Kraft is Damn Crafty...

Let's put it this way.

Kraft has a new arts and crafts project in town...it's painting Cadbury's damn Easter eggs, now.
Cadbury is Ka-blam! Ca-burying what's left of its originality.
Kraft CADded more to its monopolistic inventory.
Cadbury is caddying all its creme eggs in another basket.
Cadbury is burying all its creme eggs into another CADdie.
Thus, Cadbury... gettin' buried in Kraft's caddie... left to die.

Kraft was crafty, and bought Cadbury.

Okay. I read way back, in September, that Cadbury saw Kraft's offer to buy them as an insult. I was extremely happy that Cadbury was so defiant! I emailed them, telling them to keep it up.
A few days ago, I found out that Cadbury was owned by Kraft. Since February. This reminds me of the time I found out that Snapple stopped using HFCS, and I was only a few months late, too. This is actually pretty good, considering I don't really keep up with food news [or any news, really...] so discovering it online using previously acquired information is pretty nifty. ANYWAY. I emailed them, with this:

"I am extremely completely irrevocably INFURIATED that you, Kraft, have bought Cadbury. Gee, thank you for being a monopoly."

So. This is what I got back:

"

Thank You for Contacting Us! Dear Charlotte, Thank you for visiting http://www.kraft.com/ . I appreciate you taking the time to e-mail us and let us know about this situation. We always like to acknowledge when our consumers provide us with information that can help us serve you better. I'll make sure to forward your information onto the appropriate staff. Again, thanks for contacting us, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy our products. Kim McMiller Associate Director, Consumer Relations ~~TLXEA_20700759~~N ------------------------------------------------------------------"

She obviously didn't read my message. "I hope you'll continue to enjoy our products" contradicts exactly what I had commented. If it wasn't for Vegemite... I'd say "bye bye, Kraft." I don't really know why I dislike Kraft. The food isn't bad. I lived on Kraft peanut butter in Australia. I think it's just that they buy out smaller companies, and streamline everything so that there is no more diversity.

But a lot of companies do that, so why am I bashing Kraft? I really don't know. Call me biased. Off my Kraftckers.

Ferrero Rondnoir

Erm. Pop art. Pops in your mouth, not in your hands.

I was skimming through my Food folder because today, I did not eat anything remotely interesting. Okay okay, I lied. I had a burrito, with mango salsa. Oh, and green bean soup. And purple cabbage. However, I hadn't taken any pictures of that stuff today, and I KNEW that I had stuff in my Food folder about which I hadn't blogged.

And here is one, from January. The dark chocolate Ferrero. The Rondnoir. As a digression... it's rather funny how the first search result for "Ferrero Rocher" ends up with the USA company title of this, er, Italian brand. I suppose it's now more American than Italian. Sigh.

So, this was six months ago, before I knew how to take food pictures. Actually, to be fair, I'm still not great at taking pictures. But, at least I now take pictures of the interior of the food...
So, now, I shall explain the interior of the Rondnoir, since I did not take any pictures of it. Imagine... a cookie-like crunchy exterior, which confuses you, as the exterior looked like hard sprinkles rather than airy cookie crumbs. Imagine the gentle shell of wafer... and in your head, you're musing about how cookie crumbs can stick to a wafer. It doesn't seem possible. Perhaps it is due to the thin veil of hard, shiny, chocolate coating that binds all the crumbs together? Maybe it is the sheer magic of chocolate, the glue that binds the world together? KABLAM! You're suddenly thrown into oblivion, as you taste a sweet, soft, gooey, chocolatey spread... it's like chocolate jam, sans texture. No, no, it's texture is so utterly completely smooth, it feels as though you are skydiving. Or lounging in melted fudge. Or chilled ganache. Yes, ganache is the perfect descript- wait! What is this hard sphere doing in your mouth?! You bite it... and realise that it is a centre of bittersweet chocolate, the perfect accompaniment -or, rather, all the others [the cookie crumbs, wafer, ganache] were the perfect accompaniment to this frivolous finale. It's gone. You have devoured a copy of what everyone else, including you, has deemed as beauty. You hold the wrapper to your tongue, just to check that every atom has been exterminated. Your breaths inhale every modicum of life from the remnants. Your ears contain the final crinkles, never to be heard again.
Okay, you get the picture. Or, the taste. I'm sure a zillion other blogs have blogged about this... but you know that mine has, by far, the most sensual experience.

Rollin' up Graves'.

Short message about Rolos and Graves' Disease.

