Savoury Crêpes

As a farewell dinner (well, only for a little over a fortnight), SP and I made some crêpes. Twice, he flipped them using the pan, which was spectacular. We had various fillings: brie, peanut butter, fig butter (which has crunchy niblets!), and grilled tofu.



Regarding brie, a new cheese for me: I mildly dislike it. The rind has ruined it for me. Even after melting, the brie rind elicits some feelings of disgust, which have developed more strongly over the week. It tastes a bit earthy, but also reminds me of certain bodily fluids. This flavour is mainly due to retronasal olfaction - the volatile compounds that are smelled by the nose via the mouth while eating the food (as opposed to just sniffing the food). When I pinch my nose, the flavour is greatly reduced, and all I'm eating is a chewy rind that is mildly salty. So, I've been cutting off the rind and saving the pieces for SP, who enjoys it. In fact, some of the mold from the rind colonised a new patch of cheese in the interior, due to contact in the bag! The cheese itself is really soft, has a mild, earthy flavour, and is buttery. I don't think that I enjoy it that much as it doesn't pack much umami.


The fig butter goes pretty well with the brie, and I was too busy eating to take more pictures. There was no need to "prepare the Nutella" because we didn't have any. Crêpe combinations included:

• Brie + fig butter + tofu
• Peanut butter + fig butter
• Brie rinds (all SP's!)
• Peanut butter + brie

The first crêpes looked great (according to SP), although all our crêpes were on the small side as I possess a small frying pan.

"Brie and fig butter" has a fancy aura. Imagine going to a dainty restaurant and being served 

"Traditional, fresh, homemade crêpes cooked to a perfect tan colour, adorned with specialty imported double cream brie cheese curls and a generous smear of select fig butter with natural sugars"

...Or, you know, elicit a warmer atmosphere by getting your boyfriend to make them for you at home. Although he is expert crêpe-flipper, I am expert crêpe-batter-in-the-pan-spreader.

On the side, I made some bubble tea (Pu Er + sugar + milk + instant tapioca pearls) , which we both drank lukewarm. Then, like a four year-old, SP started shooting tapioca pearls through the straw, and got not only my bedspread, but also my light-coloured skirt splattered with milk tea.

We ended up with 7 or 8 crêpes, made with 1 cup of white flour, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of oil, and 1 tablespoon of sugar. This is a recipe that SP's mum uses.

Rocky Road Cookies

Apparently, there are different versions of the "Rocky Road" flavour. Therefore, I don't think it's wrong calling these leftover-Halloween-candy-pieces cookies "Rocky Road" cookies. They have oatmeal, marshmallows, peanut M&Ms, rock-shaped chocolate with realistic rock-like sugar coating (I used to pass by a chocolatier at Penrith Plaza when  I was younger, in Australia, and they used to have golden and silver beads/sprinkles/candy balls on display. I don't remember if they had rock-like coating chocolate, though), one peanut butter bunny from April, 3 malt balls, and milk chocolate chunks.

My sister and I made half a batch of cookies using a recipe from a brand-name sponsored recipe book. Why did I buy a recipe book full of food company advertising? ...This was 4 years ago (wow...that long?) and I was in NY and the Strand was having a sale (closing sale?) and I got a thick hardcover recipe book for $1 with pages after pages of shiny, colourful pictures of scrumptious desserts!! So, I did it for the pictures.

Come on, why else -apart from the images- do recipe books sell nowadays, with millions of equally fancy (or, even better...like the recipes I have, which have comments on better technique and economical energy usage?) recipes online?

Half the batch ended up providing us with 31 cookies. Yummy.

By the way, the Australian version of "Rocky Road" is evidently superior to the American version (in my opinion, drawn from experience). According to Wikipedia (I know, not a completely correct source), the American version is just marshmallow, nuts, and milk chocolate--that is true. The Australian definition, however, includes things such as COCONUT, TURKISH DELIGHT and jelly!--that is true also.

Friends!

