Grilled Pear And Cream

I'm never buying pears in a package again because I eat them at a rate of 0.25/day, and the rate decreases when the pears start to soften. I like Bartlett/Williams (both names work), but only if they're light green and hard. Once they start to get watery and mushy (a.k.a more and more like a Chinese pear), I lose interest.

What to do with softened pears?! Again, my pancake maker delicious-fies food. It's like a function. Stick in input. Pancake maker evaluates it. Delicious output.

let pancake_maker (food: 'a) : betterfood =
 Somemagic.heat food

(for Ocaml).

Anyway, I grilled a pear, sloshed some Half & Half on it, and poured in a lot of cereal. Yay! Creamy dessert!

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.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

It's actually the 19th but I shall post this as the 18th.

For dinner I went out to eat pancakes with BV. We went to the Ritz Diner... because where else do you find chocolate chip pancakes at 8pm? Yes, PM, not AM. An amazing but sugar-crashing-filled meal. Seriously, by the time I was halfway through the pancakes, I had a huge sugar rush and I felt all hyper and sleepy at the same time. Which is how I felt on the night of graduation. Anyway.

When the waitress asked us what we wanted and we both said pancakes [I got two pancakes, he got three. I know that three is a LOT of pancakes, since last time, I got three blueberry pancakes and even though my brother ate some of it, we still didn't finish it...so that's my experience with food from the Ritz. It's a rule. You can't finish a plate of it in one sitting. This was proven true again since BV didn't finish his pancakes, and nor did I. Again.]

The chocolate chip pancakes are fabled to be amazing. That's what I had learned from people but not from experience two years ago from after Counties in Spring Track. I personally think that they are deliciously fluffy pancakes [not boiling-water-spattering like the blueberry ones] and not too sweet, which meant that the syrup filled all the spongy cavities in the dough. They were also neither extremely eggy nor gluteny, which I like. I noticed that the chocolate chips only appeared on the underside of each pancake, though, which I suppose helps the chocolate chips not stick to the griddle.

The people at the Ritz are nice.

Amazing day.

TAPIOCA!

I love tapioca.

Yes, tapioca is used in bubble tea [a.k.a. pearl milk tea], which SVC introduced to me a few years ago and I was thinking "Hmm. What is so interesting about THAT?".

How wrong I was.

Tapioca Pudding is also the name of a character from the Peanuts series by Charles Schulz. I don't think I can truthfully say that I've had tapioca pudding before... though I HAVE had extra-gooey creamy tapioca, which I suppose could constitute as a sort of pudding. Anyway, my mum decided to cook this mini tapioca we had sitting in a shelf, and apparently, this kind disintegrates really easily. The orbs were mushy. However, after adding some soy milk, the globular mass started separating from each other... and I actually ended up with something that appeared to look like tapioca! Yay! [Earlier on it was a clear jelly mass, like a bowl of steaming gelatin pieces, or hair gel]. Personally I like it with a lot of blueberries :) although the mug with banana wasn't too bad. I didn't add sugar to either mugful, though, but I think that's just my preference.

MP's Chocolate!

So, during dessert [after which we ate pizza. Don't ask.] at MP's grad party, I tried three chocolates, from this rather dandy tin box of chocolates. It was a Polish brand. There were five flavours in total, but I tried the chili, coconut, and brandy flavoured ones since they seemed to be the most "exotic".
The chili one was a huge disappointment. Actually, the label just says "HOT CHOCOLATE", which implies that it is either a high-temperature-chocolate-drink flavoured, or a spicy flavoured chocolate [with the chili pepper, right there!]. It was neither, unless you count the fact that it was probably 35 degrees C. In this case [or should I say, in this tin], the whole box of chocolates were hot chocolate. Meaning that the brandy was hot brandy, and the coconut was steamin'.
In short, the "Hot Chocolate" flavour tasted like a dark chocolate truffle and did not taste even a bit peppery or chili-ful or spicy or zingy. Rather huge disappointment, as I wanted to measure my home-made chili chocolate cake [from a few years ago] with something that's actually in industry.
The "White Chocolate and Coconut" flavoured chocolate was really textured, though. No, really, I honestly. Fell. In love. With. It. The taste of coconut was very prevalent, which made up for the failure of the "Hot Chocolate" flavour earlier. There are some brands of chocolate in which the coconut is basically jam-packed in sugar, like the interior of an Almond Joy. This one, however, was literally "jam"-packed, in the sense that it was NOT a saturated dessicated coconut mass. Instead, there was some sort of coconut "jam" or goo, which worked well with the harder outer shell. The white chocolate was extremely smoooooth, not sickeningly sweet, and paved the way for this gelatinous center.

So, I've never had brandy before. I don't drink. This flavour tasted like a normal truffle, except that there was this hint of something weird. I suppose the weird thing was the brandy. Because I couldn't detect brandy [as I don't know what it tastes/smells like], everyone decided to sniff it. It was actually quite amusing [Okay, not just amusing. I was literally choking with laughter] watching people sniff the brandy truffle.
The bright side is that none of the chocolates that I ate had dimples due to the plastic or metal moulds at the factory. Thus, I can conclude that they are better than the Lindor Truffles, with respect to their appearances. Actually, the Lindor truffles were definitely inferior to these, tastewise, too. Plus, no condensation, even though this is July, whereas Lindor's sweaty exterior was prevalent in January.
Looks like ganache. Smooth move, Choco Amore doods. [MP gave me some Polish chocolate for my birthday last year. It was really smooth too, which was a pretty huge feat considering it was a fruit and nut bar.]

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.

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!

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.