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[jellybellybee]

The Last Time

I was thinking today about “the last time,” and how sometimes, you don’t know that it’s the last time. Like the last time I picked up and held my little one. If I’d realized it was the last time I’d pick him up because he was at the cusp of too big for me to pick up anymore, I would have cherished it more. Held him a little longer, even if my arms ached from the weight. The last time I fed him a bite of food, because he was able to handle it on his own now. The last time he grabbed my hand to hold it while we walked, I would have held on tight. The last time he asked me to video him while he pretended to host a science show about dinosaurs. I didn’t know that he wouldn’t ask again, because he’d gotten older and self-conscious. There have been a lot of last times. There are a lot of firsts too, and more to come I’m sure. But it’s good to remember to stop and appreciate those little everyday things, because as life rolls on, some of those things are going to happen for the last time. So next time, when I’m exhausted after a long day at work and just want to sit and veg, and he asks me to come sit next to him on the couch so he can show me something he’s built in Minecraft, I’m going to remember that it might be the last time, and sit and appreciate that he still wants to share his game with me.

[jellybellybee]

Casual Racism Isn’t Funny…At All

Saw this on my IG feed today, posted by a momfluencer I followed until today. I was struck by the casual racism, the fact that so many people thought it was funny (rather than racist), and one of the comments on the post “Well I have the body of a Goddess - it just happens to be #buddha,” @doritosgirl21 (IG). I get it, “it’s just a joke,” and some people would say I’m being too sensitive. This struck home because I’m both Thai-American and Buddhist.

In case it’s not obvious, the implication here is that Thai people don’t care about our temples, and also that the Buddha has no care for his/her body, because that’s part of fat-phobic culture. If you’re fat, it’s because you don’t care about your body, are lazy, make bad choices, etc, etc. Ultimately, this kind of “humor” shows your ignorance and lack of care with how you express yourself. No one is perfect, I’m far from it myself. I try to take care with what I say and how I say it, and I make mistakes. On the other hand, someone who is a social media influencer, should probably take a moment to think about the things they post. I accidentally say something offensive or hurtful, it reaches a limited circle of people I know. What she posted, was liked by over 1500 people. She has over 87,000 followers, among them other social media influencers with thousands more followers. This casual racism gets amplified, and keeps it normalized. And as long as saying things like this is okay, then we’ll never be able to make serious headway with ending systemic racism.

I feel slightly better. No one will see this. I’m no influencer, I’m not thick-skinned enough to handle being one :) But sometimes I just need to say something, out to the void. Did I call her out? No. Why not? Because it was pointed out to me that someone who would post something like this, and her thousands of followers who thought it was funny, would not care what I had to say about it. That I (and others like me) would find it racist and hurtful. I can only hope other people saw it for what it was, and perhaps will have done the same as I did, and unfollow her.

[jellybellybee]

Thanks for stopping by for tea with our positive bunny friend! ☕ We can be so critical of ourselves and not even realize, so sometimes we just need someone on the other side of the table to tell us what they really see.

Chibird store | Patreon | Webtoon

[jellybellybee]

I think this is Pieris japonica. I’m still playing around with the camera, to see what it can do and how it does it. This was taken in the early afternoon, overcast conditions, in the shade. The only edit is that I cropped it. It was taken in landscape, I cropped it to portrait.

Lens: RF35mm f/1.8 macro IS STM

f/3.5 1/60 sec ISO 320

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[jellybellybee]

🤣 🤣 🤣

me after a year of quarantine eating junk food and barely moving

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Same at 9yo 😂

[jellybellybee]

My, what big eyes you have, Uluguru Forest Treefrog (Leptopelis uluguruensis)! This amphibian’s common name refers to its home in the forests of Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains. Males only grow up to 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) long; females are slightly larger, reaching around 1.6 inches (4.8 centimeters) in length. You might find this critter hanging out on a banana leaf, if you can spot its bluish-green coloring against the foliage. Photo: Sue Cro, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr https://www.instagram.com/p/CKjom3agc6J/?igshid=17vuwk1zpw6lh

[jellybellybee]

