Boiled Dumplings

Delicious savoury food!! For some reason, I've been consistently craving savoury food throughout the last quarter of the year. Today my mum made egg and carrot filling for dumplings!! My sister and I filled the dumplings with the filling. Actually, my sister made one dumpling and I made the rest. Her dumpling looks like a bag (it's the second one to from the left in the image below). We had some dumpling skins left over, and my sister cut tiny holes out of one of them and made a "snowflake" design.

 I'm not sure how to make boiled dumplings look appetizing. So here they are, dripping with soy sauce, like mini brains dripping with blood... well, not really.

 SO DELICIOUS. Reminds me of childhood. Of being 5 years old and helping my mum make dumplings from scratch...and not being able to crimp the tops correctly...

Curry!

I made some curry today with potatoes and squash from the garden. I also added in two carrots and two pieces of coconut. It was delicious!! Even my brother agreed, and he even wants to eat it again (with rice, this time)!!! My sister didn't, though, because she just wanted to eat candy/pancakes/chips. The curry wasn't too spicy, because I didn't add any chilies (but my sister STILL thought that it was spicy. Sigh.) This goes perfectly on its own, with rice, with noodles (yes, noodles), and even with whole wheat bread! Mmmm.

Ingredients - serves 5 to 6.
1 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic
0.5 onion
2 tsp curry powder
3 tsp coriander
(1 packet chili powder/flakes or chili)
Around 300 g potatoes
2 carrots
300 g squash
350 ml liquid (I used 250 ml water and 100 ml milk)
2 chunks of coconut for fun
A lot of tofu.

Method
1. Cook spices, garlic, onion and oil in a BIG saucepan for a few minutes.
2. Add chunks of potato and liquid to the curry mixture and stir on high heat until liquid starts simmering.
3. Add chunks of squash and let everything simmer on medium-high for 10 minutes.
4. Add carrots and let everything simmer until the vegetables are at the consistency that you prefer. We wanted something slightly mushy, so we simmered for about 20 minutes in total.
5. Pour curry into a bowl that has cubed, fresh tofu.

I'm just glad we don't have to ever buy the ready-made curry sauces from the vacuum packages that have globs of oil. I ought to add shredded coconut next time.

Baked Acorn Squash and Seeds

Despite it being something like 38-9 degrees C today, I was determined to finish the acorn squash in my fridge. Right now, all that's in my fridge is about one serving of Colby-Jack cheese, a pound and a half of carrots, one tomato, cherry cough drops, and those disgusting candy sticks from a while ago. I need to clear out my fridge by the 28th so that it can defrost properly. I also have two cans of beans, a tube of polenta, and some amount of oat bran left.

I wanted to make acorn squash and chips but after not being able to slice the chunks thinly enough, I figured, eh, I'll just bake them. Bake them without oil or seasonings at 400 degrees F for some 15-or-something minutes.

I also toasted/baked the acorn squash seeds, and they smelled phenomenal! They smelled like... popcorn.

They tasted like... popcorn. Slightly. I loved it!

I actually also love baked acorn squash! It's deliciously sweet (but not too sweet) and has a potato-y texture! The acorn squash skin also smells and tastes like nori. What an interesting plant... popcorn, nori, and a delicious sweet interior...

The "baked" carrots, however, were still half raw when I ate them. They were a little sweeter than usual, but it wasn't too much to talk about.

Trustees Dinner

Alright, I have to admit that food draws me to places. Greedy, right? For every student, whether in high school or college or even kindergarten, [and, okay, maybe the workplace but I wouldn't know], food is a motivator.

It's a good motivator too, because otherwise, I probably wouldn't have met the Trustees of UPenn, which was pretty cool because they're pretty accomplished people. Although they state that they don't get paid to do anything, I kind of doubt it ... because would they truly fly over [from Hong Kong! London!] to Penn 3x a year [or more] to just... meet up? Do their loyalties really lie that deeply with Penn? Then again, I'm just a first year student, so I probably haven't gotten to the point where I simply adore UPenn.