My previous calc teacher, as you know, kept candy in a drawer for we students, every single day. At one point, I spied this thing that looked like a chocolate, with a golden foil wrapper. It was really sticky, with the caramel inside sticking to my teeth the way benzene sticks together.
Anyway... a few weeks later, at the Hershey store, I realised that they were actually ROLOs. I think that these are significant because I wanted to give one to AP but I ended up chickening out.
Today, I thought of them just because, as usual, I am thinking about food. However, I'm also thinking about not thinking about food, because I actually need to lose 350000 Calories. Okay, maybe not exactly 350000 Calories, but in the past few months, I have gained at least 2 to 3 kgs because my metabolism is slowing down loads, thanks to Graves' Disease. This is a good thing, because it proves that methimazole is working for me, but it sucks for my body since I'm storing everything as glycogen and triglycerides. Tack on a bunch of parties... and plain old exercise doesn't really cut it.
Hmm... at least I know that I can change this. Technically, I'm still of an "average" mass. No such thing as a lost cause. I'm trying to be optimistic.

MS's Grad Party - Desserts!

Okay I lied. I WILL talk about MS's grad party, because it was truly the one with the most ethnically diverse foods [well. Apart from mine :P, but mine doesn't count]. This month, June, has been the most prodigal month of my life. No kidding. All that EXCESS food ["XS" as my chem teacher used to write, while we balanced out equations]... all that variety...

This is LEGIT Americana. Eat and party. Oh, and run away from exercise.

This is the stuff I've been missin' out since 2006, though I don't really know if I would've wanted partying to interfere with schoolwork. Maybe it was just better that I used to be antisocial, because by being antisocial, I would get all my work done.

But now that HS is over, I can party all I want!! This morning, JM came over for breakfast, I went for a super-long walk with MZ, JM and my bro and I went to the weight room... and it was all real chill, just hanging out and letting time slide by, without a sense of anxiety and procrastination.

Okay, so the dessert at MS's party was really sweet! She is Philippino, so there was a ton of ethnic food, which I love. Oh, there was a whole roasted pig... as a side note. MP commented on the irony that I found it enticing, but I basically blog about anything that interests me, food-wise... so here it is!

Glutinous rice pudding, with some brown sugar topping that was the reason the pudding tasted good. [I like corner and side pieces].

Mango trifle. It. Was. The. Best. Thing. There. Layers of mango and cream, patched up with sponge cake and crushed sweet biscuit pieces, and a crunchy top...

Pieces of trifle, with watermelon and the rice pudding.

I think that this was sweet grass jelly drink, with colourful tapioca balls inside. I am not sure, though.

Plantain wrapped in sweet pastry. It actually tasted like sweet potato pastry, for a second, but then I saw the seeds and the yellow filling. Oh, and the texture was not sweet potatoey. Plantains are awesome!

Eggplant parm; glutinous rice flour sweet bun, with a piece of processed cheese [It was sticky and nice until I got to the cheese]; soft taro pudding, coconut rice pudding - second favourite dessert there; some mini rice cake [see below] that I didn't like as much; upside down flan spongecake.

Another rice pudding, above which is the mini rice cake that I didn't really fancy.

Sponge cake! With flan on top! I love flan, in general, and the fact that this cake is absolutely beautifully shaped truly helped me to more helpings of it...

Plate of everything. The one in the bottom left is the coconut rice pudding, and I took the corner piece, with the crusty top and sides. I think that I love corner pieces because it has the widest range of textures.

Berry Nice Morning.

With ice cream dollop.
Without ice ceam dollop.

I'm gonna let two grad parties slide [too many pictures]... and instead talk about berry pancakes and smoothies. Yesterday morning, my brother and I went to JM's house to make some berry smoothies for breakfast and watch the movie 21. We brought along a lot of raspberries, some gooseberries, and a few blueberries from our yard. JM has this mulberry tree, so the smoothies we made ended up being berry berryful. Actually, I can't really take credit for what JM's sister and my brother made, with milk and ice and berries. Oh, and maple ice cream, once we realised that the smoothie tasted way too sour without a shot of sugar.

JM and I, on the other hand, made some berry pancakes with the leftovers. We used this flat-pancake recipe but omitted the baking powder because apparently last time, the pancakes had turned out sour. JM actually has a griddle! GRIDDLES ARE AMAZING! Although I never butter or oil the pan when making pancakes, JM does. I personally didn't see much of a difference...

