2 Days in Philadelphia

I hung out for 2 days with SP before the semester begins (tomorrow)! We ate a bunch of food (no surprises there...):

1. Falafel food truck on 35th and Market St.

Thought I had escaped from rice since I'm not going to be home until at least March. Guess I was wrong. At least it isn't plain ol' steamed white rice (actually, the older I get, the more and more I appreciate eating plain ol' rice. Maybe it's because I have just grown to love food/carbohydrates, in general).
The falafel was kinda dry and crumbly and uniform in texture.

2. Ramune (Japanese drink with the marble that seals it until you push it down).

3. Singapore Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant 1029 Race St. (six stars out of five)

 Dim lighting (how utterly romantic!), cool tablecloth*, light green tea, and multiple utensils (fork, spoon, and chopsticks that seemed to be made out of a really absorbent wood). When passing me a fork, the owner (?) of the restaurant jokingly asked me, "Do you know how to use this?", and I replied "I'll try...he'll teach me [referring to SP]." (because SP isn't ethnically Chinese, but I am). Since moving to the US over five years ago, I've used chopsticks maybe 20 times in total, usually at restaurants that don't offer alternatives. My favourite eating utensil is probably the metal teaspoon.

 Stuffed tofu with amazing chunky ginger-peanut sauce. Dude. I could drink this sauce! I realise that I would probably be terrible at getting a guy via a dinner date. Especially with the picture-taking and my indecision. Particularly if there is a vegetarian menu with sections labelled "Beef", "Poultry", "Pork", and "Tofu" (all made with soy or gluten, of course).

 VEGGIES!! I am going to make stuffed tofu one day. I think they stuff the tofu AFTER stir-frying it, else the veggies would fall out.

 We also got dumplings. I want to drag SP here for dim sum one day, just because I love dim sum, and every time my family and I go to some dim sum place, most of the stuff has animal pieces. I didn't particularly love the dumplings because the filling was kinda mushy, and there was a lot of extra space inside the dumpling. SP liked them though.

 SP got a curry hotpot, and the veggies at the bottom were still tongue-burning-hot by the time the meal was over. It was pretty amazing, although I got my tongue burned a bit. I was going to get curry with gluten (read on the menu as "Curry with Beef") but I ended up getting Crispy Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs (gluten). I was debating between that and Sweet and Sour Pork Loin (soy), but the owner (?) recommended the gluten, so I got it. I mean, what do vegetarian chefs substitute animal bones with, right?

The sauce was really sweet. There were chunks of pineapple, tomato, pepper, carrot, and broccoli in the dish. I'm glad that this restaurant uses sundry vegetables in all its dishes (unlike other Chinese restaurants that pair broccoli with EVERYTHING) -- well, duh, it's a vegetarian restaurant.

The gluten ball tasted a bit like potato, a bit like gluten, and sort of had the appearance and texture of pig flesh. It obviously didn't taste like pig flesh. The sauce masked everything, though, which was neat. I'm going to believe that the "bone" part is just a potato fry, because that's what it tasted like. It was odd chewing the "bone". Seriously. It's like having an edible popsicle stick.
Note the brown rice.

At the end, we got 2 orange slices, 2 fortune cookies (grr) and 2 fried sesame balls with custard filling. My fortune was "The weather is nice". Great.
I think that for a sit-in vegetarian restaurant in the city, the meal was reasonably priced. With presumably fresh ingredients and a lot of veggies in the dishes, dim sum at night-time, a regular customer sitting in the corner reading a book (who ate a meal and also ordered take-out before leaving), and pretty tablecloths*, Singapore Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant is quite charming. SO BRING YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S) THERE!

*In looking at pictures of this restaurant online, I realised that they also have pink tablecloths. I prefer the paisley blue ones more)

4. Lotte Koala's March (cookies) - not a huge fan of them but SP loves them.

5. Lovash Indian Cuisine on 37th and Spruce St.

 More rice (long grain, rather cold -- but that may have been due to the weather, but the peas and paneer cheese were still warm). Some of the peas were still a bit hard, which means that they use dried peas, and not frozen ones. I love frozen peas and frozen corn. I eat frozen corn while it's still frozen, and I intend to do that with peas too, in the future (for other frozen things I eat, read here). The panner was less plasticky/smooth compared to paneer I've had before, and I'm not sure if that makes it more/less authentic.

 SP got chicken with something...It looked good because it was in a plastic container while mine was in a styrofoam one.

6. The Crepewalk, 36th and Spruce
Nutella crepe. Obviously better than the crepes that I made (which SP said were too thick). These are pretty much translucent!

Lightlife Smart Cutlets

To use up more dining $s, I decided to buy some Smart Cutlets and stick them on a pan and have one for dinner with veggies. I grilled one plain, and it was completely bland, so I decided to grill the second one with garlic, pepper, and pesto seasoning.

The texture was supposed to resemble chicken, I suppose, but it definitely tasted a bit gluteny and too uniform. I like the fact that there was no super-salty flavour, but there was basically no inherent "flavour", unless I added seasonings. Although the 17 g of protein is a perk, this doesn't taste as delicious as tofu, or tempeh, which have their own textures and flavours. This grilled cutlet is homogeneous to the point that I really don't know what I'm eating, even though I know it's soy and gluten.

My mum also decided to stir fry peppers and celery with apple. And goji berries. This was a sweet change. Yes. Sweet. (Oh my eardrums are tearing!!)

Lentil Chips!