There was a lot of leftover food and a lot of the stuff was actually vegan. Vegan orange vinaigrette dressing [which I really... didn't like], vegan asparagus [well, duh.], amazingly crispy roasted roots/tubers, vegetarian lasagne, and "seasonal" fruit, which included the most unseasonal fruits ever for February: blueberries, strawberries, and pineapple.

This was catered by Bon Appetit although TJ refused to believe it since the food was "so good". I think the food was quite nice and my picture is terrible.

It's kind of funny how context changes how "delicious" food is perceived; in a dining hall, the same cooked asparagus appears much less savoury than a nice metal tray of perfectly organised asparagus on a heating block. Fruit that's usually in a metal canister plopped on ice appears much less "exotic" [I guess?] compared to fruit that's thinly sliced on a tray.

That's the theory of plating, anyway, but I don't think I believe in it. My brother does though, so he always reprimands me for not plating my food whenever I cook. Really, why does plating matter so much? Is it really necessary to have a small 5cm^3 chunk of lasagne, cut perfectly, on a 24-cm diameter white plate, with exactly 3 sprigs of parsley as garnish? Does that really taste better than a lump of badly cut lasagne splattered onto a plastic plate that's also filled with carrots and salad and other stuff that make a meal [save plates!! Save dishwashing liquid!! Save water!]? I think I prefer the latter...

Another reason I went to this dinner was that they were giving out scarves and shirts. The really sad part was that for the class of 2014, there were T-shirts, not scarves. These weren't even new shirts; they were the ones we got during Orientation! They were leftovers! The scarves were leftovers too, but they only had the class of 2011/12/13.

The smart thing to do, of course, was to take a 2011 scarf and using thread to sew the 1 into a 4.

Which I did later, and it looks alright from far way. TJ has decided just to wear a 2011 scarf. It's not everyday we can be seniors, after all.

Dumplings!

Today AK came over to my house and we made vegetable dumplings! I had made the filling earlier on [9am, to be exact], using my brother's drink blender. Actually, it's also a solid-ingredient blender, and it chops carrots and tofu really well! The filling included carrot, extra firm tofu, garlic chives, bean sprouts, and some soy sauce... and PLENTY OF PEPPER. Perhaps there was way too much pepper...

We used premade dumpling wrappers, because it is seriously time consuming making my own dumpling wrappers. My mum used to do that when I was ... 5, and we didn't have any Chinese supermarkets nearby in Australia. She used to flatten out tons of little dubloons of flour, and I used to use the rolling pin and make irregular ovals. The wrappers were much thicker then, and tasted much better than these ones [more gluten, I think, and more transparent and chewy]...

The lettuce leaves are there to prevent the dumplings from sticking. However, at least two dumplings DID stick to the pan. :(

YEAH DUMPLINGS! This was also a great time to catch up on life and college, and to get fat for the winter. Haha.

CELEBRATE!

Exams over, did terrible in my honest opinion...

Well at least I had a really nice dinner today. Along with some snow in the morning. I should appreciate life more. Hey, I really really am grateful to get this far in life. I think I'm going to add AdSense to my blog now. I mean, I legally can now!

So I went to Kings Court for dinner with TJ, and this is the first time I've had a legitimate dinner since...Sunday. Seriously. I have just been that busy with studying, which was pretty futile because I still did terrible on my calc exam. I went from the 30th [or higher] percentile to below the 60th percentile, because of one exam.

So, I had a hodge podge of a-tad-undercooked roasted potatoes [it was raw enough to not taste floury, and roasted enough to not taste crunchy like an apple], green peppers, a tomato, basil, and tofu with vinaigrette salad thing, glazed carrots, and two random dips. The best thing about Kings Court's dining hall is the variety of dips. There are the staple hummus and lentil dips, but also tofu chipotle dip and carrot brown rice dip [the ginger in it ruins it, in my opinion]. Today, I tried the mustard cauliflower dip [which tasted just like really mild wasabi].

