"Real People" Dinner

At a Discussion Dinner for my program, I was making a point and rambled that we first pilot test our food/solutions in our lab, and then, after approval, "give the test to real people." This phrase became the butt of a handful of jokes later in the discussion, and I am now ostensibly the lab assistant of a lab that has "non-real" people. On a related note, AK distinguishes "real people" food and lodging from college kid living conditions. "Real people", for example, have vapid paintings on their walls, and don't eat ramen-with-poached-egg. In a clutter of spontaneity and thoughtful planning, we managed to have a remarkably posh "real people" dinner on the porch of his house, complete with neither tablecloth nor napkin. Actually, apart from the food and sunset, everything else was rather "college kid"-style (including Christmas lights). However, the food is the only thing that matters and it's neat choosing not to pay for perfect plating and swanky music.

Unfortunately, as is frequently the case this summer, I didn't have my camera, so these phone pictures will have to suffice.

The Menu

Not-Crusty-Enough Baguette with Camembert

8 Oysters (4 Chesapeake, 4 other)

Ribeye Steak with Mushrooms and Steamed, Buttered Spinach

The Oysters

Oysters are really expensive to order at restaurants. At Simeon's, oysters are $37.50/dozen (I think). At Wegmans, however, they are only $1. Although this sounds perfectly ridiculous (because an entire box of mac and cheese is $1), consider ordering 6 cooked-from-frozen mozarella sticks for $7.99+tax+tip from a generic casual-style restaurant. And they revel in it.

The woman at the Wegmans seafood counter was very nice and explained to us that one of the oyster types was more briny than the other. However, I don't remember which was the more briny one, and I don't remember the name of the other oyster type either. Suffice it to say that 4 of the oysters looked more textured and wavy while the other 4 looked neat and tidy. '50s conservative, vs. '60s whoot-whoot, if you will. Although the two types of oysters came in different nets, I ended up mixing them due to a memory lapse. In another memory lapse, I put the oysters in the freezer, only to realize 20 minutes later that oysters should probably not be frozen because the oysters were still alive (maybe?) and that frozen scallops (and other seafood) have a terrible texture, so why not oysters? So, they were promptly moved to the fridge.

However, obtaining oysters is not the main problem. Opening them is. I didn't see the point of purchasing a $20 oyster opener, and I was confident that we could pry them open somehow. The woman at the counter suggested using a screwdriver. She also said that legally speaking, she could only tell us to eat them cooked. I found this humourous.

We tried using a butter knife and another sharp knife to pry open the oysters, before AK found that a 3/8-inch drill-bit (flat) works perfectly as an oyster opener! You gently poke the drill-bit between the bottom (corner?) of the oyster, and then gingerly wiggle the drill-bit around the perimeter of the oyster.

After a short amount of time (much less than the time taken to get to a restaurant, order food, and wait for food), we had our oysters! They sat in the fridge on ice, covered with a plate, for about an hour until we ate them.

The camembert was good because the rind was bland. That's probably not how it's supposed to be, but is agreeable towards my preferences. The steak was good. There were chunks of fat in it, and little blobs of mushroom and garlic. The spinach was made by steaming in this collapsible colander/steamer (like this), which I think is super nifty device!

This was so fun!

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.

Pesto Sauce & Whole Wheat Macaroni!!

Since we have a LOT of basil growing in our yard, I decided to finally make pesto, something I've been planning for the past 5 years. No kidding. With plenty of basil, a whole bag pine nuts, and a tray of garlic, all I needed was some parmesan cheese.

I adapted this recipe a lot since my sister doesn't really like basil. She actually doesn't like garlic either, so next time I'll just make pesto sauce without garlic specially for her and then make real pesto. In addition, I didn't use too much oil, since I used a whole cup of pine nuts and a whole cup of cheese. The pesto itself was therefore much creamier and thick, which I prefer over a light and liquidy pasta sauce. It also occurred to me that pesto is a raw sauce... Hm. Interesting. The nice thing was that I got her involved in the cooking process. Dinner was quite spectacular for my mum too because she didn't have to cook or do dishes.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh basil leaves!

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil)

2 small bulbs of garlic

0.5 cup olive oil

1 cup pine nuts, toasted.

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni

0.5 cup water

Method.

1. Cook macaroni.

2. Wash leaves. Stick in blender with garlic and toasted pine nuts and pulse a few times

3. Add cheese, oil, and water. Pulse.

4. Scoop generous globs of pesto onto drained macaroni.

5. Sprinkle with more parmesan!

6. EAT EAT EAT!

The best part is that I made restaurant-quality sauce for literally something like a dollar.

