Pot of Poop...

I got duped today.
Well, I didn't. I just was naive enough to eat something without reading the ingredients, because I trusted the company. Hershey's. I TRUSTED them. But I guess I was wrong.
HFCS is the second ingredient. PHO is the third ingredient.
The first ingredient is sugar. DO YOU CALL THAT CHOCOLATE?!?!?!?
... I guess in the U.S. of A they call it "chocolate". Sigh.
So halfway through consuming one, I read the ingredients, and then became extremely biased against them.

So, in order to give a less biased review of these "Pot-of-Gold" candies, I guess I have to revert back to what I was thinking when I took my first few bites. In all honesty, I could not taste any chocolate. None. Zip. Zero. No chocolate taste at all. I could taste a bit of the pecan, though there was no strong aroma or anything... it was in little pieces which added a nice crunch, but it was not chunky. The caramel was the majority of the piece; it was sweet, very gooey... quite nice, I guess. It's... about 48 calories per piece which kinda sucks. Overall... I regret having eaten one. :(

Potato Poem + Work

I have a poetry "unproject" for English, so I've been spending the day doing it, going to track, and going to my doctor for a checkup because my track times are getting seriously abnormal. Apparently, there's nothing wrong with my heart rate or blood pressure [even though I personally feel that my blood pressure is irregularily high for a track athlete].
Anyway, I found a few food poems that I'm going to use for my "poetry anthology" since, out of all poems [not including songs], food poems are the best. My first meaningful food poem has to be Carol Ann Duffy's Valentine. [Yeah, it sounds cheesy, but the poem is NOT cliche or sappy. It's onion-y :)]. Today, I found a poem about potatoes, onions, a sandwich, and Thin Mints [I despise Girl Scout Cookies on a moral basis - why sell cookies loaded with CRAP?!?!? - so they will never be talked about again!]. I think there's going to be a copyright issue if I just paste the poems here, so here are the MLA cited parts for the three of the [yes, three. not four.] poems; go rummage through the internet fridge.

Hamby, Barbara. "Ode to the Potato." Babel. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2004. The Writer's Alliance. American Public Media, 14 Mar. 2009. Web. 30 Mar. 2010. .

Neruda, Pablo, and George D. Schade. "Ode to the Onion." Fifty Odes. Austin, Texas: Host Publications, 1996. 145-48. Google Books. Google. Web. 30 Mar. 2010.

Oh and I totally forgot about this one: http://catandgirl.com/?p=728

It's a villanelle, about a sandwich. I just hope that it's soy or gluten "animal" pieces in there.

My Brother's Birthday

Happy Birthday!






This looks like a plate, but it's actually a bowl. How cool is that...!? :D

Dove dark chocolate.

In our food drawer I found a piece of Dove chocolate. I doubt that my family has bought Dove chocolate since...2005, if ever. So, I assumed my dad got it from some company party or something. Turns out my brother got it from a sweet sixteen party, but I don't think that he wants it. Anyway. Piece number...13.
No grittyness, very smooth, not very bitter, but it was dark chocolate. It's okay, but it's kinda small. The wrapper was really thick and pretty. It was nice :) but maybe a bit above average. I hate the whole rating thing but maybe I should start rating? However, it's just my opinion, so I don't want to sound like a conceited ["con-sye-ted"] gourmand. So... 7/10? Eh, I dunno. Because in this case, everything that isn't dark chocolate would definitely get below 5. So, my rating system kinda sucks. But... anyway, Dove is up there.

I just realised that any chocolate probably would get at least a 7/10 because I love chocolate, and it's really difficult to rate it. So, scratch the "7/10" nonsense!

Plate of Updates.

