Let's Catch Up

Hey gang, I've been on a blogging hiatus for a while!  So many things have happened in the past four months:

I became a full-time, permanent staff lawyer at HomeBase.

I took the CA bar exam, and it felt good.  (Results coming in mid-November.)

I went to Yosemite for Siobhan & Sean's beautiful wedding.

I went to St. Paul for work, and went to the Minnesota State Fair with Molly.

I saw Jim Gaffigan do stand-up at the Mountain Winery for my birthday.

I went to Lake Tahoe to celebrate Morgan's birthday.

I began my San Francisco apartment hunt, which is ongoing.

I went to Seattle to visit Jaki and David (and ran into Saleema).

I went to the Big Game with my dad, and we had fun even though Cal lost.

I could spend an entire post on any of these events, but I think this will have to do.  I'm hoping to be more frequent in my posts in the future!

Coming Home

This week has been exciting, unexpected, and a bit nostalgic.   On Wednesday, I began a three-month staff lawyer contract position with  HomeBase!  I am extraordinarily fond of HomeBase, as it was the location of my first legal internship.  I interviewed for a position with them back in March (in fact, on the day after the bar exam ended), but they weren't able to hire me at that time.  Then, on Monday, I got an email from my old supervisor asking me if I'd be interested in some contract work.  I said "Absolutely!" and got a call from the executive director on Tuesday night, asking me to come in Wednesday.  So whirlwind!  For now it is a full-time contract position, but there is serious potential for it to turn into a permanent position.

It all happened so quickly, I didn't even have time to let it sink in and become really excited about it.  It's strange, because it doesn't feel like a "new" job; having already worked there for a summer, I mostly just feel nostalgic.  Indeed, reading over my posts from the summer of 2009, I realized that the last time I did Bay to Breakers (which I'm doing next weekend), I was working for HomeBase!  It's all coming full circle.

This changes everything.  I have an income (and can buy stuff).  I have a plausible path to a permanent position, which would enable me to get my own place and reassert my independence.  I can start repaying my student loans.  Most of all, this gives me a huge psychological boost on my bar exam results coming out next week.  Even if I don't pass, knowing I am employed makes me feel a lot better about it.  (And, because HomeBase mostly does policy work, bar admission isn't a requirement to work there.)  My heart is full of joy and thanksgiving.


Sing a new song to the LORD,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
His right hand and holy arm
have won the victory.
The LORD has made his victory known;
has revealed his triumph in the sight of the nations,
He has remembered his mercy and faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.


Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth;
break into song; sing praise.
Sing praise to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
shout with joy to the King, the LORD.


Let the sea and what fills it resound,
the world and those who dwell there.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
the mountains shout with them for joy,
Before the LORD who comes,
who comes to govern the earth,
To govern the world with justice
and the peoples with fairness.

- Psalm 98

Doc Review

The past two-and-a-half weeks, I have been commuting up to San Francisco for a contract document review job.  I cannot say much about the litigation, of course, but I will say that it involves the semiconductor industry.  I saw the job posted on Craigslist, welcoming JDs with no prior doc review experience, so I applied within 45 minutes of the job being posted, and a half-hour later received an email with a bunch of forms to fill out for my employment!

Doc review is extraordinarily boring work.  Essentially, I was paid to sit in a room with 30 people and read strangers' email for eight hours a day.  We used doc review software to code each doc we read based on a variety of different categories derived from a subpoena.  Competitive spirit that I have, I made doc review more fun by trying to beat my prior record for number of documents reviewed in a day.  I always felt good when I hit 700 docs, and my personal best was over 800.

A sunrise view of the Bay from Caltrain.

The commute to San Francisco from Sunnyvale is always pretty intense.  I was working from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm, but left my house at 6:30 am and did not return until 7:15 pm.  I rode my bicycle to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station, took Caltrain all the way up to San Francisco, and then transferred to Muni to get to the office, on Montgomery, a block up from Market.  Muni majorly cramped my style by being behind schedule so often that I missed my preferred train home 60% of the time (a terrible track record)!

