Chocolate Turkish Taffy

Yippee, novelty candy! Turkish Taffy is this airy, slightly porous, dense marshmallow-y light sugar candy that is advertised to be snappable. The idea is that you hit the bar against a hard surface, causing it to shatter. Then, you eat the pieces of the bar. I chewed the pieces because that's how I eat candy. The bar had a really clean break, which is interesting for a candy with the consistency of hard caramel and the flavor of cola.



Good candy bar for angry or violent people. And non-angry non-violent people.

It is definitely preferable to hit the candy while it is still wrapped, or else you get chunks all over the floor and table.

"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!

Carriage House Cafe

(No Pictures...but a milestone!)

Brunch: my least favourite meal of the day because it means that I didn't wake up early enough for both breakfast, second breakfast, AND lunch. However, brunch at the Carriage House Cafe this afternoon was quite a relaxing and novel experience.

Carriage House Cafe is a restaurant that offers local food. It is blatantly obvious when pointed out, on Stewart Ave, but is otherwise camoflauged because it has no blatant neon sign and it is painted an olive green that matches the nearby trees. It kind of looks like a barn, and the front door is difficult to open. The interior is both bubolic (with stone brick walls, lazy fans, and a winter scene painted on a giant saw) and old-school modern (with typewriters, a turtle lamp, old-style radio, and glass tables), if that's even a style.

It was really busy when we arrived at noon, so we either had to wait upstairs (really pretty, natural lighting, clean, quaint), or sit at the couch. We decided that we might as well eat at the wooden coffee table with the velvet, paisley-seated couch with plump beige cushions in which you could lose yourself (or your wallet, haha). It felt a little uncanny to be about 50 cm lower than everyone else seated at tables. Maybe it just seemed too casual. If the entire restaurant were couches and beanbags... well, then, that's a business plan.

The locally-killed animals included salmon, cow, pig, and rabbit (there may have been others but I don't recall...). As I have never been offered the opportunity to try rabbit, I was in quite a quandary. I like rabbits. They're cute. I frequently consider getting a pet rabbit after I graduate. Heck, a rabbit face is on my login screen! So...no rabbit, rabbit pate, or rabbit sausage? What a eerie feeling, which was soon overwhelmed by my animalistic desires to try new animals and not be a hypocrite (because I eat cows. Why not rabbits?).

I ordered the breakfast sandwich, which was an apple and rabbit sausage, egg (I asked for poached), and salad lettuce, served in house-made ciabatta (one side coated in butter, the other side with some mildly spicy mustard mayonnaise), with fried potato chunks on the side and homemade ketchup. The apple and rabbit sausage was really good. It was slightly peppery, and the apple cuboids were the size of rice grains. The rabbit part was very juicy, chewy, and sausage-like. It was kind of like eating a cow burger patty, but more fatty and chunky. I wonder which part of the rabbit they used. I would assume that the legs would be too muscular, thus rendering the patty too lean if they used it. But then, where do they use? The poached egg were great. The ciabatta was perfectly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, with lots of holes. The butter soaking into the ciabatta made me question why I never buy good butter to put onto my toast - or rather, why I never eat buttered toast in the first place. I also really enjoyed whatever mayonnaise sauce thing they threw on the other half of ciabatta.

The potatoes and ketchup were pretty good. Perfectly fried.

I also tried a slice of bacon which was pretty thick and not very fatty. It was pretty good but a bit too salty.

Overall, I currently do not regret adding rabbit to the list of animals I've consumed, though I think I prefer lamb more. The list is:

Cow

Pig

Chicken

Duck
Goose

Lamb

Various fish (eel, salmon, etc.), but not shark

Various other seafood and crustaceans (clams, mussels, oysters, squid, octopus, in various states of rawness)

Turkey

Quail

Snake

Turtle

Rabbit

Contrary to stereotypes, I have not tried kangaroo or dogs or cats. Possibly because of the stereotypes, I would prefer to keep it that way for now.

