Lasagne and Meatballs

Used up a bunch of leftovers to make lasagne and meatballs. While my tactics are questionable, the fridge is now organized and the food tastes fine.

The lasagne has a lot more cheese than necessary, and also includes leftover turkey pepperoni (my sister has now decided that she no longer wants them). The sauce includes homemade sauce, store-bought pasta sauce, a teaspoon of leftover vegetable cream cheese and a few tablespooons of leftover Greek yoghurt in lieu of butter. It is a very beefy four layers (1 lb of cow, pepperoni, cheese, tomato, spices, yum). I added an extra lasagne sheet, which is that crusty topping.

The 78 meatballs were made with:
 1+ lb of minced cow
4 slices of toast, crumbled by hand (my mum ate the first two slices I made. Oh no!)
>1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 chopped onion
4 cloves chopped garlic (enclose cloves between two bowls and shake vigorously to remove skin -- see here)
1 egg
1 tbsp oil
spices
1/4 cup milk

and baked for 20 mins at 350F. The cheese oozes to the bottom, so you have to cook it on the bottom rack in order for the cheese to crust up when it falls onto the pan. Cooking on the top rack means the cheese melts but doesn't crust up anything and you end up with meatballs in puddles of fat.

Now, what to do with a pound of leftover shredded mozzarella?
Cheesy bread tomorrow ...maybe.

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.

Penn Picnic and Reception - 2nd Sept

Penn NSO started on the 2nd of September, and we all got up at 5:30am to drive to PA by 9am. As usual, it took 90 minutes to get into Philly, but half an hour to actually end up at the specific street on which we stopped. I'm not disclosing where I live, although one could probably figure it out... since I don't have a cafeteria at my dorm house, unfortunately.

Anyway, after unpacking and all, there was a Penn Family Picnic for all we families and kids. It was actually very similar to the food at the Penn Frosh Picnic in my area on the 19th of August. There were wraps and cookies, but there was also some punch and iced tea and lemonade, which helped, since it was really hot that day.
Firstly, I'd like to say that I fell for the cookie trip again. Last time, I ate a chocolate cookie that was way too hard for my liking. This time, I made the same mistake. I need to learn!! I'm not particularily fond of hard/crunchy cookies. I like the moist cakey ones more, such as the raisin one. It's good to know that Penn has consistency though, concerning its cookie production. The wraps were really good though, with the mozzarella cheese and vegetables, although it was a tad oily.
After the President made a speech, there was a reception, and it was quite a sight watching 3000+ people swarming around taking food... There was this amazing mashed white bean thing, some caramelised onions [the first I've ever had] and a smokey-chipotleish spiced [I'm guessing?] eggplant thing.
There were also tons of cookies. They were the hard kind.
The vegetable station was ridiculous. I wonder what they did to the half heads of cauliflower, the whole peppers and the corn. Surely it's not solely for display? If it was, that'd be a waste of vegetables...
Whole heads of broccolis! Whole rutabagas! Utterly ridiculous!

Excess. Superfluous. Extravagant. Luxurious. I don't know; so much for this being the "year of water". Think about all the water used to produce these crops...they better use them.

TH's Grad Party

"Party" is synonymous with "food".

Hate to break it to you all, but TH had a party today and I didn't take any pictures. However, I can basically summarise what happened today at Costco and at TH's backyard. Sooo... party first.

We had really nice mozzarella with tomato slices, and water crackers with cheeses [brie, cheddar, and this other pungent one that I didn't like]. There was orange punch, fruit salad [awesome!] and garden salad. The potato au gratin was really awesome, but the sauce for the penne was way too sweet for me. The dessert was the Costco cake [you know, the giant one. The one everyone has] and those highly decorative but not-flavourful cookies]. Thus, I didn't really like the dessert part.

Okay, now for my party planning!

My party is tomorrow. My mum and I have been arguing about it for the past week. Or, two weeks, really. We keep arguing about the cake, the decorations, the "whether I should grill stuff" or not. It goes on. We ended up going to Party City, Amazing Savings, Costco, Shoprite, then 5 Below, then Costco again, in the past three days.

This morning, at Costco, we bought a ton of stuff including a red velvet cake. I personally didn't want one, since there is a long list of ingredients, of which two are HFCS and PHO. To add to the irony, this is the piece of dessert on which I added "Happy Graduation" with butter-sugar-green-colouring icing. I should've added it to the apple pie, but the container is non resealable, unfortunately. However, I believe the red velvet cake is symbolic to not only my "graduation necessity", but also to the fact that it's extremely "American". Eh. I also got a pack of mini cinnamon rolls, mini brownies, and mini chocolate chip cupcakes. Along with this, we bought some cookies, and I'm going to make some rice pudding. I also made some trail mix yesterday, though I doubt any XC/track people would want to consume it [including me]. I think that there is a substantial amount of sweet stuff :)

Later, I made a salad [without the dressing, though I'm thinking of either pesto or honey mustard; we bought some french dressing and HONESTLY - it is ridiculously difficult to find salad dressing WITHOUT HFCS. and I cut up a lot of baguette [for croutons and breadcrumbs tomorrow].

Yesterday, I actually cleaned my room for the first time in a month. Though, everyone is gonna be downstairs [Wii + food], the backyard [frisbee/capture the flag + food] or the basement [dance party + food... if it rains]. Seriously, the weather has been so fickle. It was "supposed" to rain on Sunday, and it didn't. It was supposed to rain today... and it did, two hours later than it was "supposed" to. It better NOT rain tomorrow afternoon...

I guess I'll have tons of pictures tomorrow. It's gonna be hectic!