TJ made me some iced peach juice. Actually, I think's more of a... hm... It's basically ice and peaches stuck in the blender. I really liked it, since it was icy cold (frozen peaches, I found out, don't taste as juicy or sweet as fresh peaches), but there was still a pleasant peach taste. TJ didn't enjoy it though, and proceeded to throw away a plate of cut up peaches, which kind of irked me.

 In other news, SR gave me a peanut butter cookie that his mum made for him. It's funny, because my mum came to Penn to give me my glasses (whoo!!! I can see far away now!) and brought along a bag of broccoli, cauliflower, mangoes, peaches, and basil from the garden. She also brought me a slice of pizza, which is pretty silly considering I have at least 9 slices of pizza in my fridge right now.

Frozen Peanut Butter

While browsing the internet trying to find how much ice cream costs per pound (or per ounce. I've still found nothing...), I realised that I've never frozen peanut butter before.

I've frozen bananas, gooseberries, apples, blueberries, currants, cookie dough, grapes, bread, and nut brittle. I've never tried freezing peanut butter.

Hm, when I lose my frosh 15 I'll eat a jar of frozen crunchy peanut butter. Perhaps I will even add some chocolate, cereal, breadcrumbs, tortilla chips, and yoghurt into the jar (after I pour out all the oil at the top and use it in cooking). It will be peanut butter froyo, but the ratio of peanut butter to yoghurt will be something like 97:1.

I realise that I probably sound a bit crazy.

However, I think it is really crazy when people drive over a mile to get to a chain ice cream store, spend $3-4 on one measly scoop of ice cream, and drive back home. (In the case of Philadelphia, walk to a brand-name ice cream store, purchase a $4.25+ ice cream with tax).

It makes more sense to pick up some a whole container (1 pint to 1 quart to whatever value-pack-size) of ice cream for $1-7 while doing the weekly/monthly grocery shopping. (In the case of Philadelphia, walk literally 300 m further from the brand-name ice cream store, purchase a $2 pint of the same brand's ice cream flavour, with/out? tax).

I also learned today at Trader Joe's that the goat cheese on crackers is called chevre and it's even more delicious when it's spicy.

Penn "Chocolate" Festival

"Next semester, I will be more involved in social groups at school."

That's what I said last semester when I realised that I was pretty much in two clubs.

Then I realised that if I joined another two, I'd have no time to do my homework, study, go to the lab, run, and eat food.

This is in addition to the fact that I'm already managing my time better than I was last semester.

So, I didn't join any extra clubs, but I do get emails from the Penn Gastronomy Club (which I should officially join, actually). Recently, I got an email about the Penn Chocolate Festival, and there were going to be "some of the city's best chocolatiers" and free samples present!

At the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall, the Penn Chocolate Festival took flight. Breezy. Short. Among the tumbleweed. It was too timid to be anything like other food events (e.g. Campus "Free" For All), which was good because it meant that each member of the audience had extremely personalised attention from the vendors, which included just two chocolatiers (Really).

Despite obtaining a lot of information from the vendors, I didn't get many samples, which was a bit of a let-down considering the blatant advertising in the email. Then again, the email claimed that there were going to be many chocolate vendors, which wasn't the case.

The sweet, thick and creamy tea (which didn't taste much like tea) with mini tapioca balls in the above image came from Boba Brothers. I loved the fact that the tapioca balls are tiny! (~2mm in diameter; it makes them drinkable via a standard straw, and it is quite a twist). Actually, I wonder how bubble tea would be like with various sized tapioca balls in the tea...

Although the liquid was super sweet, clean/not artificially-flavoured-ish, there was no "chocolate" in it at all.

My second stop was John&Kira's chocolate. The fact that they use local ingredients and have beautiful packaging and are a home business (I talked to Kira) means that their prices are jacked up, of course. For $6.50, I can get Chipotle, instead of a bar of chocolate. However, John&Kira's also have everything that Chipotle, and Godiva, and Lindt don't have; they own the company, they can allow me to make my own flavour, and they use ingredients from around here. The mint in the mint chocolate came from University City's Urban Garden! I have no idea where that is, but it's within a 3 mile radius, probably. According to the brochure, the honey comes from Millerton PA, while the berries come from Meadow Gap PA. I'm not sure why they're advertising that the coffee whiskey comes from Mexico or that the bergamot comes from Sri-Lanka, because those aren't "local", but perhaps the overall message is that these ingredients come from known sources, and we're supposed associate that with fair labour or something.