On the Monday morning before last, my train struck and killed a man, an apparent suicide.  I was sitting in the second car of the train, and I will never forget the sound of the impact.  I was over an hour late to work because we had to wait for the coroner to come and document the incident.  In the days that followed, I replayed that moment a lot in my head when I was on the train.  I read a well-done Mercury News article from 2009 on how the 10 to 20 Caltrain fatalities (mostly suicides) each year affect Caltrain workers psychologically.  It makes me so sad to imagine being in a place mentally where death seems more welcoming than life.  I was heartened to learn that Google responds to suicide-related search terms with information about the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Hopefully, I will receive more doc review jobs through this contract employer.  They told us that they will have a lot more work in the coming year, and will be in touch.  In addition, they have a location in Silicon Valley, so perhaps I will get some work closer to home.  And, now that I have some doc review experience, I can start applying for similar work with other companies.  It's not my dream job, of course, but it's a nice way to make some money and stay busy while waiting for bar exam results (next month!) and a full-time job.

Post-Bar, the Sequel

It's wonderful to find myself in a post-bar exam world again.  The exam went well enough.  It's impossible to tell how I did, of course, but I found myself feeling very calm in the days leading up to it.  I think it helped that I had no jitters about the unknown, having taken it before.  The three-day exam took place at the Oakland Convention Center, so I stayed at the Washington Inn across the street.  It was nice to have such an easy "commute."  There were no surprises during the exam, in contrast to the fire alarm that went off during the July administration.  After the exam, I went out for celebratory drinks and dinner with some Berkeley friends who live/work in the area--what catharsis!

The following week, I used some of my frequent flyer miles to take a lovely trip to D.C.  I stayed with my old roommate Jess at her new apartment, crashing on my old couch.  It was splendid to see some of my dearest D.C. friends, many of whom were able to take off time from work to hang out with me!  Having spent several years in D.C., there was no pressure to see the quintessential D.C. sights--the point was to spend time with friends.  However, we did take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to walk the Tidal Basin, visit the zoo, fly kites, see the Arboretum, and tour my favorite historical site, Mount Vernon.  It is always delightful to see old friends and pick right up from where we left off.

Since returning to California, I've been spending time with my family, catching up on a backlog of emails and blog subscriptions, and beginning some post-bar projects.  I've started using my Spanish software again, which was one of my New Year's Resolutions.  I've also been cooking more, reading for pleasure, and working on my embroidery.  In fact, yesterday was my dad's birthday, and I gave him this cross-stitched version of the famous Blue Marble photograph of the Earth from Apollo 17, because he loves rocketry and the space program:

Other post-bar endeavors include volunteering more, donating blood, using the yoga classes I bought on Groupon, and getting back into jogging.  I discovered a free iPhone app called C25K Free (Couch to 5k) that provides an eight-week schedule of audio-guided interval training, which has been very helpful in keeping me motivated.

I also plan to spend a significant amount of time helping my parents downsize and clear out the garage, as they are hoping to buy their first home this summer.  All of these things should keep me busy while waiting for bar results and employment!  Although, it's funny...  Just as I came to terms emotionally with the fact that I was still unemployed and taking the bar exam a second time, I got two interviews in a week.  Mysterious.  We'll see what happens, but for now, I'm trusting in God and trying to celebrate the time I have been given.

The 2011 Eleven

2011 was a significant year for me.  Both joyful and challenging, the following eleven events sum up the most consequential moments of the year.

Gratitude

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  This was my first time being home for Thanksgiving in three years, so it meant a lot to me.  It was also my first Thanksgiving without my Nana, and her absence was felt, but I'm thankful that she's in a better place.  I enjoyed spending the day cooking with my mom.  In addition to all of our traditional dishes, we tried something new: mini pumpkin pies baked in cupcake tins!  They were incredible, and will definitely be a new tradition for us.

My family and I went around and named some of the things for which we are thankful this year.  It was a positive exercise for me, especially since I'm still coming to terms with my bar exam results.  Here are some of the things I mentioned:

• Going to Jamaica for my human rights fact-finding mission
• My experience as managing editor of the Poverty Journal
• The Catholic community at Georgetown Law
• Graduating from law school
• My new kittens
• My iPhone, which connects me with so many people I love
• My friends in DC, who are doing a great job of keeping in touch
• The support of so many friends during and after the bar exam
• Having a family willing and able to take me in during my bar exam studies and un(der)employment

That last line is the most significant for me.  I have been graced with the luxury of being able to wait for the right job opportunity, and to focus on my bar exam studies.  Despite the bumps in the road that I've faced this year, overall I am extremely blessed.

