively, soups are easy to make earlier in the day or the night before. Just bring it up to simmer and serve hot with some fresh bread. If either of these is too much work, you can always settle with a cheese platter—put some bricks of cheese on a wooden cutting board with some knives and crackers, maybe a few slices of cured meats. Personally, I like crostini types of snacks. Get a nice baguette and slice it into thin rounds. Brush with olive oil or butter and toast in your oven until crispy. Top with a bit of cheese, or meat, or a spread of your choice. A bit of smoked salmon, herb cream cheese, and a sprinkle of chives makes it perfect for me.

As for the entree, what’s good for everyone? Ignoring dietary restrictions, fish and chicken are pretty easy to just throw in the oven, pull it out, and serve when it’s time. I like to go with a recipe that’s pretty heavy on the aromatics, but it’s not for everyone! To me, lots of garlic, onions, and herbs help to make a kitchen feel homey, and there’s nothing quite like opening the oven door and hearing everyone groan with anticipation. For a bit more of an active cooking experience, you can always grill or pan-fry your main course—this is more along the lines of what I generally do. Sear some steaks in a pan or a grill and top it with butter, or work to build a more nuanced dish like chicken marsala (a personal favorite). Either way, I’d aim to do about one large serving per person, with extras for the folks you know who like to have extras (mostly me), and you’re set!

But wait! Side dishes? Make them in advance if you can. Or have them be as very little maintenance if possible. Salads if you didn’t have one for an appetizer are great here, as are various potato preparations: mashed, baked, and gratin are fantastic ways to serve a side starch. If your entree is pretty heavy, keep your side relatively light! And vice versa. You want everyone to have room for dessert, of course.

After everyone’s done with their main course and has been settled for a bit, I like to bring out dessert. Unless you’re into baking and pastries, I’d definitely grab a cake or a few pastries from your favorite bakery. It’s a lot of work to make your own desserts, and the precision can be taxing when you consider that you’ve made so many other things for this party (even if you didn’t do it all yourself). Something easy to cut like a pie or a cake works well for dessert, especially if it highlights seasonal fruit. Ice cream and coffee are also fantastic and absurdly simple. Carve out a couple scoops and serve with a small cup of joe.

The Drinks

While we’re talking about beverages, what do you serve for the rest of the dinner? It really depends on your crowd and your personal tastes. We have a stocked wine rack and a decent amount of hard liquor, so it’s easy for our guests to have whatever they’re feeling like imbibing.

I’m a bit of a wine snob (I’m sorry), and it’s nice to have a general progression of lighter wines to bolder ones as the meal goes on. A rosé is a good halfway point for avid white and red wine drinkers, and generally fits nicely for an appetizer into a main course. Aiming for bold reds through the entrée typically works best, unless you’re serving white-fleshed fish or lighter chicken preparations.

This being said, serve whatever wine you think tastes best! It’s the expectation that you serve white wine with fish and chicken, but no one is stopping you from having lovely glass of gewürztraminer with a steak or a fantastic glass of pinot noir with halibut.

If your guests are into cocktails or straight liquor, it’s nice to have some glasses available and some ice on hand for said drinks. I urge guests to keep it simple. We’re not in a bar, and I won’t have slices of lemon, lime, or orange, or mint or basil leaves on hand just because you want a specific cocktail. I generally assume that if someone is drinking a specific boozy drink, they’ll be drinking it all night. I treat beer the same way: have a small selection of beers you know people like, and if they’re drinking it, odds are that they’ll drink it all night.

It’s also great to have some non-alcoholic, non-water drinks on hand for designated drivers, guests with allergies, or generally otherwise opposed to liquor. Sparkling juices and seltzers can be nice alternatives to soft drinks, and they’re tasty too. Water should also be readily available, for cleansing the palate and sating thirst (I keep a Brita in the fridge for this purpose).

Whatever Comes After…

Is whatever you want! Some dinner parties end with the end of dessert, and others go on to play games, watch TV or movies, and whatever else you and your friends do. It’s probably better to avoid any strenuous activities right after all that food, though. I personally insist on cleaning up after myself—my guests are just that, guests. But if they’re insistent and you’re tired, might as well take advantage of the free labor!

Don’t stress out (unless you like it), and try to have fun! Your guests will have a good time if you are, and it’s not worth it to go crazy over a night of cooking (and drinking). You can always clean up tomorrow, eat the leftovers and relax after everyone’s gone. Good luck!

