Life recently:: music and food

Hello everyone,

As a musi grad student, my days and weeks are always constantly filled with music,

but this week seemed particularly full of violin playing.

Perhaps because I had 2 lessons this week,

or perhaps because I'm getting ready to play Bach Chaconne in a masterclass with Mr. Ron Patterson,

(eeek!)

or perhaps because we had our Chamber Music Marathon yesterday

(seriously ALL day. 12 hours. we had one last semester as well, as seen here)

but anyway, it was a really great week, even if my back and arms are a bit sore from overuse..

This semester, the theme for the Chamber Marathon was French music!

Our violin-clarinet-piano trio played Milhaud,

and though I had never heard of it before we started playing it,

all of us soon fell in love with its charm!

I mean, there's really no better way to describe it; it's just a really charming piece of music  =)

To match the mood of its Parisian feel, our trio decided to bring some color onto the stage,

and I picked a flowy, two toned green dress to match the mood.

I guess it worked because an elderly gentleman pulled me aside before I was about to perform during the marathon to tell me that he had just arrived from visiting Paris, and that I looked very Parisian!  =D  

And then he proceeded to show me a whole lot of Paris pictures,

which definitely fanned my desire to visit Paris someday.  

It's on my bucket list after all,, it'll happen..

Yay our trio!!    And of course, my scientist, who is probably my biggest fan  <3

In other music related news,

we were just informed that next year, the Rice Symphony Orchestra will be touring the East Coast!

We'll definitely be performing at the Carnegie Hall, and also possibly at the Kennedy Center in D.C.

AHHHH 

SO ECXITING!!!

Though not everyone will be able to go since only the symphony orchestra will be on tour,

and the chamber orchestra will be staying at Rice, 

holding the fort,

it's still incredibly exciting for eveyrone!

My beautiful stand partner and I right before we heard the news.
photo taken because we were awesome and were oppositely matching  =)

Life recently has also been filled with food, of course.

but it was quite fun because we tried a lot of new recipes!

I went through a bit of a mozzarella, tomato, basil phase,

and was constantly eating these sandwiches!

They were so easy to make, 

and what was really amazing about them was that it was so easy to mix it up!

here, I added some avocados,

other times, I added some spinach,

other times, I added different seasonings, etc.

It's like a fancy grilled cheese  haha

and my new found love for English muffins.  it's the perfect size!

We also made some Hobak Jun, which is a Korean Zucchini side dish.

It's really simple to make, but so so delicious!

I think we'll probably be making it again  =)

all you do is cut up a zucchini, salt it, coat it in flour, then dunk it in egg mixture, and fry it!

so. good. 

Then, on a night when Amulet and I both had A LOT of writing to do,

(because I always tend to leave writing until the night before it's due,,,)

I made some firecracker saltines!

basically saltines coated in lots of spices and then baked,

and it was great with some chicken noodle soup Amulet made!

yay for roomy bonding!

And then, of course, once I started detox,

lots and lots of vegetables appeared in our kitchen.

This is our roasted veggies we had for dinner last night!

all it required was a whole lot of different veggies,

--we had tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, summer squash, green peppers, and eggplant--

and some sesame oil and spices!

so colorful, so easy to make, and most importantly, so yummy!

and to go with the roasted veggies,

we made some sweet potato soup!

yay for making up recipes!

it's basically Korean sweet potatoes roasted in the oven, then boiled in water until it could be pureed.

Nothing else is added, but it was surprisingly good!
I think I want to try it with butternut squash next  ;)

I hope you are all having a fabulous weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

--Janny