I got some good news from Georgetown: they're willing to extend my stipend to work with the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies!  So, although today was supposed to be the last day of my three-month fellowship at CGRS--indeed, they took me out for a delicious farewell lunch of Burmese food* yesterday--I will actually be working 24 hours per week through the end of December.  I'm glad to be able to do a little more work with CGRS, because there are so many interesting projects going on.

Also, I really appreciate how flexible they are about my work schedule.  In light of my three-hour roundtrip commute, they have agreed to let me telecommute exclusively for the month of December.  So helpful, not only to save time, but also money.  (Caltrain and Bart have been running me $22 per day roundtrip, ouch!)  I wish I could stick around longer, but Barbri classes start up again on January 2nd, so I'm trying to avoid working during my bar prep.

Speaking of the bar, my supervising attorney had a great talk with me yesterday, during which she revealed to me that she, too, had to take the bar exam twice.  As she and I have a lot in common--Georgetown Law alumnae, straight through from a Pac 12 state school, human rights fact-finding mission, certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies--it was very reassuring to hear that she had been successful during the February administration, and went on to find public interest employment in her field of choice.  I have been blessed with so many encouraging, supportive supervising attorneys in my past legal jobs, and CGRS is no exception.

*I had never had Burmese before, and it is fantastic!  I love the Indian and Thai influences.  I had coconut chicken noodle soup and tea leaf salad.  So good.  I want to try my hand at a coconut milk-based soup, now.  Check out Burmese Kitchen if you find yourself with a hankering for Burmese food in the middle of the Tenderloin.

Oh, Drat

Well, gang, I'm hoping for better luck in February, because I did not get good news this evening.

The following is a letter that I wrote myself on the day before the bar exam.

Three Days

The results of the California bar exam will be released Friday evening.  My life has been slowly marching toward this day for years. I have thought about this Friday literally every day since I graduated from law school.  And, it is finally nearly here.

I'm extraordinarily nervous.  I'm trying not to freak out.  I'm trying to stay calm.  I'm trying to keep busy with cooking and friends and books and family and silly craft projects to take my mind off of the looming date.  I'm trying to focus on the message of Matthew 6:25-31.  But, it's difficult for me.  I'm afraid of humiliation, disappointment, imperfection, weakness, inferiority...  Of Failure with a capital "F".

Shortly before the bar exam, Erin sent me a link to a blog post entitled Please Stop Telling Me I'm Going to Pass the Bar. It sums up quite perfectly how I was feeling in the two weeks leading up to the bar exam.  Many of those sentiments still apply.  This part of the post was especially resonant for me:

Now, lots of smart people fail the bar exam. For a variety of reasons, it happens. These people are not failures. I can look at these people---people who I know and respect, and consider them bright, competent, amazing attorneys. The younger ones, I love and respect. I don't think they're idiots. For the older ones, it's a war wound, and a mark of character: proof that they really do "get" the real world. But if I don't pass? You guessed it. I'm a failure. Nobody said this psychology made sense.

It's an incredible, self-imposed double standard.  I would never judge someone for having failed the exam.  It's a tough exam!  Stuff happens.  But, if I fail the bar exam?  Well, that would make me a Failure.

Now, that's just ridiculous.  Regardless of what happens on Friday, life will go on.  As I blogged shortly before the bar exam,

It is only an exam.  It is not a measure of my self-worth.  I tried my best this summer and learned a lot, and that's good enough for me.

Thanks to everyone for walking along side me on this journey.  Thank you for the hugs, the popsicles, the Starbucks gift cards, the emails, the prayers, the listening ears, and the kitten study breaks.

See you on Friday.

NaNoWriMo

For years, I have wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo.  30 days and nights of literary abandon?  Sign me up!  Except, oh, wait, I have this paper due, and there's a midterm coming up, and a thousand other excuses, most of which were related to school.  Well, this year, no more excuses!  I am doing it.  I will be writing a 50,000-word novel in the month of November.

