MORE Lindt!

I need to finish updating about Lindts, from before the trip to MA. There's only two more!

So, Lindt. Cresta Classic. Basically... milk chocolate with a hint of crunchy caramel [I think?]. Pretty normal.

Annnnnddd...

The Lindt Milchnuss Lait-Noisettes, which, for some reason, had a large indent. Again. Why do the blue ones have large indents? I like the intricate lines on it, I suppose.

It was... nutty? This is such a bland post; I apologise for my lack of review for each piece of chocolate. I suppose it is because these two were quite bland in the sense that they were trite flavours/textures.

Spaghetti and a Broken Mug.

I was just about to update when I decided that I would go get my Pink Panther mug and microwave some gingerbread batter. The mug somehow slipped as I was picking it up from inside another bowl, and fell about 10 cm smashing on to the countertop.

Apparently, there had been a lot of oil in the bowl, which inevitably coated my mug. I guess I didn't pick it up properly... I don't recall ever dropping a mug before this one.

So. Now, there are four major pieces left of my mug. You've all seen the mug before in previous posts; it's one of the regular vessels for anything microwaved. It's large enough to use as a bowl. I had breakfast using it today! :(

I ended up microwaving some gingerbread batter with a piece of it anyway. More about that later. I'm wondering what I'm supposed to do with this mug... though my mum is throwing it away tonight. :'(

On the other hand, my actual post today is about what I made for lunch. Spaghetti. Thin whole wheat spaghetti is really yummy, just plain [and a tad undercooked. I love undercooked spaghetti!!]. But, I made a sauce anyway...

Ingredients:

Drained spaghetti water

3-4 HEAPED tbsp tomato paste [PASTE. Not sauce.]

Dried oregano

2-4 tbsp white vinegar

1/4 of an onion

Two mashed up veggie burger patties [I got sick of Boca burgers so I'm trying to use up what I have left before I go to college]

NO SALT.

Garlic

Method: Stick everything in the pot [the water should still be around 100 degrees C] and let it simmer for a while. Then, pour it on the spaghetti, and consume.

YAY for basic! R.I.P. my mug.

Breakfast at the Comfort Inn

I'm still talking about Boston. Eh, I suppose it's a good thing since I haven't actually eaten anything worth noting, except half a "German Apple Pancake" from the Ritz yesterday with EY, but since I had run there, I didn't bring a camera.

The breakfast at the Comfort Inn was nice, considering that for the past two days, I had been eating stale raisin bagels and mini muffins at the other hotel... with utterly no nutritional value. I went ellipticalling at around 7am since I hadn't run in AGES but I was honestly really tired. Anyway. I ended up drinking a ton of milk and eating a lot of food.

They had these egg patty thingys, which is basically a thin cylinder of some egg material that you microwave for 45 seconds and stick between some toasted English muffins. Come to think of it, I have no idea what that egg patty is. It could be leftover egg pieces from the day before, mashed together and pressed through a mould. It could be some premade egg and maltodextrin mixture. There's probably PHO in it. I don't want to think about it. I love toasted flour products! I ate a piece of processed cheese in the sandwich even though I dislike processed cheese... but I suppose this is some sort of comfort food, since way back when I actually like Mc.D in HK, my brother and I used to get this if we were early enough to get to the shopping centre before 11am. Usually we weren't.

They had a waffle maker so I made some waffles which were really airy and too crispy for me. They actually tasted like inflated wafers without the layered creamy filling. Which I guess wasn't too bad.

Waffle maker!

My brother didn't finish half of his cinnamon bun so I ate it. It was too bready so it conflicted with my previous cinnamon bun experience at Cinnabon, where the cinnamon bun was like a huge buttery pudding thing with an avalanche of icing.

Another sandwich, because I got bored of waiting for the rest of the family. It didn't help, though, because I ended up making tea for my grandpa, coffee for my dad, and waitressing pieces of bread and waffle around to them. Even though we were literally 3 steps away from the food table.

