Leftovers Sandwich!!

I absolutely love sandwiches! I made a sandwich with (some leftover) stuff in my fridge:

1. super toasted bagel (leftover from work)

2. spicy tofu (ok, not leftover)

3. spinach in the process of wilting

4. spicy peppers (leftover from a meeting)

5. cheeeeeeese!! (not leftover)

6. sour cream and onion dip

So delicious!... and it only took about 5 minutes to assemble (but I ate it disassembled)! This was taken at about 4:30pm, when I had my lunch-dinner-snack. My meal timetable is quite skewed now. It used to be something like 7:15am, 10:10am, 5pm, and maybe 9 or 10pm. Now, because I get up every day at 9 and usually have class or Monell until 5 or so, my schedule goes something like 9am, 5pm. Actually, sometimes I have lunch at around 12 or 1, but other times, I just eat during class. For example, yesterday I had bagel at 9:40am, a banana muffin at 11am, and an apple at 12:50pm. I then went to Bio lab, came back to my dorm at around 4, had a sandwich, and took a 3 hour nap. As it was a Wednesday, study break provided some $80 worth of junky food, so I had a bowl and a half of cereal.

Today, my eating schedule was: peanut butter sandwich at 9:15am. Orange at noon. Sandwich and carrot and peanut-butter-dough at 5pm.

During certain exam periods, I eat even more hectically! Let's say I get back to my dorm at 11pm from the library (another problem with spending a lot of my time away from cooking is that I never get the chance to eat my multivitamin). Of course, that day I would've had breakfast at 9, and perhaps some carbs around 5pm. So, I cook some pasta, eat some fruit, and as I panic about all the information I've yet to learn, I start eating more food. The food isn't necessarily unhealthy -- peanuts, fruit, eggs, okay, and candy, but out of sheer stress, I just eat. And eat. And then it's 2am so I stop eating, and at 4am or so, I promptly go to sleep.

I'm also quite sure it's unhealthy to consume a (283g) bag of Candy Cane Hershey's Kisses in 4 days.

I acknowledge that my eating habits and desires are huge problems, and they contribute to a negative self-reflection and serious adipose tissue buildup. Therefore, I figured I should start using my other senses to enjoy the world. So, I went to Lush, got a bath bomb, and now I can enjoy the redolent scent of roses whenever I sit at my desk (provided the smell of food isn't in the air), and I can have honey-scented clothes.

Ginger Pepper Coconut Cakies

Today, the kitchen is overwhelmingly nutmeggy. Urg. I'm not sure why I dislike the sweet smell/taste of nutmeg. I was going to make gingersnaps but we don't have molasses. We've never bought molasses before...so instead, I sort of invented ginger pepper cookies/cakies, which I am sure exist elsewhere in the world. They look more like mini scones/cakes than cookies, mainly because I did the whole orange juice citric acid+baking soda thing again. Using this recipe as a basis, I flung around ingredients and burned down the kitchen. Luckily, I am going back to UPenn today, so I'll have somewhere to live while my family live in a kitchen-less house. Just kidding, I'm not Chowder. But we did have a 90 minute power outage yesterday.

They are cakey, slightly gingery, are a bit moist and textured due to the whole wheat flour and coconut, and lack crunch and buttery-ness. Not gingersnaps at all...more like a spice cake?

INGREDIENTS --makes 25 pretty big cakey cookies.
75g white sugar
75 g brown sugar
1 stick butter
1 egg
3 tbsp orange juice

some cinnamon
some nutmeg (I put in 1 tbsp, which was too much, as I'm not a fan of nutmeg).
some tablespoons of ginger powder
some tablespoons of ground black pepper (add dried chili flakes if you want?)
300 g whole wheat flour
50 g dried coconut (I used unsweetened, local)

1 tbsp baking soda

METHOD
1. Cream sugars and butter. Throw in the egg and orange juice.
2. Add the dry ingredients, ~80 g at a time. Fold.
3. Add the baking soda. Fold.
4. Scoop onto pan-greased-with-butter-wrapper.
5. Bake at 350 F in an un-preheated oven for 15 minutes on the middle rack. Let sit for about 10 minutes, or more. Just keep checking with your fork (it should come out clean, and the cookie should look solid).

Risotto (from Year 10)

So I decided to fashion my plate of risotto into something like this. Obviously the kitchen needs better lighting...