😂

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The endangered Gray Wolf *Canis lupus*

f/11.0. 1/1000s 800mm ISO 10000

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😍

Disney Princesses by ROY THE ART

[jellybellybee]

Canon EOS R6

I got a new camera because I wanted a new lens. Canon released its RF 800mm f/11 IS STM lens and I was so excited to see that it wasn’t going to cost an arm and a leg, and an extended period of eating nothing but ramen in order to afford it. As you can see from its name, it’s an RF mount lens, meaning it wasn’t going to work with my DSLR, so I had to buy a new body. It was worth it. Canon’s other 800mm lens is an f/5.6L IS USM lens, all kinds of goodness, but also $12,999. I don’t make my living with my camera, so spending that on a lens that I wouldn’t even use all the time (800mm is not an every day lens) was a big no.

I took it out for a test run for the first time today. The f/11 means it’s going to work best on a relatively sunny day. Today we had partly cloudy, and where we went there was tree shade.

What I like about this lens, besides the reasonable price, is the photo quality is really good! On top of that, because it’s not all metal like the L series lens, it’s pretty portable. This shot was taken handheld, and between the camera and lens’ IS, and the fact that the lens isn’t ridiculously heavy, handheld shooting is doable.

[jellybellybee]

I love to drive. It’s a happy place for me, so I’m super thankful that this is my daily driver.

[jellybellybee]

This is so yummy!

a Bacon and Sour Cream Stuffed Baked Potato can be yours at Troubadour Tavern! #troubadourtavern #disneylandfood #fantasyland #disneyland #disneylanddining #disneylandcalifornia (at Disneyland - Theme Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx73CUcA_cp/?igshid=jh4go2nzxm5h

[jellybellybee]

Pork Loin with Apple Cider and Rosemary

This was another Instant Pot success! So easy to just brown the pork loin, sauté the onion, and then put everything in the pot. It cooked four about an hour and half (a 2lb boneless pork loin roast), add the apples and thicken the sauce and voila! It was done. And so soft and moist, a definitely favorite in this house. This time we served it with mashed potatoes (we cheated and used instant) but it would go equally well with rice (I never use the Instant Pot for rice, I much prefer my rice cooker). What I really liked about this one was that I had never tried cooking a pork loin before. I’m not the one who bakes/roasts in the oven. I’m more of a stir-fry, curry making type. I’m really liking my Instant Pot.

[jellybellybee]

I love our local grocery store. These are pink scallops, and they’re just beautiful! I heard they taste good too, but I just thought they were pretty.

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Ground beef stroganoff. After we managed to cook a chicken in the Instant Pot without blowing up the house, we figured we’d give it another shot. We like beef stroganoff, so we figured we’d give it a try. It’s one of those things we don’t make that often just because we don’t like messing with the mutliple dishes (pot for the noodles, pan for browning the meat, strainer). When we bought the Instant Pot, we got one cookbook to go with. I went through the recipes of the three books that were available at Costco at the time, and found the one with the most everyday things we’d likely want to eat (things we made at home anyway). I know many people just go it on their own, or find things on the internet, but since we’d never really cooked with a pressure cooker before, I wanted a book that would lay things out for me, and tell me what to expect (like how a pressure cooker works, and what to expect as it comes up to pressure and how long it takes). There’s nothing quite like staring at this machine that’s making weird noises, and wondering why it doesn’t appear to be doing anything.

So, what we found with this recipe is that after some quick prep, everything got cooked in the one pot. Brown the meat, add the onions and mushroom, sauté a bit more, pour in the broth, pour in the nooodles, moosh them a bit to get most of them submerged, and then pop the lid on and let the machine do it’s thing.

We loved this because after the first few minutes sautéing, the machine did the rest of the work. We were free to hang out with our kid, tidy the kitchen, whatever. It was probably a little faster than cooking on the stovetop, but for me, that wasn’t the big bonus. A lot of things can be cooked relatively quickly on the stove. What the bonus was was being able to just let it go. And having everything cook in one pot that could then go in the dishwasher. And it tasted great to boot! The success on this one got me a little more comfortable with the machine.