The main reason I go to Kings Court's dining hall is that the vegan brownies are amazing. They taste like gingerbread, with slivers of moist carrot dotted througout. They do not taste chocolatey at all, though, which I suppose would otherwise ruin the gingerbread flavour.

Actually, I will blog about the various vegan baked goods later, since I do have pictures of them, and there is actually a story about how I didn't end up with that many of them in my take-out box.

However, there were no vegan baked goods today!! I had to celebrate, somehow, so I got some ice cream. Actually, to be more correct, I obtained one scoop of raspberry sorbet [not that great. It wasn't tangy enough... and didn't taste like raspberry], two scoops of rainbow sherbet [yes! any sherbert is amazing! I particularly like lime/sour sherbert], and one scoop of peanut butter frozen yoghurt. I'm not quite sure what the peanut chips are, because they are definitely not normal peanut chips; it seems like it's frozen defatted peanut butter. I don't understand how they can solidify peanut butter into chunk form, but perhaps there's some saturation of the C bonds, or gelatin, or corn syrup solids...

The problem is that the peanut chunks tasted really smooth, which is generally not the case when there are stablisers, corn syrup solids, or flour etc. It didn't taste waxy, which you get with commercial-grade chocolates [Next time you get that chocolate coating on ice-creams or "chocolate candies", note how it tastes... oily and segmented...]

December Birthday Parties!

Every month, my dorm house has a celebration for birthdays. This month's party was the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, with a lot of food. There were M&M pancakes, carrot cake, lemon bars, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse [simply amazing!] and potato latkes.

Here is a terrible photo of the chocolate cake, carrot cake, lemon bar, and a peek of the peak of chocolate mousse. I completely forgot to take pictures of the latkes, but they were really thinly grated pieces of potato [think cheddar-cheese-sized pieces], fried in hot oil until orangy brown. For some reason, they tasted fishy to me, so I stayed away from them. I don't think that there was any fish in it, though.

The M&M pancakes made the pancakes really blue. Although it's not shown well on the camera, the pancakes were literally sky-blue coloured. They were delicious, though, and at some point, CG made a square pancake. I didn't take a picture of it, though, but MF did. So, I'm not going to upload it because it isn't my picture. However, I can say that it was a square pancake, perhaps 30cm x 30cm, with a smiley face dented into it.

Then I went to Double Dinner Friday, which was completely amazing but I didn't bring my camera, so next time I'll take pictures of the food [but really, it's all packaged carbohydrate material]

Ice Cream and Pie.

Five years ago, when I saw no error or consequences in organic foods, my science teacher did the unthinkable. He created a science project in which one group would argue for ORGANIC food, and one group would argue for GM food. I was in the group for GM food, and I was utterly speechless. My narrow mind believed that there was NO SUCH THING as a negative side to organic farming. It was like telling me that I didn't exist. I'm not sure what I said in the debate [probably something with a lot of eye rolling], but I remember that one of my group members said "Well...GM food makes food taste good. Like, carrots actually taste like CARROTS".

This is something I thought of today when I got back from the Eco-Reps meeting. What defines the taste of food? I'm currently eating tempeh. I think a piece of tempeh tastes like tempeh [I'm still relatively new to eating it], but how would I describe it to TJ? TJ tried tempeh for the first time today, and I was trying to get her to eat it. I said that "it tastes kinda fishy... and nutty..." but tempeh does NOT taste fishy or nutty. Today, the tempeh in my sandwich tastes like cattle slices. But that may be because I associate mustard with cattle slices. I mean, the first time I tried tempeh, it tasted like fish, but that maybe have been due to the sauce [tomato? I don't think I've ever had tomato sauce with fish before, though...].