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Food

Picky Eating and Overcoming the Fear of Fine Dining

July 23, 2014 Chuong Nguyen Leave a comment

I’ve been a picky eater ever since I can remember. I don’t like vegetables or most fruit. I generally don’t like green foods. I absolutely hate the fibrous crunch of lettuce, celery, broccoli—you name it. Going out to eat in my high school years with friends was basically me ordering a dish, picking off 50% of the contents, and eating what little remained, unless I was fortunate enough to find the one dish that wasn’t covered in a salad and coleslaw. So how did I fall in love with food? It seems unlikely, considering that I entirely hate a major food group.

My family went on vacation the summer after my sophomore year, and my mom desperately wanted to eat at this restaurant she’d seen reviews for. It was her birthday, and I was dragged along, slightly against my will. What was wrong with just going to the Outback for another Bloomin’ Onion and some of their ridiculously portioned cheesecake slices? What about their awesome dark brown bread they served with a huge knife running through it?

I didn’t know it, but I was about to lose my footing. Birthday dinners would never be the same for me.

I swooned after one bite of something utterly and impossibly amazing. One little piece of steak. It looked so sad on this large white plate, all by itself. I pitied it, put it on my fork, and put it in my mouth. What I tasted was this juicy, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth slice of heaven. Just barely crispy on the edges, but succulent all the way through, it teased every sense out of my feeble teenager mouth. It was heavenly, and suddenly Outback seemed boring, for peasants only. I was awestruck that something so small could pack such a punch, bring up so many wonderful food-related feelings. When the time came to order dessert, I decided to be adventurous and ordered something with fresh fruit. A raspberry “napoleon”: chantilly cream layered with fresh berries with crispy pastry tuilles in between. The order shocked my parents. I astounded them again when I ate bite after bite of my dessert (previously, I’d only been interested in artificial fruit flavors).

From then on, there was a small obsession with finding a perfect bite to meet that piece of meat. Now that my parents were not as worried about me finding something to eat on any given menu, we tried new restaurants. I was enjoying new flavors, but I kept running into all of these pesky vegetables. They were on every entrée, present as a garnish on every appetizer. Sometimes, they even made it to dessert, which disgusted and horrified me. About a year after the best piece of steak ever, my mom grew tired with me leaving half the plate behind. She told me, “Finish your plate or you can pay for your share of the food,”—and with those prices, I was horrified. When a dish was a solid week’s worth of earnings at my then-shitty-semi-retail job, avoiding the vegetables was clearly not worth it when I wanted to go to Disneyland over Spring Break.

So I put the piece of asparagus in my mouth, chewed briefly, and swallowed. And it wasn’t love. It was still mild disgust, but the idea of paying for something and not eating it (at least at a high price point) started to gall me. Bite after bite, frown after frown, the vegetables went away and the plate was empty. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it wasn’t something I’d choose to do on an everyday basis. My family found it entertaining, that I would break such a hard-and-fast eating rule for a fancy meal.

I’d like to say that day changed something in me, but it didn’t. I still don’t like greens, though I’ve compromised and started to enjoy some fresh fruit more often. The love of food, great food made with immense care, pushes me to keep trying new and exciting things. So I keep trying different restaurants with exotic menus and preparations. And I’ll have you know, I recently ate a large slice of cucumber with eggplant relish and didn’t throw a tantrum (or throw up).

Photo by Sara Slattery

Money

Not Going Broke, A How-To

June 17, 2013 Chuong Nguyen Leave a comment

After vacationing in Japan, visiting New York, and moving in with my boyfriend, all within three months, I had a lot of debt and needed to have a plan to get rid of it. I have a decent job that sort of allows me to live comfortably, but the reality is that I needed to budget my spending and hold myself to it. Budgeting my way out of debt and into better savings sucks. It really does, but it’s part of being a responsible adult who maybe wants to buy a house, or get married, or take another big vacation abroad.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Let’s take a look at how I try to set up my budget, which is generally applicable for a young working professional living in the major Bay Area. Please note that the cost of living can be scaled down (or up) depending on where you live.

How Much Money You Make

For salaried workers, this is pretty simple. How much do you get paid? How often do you get paid? Multiply accordingly to figure out about how much you make each month. For example, let’s say my annual income is $40,000–after taxes. It comes out to about $1,200 per paycheck twice a month. We’ll work with a baseline of $2,400 dollars each month, subtracting as we count our expenses.

Cash Flow: $2,400

How Much You Have to Spend

Car payments, rent, and insurance are some typical costs. These are required for not losing your car, your home, and your health (or maintaining any of the above), and as such, these are your priority payments each month. In addition, since you have to buy gas for your car, you should estimate the average cost of a tank and the number of times you fill up in a month. I generally go to a gas station about three times a month, give or take a week. There’s not really an opportunity for cost savings here, barring trading down your current car and moving back and forth.

