Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Episode Transcript

Transcript edited by Hannah “Asher” Sham

Show and Host Introduction

Kylo: You are listening to Let’s Talk!. Let’s Talk!, is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website, pcc.edu/DCA, on Spotify, on XRAY 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Community Radio, 90.7 FM.

 [Intro Music]

Zoe Liu: Hi, everyone! Welcome to “A Slice of Life”, the podcast where we go over the PCC student experience. Talk about what life is like in Portland, discuss amazing life stories that people have, and tie it all back into our culinary journeys. Our individual journeys of learning how to cook, learning amazing recipes that you can make from simple ingredients right at home, and explaining how those recipes and the culinary journeys that we’ve all been on inspire us to achieve more, to be greater, overcome challenges, and chase our dreams! I’m your host, Zoe, and I’ve got my little co-host friend, Tucker, with me. He’s my guide dog and I’ll be taking you on our introductory episode. So, sit back, relax, grab a cup of tea, coffee, and let’s go right into A Slice of Life. The first thing you might be wondering is, ooh, what is the name of this podcast? It’s about the mission of the podcast and it’s a hilarious pun too on just the culinary journey. Ultimately, the goal of this podcast, the mission of this podcast, is to interview people and to have them share their amazing and unique life stories. It’s to inspire you. It’s to be about the student experience at PCC because, while it may seem daunting, ultimately there are so many amazing things that you could do right here on campus and there are so many amazing recipes that you could do with the simple ingredients that you get here on campus. It’s easy to watch some cooking show and be like, “Ooh, this is fun!”, switch the brain off. But, it’s sometimes difficult; “when do I make this recipe at home?”, “Where do I get these amazing ingredients?”, “Where do I get lemongrass, or a Thai basil?”, “How do I make this red curry braised rabbits?”… But, cooking doesn’t have to be super fancy. It doesn’t have to be like restaurant level quality. It just has to be simple. Something that you’re able to be proud of, something that you can take and be happy about sharing with friends, family, and loved ones. So, we’ve talked about the goals of the podcast, why the podcast is named the way that it is, and the fact that we’ll have guest hosts from episode to episode on the podcast. Today, it’s just me and i’d like to give you a little bit of an introduction to me, Zoe. Who I am, what my story is like, and how everything ties together back into the podcast. So, let’s get to know each other a little bit. I wanna give a quick note that it’s going to be a common thing on the podcast that the stories that we share aren’t always gonna be all sunshine and rainbows. Difficulties in life exist because like Tom Hanks and Forrest Gump said, “life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”. Sure, there’s some sweet parts to it. There’s a lot of really tasty stuff. But, there’s also the bitter, the things that we don’t enjoy nearly as much, the things that might shock us or that might make us just a little bit uncomfortable. So, I am going to give a trigger warning before any more difficult parts that are coming up. But, ultimately, even though there are going to be challenges and there are gonna be difficult parts of the story to hear, there are also going to be amazing resolutions to these problems. That’s what this podcast is all about. Life stories, overcoming challenges, chasing dreams, no matter how far away they seem, and inspiring you, the viewer, to believe in yourself. Just as the people around me have inspired me to believe in myself. So like I mentioned, my name’s Zoe and I was born in good old New Jersey, but I came to Oregon when I was two. So, I’ve really been raised in Oregon. I do consider Oregon my home and you can’t call yourself a true Oregonian without loving a little bit of that rain! So, from an early age, I was always really advanced; I had a really strong focus on academics. In elementary school, way back in even the third grade, I was starting to take more advanced courses, taking classes that were meant for older kids, and in fifth grade I ended up taking some university courses. That summer, it was Chinese, Algebra II, and then throughout middle school I was also jumping way ahead. Taking university courses, high school courses, even calculus. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I ended up taking the GED, getting my honors GED, and applying to Oregon State University where I was accepted into the Honors college program. I ended up deciding to follow my father’s footsteps and deciding to major in electrical engineering and it really was so wonderful, something I truly enjoyed. Now, at the same time that all this was going on, I was also training as a professional table tennis athlete. This is something I look back on super fondly, because I would spend hours playing with my dad, my brother, training with my coach, training with amazing people. I am actually several time Oregon State champion, and when I was around 14/15, I was nationally ranked. I believe I placed number eight in the under 15 category at the nationals, and I did pretty well in the under 21 category as well. Now as all this was going on, as I entered high school, as I was training in table tennis, doing academics and studying hard to get my bachelor’s when I was 18, I was actually having a pretty difficult home life. With my father, it was difficult because he was never at home a lot of the time, he had a lot of business elsewhere, and, though he really loved us, we just never really got to see him all that much. And, my mother was an extremely negative force of my life. There was a lot of physical abuse, emotional abuse, a lot of trauma associated with that, and it really just kept building up and up and up. Even though I had just gotten a teaching assistant position and I was really enjoying it. I just felt like there was nothing I could do. I just couldn’t go on anymore… So, 18 days before my 18th birthday, pure coincidence, I ended up making an attempt on my own life and it ended up leaving me without my vision and without my sense of smell. It was really difficult for a while, because I didn’t know what to do. Everything was pain, everything was different. There was so much regret. But, when I got back home, eventually, I started taking classes from this wonderful organization called the Oregon Commission for the Blind, which I will reference from time to time. The OCB, if you will. There are such wonderful people there, such wonderful teachers and students. Everyone has an amazing story. And I was really starting to get a hang of how to learn to live without vision. But, ultimately my mother pulled me out of those courses and pushed me back into academics a little bit too soon, I ultimately believed. But, even though it was difficult going back to campus without any vision and having to relearn how to live life, it was still a wonderful experience because there were so many people that were genuinely wanting to help me, genuinely concerned. And that’s kind of where the seed of the podcast was planted. The student experience and especially on PCC campus, if you’re new, can be sometimes really scary. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to think. And. It’s hard to take that first step. For me, having lost my vision and my sense of smell, I did not step into the kitchen to cook for years. I would say, maybe half a decade even. But, with my focus on academics, it was really a lot and having to relearn life. I kind of started to just dissociate a little bit, breakdown. In 2022, at one year after getting my guide dog, Tucker, I ended up leaving home and striking out on my very own. Sure I was scared, but I ended up meeting my two current roommates who I come to think of as my adoptive siblings, my family. They’re ultimately the ones that have really inspired me to push myself forward, to do things that I might not feel as comfortable with. Because, even though I’m disabled. It’s not a disability, if you think of it merely as an inconvenience. Now, no journey is without mistakes and if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s likely that you’re living in Portland or that you’re a student of PCC campus, and a lot of us have a rice cooker at home! For me, the first time that I started using rice cooker, I was like, “I kind of know how to cook rice, but what about a Rice-a-roni? Yay!”. So, I cooked a cheddar and broccoli Rice-a-roni in my rice cooker and, having poured milk and butter in there, it ended up overflowing, going everywhere, and kind of ruining the rice cooker. Now, yes, that was a mistake. But, ultimately the way that I think about mistakes are that; mistakes are an opportunity to learn. They don’t become folly unless you consistently make those mistakes over and over again, without attempting to change. For me, that was very easy! Milk boils and really becomes frothy, and it does not go in the rice cooker! Now, even though I had started using things like the rice cooker and other appliances; for me, personally, I thought it was still impossible for me to use something like the stove without my sense of sight or smell. ‘Cause, I had thought for a long while, how will I know if something’s burning? How will I know if things are okay? I remember at the OCB when I was taking a meal preparation course; I was marinating mushrooms to make these vegetarian burgers, like these big portobello mushrooms, and I ended up like using a balsamic glaze that my teacher had gave me instead of a balsamic vinegar. The glaze had a lot of sugar in it, so when they hit the cast iron pan that I was using, it started to smoke and I didn’t even notice. But, it’s again, an opportunity to learn. It’s an opportunity to take a little bit of life and use that to your advantage. Since then I have not set off the fire alarm! I properly ventilate I use the stove fan. I make sure to use proper cooking times. I’ve gotten to this point where even if I’m cooking something on the stove, I can feel something with my spatula and tell about how done it is; whether it’s a meat or vegetable or like even a grain. So, yeah, these have been