During October, I have been brainstorming what to write.  I've had many ideas for novels over the years--what English major isn't a cloak-and-dagger aspiring author?--but I wanted to make sure that I loved my idea enough to carry me through my first NaNoWriMo without stalling out halfway through November.  Last week, I was starting to get concerned, because I still hadn't developed the right premise, when I decided to fall back on the age-old adage: write about what you know.  And, that's how my idea for The Resident Alien came to be.  Here's the synopsis:

In a dystopian future plagued by war, environmental disasters, and the breakdown of international human rights law, the people of Earth have largely abandoned religion, and actively persecute the few who remain faithful.  Eleanora, a Roman Catholic, bands with other religious refugees of all faiths to seek asylum on the planet of Nomos, where logic and lawfulness reign supreme.  Facing onerous interplanetary immigration laws and policies, Eleanora is taken aback by the xenophobia and second class status that human refugees experience as “resident aliens” of Nomos.

Befriending a refugee nun, Sister Ramona, who has become the face of the refugees’ struggle for acceptance by Nomosian society, Eleanora uses her experience as a journalist to spread the word about the plight of the refugees.  When some Nomosians begin to express sympathy for the refugees, and even convert to Catholicism, the government of Nomos cracks down on the liberties afforded to the resident aliens.  Eleanora, Sister Ramona, and a few key Nomosian allies fight for religious freedom, exposing the uncomfortable truth that Nomos has many of the same flaws as Earth.

It will be a lot of fun to explore this idea.  I think I have a decent shot of completing this novel, because I love science fiction, I'm interested in religious issues (especially ecumenism), and my background is in international and refugee law issues.  Creating an intergalactic framework for refugee law will be particularly enjoyable, because it will afford me an outlet to critique our current system by analogy.

Is anyone else thinking of doing NaNoWriMo?  If so, add me as a writing buddy; my username is grammarsavvy.  If not, do you have any other absurd goals for November?  I challenge you to take on a project you've wanted to do for a while this month!  Remember, in the words of Leonard Bernstein:

"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not enough time."

Internal Deadlines

In the three years since graduating from Cal, I have watched many--indeed, most--of my close friends struggle with un(der)employment.  I felt very fortunate to be riding out (at least part of) the recession sheltered in the safe retreat of law school.  This year, as my graduation from Georgetown approached with no job offer in sight, I struggled with feelings of doubt, fear, and disappointment.  Doubt about whether I had chosen the right career path.  Fear of never breaking into my chosen field.  Disappointment in myself, as someone who has derived a great deal of her self-worth from past successes.

Then, in May, my studies for the bar exam began.  I reset my internal deadline for finding a job to September, one month after the bar exam, and the deadline for my Plan B: accepting a post-JD stipend from Georgetown to do three months of volunteer work with a non-profit organization.  No job materialized; indeed, not even an interview.

I accepted a volunteer position with the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which I began in September.  It is a wonderful place to volunteer, and I am glad to have this opportunity to expand my knowledge of refugee law.  I have done research on marital rape in Chad, domestic violence in Slovakia, and repressive social mores in Afghanistan.  I drafted a record summary for an amicus brief that is in the works. I am currently writing a practice advisory on the one-year bar to asylum.  This is the type of work that I want to be doing, in the perfect location (San Francisco), and yet, I lack satisfaction.

I feel the pressure of my revised internal deadline for finding work: the end of November.  This is when my stipend runs out (unless, as has been hinted to as a possibility, Georgetown finds some more funding). This is also when I will learn whether I passed the bar exam.  Right now, one of the only things keeping me from completely beating myself up about my unemployment is that I know that non-profit organizations do not have the resources in this economy to hire people who do not have their law licenses.  Once I pass the bar, that excuse will be gone.  Or, even worse, perhaps I will not pass the bar, and will have to begin my studies--and the hellish waiting process--all over again.  Either way, November is going to be a rocky month for my legal moxie.

Today, I stumbled across this feature in New York Magazine: The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright: My screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked, surprisingly resilient generation.  The article explores the psyche of twenty-somethings who are facing un(der)employment in the recession, forced to settle for menial work, move back in with their parents, and reassess why we all worked so hard in high school and beyond.  A lot of the article resonated with me.  It served as a good reminder of the folly of resting my self-worth upon my career.  There is so much more to me than my job (or lack thereof).

