Change is a constant in life. I looked up who said this quote and it’s apparently Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher. You know it’s actually true when someone thousands of years ago observed the same phenomenon you’re experiencing today.

We moved from the Bay Area to NYC a year ago (only 2 posts ago!)…and now we’re moving again. This year I also switched careers and am almost a week away from completing a full stack software engineering bootcamp.

I’ll be starting fresh in Austin Texas, looking for a new job in a new lane, in our new house — the first house we’ve ever owned.

I’m pairing this post with a non-recipe encouragement to make a cheeseboard. Because cheeseboards are never the same, but they are always amazing. To be *…ahem….cheesy* — a cheeseboard is like life. You can arrange it nicely, but it’s almost never the same.

But that’s also the beauty of it! You want to try new things! You can keep a few things you love from cheeseboard to cheeseboard, or from life situation to life situation, but it’s highly encouraged and in fact, a great idea, to swap out the old with the new.

Ok done with the metaphor.

A little more about our life: We bought a duplex in Austin, Texas with a backyard, so our dog Rocket is going to be the happiest ever. It needs work and we’ll be updating it quite a bit — hopefully this year and next with some boring things: new siding, fix some electrical, the roof, cutting tree branches, pull out the plants that are too close to the walls, but also some exciting things: redo kitchen, bathrooms, fireplace, extend the backyard and new fences.

Over the last 17 weeks I’ve learned how to build websites and mobile apps from the backend to the frontend. I’ve learned JavaScript, data structures, algorithms, and so many new technologies. If you had asked me about these things on January 1 2020, I would have given you a very blank stare. However, coding is a really energizing change of pace. It’s a similar feeling to writing: typing something into existence. Except the thing you make is functional. Buttons you click send requests to the backend to change things on the frontend. It’s pretty cool.

A little more about this cheese plate. I made it for a quarantine lunch at the beginning of summer. I made it veggie and fruit-heavy because it felt good to stock up on fresh things instead of mountains of pasta and bread for a change. It has: cantaloupe, cucumbers, watermelon, tomatoes & basil, burrata, prosciutto, and toasted bread.

Hope anyone who reads this is staying safe, but also following their dreams. It’s been a crazy year for everyone, yes, but it’s a great opportunity to sit back, to pray, and to think hard about what your life looks like & what you really care about.

The post Cheese Boards & Change appeared first on The Bay Leaf Kitchen.

We’ve lived in NYC for 8 months now. We had 6 months of the best pre-pandemic life and New York was everything I imagined and hoped for (except, like a true snob, I think California’s food — and especially produce — is better).
It’s really unbelievable how much NYC has changed because of Coronavirus. I don’t have a recipe to share in this post, but since it’s the tail-end of spring, a season we’ve spent mostly inside our apartment, I’m going to share pretty photos from the time we walked to Central Park’s Conservatory Garden and from our many walks in Riverside Park (a block from where we live).

Only a few months ago we were living our best NYC lives: we were spending our money on comedy shows, Broadway, amazing food, getting drunk on $15 cocktails and taking the subway safely home. Now we’re at home 85% of the time (the 15% is to take Rocket out 3 times a day and occasionally venturing across the street for bagels).

I’m so grateful I decided, at least for our first year here, to move into the neighborhood I really wanted to live in in NYC, the Upper West Side — with all its rom-com vibes and You’ve Got Mail filming locations. We moved into the largest apartment just inside our budget, rather than going for a cheaper place further away — which would have been a practical way to balance how much we had hoped to be spending on living an awesome life in NYC. But now, with the world as it is, being at home in this apartment with it’s creaky floors and white crown molding, in the beautiful flower-decked, Riverside Park-abutting Upper West Side has been so soothing to my anxious FOMO- susceptible mind.

So many friends have reached out to see how we’re doing. The truth is, we are really doing well. We’re extremely privileged and grateful to live in a neighborhood that is largely unaffected. Most people we know have been able to work from home and not get sick. Both our jobs were planning on keeping us.

I say *were* because I have some more news…

It might seem like the worst time ever to do this, but being in quarantine has helped me take the proverbial much-needed step back to evaluate what I’m doing now, and if it’s what I want to keep doing later. I’ve been in a few jobs recently where I haven’t felt passionate, or where I felt like my role was limited. It’s felt extremely difficult to improve and grow, and in the last few roles, I’ve encountered so much change with managers coming and going, my career growth has observably suffered in the wake of these changes. These factors, and a few others led me to decide to pursue something different.

Last week was my last week in social media/marketing for the foreseeable future (though, as we all know now, the future is rarely foreseeable).

Since the beginning of this year, and more-so now during quarantine, I studied intensely, then I took a test, did a coding interview, and got into a selective all-female software engineering bootcamp. And I finally feel excited. This is a step I’m taking of my own initiative, to learn something hard and new, and potentially rewarding. It’s a step I’d been considering in the background over the last couple years as I worked alongside engineers at tech companies, and most recently, as I was working from home alongside my husband Jonathan, a full-time software engineer who loves his job.

I’m entering my 3rd week of a 17 week program. It’s hard now, and the pace is so fast, but I know I’m improving! What used to take me 3 hours, takes me 45 minutes tops. It’s the baby steps!

Later on I’ll probably have deep thoughts to share about when you should consider a career change, how to research one, and how to actually do it. But for now, I’m just really enjoying learning. It feels good to stretch these muscles again, memorize things, do homework, apply concepts, write code, and pass tests.

It’s new. It’s hard. But it’s fun.

The post Spring in NYC, during a Global Pandemic appeared first on The Bay Leaf Kitchen.

A few months ago, we played tourist in our own town, San Jose, California. I grew up driving to the Bay Area to visit family and I would always see billboards for the Winchester Mystery House: “Beautiful yet Bizarre.”

