"Once upon a time ...

... there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." I first read this sweet quote when I saw the wedding program of blogger Joanna Goddard of A Cup of Jo.

Months later, I came across another quote from the same book at another wedding-related post from Miss Stripes of Weddingbee:

"For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become a moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love, both sides were heads: I knew I couldn't lose."

With such romantic writing and vivid imagery, paired with its intriguing title, The History of Love was a book that I kept in the back of my mind as something to check out when I had time to read for fun (summer). This novel by Nicole Krauss is about a lonely, elderly man named Leo Gursky who has loved only one woman, his childhood sweetheart Alma. As a young man, he wrote a book, also called The History of Love, inspired by Alma. However, he lost his love and his book decades ago. Unknown to him, though, Leo's novel has been published in a different country, in a different language, and under a different name.

One person whose life has been touched by Leo's book is 14-year-old Alma Singer, who was named after the book's character. Her mother longs for her late husband who died years ago, while her 11-year-old brother Bird thinks he's the Messiah. Young Alma's quest to find a man for her mother to love turns into a larger adventure to find out more about her namesake.

Each chapter shifts to a different narrator, mostly between Leo and Alma, and there are also chapters with third-person narration that provide the history of Leo's book. Readers also receive snippets of Leo's book throughout the novel, so it's like reading a story within a story. The characters have quirky, unique voices, and sometimes what they say makes you laugh, while other times you just feel for them.

At 252 pages, it's a fast read, but there are a lot of details packed into those pages. Plus with the different narrators and the non-linear storytelling, I became confused sometimes. However, I definitely want to re-read this book, taking my time this time, to really appreciate the writing and understand some parts of the story better. Plus, there were a few twists and turns, some of which I saw coming and some I didn't, so that's another reason to read it again.

Apparently, there's suppose to be a film adaptation of this novel. Director Alfonso Cuarón had bought the rights to it years ago. I wonder who will portray the characters, and I wonder how the film will turn out.

Food Detox

Wonder why all these people are standing in line? Well, they're waiting to have Father's Day lunch at Kome Japanese Seafood & Grill. There was already a line out the door at 10:30 a.m., even though the restaurant opens at 11 a.m. People get there early and get assigned a number on a first-come, first-served basis. When their number is called (as the employee with the megaphone is demonstrating), then they  can finally head to their table.

After a wait of 30 minutes or more, what awaits patrons of this Japanese and Chinese buffet? My plate shows a sample of the Japanese fare:

The line for the Japanese food was relatively shorter than the much longer one for the Chinese food, so I just went with the flow, since I was hungry. It's possible, though, to be so overwhelmed by the crowds and lines, not to mention all the food and choices at such a buffet. Maybe some people can go crazy:

That cute kid is one of my cousins, Joanna. She was able to cut in line for particular Chinese food by sweetly saying, "Excuse me, excuse me!" and laying on the charm real thick. However, if you're not blessed to be a second-grade girl and you're eating at this buffet with family and friends, my suggestion is for you to coordinate with your companions: Maybe one person can get food from the Chinese area, another from the Japanese, another from the noodles area, etc., and everyone shares the wealth with each other:

Maybe you're in a food coma just looking at that picture? I did try to be careful with what I chose to eat, sticking mostly to relatively healthy fare, like seafood instead of beef and pork, as well as making sure I  got my veggies and fruits. Still, I didn't want to overwhelm my system later in the day. Let's just say that all for dinner I had that night was a granola bar, dry cereal, and an apple. 

After eating some home-cooked leftovers for breakfast and lunch (part of the joys of seeing my family) on Monday, I was on my own for preparing dinner. After a jog/walk, I was in the mood for something pretty light after my weekend dietary habits. I think this fits the bill pretty well:

I made a tuna fish salad without mayonnaise. Instead, I used lemon juice, lemon zest, ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, and a little extra virgin olive oil for seasoning. I also used drained canned tuna that was packed in water instead of oils, along with chopped fresh celery and red bell peppers. I used one slice of a nutty wheat bread for my tuna sandwich, and another slice of bread for fried egg in toast for something warm and a little substantive. With some baby carrots and a white nectarine for dessert, it certainly fit the bill of what I was looking for:

What's cooking? Quick, affordable meals!

