Snackums

In lieu of Halloween candy updating... (will do that at some point):
Snacks from China, brought to me by my dad when he went to China in the summer. Consumed before Halloween so that I can make space for chocolate and such (actually, my room has a lot of space. Plenty of room to store food...and no mice [yet]).

Square cracker thingys: really spicy and tasted a bit like stale wasabi.
Green plastic packaging: delicious spicy tofu. Vacuum packed. It's like jerky...but it's tofu!!!
Yellow plastic packaging: more spicy tofu jerky in oil.
Bamboo shoots: pickled and spicy.
Mushrooms: pickled and spicy (and really oily)
Dried kiwi: did not taste like kiwi. Way too green to be naturally preserved kiwi...bland and not that delicious :( :( The seeds were real though.
Lotus seeds: Moist and nutty.

Maybe I Should've Gone Home...

...over the long weekend.

I got out of work at 1:30pm today.

I went to Qdoba, got 2 vegetarian burritos for $6.25. Misters Washington and Adam and all those others killed so that I could buy two burritos for the price of one.

I walked into the city. I now realise that Philadelphia is puny compared to NY. The sad part is that I will not be able to go to every restaurant and grocery store in Philadelphia, so why would I ever have the chance to get to all of them in NY? Yet, I already feel sick of over half of Philadelphia - the clothing stores, the shoe stores, the furniture stores...

I realised today that the only reasons I still live is to eat food and to be in situations/environments for which I have a deep attachment. Seeing as I do not currently have family to see, friends to see, familiar places to be at, or time periods of my life to relive, eating is all I can do to feel happy in an impersonal, lonely place. Purchasing food has become my way of coping with being alone. Somehow, I tell myself that apart from tuition, the rest of my money is to be used on food. Then I wonder, what else would I spend my money on, anyway? Jewelry and clothes do not interest me that much anymore. Movies and books can be borrowed. I somehow have a bizarre addiction to food. Anything put into savings would end up being spent on food, right?

Today, I walked 8.43 miles from 4:30 pm until around 9:30 pm, pausing to look at some galleries as it was First Friday. There were nice snacks in some of the galleries and some very inspiring art (including some with glitter). One clothing store was giving out free hot dogs and I briefly considered being a scavenger and not a vegetarian anymore. What would happen? However, I am so used to just disregarding animal pieces. I don't know.

Since I was supposed to run today instead of walk, tomorrow I will probably walk at least 16 miles, since I feel that my W-H ratio puts me at a high risk for cardiovascular disease.

So, what did I do today?

1. Nuts To You on 20th St. Nice. Let me try a piece of dried kiwi (tasted NOTHING like kiwi; just sugary...flavourless. Luckily I tried it; otherwise, I would've bought a whole pound of it). Instead, I bought two pounds of sour gummy bears because they were "on sale" for $1.99/lb.

2. Nuts To You on 13th St. Less friendly, but I went because I realised that I could sample a circus peanut. The guy seemed a bit miffed that he'd have to untie a bag of circus peanuts, just for me to take one of them and thus make the "one pound" bag a little less than a pound. Last time I checked, a dried piece of kiwi was heavier than a circus peanut. The person at the 20th St. store was much more lenient about it, I guess. This store was bigger, though, and appeared to have more variety, although it could all just be spatial bias. I am glad that I didn't buy a packet of circus peanuts. Okay, I slightly like circus peanuts; they're chewy, but not really sticky like marshmallows, and certainly too soft to be considered similar to Lucky Charms cereal marbits. Circus peanuts are too moist for that. They're also super-artificial banana flavoured, and I would probably fall in love with them if they were peanut or chocolate or even mint flavoured instead. At this store, I found loads of sour gummy bears, NOT on sale, for $1.99/lb, so I don't know what I'm supposed to think (negatively, I reckon). I bought a bag of animal crackers for 40c because my sister loves them and as I was paying, a guy walked in asking about the pizza peanuts. The cashier said that there were none left, but that they were selling plain peanuts for 99c/lb. I bought a bag of those too. They aren't completely peanuts; they're covered in a flour coating which reminds me of this batter-coated peanut thing I used to eat in HK. And AUS.