Oh, here I am again ranting on that other person's blog (see yesterday's post) who lists the price of all the ingredients.

I'll do that here too, just so I can be "famous" and "adored".

Ingredients if I want to be honest about the price

1 cup fresh basil leaves! - $0 (from garden)

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil) - $0.25

2 small bulbs of garlic - $0 (from garden)

0.5 cup olive oil - $0 (got reimbursed)

1 cup pine nuts, toasted. - $0 (got reimbursed)

1 cup grated parmesan cheese $~1

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni $0 (used dining dollars, so it's technically free.)

0.5 cup water $0

Total: $1.25

Price per serving: $0.25

Or, Ingredients if I want to emulate the other blog

1 cup fresh basil leaves! - $1

1.5 cups spinach leaves (or more basil - again, my sister doesn't really like basil) - $0.25

2 small bulbs of garlic - $0.20?

0.5 cup olive oil - $0.40?

1 cup pine nuts, toasted. - $3?

1 cup grated parmesan cheese $~1

250 g organic whole wheat macaroni $2

0.5 cup water $0

Total: $8

Price per serving: $1.60

IN YOUR FACE, TRITE OTHER BLOG!

I guess I'm still bitter about how that person gets so much freakin' respect for something not that notable.

I'm really glad that I made pesto sauce, since we have a LOT of basil, a lot of pine nuts, and a lot of delicious cheese. It's also so simple! I tried it on fries and it was great too. I don't think I want to use any oil next time; I'll just make it with water since the pine nuts have a lot of lipids anyway. I won't use spinach either, if I'm not making it for my sister.

Sitar Indian Restaurant

It's so hot today.

My room's AC is also pretty terrible.

Anyway, TJ, CL and BN and I met up at The Greek Lady for dinner, but after looking through the vegetarian options, we decided to go elsewhere. It's not that their selection was scanty; it was just that everything vegetarian was basically the animal version, sans animal. For example, the vegetarian gyro was lettuce, tomato, feta cheese, sauce and pita. Uh, where is the protein part? Where is the falafel?

After much wandering around in 96F weather (yes, I was watching the really vapid "news" - how the heck is "Oh. Today is 96F." allotted to 15 minutes worth of news?), BN decided to take us to Sitar, an Indian restaurant/buffet place. Apparently, lunch is around $8 and dinner is $11.75+tax, and there is a student discount of 10% [allegedly]. We each ended up paying $13.

I'm not really sure whether or not the mango juice was free, because the menu claims that it's $2.50, but either way, we all ate a lot of food and laughed at many jokes. The juice was unusually sweet, pulp-free (sigh.), and chilled. TJ put pepper in BN's water, but he didn't notice. Chances are, the pepper, being an insignificant amount and also insoluble, sank to the bottom of the glass.

I don't know the names of many Indian dishes, unfortunately, but the naan bread was amazing. Actually, it tasted kind of like the flour tortillas that my mum used to make, which means that either my mum unknowingly made naan, or the naan just tastes really similarly to flour tortillas (well, not Qdoba/Chipotle flour tortillas. Those are more gluteny). The spinach and paneer cheese was really delicious paired with the naan. On its own, the cheese was great, but the spinach was too spicy for my liking. Actually, a lot of the food was too spicy for me (I guess I'm just not that tolerant). The yellow lentil thing that is covering the naan in the picture was really great, too.

Plate 2. Unlike at Penn Dining, it is kind of hard to consume more than 1.5 plates of food. Also, the rice had animal pieces in it even though it was labelled vegetarian and BN mistook the animal pieces for nuts, which I then mistook as cashews. It turns out it was something chewy and meaty. :( The potato in the potato and green beans was really great, but the green beans were really salty and wilted (due to the salt, of course). I loved the potato samosas and the chickpeas! At that point, however, I really felt like not eating anymore Indian food for at least a few months. Seriously, I was that full and I honestly do not crave Indian food anymore. Although the food was pretty good, I think that if I were to buy food from here again, it'd be the potato samosas!

Fruit watery custard-y thingy. The fruit? canned apples. Actually, they're canned pears, but they look like apples (the red parts), so I'm not really sure what they REALLY are, but they're definitely canned. The custard part was pretty good, though, although it was less viscous than yoghurt. I guess it's a bit confusing for me because I prefer custards to be super thick.