wonderful life experiences that I’m really excited to share with you on this podcast, A Slice of Life. If you’re able to take something away from this podcast, feel inspired by the stories that you hear, and maybe even find a favorite recipe. Next episode, that I’ll be doing very soon, is going to be focusing on going to a food pantry on campus because they’re fairly easy to find and, if you sign up, you can get a food box. I’ll go there in person, talk to some of the people waiting, maybe some of the people that are working there, do some quick interviews and bring home a food box, because I myself also volunteer at a food pantry and I know how important food security is to so many people. Using the ingredients from a food box, you can truly make some amazing, absolute bangers of meals. You wouldn’t believe it, but using in combination with some sauces and spices that you can buy for cheap, at like WinCo or Fred Meyer, I was able to make dishes as complicated as Osaka ginger pork, Japanese ginger pork, to Taiwanese Pork, to Corn Beef Hash, Salt Crusted Baked Potatoes… Delicious meals. My roommate, Kuma, who I’ve come to see as my adoptive oldest sibling, has shared some of the recipes that they’ve learned to make with food boxes as well. Amazing, delicious recipes like Beef, Bean, and Cheese Enchiladas with a Homemade Enchilada Sauce, or something that they’ll be sharing, if I feature them on one of the next episodes too, a Mediterranean one pot soup dish. It’s absolutely divine! Now, the important thing to remember here is that all these stories and all this cooking ties back into the student experience. It ties back into the things that you can do right here, in Portland, on campus, and using the simple ingredients that you can get on campus. I wanna be able to achieve the goals of this podcast to inspire you and for you to take a little bit more away from this podcast and enhance the student experience that you’ll be living through. So, having gone over the podcast, the goals of the podcast and introducing myself, I’d like to take us into the kitchen for our very first recipe. Today it’ll be just me in the kitchen doing a sort of Bulgogi Beef recipe. I want to mention to be safe with any utensils that you may use. Be safe with kitchen prep stuff. Always make sure to wear an apron, have proper sanitary conditions, and to always wash up. But, for a quick overview of some things that you’ll need, you’ll probably need two cutting boards or trays, you’ll want a nice sharp knife, maybe a few sauces that I’ll explain, a few vegetables, like carrots, maybe some bell pepper that I’ll be using in the recipe, along with rice, some beef, whether it’s sliced like slices of beef or ground beef, even ground pork or slices of pork tenderloin work as well, and, if you could get some of those ready and some Soy Sauce, some Rice Wine Vinegar, a little bit of, maybe some Sesame Oil and some spices then you’ll be good to go. So, I hope you’ll find it really lovely, tasty, and I’m excited for you to join me on the upcoming kitchen segment of our podcast. So, see you in a bit!

 [Intermission…]

Time to Cook

Zoe Liu: Hi everyone! Welcome to the kitchen and the cooking segment of our podcast! So, a lot of people often ask me, “Zoe, what’s the thing that you do to relax the most?” Or, “you seem so optimistic. How can you just stay that way all the time?”. For me, a huge part of it is being able to cook, being able to make the things that I love, and being able to really experiment. Because, sure, cooking might seem like a difficult endeavor. It might seem really daunting at first. I mean, for me, the first time I stepped foot in the kitchen, I tried to make a Rice-a-roni in a rice cooker! I poured milk in and I didn’t realize that milk would boil over, so I ruined my rice cooker! But, it’s the little lessons like that that make the cooking journey so wonderful. You don’t have to go outside to buy expensive foods. You don’t have to think, “oh, I can’t do it at all!”, because cooking really is one of the most empowering things that you can do. If you’ve ever had bulgogi beef, this is a recipe very much inspired by that. It’s a very nice savory, but a little bit sweet, very comforting dish that you can make with ingredients that are easy to get and with not that much time needed. So, with that being said, why don’t we get started? The first thing I’ve done is I’ve laid out all of our ingredients, and this is one of the easiest things to do to make sure you don’t get confused or stressed. We have our beef, our vegetables, our spices, seasonings, sauces, and of course our rice. For me, I do love to use a good Basmati Rice and I have here a rice cooker. Now, if you don’t have a rice cooker at home, really easy to do, you can cook it in a pan as well. Just put your rice in, wash your rice three times thoroughly get rid of that starchiness, and then with your rice and a flat layer on your pan, you can pour water in. If you put your finger, like your index finger in, and you just touch the surface of the rice, if the water is up to your first knuckle, that’s about good. And then you can go ahead and start simmering it. Because I have a rice cooker I’m just gonna