Journal 1

Hello, this is my first journal entry. I am not really sure where to start, so maybe I will just jump in to what has been going on in my life?

Recently I planted some plants in my garden. There are a lot of animals in the area, and the only way to produce produce is to fortify your plants in a really strong enclosure! Even the ground must have some sort of barrier that digging animals can’t bite through! It can be disappointing if you are not mentally prepared, but you can’t get mad at the animals for outsmarting you! I have found that worrying only about the plants in the secure enclosure and expecting anything else to get eaten is the best strategy. And even expecting the enclosure to get broken into!

Here is a time to say that I do not own the house I live in. Nowadays, I cannot even get approved for an apartment! They require like 3-5x the rent in salary. Crazy! I am 30 and this is not doable for me for an apartment in the location I want to live in. This is downright impossible for someone who just turned 18, or is in their early 20s. And impossible for many people even decades older! Or ever! But especially someone who just became a legal adult and wants to get away from their parents and start their own life. What are they supposed to do?

Things like this frustrate me so much. It feels like things are getting worse, not better. And what do young people have to compensate for this demoralizing housing nightmare? TikTok, a shady app that steals their formative time? Not to mention their data and the information it can put in front of them. (And why, in cooking TikToks, must the ingredients be dropped, slapped, or tapped? All a consequence of a helicoptered childhood spent indoors in front of a screen deprived of physical activity in nature? Okay, then I understand. How about bread-making then? You get to play with the dough and you get a lovely treat at the end.)

Okay after that foray into Asya’s stream of consciousness, I would like to share another outdoor activity I have been doing lately: charcoal grilling! My new grill is the Weber Kettle. There is very little information on charcoal grilling online, even from Weber’s official website! It is still one of those things that is sex-stereotyped so the males feel they all carry some sort of special knowledge. Like knowledge of the location of the philosopher’s stone. It makes me laugh. Don’t get me started on when they try to “pass it down” to their son!

Anyway, it has been a fun challenge to try and figure out. It makes grilling on a propane grill seem like cheating. This weekend I am using a tool that I quickly realized was a necessity: a little basket that holds lots of coals that goes inside the grill. I went with Wirecutter’s pick, the Slow ‘N Sear Deluxe. Let’s see how it goes!

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good weekend!

Asya