Sustainability in the Food Industry

One of the presentations at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Conference was about sustainability in the food industry. I care a lot about sustainability (specifically waste management and reduction), and it has occurred to me that there are careers in this area in food. I think that one of my college application essays said something about that, actually, back when I felt more optimisitc and full of potential.

Ah, here we go:

The chance to learn and research about crop production in relation to both the local biological impacts and domestic and foreign economical aspects would provide me with deep and broad insight. I would have the opportunity to change an agricultural or business practice, although I already frequently boycott or contact companies such as [company name redacted] to recommend that they use less processing in products. As a potential biotechnologist with a detailed understanding of the economy, I aim to promote fresh, varied food that is healthy, beneficial for the environment, and economically viable for efficient production and storage.

Well, that bombastic essay resulted in my rejection to the LSM program, which in retrospect, is a relief. In any case, at the Expo, I went around a bunch of booths asking about their sustainability initiatives, or what people in that area do (i.e. I need a job). Sure, product development is engaging and interesting too, but I would feel more useful to the world by researching or developing more sustainable packaging or food production methods. So let's swivel back to the sustainability presentation.

I got there a bit early and sat in the second row because the first row was occupied by a woman and her daughter. I watched them as they chatted. Soon, it occurred to me that the woman was the one who was giving the speech, and later, it hit me that she was actually extremely important. By this time, I had lost my chance to introduce myself to her, and after her presentation, she and her coworkers left. On the bright side, I had a neat conversation with her 11 or 12 year-old daughter.

So, rule number 1: If the person doesn't look busy, introduce yourself. You could be speaking with the Senior VP of Starbucks. And indeed I could've been.

Dr. Mary Wagner gave an interesting but broad presentation about coffee-growing sustainability efforts by Starbucks. I would've liked to have a chat with her afterwards because I had a lot of questions.

She started off by distinguishing between the Arabica and Robusta beans. Starbucks uses only Arabica beans. My notes say something about the coffee cherries being handpicked, and the only part of the cherry that is kept is the coffee bean. I wanted to ask whether there are efforts to develop applications of coffee pulp and skin (because in the dairy industry, they used to discard whey until they realized that protein powders were an enormous market). This would be the kind of research I'd like to do and would find fulfilling (perhaps). 

The coffee is grown on hilly land +/- 20 degrees from the equator. Coffee is susceptible to this fungus that causes "coffee rust", a disease that has something to do with lack of water. Of course, water (over)usage is a huge problem in the world. There are actually two kinds of processing, dry and wet, and a goal is to make dry-processed coffee taste like the wet-processed version and therefore minimize water usage.

I wonder, do they compost the coffee cherry skins and pulp? Do they use fertilizers? What happens when the nutrients in the soil are gone? Move to a higher patch of land? Doesn't this immensely increase transportation costs?

Apparently, a factor with which Starbucks is currently toying is the growth of coffee plants at higher altitudes. They're trying to figure out how this would affect taste, water usage, growth conditions, etc.

After this flurry of overview, there was time for three questions, so I asked whether the hills from which Starbucks obtains their coffee uses any sort of crop rotation. Apparently not. I also wanted to ask whether the topsoil is affected by coffee planting, and whether there is erosion occurring because of the lack of deep-rooted trees. I mean, I had plenty of questions...enough for a coffee chat. Looks like I'm finally learning about the importance of networking and grown-up/professional, extroverted things like that.

The second presentation was by Dr. Ruben Morawicki, and the idea that stuck with me was this: "A practice can't be "more" or "less" sustainable. It's either sustainable or not." Yet, I think he also meant that there are more "sustainable" processes than others (e.g. superflous water consumption does occur).

There was this spider graph (like this) which is used to compare products based on their energy usages/other metrics. I had never heard of spider graphs before, and I am instantly fond of, and will use, this method for decision making (yes, even for trivial things such as what to have for luncheon).