The story goes — Mrs. Winchester, whose husband invented the Winchester rifle, was very interested in séances and the spirit world. The spirits told her to avoid being haunted by those who were killed by her husband’s weapons, she needed to have noise constantly in her home to scare them away. She took this literally and seriously, and therefore her home was never completely finished being built. There was always the noise of construction happening in her home: the result– a bunch of staircases that lead to nowhere, doorways on the second floor that open out into the air, random rooms and chambers between other rooms.

In full daylight, when we visited, the house wasn’t very spooky, more like a grandmother’s mansion but with lots of stairs and tiny hallways. However, I could see it being a little creepy at night. They do haunted mansion events during the Halloween season that are probably terrifying. But when we went, it was prom season and a bunch of local high schoolers were getting their photos done in front of the house.

Mostly, the Winchester Mystery House is a giant beautiful Victorian mansion with beautiful conservatory garden rooms between bedrooms, lots of balconies, and lovely stained glass windows.

The tour guide also told us that Mrs. Winchester was obsessed with the number 13 and that she altered things like chandeliers, paintings, and stained glass windows to exhibit that number. She also had a séance room that she used every night at midnight.

Overall I thought it was a great experience! Especially since we live so closely, I felt we had to go and see what it was all about and I’m glad we did!

Exciting News

So now onto my exciting news.

We’ve moved to New York City!!

With Jonathan’s completed Ph.D., we had always discussed this year being the opportunity for us to go out and live somewhere new. I was born in California, went to college there, and have lived there my whole life. Jonathan’s family moved to California from Colorado when he was 3. Both of our families and extended families live here. So we really have no reason to live anywhere else.

…except for the adventure of it!

So here we are, me having finished up at my job of 3 years at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, him taking a remote-friendly role. We drove out to New York (where we have 1 total friend: hi Heather!) and we’ve been here for a week.

This kind of move actually goes against my nature. I’m an Enneagram 6, the Loyalist, and I crave security and stability. I’ve probably gained about 5 lbs this last month stressing about this.

But I always reassure myself that this is maybe the only time to do this. We are young, our families are in good health, we have savings, we both have jobs, and we don’t have a mortgage or kids.

We master-minded the logistics of our move, using Amtrak Express shipping — which worked AMAZINGLY well, might I add — plotting all dog-friendly hotels on our route on a Google map, and sped out here over 5 days of driving. I’ll probably do a post about the logistics of the trip, since it was hard to find the exact info I was looking for on the internet.

We’re in a temporary apartment in Long Island City, Queens — but just recently signed a lease on a place on the Upper West Side!

This is a terrifying but thrilling time!

The post Winchester Mystery House + Exciting News! appeared first on The Bay Leaf Kitchen.

Basically, since we got married 5 years ago, I’d been thinking and planning for this day — graduation party day! I really wanted to celebrate his awesome accomplishments with a fun party with all our friends & family.

Party planning can be stressful, but I knew some tips ahead of time and learned more through this event. Here’s a couple highlights:

Cheese Plate

If you know me at all, you know that I LOVE CHEESE PLATES and it’s kind of my art. I kind of wish I could do this for a career, so please contact me if you want to pay me to do this for your party!!

This cheese plate was meant to feed ~50 people, and I had a little bit of everything left. I overbought cheese, as I had budgeted 3 oz. per person (50×3 = 150 oz = ~9.3 lbs) and added a little extra just in case – 10 lbs total. I had about 2-3 lbs leftover, because we also had chips & dip, chicken wings, watermelon and cake!

I followed my tried & true cheese plate strategy (outlined here), and bought a mix of fresh, crunchy, salty, sweet, soft ingredients — and lots of crackers & bread.

It was a huge hit, and very tasty/yummy. Overall it cost me about $500 for all ingredients ($10/person), but I think I could have brought that down to $400 if I was trying to budget.

We did have lots of leftover cheese, but everything else was eaten up!

Decor

I bought most of the decor on Amazon! Originally I had picked a red & gold color palette — as Stanford’s actual mascot is “Cardinal Red” the color — but someone pointed out that it was very 49er’s-esque. I definitely wasn’t excited by that idea so we stuck with white, gold, and pops of red in key areas like the cake table.

We bought balloon letters to spell out “Finally!” and “Dr Leaf” at the nearest Party City. These are really great if you have a big area of open space you want to fill up and make festive (like the windows in the photo).

We bought a variety of decor items from Amazon such as these pennant banners, dot banners, gold & white fans, the gold door covers for behind the cake table, and these star confetti pieces for the tables.

CAKE

I basically took on way too much for this party! I also baked a big chocolate cake & 50 cupcakes. I bought cute cupcake baking cups at Home Goods for pretty cheap, and used these as my “pop of red” for the cake table.

This is my favorite chocolate cake recipe. And I sort of winged-it with the frosting. It was going to be 85 degrees and the party was outside, so I added shortening to the frosting. Shortening helps frosting stay stiff and can make it have a crunch layer on top, which doesn’t taste that great, but it keeps ingredients like butter from melting everywhere. I found this article extremely helpful and learned something new: Cream cheese frosting can really hold it’s shape in heat, contrary to my common sense assumption that it would melt.

I also used this AMAZING vanilla cupcake recipe. The texture and flavor was fantastic. And made up my own “Raspberry and Rose Frosting” recipe to go with it, where I also winged-it — adding a few spoonfuls of raspberry jam and 1 tsp of rose water to it.

I got the cake topper and the cute sparkly gold cupcake picks on Amazon as well.

I’m so very proud of my Ph.D. graduate husband!!! He’s the first “Dr.” in our family and has worked so hard for this moment. Congratulations to Dr. Leaf!

The post Ph.D. Graduation Party appeared first on The Bay Leaf Kitchen.