press down and it’s going to cook. So, moving over here to our vegetable prep station, we have here our vegetables, our sauces, and our seasonings. Now, a lot of the time, especially in college, there’s just not enough time to do anything. So, it’s hard to marinate your meat. But, you don’t need a really extra long marinade to have a flavorful, creative, and fantastic dish. Sometimes all it needs is just 10- 15 minutes in a nice flavorful and savory marinade. Today the marinade that we’re going to be using is very much Bulgogi inspired, but it’s a bit adjacent. First here, we have our spices. So, why don’t we go ahead and grab these. We’re going to put into our bowl just about a teaspoon of onion powder, a teaspoon of garlic powder. Go ahead and grab our garlic out as well. Just like a teaspoon of coriander. Now this part’s definitely not something that you need per se. But, I find that, especially if you’re using beef, the coriander really helps bring out the flavor of the beef, really makes it more robust. Then, of course, one of my favorite ingredients, cayenne; to give it that nice little kick. So, you’ve got our spices in our bowl. We’ve got our spices and we’ve got our sauces. But, we can also add in a few ingredients into our marinade here. For instance, what I’m going to do is I’m going to get my garlic, which I’ve already mixed up nice and fine, and I’m going to add about a teaspoon to this bowl. Now garlic helps bring up that lovely flavor and give it some wonderful aromatic flavor too. Now, we have on the side a little bit of ginger. It’s really easy to get ginger at the store and it’s really easy to get ginger puree or ginger paste as well. But, I personally love a bit of fresh ginger, and so you can just take your fresh ginger and you can peel off the skin, just that papery skin with like a spoon or a knife. Very easy to do. Now you can take your ginger and there are a lot of ways to prepare it. You can grate it, you can mince it nice and fine. You can even actually take some ginger, that you’ve peeled off the skin off of, and put it in the freezer. Have it frozen and, when you need it, you just pull it out, grate it up, and you’re ready to go. Here though, I’m going to give it just a nice, good mincing. Now, it doesn’t have to be exact, some nice coarse slices. ‘Cause it’s not a rocket science; it’s about making food that’s easy, but that’s also delicious, healthy, and that has the flavors that you love. Perfect! So, we’re gonna take just like maybe about half of this ginger, and add it to our marinade. There we go. Then we’re going to put set aside half the ginger as well. It’s nice because I like to have the ginger there, not only in the marinade, but also just to add to the pan to flavor all the other ingredients as well. So, now that we’ve got our spices set, we can pull out our sauces over here. I have a nice dark soy sauce. Now, it doesn’t have to be dark soy sauce it’s like a sweeter, thicker version of soy sauce. But, you can just use regular soy sauce and add a little bit of honey or brown milk sugar. It’s really up to you. We just pour in about a one and a half tablespoons. You can kind of eyeball it or change it to your desired quantity, because the best part about being able to cook at home is that you get to choose how long you cook things and how much of it there is. Just grab our whisk too, or you can use a fork to whisk this together if you like. Now we’ve got our rice wine vinegar. This helps give it that nice sour flavor. It balances out the flavor of the sugar. It helps bring out that savory and that sweet. So, we just add a little bit of that in there. That’s perfect. Then a good part of a Bulgogi Beef Marinade is actually something called “Gochujang”. Now you can find this at like your local supermarket; WinCo, Fred Meyer. It’s only three or four dollars. A lot of these ingredients are very cheap and they last a long time. Now “Gochujang” is like a fermented chili paste. It helps give it that nice flavorful kick. You can also use some red pepper flakes if you like to, but “Gochujang” gives it that really nice unique Bulgogi flavor, but you can’t really find anywhere else. So, let’s add some of that in. That’s lovely! If you don’t have rice, wine vinegar, or you don’t have any of these other ingredients, don’t worry. They’re very cheap and they’re very easy to get at the supermarket and they last a long time. So, we’re gonna go ahead and give this a nice whisk. That’s beautiful. Because we’re going to be marinating the raw meat, we’re not gonna be able to taste the meat as we cook it, and we’re not gonna be able to taste the marinade either. So, now is a good time to just take a fork and go ahead and dip the tines into the marinade and just take a little taste. Oh yes, that’s sweet, savory. Just that hint of sour too. That’s going to make a lovely marinade. And a lovely sauce too, because all this marinade is gonna go into the pan while it’s cooking too. Now, for our meat, I have here one pound of ground beef. It doesn’t have to be the whole pound. You can make however much of it you like. You can even use other meats like pork or chicken. But, the thing is, this is traditionally bulgogi beef. We’re