In year 10, I made risotto in Food Tech. It's pretty ironic that I now want a career in something food-related; Food Tech was an elective that I chose slightly grudgingly; at that time, I honestly would've preferred Textiles Tech/fashion design stuff. Alas! 2 months into Food Tech and we moved from HK to the US... but within those   2 months, I did make risotto and since then, I haven't had plenty of delicious risotto, only because I don't understand how restaurants can make a fresh batch of risotto in 20 minutes. Risotto takes a full hour to make, and more if you're more patient and want softer rice. The one made by me, my GA and my dorm friends was really gooey and delicious, though but that was just mushroom. The one I made today had milk, celery, peppers, cauliflower, and firm tofu. A delicious meal...

The recipe came from some cookbook, but I used the modified version that I created in year 10 for my class. Actually, I adapted that too because we didn't have vegetable stock cubes or tomatoes. Although this recipe apparently serves 4-6, it really serves 6 in my family.

Ingredients for risotto for ~6 people
50 g butter
1 red onion
2 garlic bulbs (less if you don't like garlic)
1 tsp dried basil (or a lot of fresh basil, but it's winter now :( )

A bunch of vegetables and/or animal pieces. I used: 
1 green pepper
1/3 of a giant head of cauliflower
4 stalks of celery
150 g firm tofu

400 g Arborio rice
1 L water
1 packet vegetable soup mix or vegetable stock cube or just plain ol' vegetable stock
700 ml milk

50-150 g of Cheddar and/or Parmesan cheese (however much you like)

METHOD --takes about an hour
1. Chop up everything. I don't like grating cheese so I cubed the cheese.
2. Throw butter, onion, garlic, and basil in a huge pan and let it sizzle for a bit. SMELLS SO GOOD!!
3. Throw in vegetables and rice but not tofu yet. Unless you really want to. Note the small grains of rice.

 4. Mix water, stock cube/vegetable soup mix with milk and pour in ~250 ml. Stir occasionally. Bring to a boil and keep it on medium-medium-low heat.

 5. After a while, that liquid will b absorbed by the rice! The rice will get poofier! Add in another ~250 ml of liquid. The mixture should remain bubbly.

 6. Let rice soak up liquid. Stir occasionally. Add ~250 ml of liquid. Keep going!!

(I have flash on all my pictures because my kitchen has bad lighting. The image below is the pot without flash). You can see the texture better, but everything is all grainy looking. Haha, of course, due to the rice (a grain...get it? ha...)

 7. Last ~250 ml of liquid! I love how the rice just...soaks it all up! After adding the last bit of liquid, add in the tofu and cheese.

8. When your last liquid is nearly all absorbed and looks something like the image below, you're done! This was about an hour after I had started with the onions. The rice should be soft, there should be really gooey thick sauce, and the kitchen and upstairs should smell savoury.

In addition I got my sister to eat green peppers (which she dislikes for some reason) by telling her that it was celery.

Walnut-Cranberry-Pepper Tea Muffins!!!!

After much deliberation, planning, postponing, and messaging, we finally managed a 6-person get together. A super mini high school reunion, if you will... 1.4% of my graduating class. I decided to make muffins for the occasion. I've been wanting to try something with pepper and cranberries for a long time, since four years ago, I tried this snack mix that had cranberries, pepper, and pecans, and it was sensational! Who knew that pepper and cranberries went so well with each other?! So, using this honey bread recipe [link deprecated...but it was the Honey Association in the UK] as a guide (funnily enough, though, I didn't use any honey), I made these muffins with a simple sugar glaze. I think I should've put more batter into the muffin cups.

INGREDIENTS

50 g dried cranberries/raisins (I had raisins in mine too)

100 g walnuts (about a cup)

70 g sugar

300 ml cold spiced chai tea

2 eggs

1 tsp black pepper

cinnamon, if you wish.

275 g 100% whole wheat flour

1 mounted tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp icing sugar

1 tsp water

METHOD

1. Mix dried fruit, walnut, sugar, cold tea, and pepper together. Gently beat in eggs.

2. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

3. Add 1/3 liquid mixture to dry mixture. Mix. Add another 1/3. Mix. Add the last third. Mix. You will have a thick, sticky batter that plops rather reluctantly.

4. Scoop tablespoon amounts into un-greased muffin liners (I reused egg tart shells because I don't have a muffin pan). I ended up with 18, but I think that squeezing the batter into 12 liners would've been better because the muffins would've been more voluptuous.

5. Bake on the lowest rack of an un-preheated oven at 177 degrees C/350 degrees F for 13 minutes and let sit for 10 minutes in oven. If you have 12 muffins, you may need to bake for 15 minutes. Stick a fork in a muffin, and if the fork doesn't have goo sticking to it when it comes out, it's done baking.

6. Furiously mix icing sugar with water and lightly glaze muffin tops.

I think that everyone thought that the muffins were a bit strange, but not in a bad way. I really enjoyed them though, so I'll probably make them again for myself. Perhaps I will use stronger tea, and add 2 tsp of pepper. This has very little saturated fat, compared to conventional muffins!!!

berkshire bark - Tropical Heat

So here's a funny story.