My first impression was that the ladybugs and the bees were super shiny. They were as shiny as marbles, although more pearlescent. Apparently, there is a really high cocoa butter content in them, since the're some sort of caramel (bees) or ganache (ladybug).

Kira gave me a pretty big sample of dark mint chocolate to taste. The mint was definitely true mint; it isn't the sweet stuff that I'm accustomed to in commercial mint ice cream or mint chocolate; it was legitimate mint-right-off-the-plant. Although I do like the peppermint/conventional mint better, this one was light and delicious too. The chocolate part was... normal, I would say.

I then went to the table promoting Sazon restaurant. The guy who was at the table was a real businessman; he talked non-stop about how his chocolate was real, untempered, pure, made straight from crushed beans from Venezuela (the "original/pure/clean/unadulterated" location of cacao, apparently). He explaining his experimentation with making truffles in his kitchen, and he talked about testing all his truffles on his friends. At one point, he gave someone in the audience a whole truffle. He didn't give any truffles to me though, even though I talked to him for a good 10 minutes about his truffles and cocoa. He walked me through the truffles; coconut ones, jalapeno ones, rum infused ones, berry-filled - "I don't care about rule of 3 flavours - you know, of chocolate, and two others. I just dump them all in together and you can taste them all!", he proclaimed. He pointed out that the ones in the middle compartment were vegan, and the coconut covered ones on the right were raw and made with a ton of coconut butter. "Nothing goes above 105 degrees. I just use a blender and a thermometer; my raw vegan friend is really anal about this," he boasts. Then, he listed the ingredients in these vegan truffles, and I kinda blanked out until him mentioned the word honey.

Honey. From bees.

I'm not vegan, but vegans do not eat honey.

Naturally, I responded, "Hey wait! Vegans don't eat honey!"

The guy (I'm sorry I do not know his name but on the website, he's the Chocolate Alchemist) looked at me in this really exasperated way (and perhaps with a hint of scorn - he's not a vegetarian or vegan), and said "Well, it's just some honey; we don't know if agave is a good idea because it might have corn syrup or other things added, and honey is pure. And, our honey is local. Besides, you know that there are different definitions of vegan and a lot of vegans eat honey."

He didn't say those exact words, but that was his position on the issue. Call me biased, amnesiatic, or downright silly, but if there is honey in those truffles, those truffles are NOT vegan. His (sorta pompous) attitude, coupled with the fact that he selectively gave out truffles for sampling, meant that I didn't have a good impression of his business. I know he's allowed to boast about his truffles and his super-awesome hot chocolate since they do taste delicious (the hot chocolates did, at least), but I felt like he was stepping the line by sticking honey in a "vegan" treat.

So, the hot chocolates were amazing. I tried the Clasico and the Cuaimia. The Clasico was thick hot chocolate that had no watery taste at all; it was literally like drinking flavourful, textured, melted chocolate. The Cuaimia had a hint of chili (although not too much; I think I would prefer more) and was less chocolatey. Neither had sugar, yet they were so flavourful that sugar wasn't needed to counteract the bitter taste of the ground cocoa (not that it tasted that bitter, in comparison to cocoa powder).

Another local vendor was the Kitchen at Penn. They gave out banana pudding, brownie, and and a plastic cup. No spoon. The food tasted ordinary, but I suppose that's the point, because the Kitchen at Penn is supposed to emulate homemade food for college students missing home.

Although the next few pictures depict vacuous, gilded and bland cupcakes, I'm still posting them because they are indeed prettily decorated. Buttercream Cupcakes (a cupcake truck, not to be confused with Call Me Cupcake, another cupcake truck) offers sundry cupcakes, including the best-seller, red velvet.

I tried 1/4 of a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing and purple sugar. The peanut butter icing tasted legitimately like peanut butter smothered in cream and sugar. The cake was kinda dry actually.