Cash Flow: $2,400

Rent: -$700

Car Payment: -$306

Gasoline: -$120

Car / Renter’s Insurance: -$110

Cash Flow after Necessities: $1,164

How Much You Have for Food

Barring rent, food is where I spend the majority of my money each month. Cutting back from having sushi two to three times a week sucked, but I had to devise a plan for saving money where I usually spend the most.

First, I accounted for breakfast and work lunches. I normally don’t eat breakfast, but sometimes I do get coffee. Paying $4 three times a week for a coffee and snack comes to $12 per week for breakfast. For lunch, the cafeteria at my work tends to charge about $6 per meal, but I want a little breathing room to eat out with my co-workers once a week at about $15. A $6 cafeteria lunch four times a week, plus $15 for eating out once a week, comes to $39 per week for lunch. Next, we should account for dinners, desserts, and other snacks you would normally eat at home. I try to eat something of moderate size and of moderate price from the grocery store most nights of the week. This usually comes out to about $10 a day, sometimes serving for two or more.

To account for eating out, I let the cost savings roll over, and try to not binge on alcohol or appetizers. In order to calculate how much you’d spend each month, multiply your weekly costs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner by about 4.3 (the average number of weeks in a month). It isn’t an exact number, but it generally works out to be fairly accurate (and then I round up to the nearest whole dollar).

This part of the budget varies greatly from person to person, as some people care more about what they’re eating, how often they’re eating it, and if they can stand leftovers. I for one don’t mind leftovers, but hate monotony in the variety of my overall meals, so I spend a little more on some meals for bigger tastier foods.

Cash Flow after Necessities: $1,164

Breakfast: -$51

Lunch: -$168

Dinner: -$300

Cash Flow after Food: $645

How Much You Have for Fun

Shit gets tricky here. You have a finite amount of money left this month. You could spend it on drinking, a new pair of shoes, or a coffee table. I like all of these things, but my savings are more important to me. If you don’t have any, what happens when you run into trouble? I’m a bit proud and don’t really want to ask my mom and dad for help, so I put a small, but decent chunk directly into savings.

After that, it’s sort of like juggling. You can revise how much you spend each month on entertainment, such as movies or small trips. Or maybe, you want to spend more money on material things, and go shopping more often. These budgets are flexible because you still have money left over. I recommend that you put anything remaining from your cash flow into savings.

Cash Flow after Food: $645

Savings: -$200

Entertainment: -$120

Shopping: -$200

Cash Flow after Fun: $125

Getting Out of Debt

Above, there’s the basic outline of a budget, but you can see that at the end, there’s not a lot to pay back toward existing bills. Here’s where you look at all the things you’re spending money on and figure out where you can afford to cut back. For example, you don’t really need to spend $200 a month on shopping for new things. This could be cut down to $50 for new games or some new makeup, bringing your debt repayment funds up to $275. Furthermore, not everyone is like me and spends a lot of money on food. Some folks I know spend less than $200 a month on food, and that could be you too! Saving money to pay debt sucks, but it needs to be done if you want to be a financially responsible adult. Just learn to cut where it doesn’t hurt as bad.

Note that if you have long-standing credit card debt, you should try to pay it off first before putting a lot into savings. Your savings doesn’t accrue interest, while owing money to credit card companies costs you more in the long run. You should also aim to pay off your credit cards every month, making the bills in the long term much more manageable.

Making Everything Easier

Finally, work out your budget in Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets: it’s an excellent way to have a copy that you can manipulate and track your progress. Alternatively, you can use a site such as Mint to have them track your spending. Such websites can pull records from your credit cards, bank statements, and other bills to better show much you’ve been spending, and usually they have great ways to analyze your spending or track your goals. You can use these to see where you’ve been putting all your hard-earned cash, so you can decide where you need to cut back.

Good luck with the budgets and the savings!

Geekery

All My Shit’s Online

May 20, 2013 Chuong Nguyen 6 Comments

My boyfriend and I have schedules that don’t match up. We have social calendars that sometimes deviate from one another’s. Sometimes I forget that we really need to get eggs from the grocery store. Again. And so did he on his way home from work. Life together is complicated, but we use a variety of Google web apps to make managing the chaos easier. When we started planning a trip to Japan, there were questions like “What the hell do I need to pack? How cold is it? Are we going anywhere warm?” (Everything, very, and no). Now, when we need to organize anything, we just share a document in the cloud: no fuss, no forgotten eggs, and just a clean spreadsheet synced across our devices.