One thing that really irks me after learning about celiac disease is that "gluten free" is not "healthier" than a normal diet. Celiac disease is when your body can not break down gluten; celiacs lack the enzyme. This does not mean that gluten is bad for you. GLUTEN IS DELICIOUS. It is a protein found in bread! "Gluten-free" food does not mean it's somehow more salubrious, or more "natural". Gluten-free wheat bread is well... not really "natural" [although I'm starting to despise that marketing gimmick too]. Yet, "Gluten Free" appears right under "Trans Fat Free!" and "No Cholesterol!" Now, I know that the Mediterranean Snack Foods company is not the only company that does this [Pirate's Booty is another], but in general, this practice is like labeling an apple as "No Cholesterol!", or water as "Calorie Free!". It's stating the obvious to appeal to the public, because advertising and journalism tell the public that "x-Free!" = healthy.

A diet for celiacs is not deemed healthy, since many of the foods aren't fortified with vitamin B12 and folate, whereas most grain/gluten-containing foods have fortified vitamins/minerals from some law in the 1970s [in the U.S., at least]. Going on a "gluten free" diet as a non-celiac is like going on a "peanut free diet because some other people are allergic to peanuts".

How many people do you know are true celiacs? I know one. Apparently it is 1% of the population, although this doesn't state much since Graves' disease is also 1% of the population and I know 3 other people with it [not including myself].

Anyway, I had to put this out there because I'm getting sick of hearing people/girls [yes, sexist generalisation, but I believe more girls do this than guys] talking about their salad and their complete abstinence from bread and cool foods, not that salad isn't cool.

I got these Lentil Cucumber Dill chips [no packaging image, but here is the shiny image for the website] because there was a rather high protein content compared to potato/corn chips, and cucumber dill seemed like an amazing combination! I was thinking that it'd taste something like dill pickles. That would've been amazing; imagine a sour, watery, crispy chip like that! Speaking of which... are there burger flavoured chips out there?

Unfortunately, I was really upset with the quality and taste of these chips. Firstly, there was an overwhelming amount of saltiness. I just checked the sodium content: 260 mg/serving. In comparison, Lay's Original Potato Chips has 180 mg sodium/serving, and I think those are salty already... So, I believe there is 44% more sodium in the lentil chips. Uh, bleh.

The second part that I was highly discontent with was that it tasted like there was sour cream powder smothered over it, but it wasn't even fresh sour cream. It was like... salty, garlicky, pungent sour cream.

No cucumber taste.

Some dried dill flakes.

No lentil taste.

Super crunchy, though.

In other words, stay away. They're also kind of very expensive [probably due to the high markup. I'm telling you, a Dining Dollar equals at least 2 real dollars...].

Why Follow?

Why follow the instructions on the package?

Do you ever follow the recipe on the can of sweetened condensed milk? No! The one on the plastic wrapper that envelopes chocolate chips? No! The one on the back of cake mix?

W-WAIT! Of course you follow the one on the back of cake mix, or cookie mix, or pudding mix... there just is NO other way to use up that powdery stuff! You MUST add three medium sized [yes, medium] eggs, one stick of butter, and half a cup of water. Otherwise, the cake will cease to ever exist! It will blow up the oven, or stick to the spoon, or end human intelligence [not that THAT would be a huge deal, since it happens if you DO follow the recipe down to the millimole]!

However, since this household lacks butter, I decided to make this gluten-free cake mix that my mum bought [I don't know why, since she knows that I rarely use mix, let alone gluten-free cake mix] using my brainpower.

Also, I didn't want to use the oven because it would waste a lot of energy.

All I did was add two eggs and some water. In other words, this cake is pretty much "fat-free". Then I microwaved a bowl of it, for about 148 seconds.

And... it tasted like plain store-bought-cake-mix chocolate sponge cake. Without the burnt parts, and the wasted oven heat.

Easy.

You don't see cakes in bowls much.

This is technically the 27th, but I microwaved my first cake on the 26th.

Man Tou

There are two things that my mum has been attempting to make during her free time since we moved here, a few years ago. One of them is fa[2] gao[1], which is a steamed rice cake. It has failed miserably.

The second is man[2] tou[2], which has gone from rock-hard lumps of gluteny-water to actual scallion filled steamed buns of yeasty awesomeness. I am proud of my mum, and the fact that she somehow figured out how to make awesome steamed buns without a recipe.

She used to mix flour and water and baking soda, in an attempt to make something that resembled man tou. It was icky.

Now, she somehow manages to gauge enough flour and water and yeast... without measuring them or anything [!] and somehow yields a perfect-ish batch of the ubiquitous bun on the street anywhere in metropolis China.

This sure beats the airy sweet bleached stuff [okay, even though the flour my mum uses IS bleached flour, it doesn't taste like Wonder-Bread-bleach-crap] that look exactly like oblong sponges "man tou" that one can obtain from Kamman. Gotta respect her.

Hunan Manor

Hello Doctor State, a.k.a MD, Maryland!
After being in the car from 3:45pm to 8:15pm, we finally arrived at my parents' friends' house. They then drove us to dinner at Hunan Manor, which - surprise surprise - is a Chinese restaurant. I personally didn't have a great impression of it when I went in, because of this:
Dude, it's nearly mid 2010. And, "dungenese" isn't that great to advertise to people who speak English.
They actually, though, had a ton of vegetarian stuff that was, well, DELICIOUS.
The weird fried flour thing:
Napkin roses; the one on the right is mine, the one on the left is my brother's:
Fried tofu with mushrooms:
Sweet and Sour "Pig" [a.k.a gluten]. Actually, I was gonna get Sweet and Sour "Chicken" [a.k.a gluten], but the waitress literally said, "That one doesn't taste good." Then again, the "pig" dish cost more, so I guess that was their marketing ploy. Either way, it looks like the real thing, and the sauce was really good! The "pig/gluten" part itself though was really dense so I suppose it depends on people's preferences. I don't think I really like dense stuff, except fudge and brownies and toffee [you get the picture].