A pound for $0.99 is pretty good. Maybe I will go tomorrow to buy another bag.

3. Art galleries. I did enjoy some of the art. It makes me realise how dreary my life has become after starting college. I no longer find inspiration or draw properly anymore.

4. I unintentionally found Bread St.

5. I walked to Franklin Square Park. Watching the families, the toddlers, the skateboarders, and the couples playing mini-golf, I felt lonely.

6. Chinatown. Small. No sign of stores selling those food-shaped erasers. I momentarily considered collecting all food versions of the erasers but I suppose I will just keep a scrapbook of pictures of them on my computer. It serves the same purpose. Collections.

7. Trader Joe's. Corn tortillas. $1.49. Bananas. 19c each or 29c for organic ones. I bought two organic bananas from Colombia. I haven't had enough potassium in the past month so that may explain why I nearly fainted yesterday when I was biking. I ought to add these two items to my Trader Joe's list.

Kiwi Froyo

Kiwi.

Previously called "Sprinkles". The most popular flavours in Philly include vanilla, chocolate, original tart, and cookies and cream. Seasonal flavors turn up every few months.

Owned by Ryan and Matt Mealy, Kiwi is a frozen yoghurt (okay, for this post I will spell it "yogurt") store located on 36th and Chestnut, and I signed up for a Preceptorial lead by them. A preceptorial is basically a 2+ hour class that isn't going to be graded, and I suppose Penn gives them out because it's a way for students to learn things that aren't part of their majors/requirements. For instance, I signed up for a Thought Experiments Preceptorial, which is... well, philosophy, right? There was also one called Wine Tasting, and I got accepted into it but I'm not 21 yet so I can't actually go, legally.

I thought that this Kiwi Preceptorial would be interesting because it would open my eyes up more to the commercial/production aspect of food companies. I also hoped that there'd be a tour of the actual store, including what ingredients are used and how flavours are created. This wasn't the case though; the Preceptorial focused mainly on business. Ryan and Matt are businesspeople. They love food, sure, and they love frozen yogurt, but they are fully focused on the -open-more-stores- & -promote-Kiwi- & -sell-more-. They grew up in a family-business household, they have business degrees, and they decided to open up a frozen yogurt store because frozen yogurt was a business-grabber, with it being touted as "healthy" and all. If, for some reason, the frozen yogurt business dies down (although I highly doubt it, with more and more people believing that frozen yogurt is healthier than ice cream), they claimed that they are ready to pursue a different fad, including non-food ventures.

See, if I was going to open a bakery/patisserie, it'd be because I like food and I love baking and I want to cut out the stigma that pepper, vinegar, and chili "are too weird to put into sweet cookies/cake". So, this Preceptorial showed me why businesses expand and why Aramack and Campbell (and all the other places I applied to for internships) want Management and Marketing degrees. Thanks. Biology (and Chemistry, even though I really don't want to admit that) gets thrown out of the window. Actually, I take that back. I did ask Ryan whether they created their own froyo from scratch, and she said that they currently didn't. "However," she said with a grin, "my husband, who is a scientist, will be working on it at some point, although he doesn't know it yet."

Which goes to show that I should marry a Whartonite. Haha. I think that I prefer Engineers.

The Kiwi story, as I said, starts off from a family business; Ryan and Matt had a bunch of experience helping out in the family furniture company. They claim that each company needs to offer something "new", and to stay within that niche, in order to get recognition. The "new" thing for their furniture company had been that they offered same-day delivery, and the "new" thing for Kiwi is that the frozen yogurt is self-serve. I had never gone to Kiwi before, so, yes, I agree that this is indeed new. Unlike Flurt or any ice cream stores, Kiwi gives you a container and 14 flavours from 14(?) machines to choose from (16 in other Kiwi stores; only Philly has 14 flavours. I think that this is due to the fact that there is not enough wall space to stick in more machines here). For 49c / ounce, you can fill out however much of frozen yogurt you want; you just pull down the lever and let the frozen yogurt flow. Then, you can add toppings/fruit, and you weigh the bowl and its contents, and pay. I suppose this is great because it