The only problem with not having some sort of raising agent was that they tasted more like crepes, and the berries had to be flattened in order to actually get something that looked uniformly flat. Actually, we had dumped in too many berries in the first place, and there proberry ["probably"] was more berry than batter. I liked that they weren't sweet, though.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning :)

Caramel Nut Brownie Luna Bar

What does that look like? A brownie? Cake? Bar cookie? Squished chocolate mille-feuille? Nah... it's actually a Caramel Nut Brownie Luna Bar. From a package. Factory made. Yet, if you had cut it up nicely and garnished a 2cm x 2cm chunk of it with a dollop of cream, you'd get this thing called a "gourmet" pastry. In high society [and middle/lower class, too, I suppose], plating matters so much. Which is rather stupid, since most foods end up looking pretty much the same in your mouth, and elsewhere. I've never really had a thing for plating. Plating makes food look too dead and ornamental. Food looks so fragile and I feel like I'm guiltily eating a sacred dinosaur bone. Anyway.

What a sexist wrapper. As though women don't like Clif bars... sigh. I'm sure guys like this too.

Looks delicious, tastes delicious! There are way too many Calories for a 48g bar but whatever... It is better than eating a cookie.

My Grad Party!

Too much dessert from Costco.

YES APPLE PIE!! Though, I like pumpkin pie more. SD likes apple pie.

Fried rice [one vegetarian], cold noodles, grilled corn, water gun, croutons, POTATO SALAD WITH APPLE!, some weird cow-flesh thing [in the background].

Snack table: trail mix [I made it], fried corn kernels, tortillas, Goldfish crackers, Doritos, crudites and honey mustard dip [I made it], mango salsa, potato chips, toasted pine nuts.

I made rice pudding for the first time of my life. SC and JM liked it. :D YAY

Crudites!

Pasta with thyme and Monterey jack cheese!!

MORE RICE PUDDING!!!!!

I needa get better at estimating the amount of food to make. We had pretty much 60% of the food left, after the party. and maybe 80% of the dessert. This does not bode well with the fact that I will be home [since school is over] for the next few weeks, as I will be consuming that food.

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!

Hershey's Hugs

There is always a way to turn something into a party. Seriously, in our English class, we had our final project, in which we read a book and explain stuff to the class [yeah, it was vague]. I don't really want to get into the details for every person's presentation, but NC brought in Hershey's Hugs, which I can now add to my "New Chocolate" list [on the sidebar]!

The Hershey's Hugs were extremely pretty, as they were nicely striped. Although the inside was plain ol' chocolate, the outside white chocolate was surprisingly overwhelming. The whole thing had a bite of caramel [though when I checked the ingredients, I found nothing caramel related... so it could've been the taste of white chocolate that confused me. Though, my taste buds honestly felt as though they were tasting a hint of caramel]. As usual, they melted pretty fast. If you had moulded a few of these into a spherical shape, sifted some cocoa powder over it, and offered it to some person on the street, he/she would most likely state that it was a chocolate truffle.

School Partayyyzzzz!

I'm getting fat.

Okay, that's the cliche thing to say, for a girl, no less, but it's true. The methimazole is slowing down my metabolism, so in theory I should be eating less. However, since we are PARTAYYYING in school [and out of it], I'm still eating a lot of food. Plus, I can't run that fast anymore, so for the same amount of time devoted to running, I burn fewer Calories.

So, on the last two days of school, I had a party in Calculus, Art, English, French, and since we all skipped 6th and 7th period for the senior prank [recreating the Woodstock festival], where there was food, I basically had a party every period of the day. Though, in the whole year, we've never had a party in physics.

But first... at the Environmental Centre yesterday, I was helping out with dyeing bracelets with natural dyes. The Beats way back in the 60s used to do this - using beets - nothing beats this beet typo... turning beet red, yet, Enviro Centre? [ha. ha. ha. That was not one of my "beetter" puns. Wow this is getting really bad.]

So, Calc - bagel party with a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and spinach and artichoke dip!

Art - brownies, cookies, and a rainbow cupcake! [Thanks, AT]

English - Bagel Party - whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and a Boston Cream doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts. There are lots of sprinkles. The pastel coloured ones are actually prettier than the rainbow coloured ones.

French - MG, who is from France, made these brownie-like confections that are a cross between a brownie and a crepe. Seriously, they were awesome! I also ate a bunch of chocolate Munchkins [the only flavour I like] and Sour Patch gummies.

Woodstock - chips. They had cream soda in beer bottle shaped glass bottles, and fake cigarettes. However, I did not partake in the pseudo-druggin' since I'm straight edge [hahahaha].