Photos by Chuong Nguyen

As a fairly avid iOS user, I have no issues using main competitor’s web products. Google’s products are built better from a user’s point of view, and they’re easier to access from any device with an Internet connection. If you’ve got an Android product, these services sync up nicely with your devices to make sure you stay on track with whatever you’re doing.

For weary travelers with organizational issues, read on:

Google Calendar (or How My Boyfriend and I Book Each Other Up)

When I was at university, I made appointments on my Google Calendar for myself when I had work and classes. I’d set the appointment to recur until the end of the semester, and gave it a separate colored label so it could fade into the background. This provided the basic template for when I had free time, how late I could sleep in, and approximately what time I’d come crashing home. From here, a differently colored calendar was my appointment book for assignments and papers. Small reminders of “12pg paper on Environmental Waste” or “Problems 1-35, odd, page 76” helped declutter my mess of syllabi from my school bag. It became easier to just check my calendar for when things were due for what class, than to rifle through a binder full of papers.

When my boyfriend and I started seeing each other more seriously, we realized that we had fairly opposite schedules. I had work in the mornings and classes in the evening with some nights off, and he had classes midday and work in the evening with some mornings off. We had to compromise and find times for when we could see each other, and sharing our Google Calendars gave us the visual organization we needed to know that we could indeed see Iron Man on Thursday night, probably around 8 PM. His Calendar shows up as a different color than mine, so it helps me see when I’m free compared to when he is available. From here, it’s not that hard to text and ask if he’d like to have brunch on Saturday, because I can see that he’s working a closing shift. A few minutes of organization from you and your partner can make seeing each other so much easier.

Google Drive (or How to Always Have Everything You Need for School and Work)

Google Drive

Google Drive started as Google Docs, but it’s become Google’s version of Dropbox. Sure it’s not exactly the same thing, but for major documentation and cloud editing, it’s the best that I’ve used. You can upload and store files from other applications, or choose to create and edit within your browser using Google’s alternatives: Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Google Docs can be used to take notes for class or work, stored on the cloud for you to access from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. It’s easier to study (and you can’t make excuses), because your notes are everywhere! For writers too, it’s a good idea to just start docs with your poetry or quick writing. You can come back to it later when you come home from the cafe or school, and revisit it if you want to.

Google Doc

I use Google Sheets (similar to Microsoft Excel) to calculate budgets, including how much I’m paying for rent, if we can eat at Chili’s on Thursday (yes, but no margaritas), and how much I can afford to put into savings. Planning for trips and events (such as my friend’s lovely wedding, including all of her ideas) is a breeze. I set up a tab for locations, another for timetables and itineraries, and another for my packing list. The reward for planning on Google Sheets is that I can check it or update it from the parking lot at the grocery store or from my work computer without forgetting it by the time I get home.

But here’s my favorite part: Google Slides is a cloud-accessible version of Microsoft PowerPoint, with all of the perks of shared collaboration. You can upload your template to the Drive, and everyone can add in their parts. From there, you can peer edit easily, with commenting and built-in tracking of all the revisions from each person. I also particularly like using Slides to present as well, to avoid issues with exporting and importing into PowerPoint. It makes working in groups in university or high school (and arguably in the professional world as well) very easy. There’s no angst about how Jenny doesn’t have PowerPoint 2012 or how Marcus wants to use this font that his dad designed but no one else has installed. (That said, standard disclaimer about putting private industry information in the cloud. Google has pretty solid security, but you don’t want to be the person that leaked big news to the public. Be careful, but be proactive about using it.)

Google Presentation

For the folks who like having documents on the go, Drive is a godsend. I’ve studied from my smartphone in the hallway before an exam. I’ve used Sheets to see when I’m probably going to be debt free (or more realistically, if that new toaster is within my reasonable budget). I’ve watched my group sigh with relief when I pull up the presentation that someone forgot to bring on a USB drive.

Why You Should Declutter Your Life and Let Google Do It For You

It’s easy. You can have your social calendar on the go. You can study for classes, jot down notes, and plan your wedding from your smartphone or tablet. You can throw up that presentation about Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th Wedding Anniversary just because they wanted to see it again in without any hassle. Getting your stuff into the cloud takes a little time investment, but the payoff is huge. You can sync up with friends and coworkers, maintain and protect your access to your documents, and avoid duplication or loss of effort. If you have a Gmail or Google Apps address, you already have access to Google Drive; if you don’t, it’s free to sign up!