1. Offers customers customizable sizes.

2. Offers customers every single flavour in one sitting.

3. Offers customers the ability to have 90% toppings and 10% froyo, if they really wanted to.

4. Means that employees don't have to be trained to make the perfectly pretty froyo. When I was at Carvel, I had to make sure that the ice cream on the cone looked pretty. If it looked wonky, customers would appear a bit upset, and I'd look unprofessional.

5. Means that only 1 container needs to be ordered. There's no such thing as a "small", a "medium", a "large", an "extra large", or a "kiddie cup".

6. Is "new".

Initially, Ryan and Matt were going to Franchise, but they decided that they should just open their own store, and they were going to call it "Wondercream", which has various connotations, one of them being inappropriate and another of them meaning "fat" (if you think about the word "cream", you will instantly think of "fat". Yes, you will, because the Media said so). Technically, they're still registered under the name Wondercream, although the name Kiwi is "fresher" seems to make customers like it more.

Back to the story. Ryan and Matt opened a store in June 2009 in Cherry Hill, NJ, and it was a really tough time up to that point because literally no realtors wanted to rent to a new company. Apparently, that's how it is in the business world; you're of zero value until you stick a dent in your market. (This is where I think the story got confusing, because Ryan said that they had started searching for location, equipment, interior design etc. in "December 2008" and that "after 16-17 months, we finally opened", which would imply that they started in December 2007. Nevertheless, the point is that they took a while to plan everything.) They ended up signing four leases before even opening the first store, and because nearly no-one turned up on their opening day, they had this huge "Grand Opening" and gave out unlimited free ice cream to everyone at their Cherry Hill Mall place. Both these events demonstrate how confident they are; apparently, they gave away 15000 oz of frozen yogurt to ~2000 people. Matt laughed about how it was a huge business risk, but that summer, they averaged 700-800 people per day.

This was a different story in Philly though; when Kiwi opened here in September 2009, the unlimited free froyo idea made people line up and just TAKE AND TAKE and be CRAZY! It's pretty interesting to see both Ryan and Matt laugh at all these events, which one could consider to be "failures" or "setbacks"; again, they're really confident people. They "want to dominate", they say.

So, here is the advertising component of Kiwi from Ryan and Matt. I'm typing it down because it's true, although I'm not sure how much more likely I am to buy froyo from them when I would rather buy bread since I like bread more:

1. Customers are greeted every. Single. Time. //I guess I'm indifferent to this part, unless I get discounts or something if I become a loyal member.

2. 30 toppings. //Thanks for the choices, but I'm not paying 49c for an ounce of marshmallows or an ounce of sprinkles. I'm paying 49c for an ounce of frozen yogurt.

3. Clean. //Whoot!

4. Fruit delivery 3 days a week! Fruit is also freshly cut!//See comment 2

5. Short shelf life of everything; no HFCS, no preservatives. //Whoot!

6. Good place to go for lunch. //But is there a nutrition label somewhere? See, I would pick a sandwich over this because I know that I will get enough protein and iron from eating whole wheat bread. For froyo, how much sugar did you add?

After the preceptorial, we all went to Kiwi to get some froyo. Everyone got 25% off, and I got $5 off because I was one of the lucky 25 people out of the 40 or so people who signed up at the right time. $5 gives ~10 oz of yogurt, and since I actually didn't bring any money with me (hey, with a prepaid meal plan, what else would I be using money for?), it was really useful having a few sets of scales sitting there so I could measure my yogurt content. I ended up with 8.7 oz of various flavours, but not all of them. The restaurant environment was pretty cheerful, but that may have been because of the swarm of people in there from the Preceptorial.