just using some beef. You can even use slices of beef as well. But, for me as a college student and for the student experience, it’s really easy to just grab some ground beef and have it ready to go whenever I need. So, we’re going to go ahead and unpack it, and we’re going to add it to our marinade. Now, I have some vinyl gloves on, you just make sure that your hands are clean. But, now what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna give that meat a nice mix. Make sure to use your hands and mix it all in. Get those lovely flavors all working together. Get that seasoning all incorporated into the meat itself. Make sure to toss it, split it up, mash it all up with your hands because you want every single bit of meat to have that lovely flavor. We want a very even bite in flavor. We don’t want to just toss the meat in, let it not incorporate anything, and then you don’t get those even bites of flavor. And, that’s what’s really important here. See, the beef already is starting to get softer. It’s starting to absorb that marinade. So, our meat has been mixed and is currently marinating, and that’s the beauty about making food like this. You don’t have to marinate it for crazy amounts of time. Just give it a good 10- 15 minutes while you’re preparing your other ingredients, and that’s gonna give you loads of flavor; loads of saltiness, that sweetness, that sour, that we all know and love! Now that our meat is marinating, we can set that to the side and we can grab out our sharp knife and go ahead and prep the rest of our ingredients. Now over here I have one onion and I’m going to just slice it across the roots. We’re going to go ahead and discard those ends and peel off that papery skin. Sometimes there’s this also thin membrane like skin, it’s a little bit slimy, you don’t want that in your food either. So, if you feel that or you see that on your onion, go ahead and give it like a nice rub. Peel that off as well. Then we’re going to slice our onion into rings. Now we’re just going to give a nice, thorough mincing. It doesn’t have to be too fine. We’re not trying to make a paste here, but we’re just gonna dice it up nice and thoroughly. Now if you wanted to use onion powder too you could, but these onions are really easy to get for cheap at your supermarket or even at the food pantry. That actually is going to be a focus of this podcast, which is affordable and tasty cooking, and I’m going to be doing a miniseries in the future as well where I go to a food pantry, interview some of the people there, take home a food box and use those ingredients to cook a lovely meal. Because on campus there are actually a lot of food pantries that you can easily make use of. If you don’t make use of them, it’s a real shame because there’s just a lot of opportunities, a lot of ingredients that end up going to waste. We want to just eat healthy, make cheap, delicious food while still being able to focus on everything else that’s important in life. We’ve got our onion, all nice and finely chopped. So, we’re going to go ahead and grab a bowl, scrape up our onion and add it to our bowl. My two other vegetables that I have here are my bell pepper and my carrots. Now, the carrots you can buy them and peel off the skin and chop them up. But, sometimes it’s a little bit of effort. So, what I’ve done here already actually is I’ve bought some pre-sliced carrots. It’s been sliced in a manner called a “Julian”, being like thin matchstick. They’re already nice and prepped, they’re ready to go. So, I can just take those out and add them into my mixture whenever I need to. But, for our bell pepper, we’re gonna go ahead and slice off the top and bottom, and slice open the bell pepper. And, there are those like seeds in this side. Just take a spoon or take your finger. Go on and scrape those out. Then we take our bell pepper and we’re going to slice it into nice medium sized strips, because we’re not going to julienne this bell pepper. But, we’re going to chop it up into nice even pieces. That bell pepper is going to give you a nice, wonderful flavor. You can add other vegetables if you wanted to. Again, that’s the beauty of being able to cook and make your own food. You can decide whatever you want to add into this recipe and you can make any edits that you want. So, we’ve got our vegetables chopped up. We’ve got our onion, our bell pepper, our carrots, and all that leaves is, well, the cooking. So, we’re gonna give our hands a quick wash and head on over to our stove! Now you don’t need any fancy utensils or pots or pans. It’s nice to have a wok, but you don’t need it. Right now, all I have here is just a basic Teflon Frying Pan, and I’m gonna go ahead and add just a little bit of olive oil. You don’t need too much, just like about a teaspoon. Because, we already have that lovely flavor, those lovely oils coming from the beef itself, and we don’t want to make everything too greasy. We’ve got about a teaspoon of olive oil and we’re going to start heating that up over medium high heat. Of course we wanna turn our fan on. Now. It’s important to have good ventilation as well, whenever you’re cooking. Because, if you don’t, it’s sometimes easy to set