Last Friday I ate a lot of ice cream and pie. This only happens when I eat meals with people [which is why, perhaps, I should start being a hermit]. I'd never had egg nog ice cream before [actually, I've never had egg nog. I've had egg nog soymilk, though], so I asked what it tasted like. "It tastes like egg nog", TJ replied.

So, if egg nog ice cream tastes like egg nog, why is there such thing as egg nog ice cream? Egg nog is some gelatinous type custard, right? So is ice cream... except colder. So, I guess the question is also about texture, and not just about taste.

However, someone decided to come along and say that people don't enjoy food as much if they eat it in the dark. I personally disagree, but I personally think/obsess over food more than the "general population".

Anyway, I think I started digressing.

If carrots do taste better after modification [after all, GM corn is sweeter and juicier], then what is the negative side? A loss of nutrients, perhaps, but evolutionarily speaking, haven't we evolved so that we can get our nutrients through foods? Why would we pick bland carrots over flavourful carrots? We wouldn't. But, the bland carrots are the ones that have more nutrients...according to various sources that tell me that organic farming is healthier for both myself and the environment. I suppose a counter-argument would be that humans like to eat sweet stuff because of the calories which we needed, way back when people ate once every few days instead of once every few hours. But what about texture? One can't generalise on that; we like moist, soft apple pie filling, but we dislike squishy peaches and overripe bananas [which, by the way, are also very. Very. Sweet.]... but they have similar macronutrient profiles [SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR!!!]

So, my Goldfish cracker obsession for the past two weeks still hasn't receded.

Convocation...2014

There's going to be a lot of jumping around for the next few days, because I have to post about New Student Orientation [NSO] for UPenn, and that's going to take a while to talk about because it included a lot of food. However, before I backtrack about all that stuff, I'm just going to mention the convocation dessert, which happened an hour ago.

Apparently, this "sumptuous dessert" thing is a huge deal; the upperclasspeople talk about it a lot and claim that people actually bring containers to put the dessert in, for later. I thought they were kidding.

They were not. I saw at least seven people sticking chucks of cake and mousse into plastic containers. Seriously. But, who am I to judge? I would do the same thing if I didn't have a meal plan... and I would totally take all the desserts just because they taste good.

Chocolate mousse with hazelnut wafer crumbs on the bottom, with sponge cake. I'll get to that.

This tricked me into thinking that it was key lime pie. Don't like wavy lines make the otherwise homely cheesecake look just like key lime pie!? The unfortunate thing was that this cheesecake wasn't even sour. It was way too sweet [and a tad too warm - I like frozen cheesecake] to be flavourful cheesecake.

Charlottes. I didn't take one.

Mousse; get to it later.

Chocolate cake, and carrot cake. These disappeared immediately...

For some reason, there were orange custard cakes. Penn's colours are dark red and blue. Princeton's colours, so blatantly shown during the dessert reception, still confuzzles me. After all, Princeton is apparently our rival school, what with the Puck Frinceton thing.

Cookie pile, along with plates and smooshed cakes that inconsiderate people just left lying around.

Mounds of cookies.

I consumed two pieces of dessert, the cheesecake and this mousse. The mousse actually had a bunch of layers; starting from the top:

1. Hazelnut

2. Whipped cream

3. Chocolate icing layer

4. Weak chocolate mousse layer - shallow airy flavour, very sweet, not really what I consider dense chocolate mousse...

5. Hazelnut wafer layer - crunchy

6. Sponge cake. Eh. Plain.

7. Thin chocolate coating.

I think that I'm starting to [I know that no one can believe this] get sick of eating dessert. Seriously, I don't even feel like eating...I think it's because I'm nervous for class tomorrow.

Lasagne.

UPDATE: Here is another picture. It is still rather mixed up and the layers are a bit hard to see. There were three layers...

I am exhausted from packing and studying chem and blah. I don't even know how I had the brain capacity to drag myself into the kitchen this morning and make lasagne.