Recently, it seems like I've turned into a bit of a food blogger. In my last entry, I talked about how I'm starting to do more cooking. Since I'm staying at my dorm over the summer, which is when the dorm residents and I have to fend for ourselves when it comes to food, I'm starting to do a little bit of experimenting in the kitchen.

Last Friday, I went to a Vietnamese grocery store for cheap produce and a Safeway for other groceries. Since I've been suffering from a sore throat, cough, and stuffy nose, I made my own chicken noodle soup, loosely based off of this recipe for Spaghetti Soup, minus the tomato soup. I happened to have a large package of spaghetti on hand, so this I used that instead of the egg noodles usually found in chicken noodle soup. I had bought ground turkey, which is cheaper than chicken breasts and cooks pretty fast. The vegetables were celery, green beans and peas.

The soup tasted good, though if I were to make this soup again, I would have either put more chicken broth or less "stuff" in the soup to make this dish more like a soup, instead of watery pasta (this isn't the fault of the recipe, but rather from my estimated proportions). I also would have broken the noodles into even smaller sizes. On the other hand, the next day, I did find a stray can of tomato soup in the kitchen and used that with my leftovers -- great! It was practically like spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Eggs have become a standby for me in recent months and something I like to have on hand. They're an affordable source of protein and are quite versatile, whether it's for cooking or baking. This morning, I used this recipe for Cookie Cutter Toad-in-Hole. Instead of using a cookie cutter, I cut a square-like shape (it doesn't look like a perfect square!) with a knife in the middle of the bread. The traditional shape for the hole is a circle, so if you don't have a cookie cutter, you can use a glass rim to get that shape.

While the egg cooked in the bread, that was enough time for me to heat up a pan with oil and quickly saute ground turkey, green beans, and peas, all seasoned with freshly ground black pepper. I used canned green beans and peas in my earlier soup and had a bunch of leftover vegetables that I needed to use. This dish plus the fried egg in toast took only 10-15 minutes to cook, since I was doing them simultaneously. Delicious!

*Even though the recipe calls it toad-in-the-hole, there's a British dish with the same name that has sausages in a Yorkshire pudding batter. Instead, this egg and toast has been called a load of other names, such as egg in the basket, cowboy eggs, bird's nest, etc.

For lunch today, I had more time on my hand to prepare a meal. Still, this took less than 30 minutes to prepare and cook, especially since I was doing it all at the same time. I've grown up eating rice at home, but it was always prepared in a rice cooker, instead of on the stove. Rice cookers are pretty convenient because all you need to do is measure and pour the rice into it, measure and pour the water into it, turn the rice cooker on, and in less than 30 minutes, it should be done. It's so easy, and you're not likely to burn or otherwise mess up your rice if you cook it in a cooker, instead of a stove. However, I gave stove-cooked rice a shot. Instead of water, I boil about 1.25 cups of chicken broth and 1 tablespoon of butter on the stove on medium and added more than 1 cup of white rice. After adding the rice, I put a lid on the pot and lowered the temperature to a medium-low, so it could simmer for 20-25 minutes (I ended up doing mine for 25 minutes).

Meanwhile, I chopped up some celery and red bell peppers (I forgot to add garlic!) and added that to a pan with olive oil. I sauteed it on medium, and then I gradually added other ingredients: ground turkey (yes, I have a lot of it for one person), one egg, and more green beans and peas. I seasoned the dish with black pepper, garlic salt, and cayenne pepper. It tasted good, especially paired with the rice, which surprisingly (for me) turned out nice and fluffy, not dry at all.

While this definitely doesn't qualify for quick from my experience, I wanted to give you an update on my lemon Italian ice. Today was the first time since last Thursday that I took it out of the freezer to check it. You know what? The ice basically stayed as shavings from the last I scraped it, instead of going back to a solid block. The picture above is from the baking dish that is holding the ice. It's still good, though, to shave any ice that's still in rather large blocks. It was quite a refreshing dessert to my meal.