The third presentation, by Dr. Jason Hill, discussed biofuels. The take-away message was that people oversimplify everything. When someone asks what's "better" for the environment, we need to define "better". Better for the company (more profits, but also less innovation and a shadier public image)?  Better for the consumer (more convenient, but ridiculously expensive, OR, less convenient but cheaper)? Better for the earth (but more difficult to make this practice work on a large scale, therefore contributing no net "betterment")? 

It makes me wonder, and then feel rather helpless.

Citation: Wagner, M, Morawicki, R, Hill, J. Research Needs for a Sustainable Food System. Institute of Food Technologists Conference and Expo 2013. S503 McCormick Place. July 15 2013.

Rulloff's Restaurant

Yay, dinner at a restaurant-bar-type place: Rulloff's. Do I feel like an adult? Do I feel comfortable with a beer at the table (not on my side)?
What a peculiar lifestyle.
We sat at a table next to the only wall-window in the place. Happy Chowder-TV-show type music played in the background, which later switched into some sort of jazzy fling. There were ceiling fans, dim lighting, and a dusty cabinet.

I asked for clam chowder because I've had a fortnight-long craving for it (specifically, in a bread bowl, but they don't have bread bowls). However, I was later told that they had run out from lunch time. This was completely fine with me. I know this happens. At least they make it fresh?
AK (not to be confused with AK from high school) got French Onion Soup which tasted pretty good.

 He also got a pulled pork sandwich and sweet potato fries. The pulled pork sandwich came in a burger bun, which was unexpected but extremely tasty. I had no idea that pulled pork was so succulent and the BBQ
sauce wasn't overwhelmingly sweet. I also haven't had sweet potato fries in 2 years and these were excellent.

 Instead of clam chowder, I got the California burger with potato fries. The burger had a smidge of guacamole and baby sprouts which were pretty good since I've only ever had mung bean sprouts that look like this. The cow part was also really chewy and umami. It was a nice meal except I felt a bit hurried. Maybe I eat too slowly, or maybe the waitress was bored. We weren't left alone for more than 10 minutes at a time. I kinda wish the place was more crowded (though, as primarily(?) a bar, the place was near empty at 7 pm) so that I would've had an entire hour or two to nibble on food and people-watch.

Chicago Food!

More about Chicago Food during the IFT Conference! Man, how I wish I could've stayed here longer to eat more!

1. Giordano's - Special Deep Dish Pizza

Here I was, jumping around excitedly like a 5 year-old at the planetarium! "Oh deep dish pizza! I've stalked you on Wikipedia and Google Images for years... and now I can finally have you!" For a busy, famous restaurant on a sunny Friday afternoon, Giordano's managed to squeeze the 12 of us into one large booth, without reservations and only a 15 minute wait. The food did take a while to arrive, which was completely acceptable. Although there were various other foods on the menu (Italian roast beef sandwiches, soup, thin crust pizza, etc.), we were all set on ordering deep dish pizza. We ordered three medium pizzas and 2 plates of fried calamari + lemon + green beans + onion(?). The calamari was good (but isn't it always?) while I found the green beans to be really soggy. After one is done with the appetizers, the waiter/ess comes and whisks away your plate. We learned this the hard way after JT's plate was nabbed, even though he had already sprinkled herbs, parmesan, and other condiments onto his plate, ready for sticking to his slice of pizza.

The medium pizza was meant for 3-4 people, so we divided ourselves up according to preferences. My group and I ordered the "Special", which was mushroom, green pepper, onion, and sausage. The other two pizzas were pesto + chicken(?) and half mushroom, half something else. Ah, I appear to have not paid attention.


The pizza arrived on a metal plate that fit over a plate-chair, underneath which there was a cake pan full of condiments. RN joked about taking away the cake pan for cooking back at Cornell.

