Pizza Making!

My GA had a pizza-making event today! Maybe 15 of us hung out in the kitchen at 4 pm and made pizza dough. We started off with a pile of white flour, made a well, and poured in some yeasty hot water. Then, we added water and oil and salt, and kneaded the dough (adding water and oil along the way). We then let the dough rest for 3 hours (as I went to my Chem workshop...and I really need to learn E1 and E2 reactions).

Then, I came back from the cold and rolled out my dough, and waited for a pan. We only had 6 pans, and the oven would only fit 4 pans. And there were a lot of us. So, it's 8 pm right now, and my pizza's finally in the oven. Actually, I've already jumped up, TWICE, to my GA calling me from across the room and saying that my pizza's ready (but both times, it turned out to be someone else's. Oh well).

A (don't know his last initial) made really round pizzas. Mine aren't round...but they're, haha, "rustic". A, RK  and L all threw the pizza base in the air. I tried to as well, but I don't think it did anything remotely cool to my pizza base.

I put shredded cheese, some fresh mozzarella, and a chunk of string cheese on my pizza. There's also a little bit of basil (and store-bought basil looks really different from the basil in my backyard! It's a much lighter green, and the leaves are less jagged).

My second pizza is just cheese... and a speck of basil because we ran out of supplies. Ah well.

Ma Hua ("Sesame Flowers")

I really don't know what these are called in English, but the translation of 麻花 (ma2hua1) is "Sesame Flowers". I suppose "Braided Twists with Sesame Seeds" is a better description of the food product though. In the past, I've only eaten the mini version of these ma2hua1, since that was the only kind sold at Kamman, and I don't recall ever eating these in China/HK. I don't think it ever occurred to my mum to buy these for us, actually.

Thus, I feel quite indifferent to these crunchy, crispy, ultra unctuous (Don't ask me how, but oil was leaking out of the neatly-sealed plastic, into the tin, and even out of the tin) sweet fried pieces of dough studded with white sesame seeds.

They've a hint of ginger and are quite sweet, which is not what I'd expected from ma2hua1. The ones I've had in the past (and generally all fried crispy Chinese street food) is savoury, so this is a surprise.

This is another of those traditional Wuhan foods, but again, I'm not sure whether this huge sweet version is authentic. My mum told me about when she was younger, she used to buy ma2hua1, the size of her finger, for for a few cents at street stalls. That size seems more appropriate considering the ma2hua1 I've eaten in the past. Instead of having 2 x 6 strands of dough being twisted together, it was only two strands of dough (Well, technically one strand, since it would be folded in half, and the two ends would be looped around each other).

I think I prefer the finger-sized seaweed flavoured (or even just the original flavoured) ma2hua1 that I've had before. Just my preference.

Dorney Park

TJ invited me to go to Dorney Park with her and her family. Although I have been to Dorney Park before, 3 summers ago, I still found it fun since I love roller coasters (I've never been to a water park before, and I guess I'm just not interested in them).

Knowing amusement parks, I should've brought along some food. I did bring my steel water bottle, and there were water fountains (so I didn't have to waste $3.50 on water!!). The food was overpriced, of course, which is why I got fries. I haven't had fries in at least two months, and I've been craving them, even though I could get them for $1 somewhere nearby. The fries I got were $5.83, although I later saw them for about $5 at another part of the park :(. The fries nice and crunchy though, and sort of fulfilled my craving.

Since TJ's mum is part of a union, they got this free buffet meal thing (it was union day at the park), although TJ told me that there was no real vegetarian stuff there - it was all burgers and hot dogs etc. There was mayo-covered potatoes ("potato salad") and macaroni (sweeter... "macaroni salad"), which TJ brought out of the catering area in my bag, which got soaked in some mayo. Haha, oh well. The potato salad was mediocre, but not terrible since it was free. While we were eating, I was watching the three guys at the table next to ours; two were eating pizza/fries/milkshake, while the other one was eating a burger/fries/milkshake. While he went off to get some ketchup, the other two guys grabbed about half of his fries. He came back with ketchup, and seemed unaware of the fact that half his fries had been stolen. Just an anecdote.

TJ was determined to get funnel cake, so after we had gone on all the rides that we wanted to go on (except Possessed, because we saw it break down four times), she bought one with powdered sugar ($7). I've never had funnel cake before, and I think that it's basically a doughnut with more exposed surface area...it's delicious, yes, but definitely not one of my favourite foods. I'd prefer doughnuts solely because I have more of an emotional attachment with them. The portion is huge, though. We ate only half of it, and boxed the rest for later.