So wait a minute, two legit chocolatiers out of 5, at a "chocolate" festival?

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.

Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels.

It is terribly trying to take pictures without sunlight. In my opinion, the best light in which one should take pictures of food is definitely bright sunshine. There is no better way to highlight each crevice and every crumb.

However, sunlight rarely filters into my room since the sun sets to the left of my window and rises on the right side [I think? I really don't know, but I do know that sunlight never streams into my room].

Maybe I should clarify.

Light from the sun comes into my room through a crack called a window, but beams of beautiful, bright, sunlight does not enter my room. So, my room is always a greyish colour, unless my fluorescent light bulb...which is yellow... is on.

This is why it's terribly annoying taking pictures in my room, since I have to move the food to the edge of the table between the hours of 7am and 5pm, and usually I'm sleeping or out [I leave around 9 every day and get back from 6pm to 9pm. Nice life, I know].

So, here is a wonderful picture I took of my newest New Food:

I present you with Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels. And what a sight they are! You can see every grain of salt, every burnt corner, and even the thin layer of peanut butter enclosed by the hard, not-so-flaky pretzel!

The moral of this story is that I should take pictures of food when I get up at 8:30am in the morning and while I'm rushing around trying to leave by 8:45am so I can get to class at 9am. The second moral is that these Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels weren't desirable at all, although they look so inviting.

I eat peanut butter with pretzels all the time. So, what's the issue?

The issue is NaCl.

These pretzel pillows are so cute and enrobe a delicate, purely-saturated-peanut-flavoured [not sweet, not honey, not salty, not sesame, not fake, not waxy] chunk of peanut butter. These pretzel pillows are whole wheat. They're even coloured aesthetically!

The only problem is that they are dotted with chunks of NaCl/salt that shatter your tongue and throat the way glass decimates a piece of silk, or the way ice destroys a ship. These chunks of salt are huge! It's like having sand in a sandwich. It's unpleasant and leaves you wondering why you're stuck in a desert [metaphorically, both for the sand/wich and the pretzel pillows].

Even after scraping off salt crystals with my nails, the pretzel pillows tasted like they were smothered in salt. I sure wish they were salt-less; I would have enjoyed them so much more :(.

This may be why there is a glass of milk on the package, although I really needed to drink a LOT of water to feel as though I was at homeostasis, if at all.

172 Posts!

They said I couldn't do it... they said I'd get bored... they said I'd forget my password or my account would get hacked... but they were wrong! PIE-314 lives and reeks of nearly-year-old food! [The blog is only a year old on the 24th, because that's when I was done with midterm exams]

Unfortunately, there was no "they". My parents are unaware my this blog, my siblings are indifferent, and I have perhaps gained 2 frequent readers to this blog. To them: Thank you!

In 2010, I created 172 posts, and if you count the one on 1.1.11 [which is about the food in 2010, and included food I made in 2010], I had 173 posts. This means that I posted on about 47.4% [or 47.1%] of the year, with August having a post on every single day.

This year I suppose I should blog more, since I've realised that I never actually write about the economic/social/scientific aspects of food that much... Most of the time it's me making really stinky jokes and using dramatic imagery to make your salivary glands release an excess of amylase. I also ought to take better pictures and I really want to figure out how to make these uploaded pictures larger! 400x300 pixels is much too small nowadays, although you can click to get a 10.2mpx or 5.0mpx version.

Anyway, I haven't been blogging recently because I've been hanging out with BV and today I did the unforgivable act of prolonging the shelf-life of stereotypes.

I made a sandwich. For a male person.

Actually, it was a half-baked attempt, because it was only one slice of bread spread with peanut butter. Controversial or not... I'd gladly make him more sandwiches. He said he'd cook for me too, so that's cool :D.

So, here are some pictures of Chowder from Chowder. I love to watch Chowder!

New Year Party!