I consumed a wondrous quarter of deep-dish pizza (with one issue)! The bottom was a thick, bready crust, topped with plenty of onions and peppers and exactly 5 measly chunks of sausage, topped with a thick layer of cheese, topped with tomato sauce. The cheese was extremely stretchy and the crust was perfectly doughy and crusty (with the bottom being noticeably undercooked and floury). However, I did not encounter any sausage until I was 3/5 done with my slice (or 4/5, if you consider only the saucy part, and not the crust). I guess they only sprinkle the sausage on the perimeter. I am not entirely happy with the fact that there were only about 20 grape-sized chunks of sausage in the entire wheel of a pizza, but otherwise, I was satisfied and rotund.

[UPDATE 7/26: My brother's friend agrees with me regarding the dearth of sausage on the pizza]

That evening, I found another pizza place but I didn't try any because I was still digesting my luncheon.

2. Portillo's - Chicago-Style Hot Dog



The next day, I went out exploring all the great grocery stores and streets of Chicago. Chicago really likes revolving doors. I happened upon Portillo's on my way to the Doughnut Vault. Portillo's is in this indoor courtyard-type place, with old-style interior design which was part barn, part street, and part sqalid close-knit neighborhood. There were ribs, frozen custard and Italian roast beef sandwiches along with the classic Chicago hot dog. Portillo's opens at 10:00, and I chanced upon it at 10:08am. By that time, there had already been 17 previous orders! 20 to 30 people were milling about, eating or waiting for their food, while cheerful swing(?) music pranced around in the background. At one table, a group of 4 ate hot dogs and drank beer from giant goblets. The person in front of me asked for ribs, only to be told that one could only get ribs at the adjacent food stand.

The hot dog sausage was very normal. Boiled. Boring. The intriguing parts of the Chicago hot dog are the poppyseed bun, the pickle spear, and the various plant items in it. Overall, the hot dog was underwhelming. Just ok.

There was also an advertisement for garbage salad.

3. Doughnut Vault - Chestnut Yeast Doughnut and Coconut Old-Fashioned Doughnut

I love the Doughnut Vault! The entire setup is perfectly comical. Outside the literal hole-in-the-wall, painted on the brick is this a bright and humble menu. I arrived at about 10:45 am. As I walked in, the letterbox on the door facing the wall had two slots - Love Letters and Hate Mail. Cute, I thought absent-mindedly, as I heard a voice say that I had just beaten the Saturday morning crowd. It turns out that the Doughnut Vault gets pretty busy in the morning, and their opening hours are determined by whether they still have doughnuts. Look at this line from two years ago! Fortunate for me, by the time I had arrived, ther were only about 6 people relaxing at the table outside the store.

To the left of the letterboxes, there was a small countertop. To the right of the countertop was a glass/mirror menu and a shelf of doughnuts hidden in a cubby. The two people at the counter were extremely friendly! The woman let me halfway past the counter to look at all the doughnuts. For a small shop, they had a wide selection of doughnuts! There were chocolate, vanilla, and chestnut yeast doughnuts, and coconut, gingerbread, and possibly some other "old-fashioned" doughnuts. I asked which kind Dunkin has (because I'm not a fan of Dunkin's Doughnuts), and she said that she didn't know.

I got the coconut doughnut, and after a small deliberation, also got the chestnut one because I've never had chestnut-flavoured non-Chinese products. I brought the doughnuts to Millenium Park to eat (but I ended up saving the Chestnut one for breakfast the next day). The smothering icing on the coconut doughnut was really good, even though I know it was probably just powdered sugar and water. There were a few shreds of coconut mingled with the icing, but the doughnut was not overall coconutty. There were small black specks throughout the icing, which could've been vanilla or some other flavouring, but whatever it added was decidedly undetectable.

It turns out that Dunkin probably does the yeast doughnuts, because I didn't particularly enjoy the chestnut doughnut texture, while the "old-fashioned" coconut doughnut was fantastically fatty and cakey.