Listening to my little chef

(Photo by altemark)

Do you like the "Ratatouille" reference in this blog post's title? Anyways, if you've read my recent entries here and here, I've been blogging about food. I would consider my family and I to be foodies. While growing up, I watched many cooking programs with my family. Instead of eating out a lot, my parents, particularly my mom, cooked the meals that weren't just food associated with our cultural background. My sister has recently been cooking a lot, too, after taking a cooking class in high school. During her university's school year, when my sister lives with one of our aunts, she's the one who does the cooking in that household.

While I appreciate food, I wasn't very interested in cooking it myself. Instead, I would rather "eat for food," as the sign says in the picture above. Sure, I could at least boil Top Ramen, as well as make pasta with sauce from a jar, but I'd avoid it if I could. Even if my mom tried to get me to help her in the kitchen, it was half-hearted on my part (plus, I don't feel very comfortable with kitchen knives). When I became a university student and started living away from home, you may think that that would have given me an opportunity to start cooking more regularly. Nope. For the past handful of years, I've lived in dormitories in which room and board came with a meal plan to eat at the various dining establishments on campus -- so easy, so convenient, and so unhealthy for you, if you're not careful with your options. It was either that or eating out.

When it was winter or summer break, I usually went home, where I could enjoy those home-cooked meals again. However, I spent last summer in Philadelphia for an internship, so I was on my own when it came to food. I gradually formed somewhat of a weekday food routine: cereal with nonfat milk for breakfast; a venti white mocha from the Starbucks counter at my office; a small salad and soup with a Snapple at my office for lunch (mixed with a splurge at Panera's once in a while if I went out with co-workers); Easy Mac, microwavable noodles, or a plain turkey sandwich on wheat bread, salad from a bag usually without dressing, and fruit; Triscuits or granola bars for snacks in between all that. Still no real cooking to be found.

Near the end of my stay, I finally started to cook -- a little. It mostly amounted to whole wheat spaghetti with a jar of marinara sauce or Top Ramen with a dash of sesame oil and some lettuce from the salad bag, so it was still not exactly gourmet. However, there was still something satisfying with cooking your own meal, that feeling of accomplishment after it's all done, and savoring the delicious results. Plus, it made me realize that I could have done this cooking thing all along that summer -- it would have saved me more money in the long-run than to eat out or buy ready-made stuff. Plus, I might have felt more satisfied.

During the past academic year, I was back to my meal plan, so I didn't take much advantage of cooking. However, in recent months, I've been cooking with my boyfriend once in a while and baking for him and his family, too. I like picking and trying out recipes on him, as well as cooking (he makes a nice sous chef) and eating together. All this has been a nice lead off to another summer away from home when I'll have to depend upon myself to come up with food. This time I'm looking more forward to grocery shopping and trying to come up with things to cook from what I have on hand. Sometimes what I have on hand is kind of random (e.g. someone left me a couple cans of green beans, a couple cans of tuna, and a box of chicken-flavored couscous), but that's when you need to get creative.

I read a May 29 article from The Seattle Times about an unemployed restaurant critic who now makes due with food stamps. It was interesting to read about his experiences, and it was especially interesting to read about how he uses his knowledge and creativity to come up with things to cook, not simply for survival but for a "gastronome's quest to eat well, to maintain a nutritious diet, to satisfy my foodie cravings, and to help those who help me." He writes: "By shopping wisely and scrimping compulsively, by cooking and savoring each meal as a blessing, I am sustained. Even that mysterious can from the food bank generically stamped 'Pork with Juices' promised culinary communion." That's inspiring.