First post of 2011! I will now post about my "birthday party" on the 31st of December 2010. It's actually not my birthday on the last day of the year [but I do know someone who is born on that day!], but the idea was that I meet up with my friends from high school and celebrate my birthday which is around this time of year. The funny thing is that my mum actually let my friends stay overnight. The sad part is that 80% of the people I invited couldn't come due to another party or travelling. So, my brother invited his friends [and they took the TV to play games], and my mum invited her friends, so we ended up with a group of around 20 people. I also made a birthday cake, since I didn't want to buy a cake that had icky stuff in it. The cake I made included whole wheat flour and balsamic vinegar.

This layer of cake actually turned out alright [I was using a brownie recipe, so it's a bit flat and dense], but the first two layers were way too thin; when they were piled together they looked shorter than a pie. Or a fruit tart.

Orange glaze - 3 tablespoons of orange juice, 1 tablespoon of milk, and 1 cup of sugar! The glaze only had a hint of orange when it was dry, though.

See how flat the first batch came out?

A very coarsely-ground recipe for this cake [if you want 1-2cm-thick brownies that fit two 9.5 inch pans]

Ingredients:

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of milk

1 cup of oil

1 cup of cocoa powder

3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

1.5 tsp baking soda [want it poofier? add 1-2tsp baking soda]

some salt

Method: Mix and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees F. Add more time if you want to.

First layer=blackberry jam

Second layer=marshmallows [Should've gotten marshmallow fluff, which doesn't have gelatin, but I didn't realise that I was going to be making a four-layer cake].

Third layer=peanut butter icing!

And... the cake! I have more pictures but I'm not uploading those because I do not want people to know my real name.

[The best] Sprinkles [in the world]! They're just like the ones from Australia - the Hundreds and Thousands that my mum used to put on honey bananas [except that these are only pink, green, and white, instead of rainbow-coloured].

So there were other foods, and I took pictures of them too, but this is one that I want to commemorate. This was brought by HM's family, and HM is my sister's friend. It's primarily composed of glutinous rice spotted with quartered jujubes [red dates]. Enclosed in the chewy, sticky layers is a mound of warm red bean paste. Curly swirls of orange and lime rind gently garnish the outside of the hemispherical [or parabolic... Actually, perhaps more parabolic, since bowls are generally more parabolically shaped] dessert.

Everyone said that the cake was nice, but they could've just been saying that because they knew that I had baked it. Apparently, one of the kids had been eyeing it for a long time before my mum realised that the kid wanted cake. The kid's mum told me that it tasted "fresh" and "rich", which are nice compliments! Another comment includes the "It's good". My sister, who had helped me with it, of course was scarfing down cake and burping out compliments.

We later watched some Harry Potter upstairs because my brother and his friends were still playing games on the TV downstairs, and then we watched the ball drop, which was seriously anti-climatic [as it is, every year].

We finished Harry Potter, and BV and I watched some Snoopy [yes, Snoopy and Harry Potter are awesome!]. It was a great birthday-partyesque-dinner-type-thing.

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...]

Vegan Whoopie Pie!

So at one of those late night events there was a Vegetarian society meeting thingy and there were these cakes and stuff and a "make-your-own" whoopie pie table. I have never had a legitimate whoopie pie before. Honestly... is the stuff inside supposed to be marshmallow fluff? Cream? Whipped cream? PHOs? Meringue?...

These cupcakes were amazing though... especially as they were vegan.

This is a vat of peanut butter whoopie pie filling. It was actually tasty. Notice the marker nearby... just for size comparison. It was a HUGE vat of... sugary fat.

The pillow-sized vats of plain whoopie pie filling and cookies and cream [and I didn't think that more cream was possible] whoopie pie filling. Huge vat of gooey creamy white stuff... ring a bell? Get this in a bank? [Okay, that was a terrible joke. Or, reference. So, I'm not going to underline it.]

Since I am a neophyte at making whoopie pies, I put way too much creamy stuff on the chocolate cookie-cake thingy [which was really dry and bland. And baking-soda-y. I didn't like it.] It was way too oily. The cupcake below, on the other hand, was ridiculously moist and delicious. I didn't consume any of the other stuff [pumpkin, and vanilla, I believe.] since I, for once, didn't feel hungry.