The chestnut doughnut icing had stuck itself to the paper bag (what a pretty paper bag!) There was no chestnut flavour, so I was not a huge fan.

4. Grocery Stores! As you may know, whenever I go to a new place, I enjoy visiting their grocery stores to see what regional things they sell.

1. Some small convenience store near The Wit, near under a bridge and possibly around some milkshake place. Here, there were Dill Pickle Lays Potato Chips, Limon Lays Potato Chips, and Honey BBQ Lays Potato Chips. I bought the Honey BBQ ones because I have tried Dill Pickle ones before in Montreal. They were a bit sweet but did not taste like honey. Overall, they weren't as salty or dark as normal BBQ chips.
2. Dominick's
   
   Here, I bought some Limon Cheetos because I'm pretty sure the East Coast doesn't really have them. I have yet to try them though. Dominick's was pretty nice, overall. It's still hilarious to me that one strolls in and out of the store through a revolving door.
3. Fox & Obel - This was a fancy gourmet market where there were gummy pandas as opposed to gummy bears. The entire place was dimly lit and there were so many confections.
4. Trader Joe's - Felt just like the Trader Joe's in NJ and in Philly. Bought a peach because I anticipated eating no real fruit or vegetables in Chicago. While eating the peach, I got mistaken for a local. Why, thank you!
5. Jewel Osco - I got a guacamole sample, noted the ordinary chip selection, and left.

5. The Blommer Chocolate Factory

I purposely got "lost" in Chicago. I wasn't actually lost, because I knew that if I walked towards the tall towers (specifically, the Willis tower), I'd end up in the touristy business district. On the way there, on Kinsie Street, I saw a Chocolate Factory! As I walked towards it, the I noted a bunch of trucks, and the smell of chocolate wafted towards me. A real chocolate fragrance. Unbelieveable. At the intersection (directly opposite Jewel Osco) was the chocolate shop, open to the public.


I wonder if they change the banner every year.

The shop had so many chocolate and non-chocolate items. The shopkeeper was really friendly. When I asked whether they sold dark chocolate by the half-pound and he said no, he went into the back and gave me a large chunk of the dark chocolate I had been eying. It was pretty good, and I was satisfied. He also said that all the chocolate-covered things are not manufactured by them, but they do cover the things (Oreos, nuts, dried fruit, espresso beans) in their chocolate. They had quite a selection of chips, chunks, blocks, bars, and sugar free delicacies.

I was debating between (dark?) chocolate-covered espresso malt balls or chocolate-covered brownie chunks, and ended up buying half a pound of the malt balls because I can make chocolate-covered brownies myself! They are thickly covered with this soft, compound chocolate coating that doesn't taste very much like coffee. There is only a faint coffee aftertaste. texture is more like hardened ganache than chocolate. It's not bitter at all, which is uncharacteristic of dark chocolate. The bright side is that the malt balls are NOT like Whoppers (i.e. they lack that bizarre waxy mouthfeel).
Incidentally, I met the Blommer company at the IFT Expo and they gave me (and everyone else) an ice cream bar.

6. IFT Reception and IFTSA Mixers
My take on the Chicago hot dog.

My take on the Italian roast beef sandwich. It was good.

Had my first jalapeno popper. 

Taste of Chicago

I love Chicago (or at least, the touristy areas I visited)! My fellow students and I went to Chicago for the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Conference (which was
fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOTE!! MY
!!!!!EXCITEMENT!!!!!
BY THE SUNDRY EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!)
and we had a couple of free days to lounge around and explore Chicago. So of course, I drank it all in and spent more time wandering around the city than in my comfortable half of the hotel bed.