off the fire alarm or to burn things. Me, myself, on top of not having any vision, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I actually don’t have a sense of smell either. There was one time I remember I was trying to make these lovely vegetarian burgers. I had these big portobello mushroom caps that I had marinated in some Italian herbs, soy sauce, and olive oil. Of course, I wanted to use a balsamic vinegar to add to the marinade. But, I didn’t have any, so what did I use? I used a balsamic glaze. Now, for those of you that aren’t sure what that is. It’s like a balsamic vinegar, but it’s a lot sweeter. It’s got a lot more sugar to it. It’s a lot thicker. When you put it into a pan at high heat, that sugar will smoke. And, because I wasn’t able to smell it, that sugar and those mushrooms started to smoke and it ended up setting off the fire alarm. Now, it wasn’t a big deal because I moved it off the burner, turned off the burner, went outside, and made sure that everything was okay. But, you don’t want to have things catch fire or set off the fire alarm in a dorm or apartment or anything like that. So, it’s always good to make sure that we’re nice and careful when we’re doing something like this. So, our oil’s starting to heat up and we are going to go ahead and take our ingredients, and get them ready to add to the pot. Because, these things are gonna cook nice and quick and we don’t want things to burn. But, we also don’t want to undercook things. So, it’s important to have the timing nice and down. Now, the oil’s just about ready for the food to be added to it, so I’m gonna go ahead and grab a spatula. I am going to grab my onions and my ginger, and we’re gonna go ahead and add that to our pot. When it hits the pot, we want to hear that lovely sizzle. That’s how we know that everything’s just starting to come together. Now we’ve got a nice even layer on our pan. Let’s go ahead and grab our carrot. Let’s go ahead and add those in. It doesn’t have to be exact or anything. You can use whatever ingredients and how much of it you want. For me, I’m using about two thirds of a cup of Julianne carrots. We’re gonna give that just a quick stir, make sure everything’s incorporated together and a nice flat layer on the bottom of the pan. When we’re cooking, we don’t wanna move it around too much. We wanna give the ingredients time to warm up and cook. An old teaching instructor of mine once told me that, the marriage of the ingredients in French, it’s the “Mirepoix”. The marriage of the ingredients is really important, because the first few minutes are when the ingredients start to cook, combine, and all those lovely flavors start to release. As those onions are starting to sweat, let’s go ahead and take out our beef and our marinade. We’re gonna come back to our pan, and if you’ve already sliced your beef then this shouldn’t be too much of an issue for you. You won’t have to break up the ground beef or anything. But, because, we’re using ground beef today, we’re gonna go ahead and pour everything in there. Make sure to use your spatula get all that meat out, that lovely marinade. ‘Cause that marinade is going to turn into a nice, thick sauce. We want to go ahead and break up the ground beef with our spatula here. We don’t want a big, thick chunk of meat. My friends and neighbors are gonna be smelling this over the fence and they’re gonna be like, “Oh, Zoe! What are you making?”. And, I’ll be like, “Oh, my famous Bulgogi adjacent to beef!”. It really is so simple, even taking this to things like potlucks parties, people are always asking, “Wow, Zoe! How did you make this? It tastes amazing!”. And, I just tell them that it’s sort of my own little take on Bulgogi Beef. Nothing too special, nothing too wild. We’re using simple ingredients, we’re combining them in a way that really works. Really brings out the flavor in everything and ultimately tastes good and makes you feel good about eating! So, now we’re going to go ahead and give that beef a little bit of time to just cook through and wrap and brown. You could hear that marinade sizzling. We’re going to go ahead and give it a few minutes. And while we’re cooking the beef, let’s go ahead and check on our rice. Oh, perfect! Our rice is done! So, we’re going to go ahead and unplug our rice cooker. And, we are going to bring over our pot of rice. Now you might really be asking me like, “Zoe, I get it. Cooking is fun and everything, but why should I cook? What’s the point of it?” That’s a big reason for why I’m actually starting this podcast is because, I want to show people that there’s true joy not only in life. Not only in learning lessons and listening to the trials and the experiences of other people, but being able to have control over what you eat, over the things you do, and being able to really do things for yourself. After I lost my vision, I was sure that I’d never be able to cook again. Doubly so, because I didn’t have any sense of smell. After losing my vision, it was about, a good five years or so until I stepped into the kitchen and actually tried cooking for the first time. Of course, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing. But, I learned and I never