I do like the crunchy bits of funnel cake with a lot of powdered sugar, actually.

Throughout the day, I basically saw foods in shades of yellow. (Such is America, right?). Actually, I did see some coloured foods in the form of sugar+food colouring. Oh, and somehow having real insects in a candy store is a good thing.

I wonder if I can bake funnel cake? Low-free funnel cake? I know that my sister likes it.

Macaroni and Cheese...on a Pizza.

The world is changing. There used to be a time where pizza, macaroni, and cheese were discrete. We then had pizza with cheese and macaroni and cheese.

And now I have encountered the sum of all parts. A macaroni and cheese pizza.

Yes, it's in a bowl because I had eaten cereal beforehand. The macaroni and cheese was ridiculously buttery, which was kind of a deterrent because it tasted more like buttery oily pasta on pizza dough. In other words, it didn't really taste cheesy or umami :(. Recently, I've realised that a lot of the dough at Commons is some mix of whole wheat and white flour, which makes the dough extremely... elasticky. It almost has a plastic sheen to it. I'd say it's the high gluten content that whole wheat flours tend to have [due to less refinement? If you look at nutrition labels, the 100% whole wheat flour-made breads usually have 5-6g protein per 120 Cal, wheras white bread... doesn't have many. 1-2g? 3? Anyway, this was at Hill... and it was most definitely white flour.

MP's Grad Party

The Food. Was. Awesome! Well, who am I to judge? The food anywhere, at any party, is usually way more creative than the banal [Though, I eat a lot of bananas at home. And, bananas are NOT banal. Haha. Another silly joke! I'm going bananas!] stuff I eat every day at home for dinner. Though, today's snacks were truly original compared to the past few parties which I attended. Most of it was from my favourite supermarket/civil-exploration place - Trader Joe's! Anyway... awesome pasta sauce!
From left to right: tortilla chips, dried pineapple [simply the best thing there], seasoned crackers, TJ's cheese crackers [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz], carrots, peanut butter crackers, [A.K.A. "better than Ritz" Ritz-Bitz. Did I mention that I used to love the peanut butter and/or cheese flavoured of these? Yeah, in HK these, along with the "Garden animal crackers" were my favourite. Oh, and the chicken [?] flavoured crackers.], sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, spicy chipotle salsa [great!]
Close-up.
Pasta with alfredo sauce, pasta with tomato sauce, and vegetables with butter and bread crumbs. I felt like there was potato in the vegetables... but maybe it was just me. Either way, the vegetables were really nice :)
Salad with onions and ranch dressing. I don't really have a thing for ranch dressing, but I like onions so that was good.
Bad resolution of crunchy oatmeal raisin cookies. They were approximately 2 cm in diameter... and although I could taste the oatmeal, I could neither taste nor see any raisins. Hm. Didn't make sense, but they were really delicious, so I ate a lot of them. Actually, I'm usually more into soft cookies, but these were quite interesting. Reminded me of ginger snaps, even though they didn't have any ginger in them, of course.
My first ever cookie cake [I think]! The icing was icky, in my opinion, but I'm not really into consuming icing. Icing is great to look at, but not really to chug down. The cookie itself was really soft [Some propylene glycol? HFCS? I didn't check...]. and the chocolate chips actually tasted like chocolate chips!
My first eggplant and ricotta pizza ever! The ricotta cheese was pretty amazing; usually I just have it in lasagne, but the creaminess added a really interesting texture to the pizza. The eggplant wasn't that great, though, and I think I prefer plain eggplant parm. Or just grilled eggplant. I found the crust rather sweet, which is kinda weird considering this is a savoury product [Not a candy pizza. Those are... eh...], and it was also really dry. Not flaky dry, but BLAND dry. Maybe I was just really thirsty at the time...

I will update about the chocolate tomorrow.

Hamantashen!

A's house = hamantashen paradise.
Seriously, we made probably 391 hamantaschens.
Don't believe me? Check these blurry images out [I didn't bring my camera so I used my phone... JB brought her pro camera and took a zillion photos, and each click had that awesome shutter noise... but I can't use her images because this is my blog and I believe there are some copyright issues at some print in the book. Anyway.]!

Apricot, strawberry, raspberry, chocolate chip hamantashens. Note the chocolate chip dough :D My favourite jams are apricot jam and cherry jam. I don't really have a predilection for strawberry jam... maybe because I've had it for all my life. Oh, and the secret to the "best" hamantashen dough? Orange juice!!!!