One thing I don't understand: I used one plate. One cup. Everyone else in my family is INCAPABLE of using one plate and one cup. They all used at least three plates. Maybe three cups. One for juice and one for milk and one for tea, I suppose. I don't understand, because I usually eat more than the other members of my family do. So, if using ONE plate and ONE cup is so simple for me, why is such a difficult task for them!? It's not even like what we were eating was going to ruin a plate by drenching it in gravy or something. Like I said, when I go to college, I'm just going to bring my own ceramic plate/mug and metal spoon and try set an example so that we, as consumers, won't be so wasteful.

Chelo's

Thursday the 22nd of July: Chelo's for dinner. Though we were driving from Weymouth MA to Seekonk MA, the GPS told us to drive through RI... so we did, and on the outskirts, we happened across this restaurant, at which we had a great dinner. I don't understand why NJ and NY have all these toll roads, whereas we someone managed to avoid tolls everywhere else...

"Stuffies" appears to be a RI concept. We didn't get it; not my loss though since it's apparently this giant stuffed clam. My brother should've ordered it though; he was sort of regretting it. Eh, next time.

Warm bread rolls.

My dad got some French cow pie thing, which I believe is another RI dish. According to my brother, it was dry and too "meaty", because he was comparing it with the famous Australian Meat Pie. The mashed potato was really nice, though, and the CORN WAS AMAZING.

My grandpa got steak. He attained his goal of being able to live the "American Dream", which, for him, means consuming some steak with vegetables and mashed potato. This stuff, if done authentically in China [which I kind of doubt], is really expensive. Here, though, it's an average meal.

My mum got some seafood pasta, ate a few bites, and left the rest for the next day because she "wasn't hungry". This is why I DON'T order when we go out to eat. My mum barely ever gets through half of her meal... my sister never finishes her kids meal... my brother finishes about 50% of the time...

My brother got a "bananaberry salad", wherein the banana pieces are actually fried banana chips. They were with a balsamic dressing and a balsamic strawberry dressing. I don't like balsamic dressing. I like to use balsamic vinegar as an ingredient for jam and baked items, because it's just used to accent the flavour of everything else, but I honestly dislike the taste of balsamic vinegar itself. But not too deeply... I can tolerate most foods. Except liquorice. Anyway, I digress.

My curly fry swan!

Joe's American Bar & Grill

Such an iconic name. I wonder how filled-to-capacity this chain restaurant was, during the 2008 elections?

We went to the Braintree Mall on Wednesday the 21st, after visiting schools in Cambridge, and I honestly think that I shouldn't've ordered. In a family of 6 [for now], we should always order 4 items in an American restaurant. We have never finished 5 items, let alone six. Usually, I'm the one who doesn't order, simply because there is no main dish that I can eat due to the animal pieces. Also, though, I usually am the one who likes side dishes anyway [think salad, the bread, mashed potato... you know].

That day, my dad didn't order but I did, just to "change it up a little", though in all honesty, neither of us should've ordered. I got the spinach and artichoke dip, which is basically ubiquitous in any American grill style restaurant. In fact, if it wasn't for the seafoods section of the menu, one'd think that he/she had just walked into Applebees with different decor. Or Chili's with different decor. Or TGI with different decor. That's the problem I have with American restaurants. Sure, they offer a sense of "homeliness", but they also use the same cookie cutter. Except, Joe's American apparently makes all their food from scratch, whereas TGI reheats it.

My brother got chicken fajitas. I wish I could have a corn tortilla for once in my life instead of flour tortillas...

These are the best oyster crackers. Ever. Someone needs to send me a box of these. NO, NOT THE "Premium" brand oyster crackers [those have PHO]. It HAS to be this brand!!!!

My grandpa doesn't like coleslaw. This coleslaw wasn't as oily as the one from Clark's but I don't think I'm a huge fan of not-sour-enough-and-too-fatty coleslaw.

My brother's clam chowder. Okay, I tried some of the soup part. It was okay. Creamy. I like corn chowder more.