Mad Cool Grad Partayyyyyz

I have not updated in ages due to:

1. School. I actually had 5 projects.

2. Grad Party planning, and shopping for grad stuff [presents, shoes, dress. Bleh.]

3. Graduation reshopping because the dress I had gotten earlier was too formal. I can not tell the difference between a sundress and a prom dress. Unfortunately, I needed the former and had bought the latter.

So, the past week in pictures... [I don't know why my formatting got messed up, but bear with it].

1. First garden snow peas, thanks to my dad :D We also got our first two strawberries, and a bunch of blueberries.

2. JB's grad party, 19th - pasta was really hard at the top, but not crispy. So, it was hard to bite, but I liked it. Something I noticed is that nobody's pasta has herbs in it... I'm gonna put basil or oregano in my pasta dish at my party :)

JB's dessert. Costco on a plate, pretty much. I didn't know the ingredients of the stuff in the cake [turns out there was trans fat], so I think I should be more wary, next time. Well, now I've decided that I'm not gonna get a red velvet cake for my grad party. Actually, I think that I'm not gonna get a cake. Just get cookies. And pie.


MJ's Grad Party - 19th - This is the best damn picture ever... you can see the mood - summer chillaxin'. My first legitimate pina colada, and it was great. The crushed ice added a nice touch to it and I could definitely taste the coconut and the pineapple. To cap it all off [haha. Think bottlecaps], there was no alcohol! Yes!


MJ's grad party - 19th - Seriously good mashed potato with peas. Funny how no one is making mashed potato with apple [That's what I ate the first time I had it...], then two types of rice - the browner one had some kinda herb in it that I didn't really like, but the rice wasn't too mushy, which is good. The pasta and cheese was really great. Every party has a pasta dish. And cake. It's just a trend I've noticed.

The garlic bread was okay. The fried plantain was simply delicious... I couldn't decide whether it was savoury or sweet, but the inside was soft and gooey while the outside was crispy. After learning about it through The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver last summer, I've honestly been interested in trying it out. And it was great! MJ's got great food. Seriously. She even had green puffed rice and marshmallow treats, but I forgot to take a picture of most of the food I ate. Plus, I was in the pool the majority of the time.

16th - MP and LS's chem project was about baking, so they made carrot muffins and sourdough bread. I'm not in their class but MP gave me some :) The carrot cake was really nice without the icing, and the bread... It didn't really taste like sourdough; it was crumbly, dry, and the crust tasted the same as the inside. I don't know if I have the authority to make a statement on the definition of sourdough, as I have only had it once before in my life. That time, it tasted much more different from what I ate that day.


13th - NYC with my mum. We were dress shopping as I have stated earlier, and for lunch, we went to one of the NY-style restaurants, where a pound of food costs a certain amount. We went to Speedy's, which is around 36th and 6th, I think [Not sure.] A pound of food costs $9.50 there. I suppose if one was obsessed with eating salads, one could get a ton of lettuce and tomato for a pretty low price.

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush...

This morning, I got back from my blood test and decided to have some mulberry yoghurt. My friend JM has a mulberry tree in her yard, and she's been feeding us with A LOT of mulberries, which has been awesome since I have never had mulberries before. They're these tiny [as in, Centrum sized] berries that look like mini blackberries, but taste completely different. For one thing, they're not very sweet, and the texture is smooth, save the grittiness because of the puny seeds. My mum added some sugar to the mulberries to stop them from getting mouldy [after all, these are pretty wild mulberries. They aren't cultivated].

This was definitely a change from the typical strawberry or blueberry yoghurt. I'm not even that fond of strawberry yoghurt.

Anyway, now I'm consuming dried jujube berries [red dates, hong zao], because my mum says that they have a "high iron content" [well, not entirely true], which would help replenish my lost blood today. There's also a lot of vitamin C, of which I wouldn't mind having 400% the daily value, since I want to be extra protected against colds or illness, especially as I have Graves' Disease. I remember during the last few weeks of October, during college applications [2 E.A. and 1 E.D.], I basically consumed over 800% of my daily vitamin C every single day in the form of citrus, Centrum, granola bars/cereals, and Zipfizz [I don't know why my mum bought so much Zipfizz, way back]. That, coupled with a ton of caffeine, made my hands shake uncontrollably, and I felt exhausted and irritable. Luckily, I don't have to go through that again... until college...

My doctor told me to cut caffeine down, though, since I have Graves' Disease.