Ice ice baby

(Photo by roboppy)

The above picture is lemon Italian Ice from Libby's Italian Pastry Shop. In my last blog post, among other things, I wrote about attempts at making lemon Italian ice (a.k.a. water ice, if you're from Philadelphia), using this recipe. The recipe says to "pour mixture into a 10 by 12-inch baking dish that's sitting on a sheet tray and put in the freezer." While I did find a glass baking dish of comparable dimensions, I didn't use the sheet tray at first. I wondered how big of a difference it would make to put a sheet tray underneath it. After the mixture was still in a liquid state after one day, I put my metal cookie tray right underneath the baking dish and continued waiting for it to freeze.

Two days after I had originally put the baking dish in the freezer, the liquid was ... still a liquid! The recipe had made it sound like the whole thing would freeze after 1.5 hours! I wonder where I went wrong ... or if the recipe is wrong. The liquid is rather thick, so maybe I shouldn't expect it to freeze so fast in this massive container Speaking of container, I wonder how deep was Sunny Anderson's baking dish; if hers wasn't very deep, maybe her ice froze faster? Also, perhaps her freezer was much stronger than my dormitory's one.

Fortunately for me (and the freezer's door), I could take a break from obsessively checking the lemon Italian ice. I went home on Monday and came back to my dormitory on Thursday. It was nice to see my family and get home-cooked meals (hello, boeuf bourguignon!). However, I had to deal with allergies-related sore throat, cough, snuffy nose, and sneezing the whole time. I even squeezed in a doctor's appointment, where I was prescribed three medicines. "Yay" me.

Today, I'm still dealing with these symptoms. One bright spot about my return to San Jose on Thursday, though, was that my lemon Italian ice was totally ... frozen! I "scrape(d) the ice with a fork, being sure to mix the softer center with the more frozen outer edges":

The yellow specks underneath the scraped ice are little pieces of lemon zest. For some reason, all of the lemon zest ended up at one end of the baking dish (the relatively gooey, softer-yet-icy side), while the other end of the tray was more clear and seemed more like ice (you know, hard) -- all the more reason to mix everything together. Here's a close-up picture:

After all the scraping and mixing, I definitely wanted to try my handiwork. Verdict: It makes a refreshing, summer treat! It wasn't too sweet, and the zest added some nice texture to it, too. I let two other people try some, and they also responded positively with words like "nice," "it tastes like frozen lemonade" and "great." I definitely want my boyfriend to try some, too. I was told by one of my taste testers that it's not good to eat cold stuff in my current health condition -- hmm, I wonder if that's true.

All in all, it was a success, though it took much longer than expected for it to freeze (I wonder on which day it finished freezing during my home visit). There's still a nice amount still freezing in the freezer, now in scraped form instead of one solid block, so I wonder if that will change the texture even more.

When life gives you lemons...

(Photo by foodmuse)

...you don't only have to make lemonade! After a successful attempt at cooking for my boyfriend for the first time, I baked cookies for him and his family for Christmas, using a standby recipe.  A few months ago, my boyfriend and I went through the time-consuming (but rewarding) process of cooking wonton soup, making our little dumplings from scratch (minus the store-bought wrappers) and wrapping them each by hand:

No lemons were used in the making of this yummy soup, though. However, they were definitely used in our next cooking experiment: linguine with shrimp scampi. Knowing that we both like shrimps and wanted a quicker dish to cook than wonton soup, it seemed like a great choice -- and it was!

My boyfriend and I actually ended up cooking dinner for his parents, his brother, his brother's girlfriend, and us! We also used lemons to make lemon Italian ice, based off of a lime Italian Ice recipe. However, it took a lot longer than expected for the dish to freeze in his parents' freezer, so I never got to taste the fruits of our labor.