Here's a plate of updates [it rhymes!]
1. I made an ambigram title.
2. I deleted my "hamster-cute-pet" gadget [at the very bottom of the page] because it spammed my blog. Everytime I came here, it would redirect me to another website. I couldn't even save anything!! I couldn't even delete my gadget; every time I clicked on "Edit" at the gadget place, and the new window popped out, it would redirect. So it was a game of cat and mouse - or should I say, me vs. Spammy the hamster. So, I ended up doing this F5 STOP F5 STOP F5 STOP until I finally stopped on the page JUST before it redirected. And I deleted my hamster. Sigh.
3. My grandpa came from China and brought a lot of food. I'll be updating those, at some point.
4. More gross icing.5. My sister's elementary school Multicultural night! From 6:30 to 7:50 I ate a lot of food. I could see more that I could stomach [hardeeharhar]. Here they are, with captions:
Quince and fresh cheese. QUINCE. "They dined on mince and slices on quince" - The Owl and the Pussycat [which sounds kinda wrong now that I think about it]. I've ALWAYS WANTED TO TRY QUINCE. AND NOW I HAVE!! And it's quite good... it's like a super soft gummy candy. Or, some kinda strawberry jam... I don't remember which ethnicity it was, though. It was next to the Polish table, though.
Spicy samosas. They were pretty good. Indian.
Potato perogies. So. Good. LOVED it. Polish.
Mini pancakes with sweet cottage cheese. Polish?
Soda bread. Irish, of course. I gotta make that one day, since I'm Irish by birth.
Brazilian cheese puffs. They. Were. SO GOOD. Just like the cheese thingy [I wish I remembered the name] at St. Etoile Bakery in Cwb Hong Kong. Apparently, they closed though, so I guess I'll never ever get a chance to taste those again. Actually, does anyone know what they are? These cheese puff thingys, and they also had a green-tea flavoured one.
Challah. I forgot to eat it after I took a picture of it. Israeli.
Potato cakes. Israeli. It was too salty for me.
YEAHH matzoh with hummus. I love hummus. I love matzoh. Even if I had to eat it for a week. I think I'd be okay. Though A says she hates it. Israeli, duh.
The first chocolate coconut macaroon of my life... was okay. Not chocolatey enough. The original flavour one tasted storebought. Actually, it had that anise flavoury thing [I think that's what it's called? It's that flavour in biscotti], and I despise that flavour. Israeli.
Russian rye bread with beet and onion [so yummy, purple]. I forgot what the brown one and yellow one was. Cheese? They all had onion in them, though. The beet one was the best.
A mixing of cultures. Russian, Israeli, and Mehico.
Russian honey cake. It was so moist and yummy and I loved it.
Russian marshmallows. Vanilla, apple pectin... they tasted like light apple jam, not much vanilla, and kinda gritty because of the caster sugar on the top.
Chocolate. CHOColate. CHOCOLATE. Brazilian. I LOVE IT.No gelatin, either!!!! I don't think that I could make marshmallow puffed rice squares with it, though.
Passionfruit pudding, Brazilian. At first, I thought it was mango, because it really does taste like mango. This is the first time I've tried passionfruit.
Rita's Italian ice, which, ironically, was in the "American" food section, along with cookies [below. The image looks like a painting...], Dunkin, bottled water]. This was the first time I tried Rita's [there were only two flavours, mango... and some other fruity flavour], since on the 20th when we went to Rita's [for the "free Rita's"], they were closed :(. I think I had 5 cups of the ice. No kidding. I kept count. In the midst of consuming my 4th cup, I dropped my mini spoon from the passionfruit pudding, and I didn't want to get another one since that would suck for the environment, so I half drank it, half used a ripped piece of the cup. Yes, I am resourceful.
We brought in a aluminium container of fried rice [notice I had nothing from the Chinese or Italian sections... because we eat that too often, even though I do love both cuisines]. Woah the cookie on the bottom right looks VERY painted/drawn. Seriously. I used one small plate, 5 small paper cups, three plastic mini cups and spoons, and one mini cake wrapper. Not terrible considering the amount of food I ate... Oh, I also drank Brazilian soda, Haitian orange and fruit soda, Belgian waffles, cheese, flat Russian pancakes, sugar cane, Haitian fudge, Israeli noodle pudding, and some doughnut. The doughnut wasn't that great though.

Icky Sweet Stuff.

You probably think you're misreadin' the title, or that I made a typo. Nope. There IS such thing as something sweet that is gross [what?!]. In the past week, it's been buttercream icing and Gobstoppers.
Something bugging me for the past few days has been this: If ice cream is basically sugar and cream, why do I love ice cream, but dislike buttercream icing? I mean, it's beautiful to look at, smooth, sweet, and fatty. I don't think that I can ever like Costco cake icing. Or Shoprite cake icing. But why? I figured that if I froze it, it would be ice cream.
This morning, though, I realised that ice cream has a ton of air in it [up to 50% in some brands...], which means that it's all light and fluffy. Buttercream icing, on the other hand, has much less air.
Costco seems to use more icing than cake when making its signature gargantuan cakes. I'm serious. From the bottom up, it's: 1.5cm sponge cake, 1cm mousse filling, 1.5cm sponge cake, 2cm white buttercream icing, then 1cm decorative coloured buttercream icing. No exaggerating!
That is 97.7% icing. The rest is bits of cake that was stuck to the icing. I think this was my brother's slice of cake... I just mashed all the icing together. That's a lot, for 1/40th of the cake...
The second thing kinda bugging me is Nestle's Willy Wonka Gobstoppers. I try to stay away from Nestle food, but I think my sister got these from school... and they've been sitting there in the drawer for a while. The last time I had a Gobstopper... was when I was 10? Anyway. The whole "oh lookie there they change colours!!!" claim is completely false. Unless you call fading away changing colours. Oh, in that case, may I say, bread changes colours too; it starts out nice and brown, then gets all white because of the mould after a week of sittin' out of the fridge. And it eventually turns brownish or blueish, depending on the mould growing. Yep. Need another example? Ice pop. Starts out [hard and] blue, let's say, for artificial blueberry flavour. Then, it turns white as you suck on it [no innuendo, intended]. So, a change from red to light red is not that big of a deal, seriously. No need to advertise it, Nestle.
I didn't finish the packet of candy - which is pretty novel since I usually eat packet after packet after packet after... yeah you get the idea. Well, what are the chances I find a mutant in my packet of 11 or 12 Gobstoppers?

The past two weeks.

Yes, I know I haven't updated in so long.
All that homework... and I've been sleeping at 9pm for the past week because I've been really tired, and my track times are getting progressively worse. I might have exercise induced asthma; I'm not sure. Well, things that have happened lately... my sister's birthday, Chipotle!
Okay here:
Crispy clear.



I have to make a point here. My brother cut the cake from Costco before taking a picture of it. YOU DO NOT cut the cake before taking a picture!! And the cake... hm... I liked the strawberry mousse but I'm avoiding [yes we still have it, two weeks later - come on, it lasts THAT long because of the preservatives] because of the HFCS and PHO.


MY CAKE!!!!! I spent two and a half hours [from 10 to 12:30] making it, while Niffy was sleeping. The vanilla layer kinda screwed up, but it was. Extremely. Moist. Better that the chocolate layer, anyway. I used a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar in it, because the recipe said so. I can't really tell if it made a difference, but you could NOT detect any vinegar-ness in it. The icing... Well, it was melted chocolate icing in the middle, then peanut butter icing on top, and vanilla butter+sugar icing on the sides. The Nifster loves icing.




Those are fork-marks, checkin for done-ness.