gave up. Sure, there were discouraging moments like when my milk boiled over and made a mess, or when I cook things the wrong way and I thought to myself, “oh, dang, what a waste.” But, for the people around me to encourage me to tell me a mistake is not something bad. It’s an opportunity to learn. For people to tell me that, to tell me that I could do it, it really helped me move forward. It really helped me believe in myself. Ultimately, it’s given me a lot of confidence. Because, as someone without vision and as someone without a sense of smell, it’s hard to tell when food’s done cooking, or when it’s browned nicely, or even when you can just turn the burner off and let the residual heat finish cooking like a Benedict, or something. But, with practice, with experience and with persistence, cooking has really taught me that I can really do anything I put my mind to. So, now that our beef is starting to cook up nicely. We are going to go ahead and go back to our vegetables. Now, notice how I didn’t add the bell peppers straight away. That’s for a pretty good reason, actually. Bell peppers cook pretty fast and we don’t want them to get mushy or anything, so we’re gonna add them towards the end. But, we’re going to go ahead and grab just a little bit more of our ginger. Go ahead and add that in. Just a little bit left. Then we’re going to go ahead and add in some freshly cracked black pepper. Now we don’t even need to season it or add salt, or anything, because there’s gonna be all that lovely salt coming from the soy sauce, all that lovely flavor coming from your spices, from your rice wine vinegar, and especially that “Gochujang”. So, that’s gonna cook up really nicely. Now all we have to do is let it reduce down! That marinade, as you can hear, is bubbling away. As we cook it for just a few more minutes, it’s going to reduce down. It’s gonna thicken and it’s going to turn into that lovely sauce that we’ll mix in with our rice and turn into that beautiful Bulgogi Marinade. We’re gonna go ahead and grab our bell peppers now. If you wanted to add other vegetables too, like cabbage or, maybe, even some spinach, or kale, that would work too. Mushrooms would also work. Add in our bell peppers, and give that a quick stir. So, as our food finishes cooking, this is just a really good chance to think, reflect, and feel proud of yourself for being able to make a wonderful recipe like this. Because, yes, it’s easy to go outside, but it’s also expensive and it’s not as healthy. Sure, you can make cup noodles too, but ultimately there’s very little that can beat the lovely flavors of a home cooked meal. So, the beef has been cooking. It’s been a few minutes, and the sauce has reduced. It’s nice and thick. It’s glossy. And, we don’t wanna overcook our meat. We don’t wanna burn our meat. So, we’re gonna give it a quick stir. And we’re going to go ahead and grab our pot of rice. Now, we’re gonna turn down the heat to low, just keep everything nice and warm, but we don’t wanna burn our food. We’re gonna take our pot of nicely cooked rice, and we are going to go ahead and add that into our vegetable and meat mixture. Now, it’s as simple as just taking our rice- You don’t have to mix it, you don’t have to do it this way, but I just find that it’s a lot easier and especially if you have leftovers it’s very easy to just take all this put into a Tupperware, then just store it in the fridge. It’s a lovely lunch or dinner for the next day too. You could pour the mixture and the sauce over the rice. I just find that this way, it’s a lot easier on the run. That’s what a lot of this podcast is about; connecting it with the student experience and being able to do the best things to support being a student and whatever that busy life entails. Now, I’ve turned our burner off and I’m just gonna continue just mixing it, incorporating all those ingredients together. Our rice, our carrots, our onions. And, of course, for our final touch; you can top this with, if you have, scallions. But, right now on hand I have some sesame seeds. So, we’re going to go ahead and grab our sesame seeds, and just give that a nice shake. Then we give it one final good thorough stir. I know! I know your mouth must be salivating at the sight and smell of that lovely dish. Alright, so we have our final product and we’re going to go ahead and grab a spoon, and we’re going to give it a taste! Oh, and that’s lovely! It’s spicy, it’s savory! Mm! And the sesame seed give it that lovely crunch to finish it off. Well, I do believe that this is ready to be plated! So, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, I hope you’ll tune back in for the next episode of A Slice of Life with me, Zoe, and I’ll catch you for the next episode! Thank you all for listening!

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Asher: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk!, Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk! Podcast Collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resource Department, and the PCC multimedia department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify Channel, XRAY 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Radio, 90.7 FM.