Instead, I was stuck with six leftover lemons from my lemon shopping spree (I had originally bought ten fresh lemons, unsure of how many would be needed to equal the recipes' measurements -- no bottled, concentrated stuff for me!). I have found a few personal uses for those lemons in the subsequent weeks. For example, I've used lemons on a couple occasions to make a variation of the linguine with shrimp scampi dish to feed myself. Instead of using shrimp, which I didn't have on hand, I used eggs to get my protein. I also added tomatoes to the dish. Something else I added was thinly sliced lemon skins -- essentially lemon zest:

(Photo by kightp)

I was surprised to find out neither my boyfriend nor his parents were familiar with zest. The colored layer of citrus fruits' rinds contains oils that can really flavor food. You can read more about it here. We ended up not putting any zest in the linguine with shrimp scampi, but that didn't stop me from put some in my future pasta dishes:

For my boyfriend's graduation BBQ, I also added fresh lemon juice and zest to cookies and their accompanying glaze: Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze. Ricotta cheese may sound like a strange ingredient to add to cookie dough, but it gives the cookies a soft, cake-like texture. The cookies have a light taste, so the glaze gives them an extra zing. The glaze would probably be good for other baked goodies, too:

It was hot today, and I tried my hand at making lemon Italian ice, using water, granulated sugar, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest. It's currently still freezing, and I hope the results are worth it. I've been craving Italian ice, a popular frozen treat on the East Coast that is also known as water ice in Philadelphia. I tried this treat a few times when I was living in Philly last summer (I recommend Philly Flavors), but I have yet to find a place here in California that sells it. The texture is softer and creamier than a sno cone, since it has finer ice particles:

(Photo by churl)

Yum! Also today, I finished off my last lemon with another linguine with shrimp scampi variation, this time with green beans, egg, and a handful of shrimps from a friend. I think I may need to buy some more lemons in the future: They're versatile fruits that give dishes, whether they're savory or sweet, some extra flavor, and they seem so fitting for this time of year. Hope these ideas are helpful for anyone who has extra lemons on hand. What are your favorite dishes with lemon?

Take a bite out of summer

That spray-painted mural above (with "the decisive moment" positioning of the artist's head) was one of the many displays at the third annual SubZERO Festival in downtown San Jose's SoFA district. On the first Friday of every month, there's an event called (surprise, surprise) First Fridays, where the art galleries in this area are open late, and people are free to check out an eclectic mixture of artwork. The SubZERO Festival adds to First Fridays by having a street festival that closes off part of San Jose's South First Street and includes vendors, artists, and musicians. It's not every day that people can sit in the middle of a downtown street so casually like this:

The small group in the left foreground was waiting with a friend and me for Corpus Callosum. What the heck is that? Well, the literal meaning is it's a thick band of fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain and allows for communication between the two. In this case, though, it's also a musical/performance art group that plays instruments, including guitar, accordion, mandolin, flute, and glass goblets' rims. The group really knew how to make an entrance by approaching the stage through the crowd like a parade, with one of the members as a stilt walker and others manning a giant dragon puppet.

I took some grainy video on my cell phone, and the quality doesn't do this unique band (and my experience) justice. Here's a link, though, to the first of four videos that someone took of the group performing in the same spot in San Jose last September (you can skip three minutes ahead to the start of the music, if you'd like). You can also download mp3 files of the band's music here.

Prior to this event, I was invited to a little neighborhood porch party. It's not what you may imagine, though: Most of the guests were in their 40s, 50s, 60s, etc., and they live near my dormitory. However, the food was good and so were the conversations. All in all, it was a nice evening, and in a way, it reminded me of last summer.

It's still sinking in that earlier this week was the one-year anniversary of the start of my Pennsylvanian internship and my time living in Philadelphia. Last summer, after a 40-hour work week, I would spend the weekend exploring different parts of my adopted city, Philly -- and I have hundreds of pictures that document those memories. Going back to this evening, I found things to do besides sit around in an empty bedroom, and you know what? I did them and had fun!

This summer, I'm staying in another adopted city of mine, San Jose, which is where I am a graduate student when school is in session. There's no 40-hour internship to take up my time this time. While I am doing some work at my dormitory and should also work on my thesis, my time is pretty flexible. It'll be up to me to find things to do, to get out of the house, to occupy my time possibly alone (e.g. if my beloved boyfriend is busy and relatively far away from me), to find adventure, etc.

Basically, it'll be up to me to take a bite out of summer (not to mention update this blog)!