Spinach and artichoke dip with fatty cheese. Funny how we turn two vegetables into heart attacks, right? It was really creamy and definitely tasted more real than the kind from Applebee's. I'm serious. There were actual chunks of artichoke that LOOKED like chunks of artichoke! The pita chips were too salty, though. I liked how they gave us some celery with it, because at least that's a little different from the other stores out there, which probably don't even stock fresh celery.

My mum got this fish thingy with a corn and cucumber salad, which was quite amazing since I never imagined that the two could get moshed together so yummily.

My sister got a cheese pizza, with thin crust. It was amazing crust - look at the grill marks on the back! The topping wasn't that interesting though, and it was drenched in lipids.

Joe's American Bar & Grill, 250 Granite St. Braintree Mall, Braintree MA.

CANDY STORE OUTSIDE!

MIT Burritos!

I love MIT, even though I'm not going there for college. I might go for grad school, but that's another story... but the burrito really was nice. Except for the fact that my mum held up the line of 20+ people because she was trying to order a chicken burrito but they didn't have chicken, and she kept pointing to the trays of fillings without comprehending anything the cook was saying. In short, my mum's bad English cut a few minutes off everyone else's life...

The burritos were worth it, though, and even though I forgot the name of the store, it's the one across the road from the admissions office on 77 Massachusetts Ave. I got the beans and cheese and rice one, with guacamole and salsa. And lettuce. Fresh burritos are always so much more satisfying than reheated ones from the frozen food aisle...

Clark's

I'm just gonna randomly blog about each day on the day trip we had. Actually, when riffling through the photos from the past year, I found a bunch of stuff in April that I never got around to blogging about since there were AP exams...[did you notice that there is no April archive? That's because I had too much to study] but I'll save those for when the time is appropriate. Anyway.

Apparently, New Haven is famous for its "apizza", which is basically some thin crust pizza with clams on it, and/or other stuff. Actually, anything clammy or with seafood is considered a New Haven or CT delicacy.

While my family was sitting in the Yale info session/tour, I walked around downtown New Haven. The first store I see? Starbucks. I walk around more. I see a zillion restaurants. Some advertised "NY style" pizza and other Italian food. Another was named "College Wine". There was a vegetarian restaurant called "Claire's", which seemed mildly interesting. There was even a "Hunan"-esque shop with bad English, and a Cheese Shop [named "Cheese Shop"].

There were no little shops selling seafood, let alone apizza.

So, that was quite upsetting. I ended up walking into Clark's because the front window advertised "fried clams", which would mean that PERHAPS there was apizza, right?

Wrong. The first waitress had no idea what apizza was... and said that they didn't have anything with clams OR seafood in the restaurant. I asked another waitress, and she said that, no, the nearest apizza was a few blocks away [Later, we drove by on the way to the highway, and we literally jumped out of the car on the one way street and ran over to Sally's Apizza to buy some apizza... but it turned out that Sally's isn't open until 5pm. It was around 4pm at the time.]

However, she DID say that they had fried clams [oh! the sign was right!], and they were actually "clam strips" and not legit whole clams. Either way, I bought them... with fries and coleslaw [it was this package thing] for around $11. This is truly quality over quantity. If you think about the amount of stuff you can get at a gross monopolistical putrid place like McD. for $11, it's probably seven times more than what we got. This is why cuisine is disappearing. People want the cheap stuff since it "tastes basically the same". However, the processes and labours involved are sharply distinct, you could cut a piece of rough celery with it! I actually interacted with the waitresses, whereas at McD it's just... placing your order of reheated rainforest and coal. Sigh.

Both waitresses were really nice, and there seemed to be a huge selection of ice cream and bakery stuff there, too. I didn't take too many pictures.

I ate some fries and the coleslaw with a piece of warm bread [which my mum brought, so it had been in the car for six hours, which explains the high average kinetic energy of the molecules in the bread]. I also ventured to try some batter from the clam since I don't eat clams. I tried the super small pieces, because those are the ones that are basically batter pieces. It was good batter!

My brother actually fell in love with fried seafood. As in, he got fried scallops at Faneuil Hall, and MORE fried clam strips on the way back when we passed by CT again on the way home.

Also, I like tartar sauce.