Cooking!

 SP made tomato salad and we made mashed potato together. It's a huge mountain of mashed potato, and I even dug a tunnel for it!

I made SP risotto + poached eggs for dinner. It turns out that I'm terrible at making poached eggs, and I realised that I've never actually made poached eggs by myself before. Anyway.
 In exchange, SP also "made me dinner" :) It's curry (curry sauce in a jar) with fried tofu (first covered in flour), an orange pepper, and onion, all on sushi rice. Extremely delicious!! :) Better than any food truck curry.

Last week we also had dinner together, although there wasn't much fancy stuff. Just pasta one night and corn tortillas+cheese+egg the other. We had lunch together at Hummus last Sunday, and I don't think I'm ever going again. If there is a fast food name for Mediterranean food, this would be it. To me, everything was salty, the tabouli didn't have wondrous flavour (actually, the salt, in general, masks the fact that none of the foods have much flavour), and the falafel was dry. I feel like the hummus from the grocery store actually tastes fresher than the one here. It was just really disappointing, because all the food truck falafel/hummus-type foods have been far better (meaning the House of Pita and Magic Carpet). Oh well.

Quinoa Porridge [Sort Of]!

I think I'm going crazy. I am obsessed with grainy porridges. E.g. rice pudding, oat bran porridge, oatmeal, etc. The list goes on. Anything with carbs, really.

Today I decided to make quinoa porridge, which is quite a deviation from the norm since quinoa isn't really used in making sweet dishes [I think?]; it's usually used for salads or stir fries or soups or something savoury. Now I know why quinoa isn't used for porridge. It doesn't soften or get mushy or gluey, so it doesn't make a very gooey porridge.

I also added way too much honey [two teaspoons for about 3 cups of quinoa seemed pretty reasonable, but I guess I was wrong]. Actually, I think that the extra raisins also made the porridge super sweet. I doubt there will be a "next time", but if there were, I would definitely just cut out adding honey, since the raisins suffice in rendering the porridge to taste like some sort of textured candy.

Do Twinkies Really Need More Embellishment?

Oh look. Tiramisu. I mean, Twinkie-misu. I mean, crap on fat. Actually, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to be. And... there's an ingredient and method list. Which is longer than this post. How difficult is it to unwrap a Twinkie and slosh it into a bowl of cream?

And... for those who want to marry Twinkies; this is the perfect wedding cake. It's even pre-cut! And, you don't have to buy Thank You gifts, since all your guests are going to die of heart attacks from Twinkie-immersed-in-sugar-and-butter-and-food-colouring!

Please tell me that this book is just a hallucination. I don't actually see a "cookbook" for this thing called a "Twinkie" right? SAY IT ISN'T SO!... This is plain absurd.

Okay, I've never consumed a Twinkie before, so, perhaps they are the most delicious little pieces of gold ever. Truthfully, though, judging by the ingredients and the fact that I like chocolate cake with mousse more than "flavoured sponge filled with oily cream", I probably won't have a predilection for it, anyway.

Also, since April, Costoc has been stocking Veggie Crunchers, which I talked about way back, when my mum bought the exact thing from Kamman. Though, this version is marketed for the U.S. crowd, I'm guessing, and the wrapper is a tad different. The ingredients are the same, though. I was pretty surprised when I saw these at Costco.

And I suppose you've all noticed that my blog has recently been quite devoid of actual items that I've cooked... I've just been really occupied... There are four placement tests [Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, and French] that I need to study for, for college. I also recently have had some time consuming circumstances concerning a certain someone [It's a good thing.] Sorry guys, though, for now.

Yoghurt Oatmeal?

So... I had a track meet today, and as all runners know, carbs = vital for racing. In all honesty though, a 1600m race is not going to require 5 meals of 90% carbohydrates the day before and of. The 1600m is short enough that one could definitely chug 140 Calories [or even fewer, since 6-7 minutes of racing does not require 140 Calories] worth of sugar [a.k.a. candy!] However, since I love food, I always eat a lot before race day. Well, I eat a lot in general.

Even though today is Monday, I only had 1 hour of school because it was midterms, so I went to school to take the French midterm around 10. This meant that I could actually cook something for breakfast :D [Though in all honesty, I love cereal, toast, and sandwiches. I could live on that].

I made oatmeal. Usually, people add water or milk, but I decided to be adventurous and added yoghurt... I figured it'd be gooeyer. My method of cooking oatmeal? Dump everything in at the same time and stir it until it looks done, on medium to high heat. Gets done fast... and uses the least energy. I do not want to use fossil fuels to let the liquid boil, then add the oats, then add the fruit. *Kerplunk!* goes everything.

I cut up a whole apple [Pinklady, though I personally prefer Royal Gala Apples the most] and dumped it in, with the oatmeal and yoghurt. I also added a small cinnamon stick since I don't have powdered cinnamon at home [unfortunately - way back, when we went shopping for spices I got the cinnamon sticks because they looked cooler. Sigh.].

I'm guessing, [at most] 10 minutes later, I turned off the heat.

Looks pretty bland.
Tasted kinda sour... so I added stuff to it :) Dried fruit, chocolate powder. I know, I'm not traditional at all.

As for the track meet... didn't go so well.