Vanilla ice cream (50% of it melted, because the bowl was warm) with some carrot+nut+syrup, which tasted kind of like rice pudding. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something I'd crave.

Unlike peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate, and avocado sushi, which I can never get tired of, Indian food is something to be enjoyed only occasionally, although I do love it.

Sitar Indian Restaurant, 60th S 38th St (around 38th and Chestnut St.), Philadelphia

Eggplant Sandwich!!!

In terms off eggplant, I am definitely not an egghead. Sure, I've helped my parents flip eggplant on the BBQ grill, and I often eat Chinese stir fries with eggplant. I've just never truly cooked eggplant before. Or baked it. Or boiled it. I'm not really sure how to cook eggplant without usurping it of its nutrients, or adding a lot of oil (like my mum does when we have stir fries).

I don't want to make eggplant stir fry mainly because the eggplant from Chinatown looks so darn fresh (though it's definitely not "organic" in any sense of the word! I can tell they sprayed it with ethylene gas, because the surfaces underneath the leaves are still white). I also don't have any oil. I know, this sounds really stupid; oil/butter/other fats are a staple in a kitchen, especially when cooking, but I'm someone going to survive these two months without them (I think). One week down.

These are "cylindrical" eggplants...not the "teardrop-shaped" ones.

Apparently, eggplant can be eaten raw, although it may be bitter. I tried a chunk before I baked these, and they weren't bitter at all; they were actually kind of sweet and spongy, with a bit of moisture. I prefer them cooked, though.

After doing some research and reading a recipe, I figured that I should just slice my eggplant, salt the slices (yeah, I have a lot of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian Pizza Seasoning, but no oil.), rinse the slices, and stick them on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes at 375F... and just see what happens.

I learned a few things:

1. I feel very self-conscious when I prepare and cook food in front of strangers. I felt very shy cutting eggplant while another girl in the apartment was waiting for her mac and cheese to bake.

2. Eggplant should be sliced at an angle, not cut like cucumbers.

3. Salting and rinsing sounds easy, but actually is really annoying because you use a ton of paper towels. After using three segments for four slices of eggplant, I decided to just stick everything on the cookie sheet and just bake it and see what happens. I should've added some pepper, but oh well.

The methodology for neophytes like me is this:

1. Do not peel eggplants. Evenly slice eggplants at an angle. Unfortunately, my slices ranged from 1 cm to 3 cm.

2. Pour some salt/pepper on your hand/plate, dip both sides of the eggplant flesh into it, and place the slice of eggplant on the cookie sheet. You do not need aluminium foil.

3. Repeat.

4. Bake at 350F (the oven was preheated due to the mac and cheese) on the bottom rack for 10-20 minutes. Since there is no baking soda/powder in this recipe, you can open the oven a lot to prod the eggplants.

5. Poke eggplant with a fork to see if is squishy and gooey yet (If it still looks white, it's not really done, but it's edible).

6. Turn off oven and let sit for however long you want, if you want something more sludgy.

7. Stick in sandwiches!!

Notice that there is NO OIL INVOLVED.

So I made a spinach, cheese and eggplant with herbs sandwich, which I stuck on the sandwich grill/press that we have in the apartment. It's a really efficient non-stick grill. It's amazing!!!

Dollar Stroll and Spinach.

So, I've finally been living on my own in Philadelphia, and I'll be here for another two months with a Mon-Fri 9-5 job. Technically, it's an internship, and I don't get paid much (a lot goes to taxes too. Wonderful.), but it's still nice experience for my future in science.

I'm actually not even living on campus, so I don't go outside after it gets dark (not that I have any need to, since there are no things to study for at libraries). But, it's summer, so it's still light outside at 6pm (as opposed to January)! Today was the Dollar Stroll. A bunch of stores on Baltimore Ave (from 42st St to around 50th...that's how far I walked because it got really empty after 50th) offer smallish portions of food for $1 each. By "smallish portions", I mean one tofu slider, one cupcake, one samosa, one scoop of ice cream, or one brownie. Actually, maybe I take back the "smallish portions" part, because a cupcake certainly costs more than $1 in Philadelphia, and samosas probably cost around $6-$10 for a plate of 3 or 4 at any fine restaurant.