The Uncommon Market unintentionally sells a lot of expired food.

There is expired vegetarian sloppy joe sauce, pasta sauce, curry sauce, noodles (okay, the noodles will expire on May 11th this year), and other stuff. It's not as though the Uncommon Market is AWARE of this situation, though, since the same jars and packets of sauces have been sitting there for at least 3 months. Yes, I've been checking for 3+ months, because I've felt inclined to buy vegetarian sloppy joe sauce, and I've been waiting for a new shipment because the packets sitting on the shelf have been expired since February 2011.

No one else really checks expiration dates, but it's become a habit of mine ever since I bought some chocolate from the Uncommon Market in January, only to find that it had expired on December 17th, 2010. When one purchases a small bar of chocolate for $3.99 (Yes. Everything's price is jacked up), one expects high quality chocolate. One does not desire expired chocolate. In general, I don't mind eating relatively expired food - expired pasta, expired chocolate, expired rice (stuff that isn't perishable), but in this case, I had to make a stand. I'm already buying overpriced Dining Dollars, which I end up spending on overpriced food, so I'd BETTER get fresh food out if it

.

Sometimes I aspire to work for the FDA's Food Safety department so that I can research what "expiration" means, and whether one would drop dead after consuming some pie one hour post-expiration. Then, I wonder what life would be like being a freegan. If you push back the expiration date by ONE day - 24 hours - much more food (especially milk, yoghurt, ham, cheese, pudding, canned goods) would be saved in this world. However, I can't support any of this because there doesn't seem to be much research concerning food expiration.

Anyway, I ended up switching the chocolate for a new bar that will expire in June (but I've already eaten it), and I suppose the expired bar was thrown away, although it was perfectly edible (yes, I'm a hypocrite, right? Perfectly edible, yet I was so bothered by it that I had to exchange it).

The bar was called Tropical Heat, by berkshire bark, and the impression I got is basic, chunky, wholesome, and...spotty. It contained macadamia nuts, pineapple, mango, papapya, coconut, chili, and cayenne, and I couldn't wait to try it because I do like spicy chocolate.

The coconut texture was very pronounced, but I couldn't really taste its flavor. The pineapple, mango, and papaya were indistinguishable from each other (which is a bad thing, because...they're different fruits) and they all tasted flavourless and had a weird texture. I've had dried pineapple, mango, and papaya before, and those instances never made me think, "Wow. Am I chewing gillyweed? Stale gum?" The chocolate was normal dark chocolate, and yes, there was a hint of spicyness, but nothing too hot. It reminded me of the spicy chocolate drink from the Penn "Chocolate" Festival, so that was good. I honestly don't think it was worth $3.99, especially when I can buy really high quality pure chocolate, or just plain ol' cocoa powder, for $3.99 at Shoprite, or even Trader Joe's.

Back to buying noodles, rice and polenta, because at least those prices are only jacked up by 10-30% rather than 50-70% at the Uncommon Market.

Dumplings!

Today AK came over to my house and we made vegetable dumplings! I had made the filling earlier on [9am, to be exact], using my brother's drink blender. Actually, it's also a solid-ingredient blender, and it chops carrots and tofu really well! The filling included carrot, extra firm tofu, garlic chives, bean sprouts, and some soy sauce... and PLENTY OF PEPPER. Perhaps there was way too much pepper...

We used premade dumpling wrappers, because it is seriously time consuming making my own dumpling wrappers. My mum used to do that when I was ... 5, and we didn't have any Chinese supermarkets nearby in Australia. She used to flatten out tons of little dubloons of flour, and I used to use the rolling pin and make irregular ovals. The wrappers were much thicker then, and tasted much better than these ones [more gluten, I think, and more transparent and chewy]...

The lettuce leaves are there to prevent the dumplings from sticking. However, at least two dumplings DID stick to the pan. :(

YEAH DUMPLINGS! This was also a great time to catch up on life and college, and to get fat for the winter. Haha.

Random Blahs.

I'm actually going to go out to dinner later, but I'm not going to be back in time to update... so tomorrow I shall update about that. Instead, I'm just going to post a few random pictures.

Whole wheat spaghetti soup with onions and garlic and green peppers. And tomato, of course. And clumps of Boca burger. I have officially finished cooking Boca burgers and I will never consume another Boca burger in my life. I am completely sick of them. I like plain tofu better. Or even plain chickpeas.