Our trip coincided with the Taste of Chicago Festival near Millenium Park. This reminded me of the BBQ Festival in NYC I stumbled upon many years ago (I didn't try anything there that time, though), except that it was more diverse. Apart from the plain-cheese deep dish pizza, there was also lots of cliche Asian fare, African goat + plantain stew things, and frozen bananas on sticks (wrapped in opaque plastic packaging, so they probably didn't hand dip them an hour prior...).

For $8, one could obtain 12 tickets. Food samples/servings were about 4 to 12 tickets. Bottled water was 6 (or was it 8?) tickets, and there were no water fountains. There were free samples of juice and tea that certain companies were distributing, and I did have my reusable water bottle, so I was not entirely dehydrated. The hand-washing stations outside the portable toilets stated "Water is not potable".

Coincidentally, everything I got had chicken in it.

I did not get anything from here, but the slogan is pretty Good (see what I did there?). 

Classic Chicago-style hot dog, lacking ketchup.

I got a tamale here but I didn't get to eat it until I returned to the hotel. It was just ok. The chicken was kind of stringy, dry, and tough. Is that how it's supposed to be in tamales? In 粽子(zong4 zi3), the meat is usually pretty overcooked and stringy, and I don't find that texture very enjoyable. The corn part was good though! 4 tickets.

I found schnitzel! I've wanted to try schnitzel ever since Chowder (the TV show)! I was pretty disappointed. It just tasted like a crunchy-coated chicken chunk that was kind of tough and bland. What happened to thin slices? Pummelled with a hammer? Tender? So maybe this was mediocre schnitzel, or maybe I find schnitzel banal. 4 tickets.

Finally...chicken etouffee with rice! I've never had etouffee before. The broth was extremely flavourful! It was simultaneously mellow, smooth, and a crazy explosion. The chicken was just ok though; slightly tough. I will try crawfish etouffee at the next opportunity!

Institute of Food Technologists Conference 2013

IFT Conference and Expo 2013. What a blast! As someone from a university that doesn't have a food science program, IFT was an eye-opener to the food science industry. I found so many aspects of food science that I had never considered, and I also learned that there is a career in food packaging, sustainability, and waste management. Who knew?

I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to expose about the IFT Expo because we weren't really allowed to take pictures, and a lot of it was probably supposed to be confidential information. However, I can give an overview of the program. We had an opening ceremony on Saturday the 13th in the evening, where the current and next IFT president talked to us, and we watched a bunch of videos to much fanfare music. We then had a networking reception with snacks. Each day of the conference, there were presentations, poster sessions, product development competitions, and the Expo. The Expo is basically thousands of booths (7 football fields, apparently), each showcasing their products and looking to sign a deal with some consumer company. According to my friends, these people would start off all cheery, but lose interest as soon as they learned that we were students. I only found that this occured in about 17% of the people with whom I talked. Most companies were willing to chat, answer my questions (interestingly, a lot of people were in Sales/Marketing, so they didn't know how to answer my technical questions), and give me samples and point me to more information.
I obtained many samples. Stevia seems to be a big research area currently. In reviewing my samples, half of them were sweet items (brownies, chocolate, cereal, granola, dried fruit, candy, gummies) that had been modified to include more fiber, less sugar, more vitamins, less fat, more protein, less gluten...

I went to watch a student product design competition finals. I personally didn't think that the presentations were good enough to warrant this as the finals (typos, stumbling on words, overall organization), but who am I to judge?

At night, there were some IFT Student Association mixers, one at the Navy Pier and one in the Hilton. For a food science event, the food was merely ok. I feel like Google entry-level employees have better dining options than the typical food industry R&D employee, which is just silly.

Corning Museum of Glass

Who knew the Corning Museum of Glass had food-related displays?
I highly recommend the museum if you happen to be around upstate NY.

I was unaware that Pyrex is owned by Corning. It was pretty cool seeing old playsets and cookware.

There were also lots of art pieces made with glass. We saw a glass-blowing demonstration and it was fantastic.

The juicer and food bowl seem a bit impractical but I guess they're pretty.