I didn't know that the Dollar Stroll was so popular; I saw lines of people that wound around the block, college kids chatting, slurping ice cream, eating kebabs, drinking juices, and even a woman rollerblading and chatting on her phone in the bike lane. According to college kids here, it's not a good idea to venture to West Philly alone, but there were so many people, it was interesting walking to 50th and back, because I've never gone past 43rd St. before. On the way, though, I realised that I didn't fit in at all; I was ethnically very very part of the minority, I was ignored/left alone, and the scene was just really different; it was exclusive in the sense that you had to know someone at the stores to feel comfortable (or I'm just paranoid). It wasn't like NYC, because NYC is literally lined with shops and stuffed with people everywhere. The reason the Baltimore Dollar Stroll spans some 10 streets is that each street only has one or two restaurants/stores. That's it.

I guess living on my own for the past few days has made me realise that food costs a lot. Okay, let me rephrase; it's made me realise that produce costs a lot. It's not like I didn't know this before, but now I've caught myself wondering how necessary vegetables are. They're vital, of course! But what if I eat Chipotle instead of buying a bag of carrots and celery?

It's kind of weird to be thinking in terms of Calories and % daily values. I think I'm becoming too reductionist in making food choices. However, how else do I make food choices? What if I had bought a samosa, a brownie, a kebab, and an ice cream? $4. A nice cheap dinner, but completely devoid of anything nutritious.

So instead, I went to the farmer's market at Clark Park (it turns out that the actual market is on Saturdays) for the first time, and bought a bag of spinach for $3.75 and I made acquaintances with the two girls who sold me the spinach. I'm not sure how much spinach is, generally speaking, in University City. With taking the reductionist approach, however, $3.75 for 6ish servings of iron and vitamin A etc. vs. $4 for one serving of not-many-nutrients seems to show that the spinach was a better choice.

I'm surprised I actually have 6ish servings of spinach, actually. Okay, I don't know for sure that it's 6 servings, but I took approximately 1/6th of the bag of spinach out today, ripped the huge leaves to smaller pieces, washed it, saw the water turn green due to the chlorophyll, and stuck the leaves with my (already cooked) bean & garlic spaghetti. Dude, this is fresh spinach. You don't eat this spinach cooked!

While I was eating, one of the girls who lives in this house (I'm just renting a room) walked into the kitchen and took a red pill and some coffee to her room. I don't really care what she consumed, but I'm kinda irked that she got a paper coffee cup with plastic lid for her coffee. She totally could have used one of the mugs (they have over a dozen mugs). She probably thought I was really weird eating cooked spaghetti with raw large spinach leaves.

I know that farmer's markets sell local produce (I can now say that this spinach comes from around Lancaster, PA), and it's supposed to be, perhaps, organic, right? The spinach I had today was lighter in colour compared to Costco baby spinach. It was also a different texture and shape. The leaves were huge, and they were definitely not the small dark ovals I'm used to. A Google search of "spinach varieties" yields pictures of the spinach I think I have - thick savoy spinach. I guess I've just been living on baby spinach ever since we moved to the U.S.

OKAY! Taste! It was really crisp. The leaves were thick. It initially was pretty tasteless and reminded me of lettuce, but after a while, that characteristic stay-in-your-mouth spinach taste was really overwhelming. Pretty simple.

3 Dinners!

Somehow, my normal dinner at Commons ended up, in three hours, being a triple dinner. I went to a career info session, where there was food from Greek Lady. I then went to French House and my professor, who hadn't had dinner yet, decided to take us all to Tandoor India Restaurant for dinner. Whoot...

The Greek Lady sandwiches made me realise that I indeed haven't been eating many sandwiches lately, and that I indeed LOVE and miss sandwiches. So, for the past week [This was the 4th], I've been eating at least one sandwich per day. Sometimes, one sandwich per meal. It is delicious.

So, I was full by the time we went to Tandoor, so I just tried some stuff...dude, this was at least $10 and I felt bad for not eating a lot... but I was actually full. The naan bread was AMAZING though, as was the potato and vegetable samosa. The spinach with cheese was also great, but the cube of dessert [I'm not really sure what it is, and it's kinda hard to see due to the flash of the camera] was really gross. I think it's just that my taste buds don't like it...

We all then had some mango lassis, which I initially disliked because I could taste the grains of sugar. After a while, though, it got more tolerable, although I didn't feel hungry, which is perhaps why this review is quite negative. I just think that fresh mangoes, mango ice cream, or even mango pudding tastes better. I don't like having grainy pieces of sugar in my drinks... and this drink was supersaturated with sugar. For those who like sugary foods, this is for you :D!