I tried original tart, peanut butter, green tea, chocolate, strawberry, mint, cheesecake, mango, and I want to say pomegranate but I'm not even sure that flavour exists. I just know there's another flavour buried underneath the ones in the pictures. The peanut butter flavour actually tasted like peanut butter, which is a change from "peanut butter flavoured" items such as Clif bars or cookies etc. The green tea flavour was light and poofy, as was the original tart flavour. Actually, all the flavours tasted very light (but NOT BLAND) and watery/icy. Another word I would use to describe Kiwi froyo is "fragile" because it melts mad fast.

Yes, I'll go again next semester, when I don't have a meal plan. I'll do a proper flavour review because I was too preoccupied talking to someone new (who I guess I will never see again, unfortunately) who I had met at the Preceptorial.

Berry Jam!

Basically, gooseberry jam...

...with strawberries, and raspberries, and kiwi, and tomatoes. Oh, and balsamic vinegar. This is the third summer in which I've made jam. The first summer, I made this blackcurrant jam that was wayyyy too dry. In other words, it congealed while the fire was still on, so by the time it had cooled, it had turned into a really-gummy-almost-dried-blackcurrant consistency. It was also really sour. Last year, I think I made three batches of jam [two currants, one gooseberry], which all turned out really lovely. This year, all our blackcurrants and red currants appear to have died, due to the climate characteristic of a summer on drugs. So, all we have now are raspberries and gooseberries. Actually, we're losing those too. Anyway, I salvaged about 4 cups of gooseberries, a few raspberries, and decided to make some jam, since my family isn't really in love with fresh gooseberries.

To make the jam:
4 cups of gooseberries [yay pectin!]
1 cup of sugar [which was way too much. Hence, I added all the other fruit too. Then again, I don't really like sickly-sweet jams, so maybe it's okay for other people]
0.5 cups of water
10 or so cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 kiwi without seeds or white centre [my brother wanted to add this]
5 or so cut up strawberries.
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar [complements the strawberries very well, both taste-wise and SMELL-wise]1. Add gooseberries and sugar and balamic vinegar. The vinegar, I suppose, helps preserve the jam, meaning that we don't need to use lemon juice or another acid. In all honesty though, the sugar and gooseberry's acidity should preserve the jam well too. Stir mixture. Realise that there is wayyyyy too much sugar - see image above. All that goop is sugar. [A fine coating of sugar on each berry should be enough. A freakin' snowstorm is... too much for me].
2. Add water and other fruit.
3. Stick it on high on the stove until it starts to boil.
4. Add more fruit if it still looks/taste too sweet.

5. Start mashing the berries. Technically, the tomato is a berry. And, to astound you more, the kiwifruit is ALSO a berry! So, yes, I made berry jam today.
6. Turn down to the stove to low heat, and the mixture should be simmering. Stir every once in a while [this works best in a nonstick pot] for 45 minutes or so.

7. Check every once in a while by dropping a tad of it onto a dry plate and letting it sit there, and see whether it congeals. This is also a great time to taste the jammy syrup, because you want to know whether it's too sour/sweet.
Note the tomatoes - orangey.
8. Turn off heat. Let it sit for a while. Then, pour into jars. I got about...900g? Well, three chili-sauce jars full. Evidently, chili sauce has a different density than berry jam, so the yield is probably 1 kilo of jam.



We didn't have any bread so I spread some on man[2] tou[2] that my mum made a few days ago. You should put all remaining jam in the fridge. It keeps for at least a month. I don't know beyond that because we, as a family of 5 [well, temporarily 6] usually consume it all within that time.
Taste? Starts off soury-sweet, almost like candy. The gooseberry and strawberry flavour is initially very prevalent [NOT the store-bought strawberry jam taste, though!!], and ends in a slight tomato taste [think a tiny touch of tomato sauce]. There is no kiwi taste, even though my brother, who had insisted we stick in a kiwi, insists that there is a tang of kiwi. Texture-wuse, the skin from the berries and tomatoes and such are surprisingly a great addition. I find it amazing that the kiwi and strawberry chunks appear to have melted [even though they're just mushed]. ENJOY Jammmmmmin' EVERYONE!