Since moving home in May, I have been hesitant to put down any roots in the South Bay, not knowing if or when I might be pulled away to the Peninsula, San Francisco, or the East Bay at the drop of a hat for an employment opportunity.  I have felt particularly lost not integrating into a new religious community, after such meaningful experiences at Cal and Georgetown.  I talked with my mom about it, and realized that I was wasting valuable time by not embracing a group in the interim, if only for a few months.  To that end, I joined up with a few South Bay Newman alumnae, and we've started a Catholic women's book club.  We've met twice so far, discussing chapters from The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality. Then, at Mass on Sunday at St. Justin in Santa Clara, I found out that their young adult group (ages 18-40) is having a meet and greet next week to welcome newcomers.  It's amazing how God can open the eyes of my heart to community when I least expect it.

I don't want to waste any more time.  For the past five months, I have felt as though my life would be on pause until I found full-time, paid employment as a licensed attorney.  I have been operating on this assumption that no one will see my value as a human being until I have a legitimate response to the seemingly innocuous ice breaker, "So, what do you do for a living?"  There is no need to feel ashamed of my unemployment, so long as I am doing and living.  My internalization of my job search as a deadline, that at some point the acceptability of my unemployment will expire, is an unproductive, self-defeatist attitude.  My life does not begin when I get my first job.  I've been doing things for a living for 25 years, and counting.

Live Every Week Like It's Shark Week

I'm officially in love with 30 Rock.

Don't get me wrong, I had always liked 30 Rock, but I had never loved it.  I think my problem has been that I didn't start watching it when it first came on the air, so I never really understood the inside jokes and subtle character play.  Every time I caught an episode, I thought it was amusing and fast-paced, but it wasn't something I felt driven to watch weekly.

However, after I read Tina Fey's biography, Bossypants, I learned a lot about what the show meant to her, and what she was trying to accomplish, and I knew I needed to give it another chance.  Bossypants was a fantastic read.  Tina Fey's writing was not only comical, but also insightful, both to her own experiences as a woman in a male-dominated career, and in terms of self-deprecating awareness of her own shortcomings.  I appreciated how down-to-earth she was, and how important her work is to her, but not to the detriment of some pursuit of work-life balance.  As Tina observes after describing a weekend jam-packed with her first time playing Sarah Palin on SNL, shooting an episode of 30 Rock with Oprah Winfrey, and her daughter's third birthday party:

"By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your f***ing life."

So, after I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, I logged onto Netflix, and was thrilled to discover that 30 Rock is available for internet streaming.  Score!  With Conan, Jon, and Stephen all on hiatus for much of the month, I definitely had a smart comedy television void to fill.  I just finished the first season, and am loving it.  There are so many inside jokes that I simply did not understand because I hadn't seen it from the beginning.  This is a show that has character progression, and needs to be seen chronologically in order to fully appreciate what is going on.  Also, how fantastic is Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy?!  Now, I have to pace myself through seasons two through five, because season six doesn't start until early 2012 due to Tina Fey's pregnancy.

Health Kick

Despite the somewhat misleading fact that my last post was about cookies, the reality is that I have been on a post-bar health kick.  Being back in the suburbs means that I don't have a multi-mile walk built into my daily schedule anymore, and studying for the bar exam didn't exactly lend itself to exercising and eating right.  However, the bar exam is over, and I have lots of free time, so a health kick is underway!

While I wouldn't consider myself to be on a "diet" (see above re: cookies), I will say that I am trying to make healthier choices.  When I was at Cal, some of my PE classes (yoga, step aerobics) required us to keep a log of our eating habits, to make us more aware of our choices.  I found the practice to be a very helpful form of accountability.  Before eating, I found myself thinking, "Do I really want to have to write down that I ate that many cookies?"  As a result, I would make better choices while keeping the log, and felt better about how I was caring for myself.

There is a great iPhone app called Lose It! that is a sophisticated tool for keeping track of your food and exercising habits.  I like it because it has a built-in library of thousands of foods (including brand names), so you can just look up a food, add it to your log, and then have a ton of information recorded about your nutrient intake!  Plus, the app has a great user interface.  I especially enjoy the cute little icons next to the different types of food and exercise.  You can also set up a free account and use their website, and create goals.  I highly recommend it if you're looking for an easy way to have a bit of accountability to make healthier choices.