Mind the Food Gap - Urban Nutrition Initiative Dinner

Today at Commons there was a dinner from 6 to 7:30pm hosted by the Urban Nutrition Initiative, which is a community service group that teaches high school kids how to plant gardens and how to cook and do nutritional planning. This week, actually, is Food Week. Initially I wasn't even going to go, but I figured that I might as well go after my Nutrition midterm [which I did not do well on. I definitely didn't get above a 95% which really irks me because this stuff is really easy...] and I wondered if I'd be late, since I had to get my camera from my dorm. The really stupid thing is that I came into my dorm, left my school bag in my room, then went back out. As I approached Commons, I realised that I'd forgotten to bring my camera. By then, it was 6:10 so I figured I might just blog without pictures. However, downstairs in Commons, no one was serving food or anything... so I went back to my dorm and rushed back out and back to Commons. By then, they'd started discussing stuff about food justice. I think it's a really broad topic that one could write a book about, or devote a blog to. Either way, it was a light discussion for my table since we didn't have a table leader from the group to talk to us.

This event seemed pretty legit since they gave us 3 different sized forks and a spoon. They also emphasised the fact that the produce was local; the first course was "Roasted Red Pepper & Brie Cheese Soup", which was really delicious, actually. It was really tangy, great with the bread crust [but the bread by itself was pretty plain].

The "Spinach Salad with Local Feta, Red Onion and Warm Shallot Vinaigrette" was amazing. I seriously loved the vinaigrette!!!! I could drink that stuff [okay, I can't.]

The feta cheese chunks were really huge though, and different from the feta cheese I had eaten at this Greek restaurant back in high school.

Everyone else had "Hendricks [sic. no apostrophe] Chicken with Tarragon Cream Sauce, Sage Whipped Potato and Sautéed Broccoli Rabe". Since I'm a vegetarian, they gave me some butternut risotto. I tell you, this is NOT risotto. It's bulgur with butternut squash and cranberries. It is not a risotto. Risottos are sticky and creamy and made with arborio rice or other short-grain sticky rice. It was alright. The vegetable side was way too buttery. I guess it's personal preference, but I've grown up eating either steamed vegetables or vegetables cooked in light oil. I'm not used to the butter-drenched vegetables thing. Nor am I used to spreading a tablespoon of butter on bread, either...

However, the lighting was great so my pictures turned out nice. Actually, the guy next to me took pictures of his food too!

"Warm Bread Pudding with Maple Crème Anglaise" was pretty intense...the plate was cold and the pudding was sort of lukewarm. The bread pudding was nicely textured, and there were a lot of raisins. Overall, it was really sugar saturated. The maple glaze did not have any maple flavour. The thing that confuses me is that they said that this was grown locally, so I wonder whether Philly has a maple tree farm? I doubt it...but I could be wrong.

Interesting. I think I want to join this group to teach nutrition to kids.

Toasted Sandwich on Spruce Street. - 4th Sept

I finally met my peer advisor, and some of the other kids he advises. One actually lives on the dorm directly below mine, which is pretty cool considering that the dorms are randomly allocated [or are they?]. So, we went for lunch at this sandwich/salad store on Spruce Street, probably around 37th... Unfortunately, I have forgotten the name of the store at which talked about being freshmen in college. I do remember that I got a vegetarian sandwich [surprise surprise!] and the bread was toasted really well; it was extremely crispy, yet not burned. That's saying something! It was also this multigrain bread... I'm not sure whether its wheat flour is 100% whole grain, but I assume it is. There was tomato, eggplant, goat cheese, and spinach in the sandwich. Actually, I'm not positive it's goat cheese, but my intuition tells me it is. The sandwich was pretty light, which was nice since it made me feel all sophisticated [even though consuming the sandwich was really messy].

Spinach Soup Spaghetti

My mum bought frozen spinach soup. It was literally a block of water with spinach pieces and cream and seasonings in it. How does one cook it? By heating it. In truth, I don't understand why one would buy frozen soup, but at least it didn't have random ingredients like those in plastic containers. So, I added some water to it to dilute it and made a thinner soup. I then added it to some slightly-undercooked-just-the-way-I-like-it whole wheat pasta :)

The spinachy taste was not prevalent at all, except in the spinach pieces itself. Actually, if you had told me "oh this is a vegetable soup", I would not have guessed spinach. Leek, maybe, or just plain old spring onion. Or chives. Not spinach, though. The soup was creamy-ish though, before I diluted it.

I think I like tomato based pasta, more, mainly out of habit, though.