:)

I found some Airheads candy in the food drawer. From 2007. Or maybe it was 2006. I don't really know. So I unwrapped them all, rolled them into a tyre shape [hey, it fits the theme of Cars] and threw it into the garden. Now I have a nice piece of space in the drawer for other food!

Yup - the sesame chocolate cookies I made a few days ago... This time I microwaved them for 40 seconds, flipped each over, and microwaved them for another 17 seconds. My sister actually liked them! She said that they looked and sort of tasted like fudge. Which is great, since fudge is very much appreciated in the world. Which is why everyone says, "Oh. Fudge!" when something goes wrong, because, by calling fudge into the world, all problems shall disappear.

Pasta Salad!

I'll talk about chocolate some other time. Today, I actually felt like cooking so I made lunch. There are actually only 17 pieces of penne left. This is amazing because there are always tons of leftovers. [I mean, we always have leftover pasta and rice. No matter what.] Plus, my mum and brother genuinely like[d] what I made today though my brother didn't like the pickles part.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I found this recipe and the pictures were really pretty, so I decided to emulate it. In truth, I have never really had legit pasta salad. Okay, in year 7 and 8 there were these days I bought macaroni + mayo + tuna, which I suppose constitutes pasta salad. However, today's salad was LEGIT!
Tweaking The Luna Cafe's ingredients and method...

Stuff you need:
1 box/lb of penne
A chunk of frozen cut vegetables from an even larger chunk of frozen vegetables.
0.5 cups of cut up pickles
1 red bell pepper

Dressing:
1.5 cups mayo
0.5 cups low-fat milk
3 tbsp vinegar
Juice of one lemon
Pepper, salt, garlic powder [a LOT!]
1 big spoon of mustard.
Method:
1. I think the ingenuity of The Luna Cafe was that the boiling water used to cook the vegetables was then used to cook the pasta, because the vegetables were taken out using a strainer. I honestly think this is SUCH a cool idea.
2. Boil vegetables until they are soft and look cooked.
3. Make pasta and drain and let it sit there until it cools down. Don't use too much water draining it. While the pasta is cooking, cut pickles and red bell pepper.
4. Mix all the stuff in the dressing ingredients list.
5. Mix everything together.

Yes, the dressing does look rather unappetising. I just put it here so that you know you're doing the right thing. The powdery stuff is garlic powder since we don't have actual garlic.
The dressing looks delectable now :P


By this time, the pasta salad actually tasted good, except that there was wayyyy too much dressing. I somehow managed to coat all the pasta and vegetables using just half the dressing. I ended up dumping the other half in anyway, though, because, like chocolate, I suppose you can't have "too much". Though, apparently semolina likes to soak up liquid, so right now, 4 hours later, the liquid has, er, apparently decreased. I can't really tell, since there are only 16.5 pieces of penne left.

I just taste tested half a piece of penne and I have to say that this time, the penne piece tastes like it was made with the soury-fatty dressing INSIDE the semolina. Earlier, when it was just cold, you could clearly distinguish between the pasta and the dressing. Now, the dressing and pasta have formed a glutinous-y conglomeration of awesomeness. An analogy would be

bread in a pan + egg in a pan = fried egg on toast.
but
bread soaked in egg overnight = eggy bread [more commonly known as "French toast" in the U.S]

This was delicious pasta salad, since you could definitely taste a sourness and tangy-ness that comes only in PASTA salads! In retrospect, if I made the dressing more vinegar based rather than mayo based, I probably would get something completely different, [vinaigrettey salad?] which I would like to try out actually, since it would be healthier. [NEVER, EVER, EVER, use low fat or fat free mayo. It's crap in a jar. No kidding.]

Quinoa Salad.

So, I am obsessed with the quinoa salad thing from yesterday. The sweety-soury-light taste was so great... so I tried to replicate it, by using this recipe. Evidently, it's flawed, because lemon juice and cilantro are mentioned in the method, but not in the ingredients. Basically, though, I ended up with something similar... and I think that the reason I enjoyed the quinoa salad was not the salad dressing, but actually the quinoa itself. Which is quite awesome, as I've been stuck [or, "glutened"] to wheat, rice and semolina. Oh, and corn, of course, in the form of tortillas. However, I've never really had quinoa in my life, because I never bothered putting some on the stove and actually cooking it. Microwaving stuff is NOT really cooking. It's defined as a "shortcut/time saver" in my opinion, so I do like microwave ovens.
Anyway... It tasted sorta similar, sans dressing, and no one in the family ate much. My dad doesn't eat raw onions, my sister eats nothing healthy, my brother thought that the raisins ruined it...you get the picture. But, truth be said, they're biased because they've never had/probably won't like Mediterranean food. It's like me being a vegetarian. Choices.