I have been trying a ton of new recipes, mostly from the Cooking Light Complete Cookbook that I bought a few weeks ago (courtesy of the Borders bankruptcy, so sad).  Salads, tomato-basil soup, glazed carrots, garlic red potatoes...  It has been fun to learn some new recipes, as well as how to change recipes to make them healthier, while still flavorful.  Next up on my to-do list: panko oven fried chicken and eggplant parmesan lasagna!

One of the biggest exercise challenges is that, now that I am done with school and am not living in a fancy apartment complex, I no longer have access to a nice gym.  I confess, I didn't use the gyms to which I had access in DC in VA nearly as much as I should have; nonetheless, the ability to exercise regularly seems even more daunting without access to cardio equipment, a weight training circuit, and yoga classes.  I could spring for a gym membership somewhere, but I don't think it would be financially wise given my employment status.  Plus, I don't have a car, so getting to a gym would be inconvenient--and, knowing my weak proclivity for gym usage, it has to be convenient for there to be any chance that I'll use it.

Instead of the gym, I've decided to make my bicycle my main source of exercise.  I've always loved bike riding, and my favorite types of exercise are those disguised as fun.  Plus, there are a ton of bike lanes and paths in the South Bay, so I won't get bored.

The exercise aspect of my health kick has been off to a rocky start the past couple of weeks, because I fell off of my bike only a few days after tuning it up, which led to a terrible infection in two big scrapes on the top of my left foot, and a third scrape on my left knee.  It felt a bit ridiculous that I fell off of my bike for the first time in perhaps 15 years, and immediately got an infection.  My skateboarding brother always has some sort of open sore festering on his body, and he has never gotten an infection!  So not fair.  The infection required a week's worth of oral antibiotics, as well as an ointment applied three times daily.  It took six days for a real scab to start forming.  And, the antibiotics made me extremely sensitive to sunlight, so I ended up breaking out into delightful sunburn hives for a couple of days.  Not exactly conducive to exercise.

Thankfully, I am now fully scabbed over, and the hives are fading, so I can resume exercising as a complement to healthy food choices.  I started off with a five-mile ride through my neighborhood to gauge my level of endurance, and didn't find it very taxing, so I think I'll up the ante a bit.  My goal is to be able to ride from my house to Baylands Park, which is about 16 miles round trip, and follows a great designated bike path separated from auto traffic most of the way.

Sugar & Spice Owl Cookies

I have a bookmarks folder for recipes that I want to try.  Since last March, I have been hoping for the right occasion to make Sugar & Spice Owl Cookies (which I learned about via My Owl Barn).  Well, when I learned about the potluck to wish farewell to Amanda J., who is a smartypants starting an MPH program at Boston University this fall, I knew this was my chance!

I followed the directions in the recipe link precisely, and they came out wonderfully.  So, I won't rehash the directions here.  However, I did want to post some photographs from the process...

How Now Brown Cow

For years, I've been avoiding yogurt.  I just didn't like the way it tasted, its texture, its smell...  There was no redeeming quality to sustain me through an entire serving.  I was jealous of all of my friends who ate yogurt like it was an amazing treat--why couldn't I be like them?  What was I missing?!

Well, all of that changed last week, when I discovered that my problem was buying the wrong yogurt.  Whenever I had given yogurt a chance in the past, I bought Yoplait, or the grocery store brand.  Last week, however, I found myself in a Sprouts, looking to purchase some vanilla yogurt for a chunky strawberry topper recipe.  Incidentally, Sprouts has a fantastic selection of bulk foods, including over a dozen types of granola.  I recommend their strawberry vanilla hemp granola.

I wanted a container of yogurt with a lid, because the recipe only calls for four tablespoons, and I knew I would be making the recipe repeatedly.  So, I grabbed some Brown Cow nonfat vanilla yogurt, and hoped for the best.

It is delicious!  I licked the spoon after I measured what I needed in my recipe, and I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's different than the other yogurts I have tasted.  The texture is less goopy, and more soupy, which I find far more palatable.  The taste actually brings to mind vanilla, albeit with a tangy finish.  And, when paired with granola and fruit, it provides just the right amount of creaminess and substance to create a great breakfast.

I'm somewhat finicky when it comes to food.  There are a lot of foods on my "ew, gross" list.  It's situations like this that make me glad that I give those foods a second chance.

Do you like yogurt?  What brand, and how do you like to eat it?