Five Things Friday:
- It’s Fall. Officially. My favorite season. I even got up early this morning to do a post 🙂
- My yoga teacher training starts tonight. So excited.
- Hopefully going out to dinner with my husband tonight.
- Can’t wait to spend time with friends this weekend (after my training).
- I’m loving on kabocha this week. Got a few perfectly ripe ones. Also introduced a friend to it and she loves it too 🙂
Fantabulous Friday Five comes in 3 parts…
Five things I want to buy
- … I’m gonna say nothing. I really don’t want anything right now! Hate clutter. Instead I will do…
Five things I want to get rid of
- Old clothes and shoes I never wear
- Too many books
- Canned / boxed foods in my kitchen that I will never eat
- Kitchen appliances I never use (juicer, I’m looking at you)
- Old cords that don’t seem to match up to anything
Five places I’ve visited
- Hawaii (honeymoon; my favorite vacation)
- France (this past summer; also when I was 7 in November of 1993)
- Italy (January 2008 – graduation gift to self)
- Miami (where my in-laws live)
- LA (Guster/John Mayer cruise)
(Key Largo, south of Miami)
Five jobs I’ve held
- Video store clerk (high school)
- Call center rep at ETS (one summer in college)
- Sales associate at Gap (I think I spent all my earnings at my place of work)
- Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve in SF
- Software Engineer! (current)
Hi Maggie,
Can you tell me how you know when a kabocha is perfectly ripe? I’ve bought a couple that turned out to be bad . . . but I couldn’t tell the difference when I bought them. Any advice?
Thanks!
@Michelle: Great question, and I wish I had a better answer for you – the way I pick them is I try to find the ugliest, lumpiest, hardest kabocha. That sounds silly, but I guess it makes sense – the ones that have been around the longest are usually the ripest. Often they will have little dark nubs on them, almost like a scab. Hope that helps 🙂 I used to think that the darker green the more ripe but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve had ripe ones that were lighter colored too.
haha, i pick kabocha by the ugly-factor, too! i like to think i’m a kabocha-whisperer – i can totally tell when they’re ripe (knock on wood). size doesn’t always matter. i look for dark-grayish-green. those scabs are key & always look at the nubbin’ on the bottom & make sure it’s not moldy! i also leave behind the bright green ones. i usually find that they’re not ripe enough.
either way, if one is a little to moist & stringy, i leave it cut in my fridge for a few days to dry it out!
Cool! Thanks for taking the Friday Five and running with it. Your jobs list made me remember a couple more of my own: I sold coupon books over the phone for CASA (court-appointed special advocates) while in high school and worked in the music department at Barnes & Noble for a while as a second job while reporting at the Daily Sun here in Flagstaff. I spent a lot of my earnings on books … but it sure was nice to have a paycheck every single week.