Vegetable lasagne with cucumber, carrot, onion [lots!], and red bell pepper. We unfortunately didn't have any spinach...

I added some couscous for texture variation, and breadcrumbs on top, even though they turned out too soggy because I put way too much sauce on top, instead of just leaving it cheesy...

We didn't have shredded cheese... so I used the handy pre-sliced cheese! There were swiss, cheddar and monterey jack slices.

Apparently the lasagne sheets could make two pans of lasagne... which was a lot more than I had expected. All I wanted to do was use up the box of sheets since no one else knows or wants to cook lasagne in this house, so I had to get it done before I go to college. Actually, I've been wanting to make lasagne for ages but I never remembered. Or felt like it.

MORE CHEESE! This was before I started dumping bread crumbs on top. In retrospect, the lasagne lacked enough cheese. Next time, I will literally smother the top with cheese, so that it looks more like a cuboidal cheese wheel than a lasagne.

Lasagne after baking, before the lasagne noodles had a chance to soak in all the sauce.

Same pan of lasagne; I never got around to taking a picture of the other pan... I got busy with studying... so tomorrow I'll upload some more pictures.

Beautiful.

Also, I learned that DRY PLAIN LASAGNE NOODLES DO COOK IN THE OVEN. Honestly, precooking them is definitely unnecessary [Good thing I didn't precook them.] A simple 40 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees F solves everything. Especially if you feel like leaving the lasagne in the oven for another 10 minutes.

After taking the lasagne out, it is definitely necessary to wait for approximately 20 minutes for the lasagne noodles to sponge up the watery sauce that was emitted by the tomato sauce and vegetables. I didn't wait... and ended up with lasagne soup for the first serving. Above and below are the images of the non-soaked-lasagne noodles. I never got around to taking a picture of the lasagne after "actually" done, though. Tomorrow... I shall post them. However, later on I was looking at the lasagne and the sauce/cheese/noodle ratio wasn't defined clearly :( However... this isn't terrible since this is the second time I've made lasagne in my life. I should definitely make it more often.

Samurai Sushi

I lacked a camera.

My mum took both my camera and phone to NYC today, so I couldn't take pictures of the food that I consumed. I can, however, describe the sushi with such utter detail that your keyboard will break down due to drool.

Or not, since it wasn't that big of a deal. The only reason we went to Samurai Sushi for dinner is that my sister wanted to eat sushi rice. Oh, and I suppose, also that my dad thinks that cooking is for females.

So, my sister consumed maybe 50ml of Sprite, two pieces of raw salmon, half a piece of another fish, too much soy sauce, and half a bowl of rice. My dad got this plate of sashimi, which came with some miso soup and some salad with ginger dressing. I distinctly remember there being one cherry tomato in the salad, last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. I suppose the staff decided that tomatoes aren't important to their restaurant menu, since the only thing WITH cherry tomatoes was the salad. I suppose this is a wise choice, even though I now have an empty space in my expandable stomach, shaped just like a cherry tomato.

Since I don't consume fish, I got this vegetable sushi. It was a lot of pieces of pickled radish [which I don't really like], pickled carrot [eh, okay], raw sprouts [not enough], raw cucumber [awesome!] and one piece of avocado, wrapped in rice and a piece of nori. I was pretty devastated [okay, overstatement] by the fact that there was only one piece of avocado in each piece of sushi [there were 5 pieces of sushi]. I LOVE AVOCADO! Why give me two pieces of pickled radish per piece of sushi, yet only leave me one meagre chunk of avocado?

The raw sprouts were cool, though, since my mum has never let me eat sprouts raw before. Actually, she never used to let me eat peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, or spinach raw, until I read recipe books and realised that these plants aren't toxic fresh out of the earth.

In conclusion, I lacked a lot of protein in this meal. I think that I should invent gluten/soy salmon sashimi substitute, although I personally don't miss the taste of fish anymore... [but this may be a different story in HK].

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.