Is this what they eat in heaven?

(Photo by distopiandreamgirl)

Man, that's one fancy, three-tiered pavlova! That would definitely be awesome to have at a wedding.

Pavlova, or pav, is a New Zealand/Australian meringue dessert topped with whipped cream and fruit; it was named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova. This dessert, though, doesn't have to be so complex. It can be more simple (but still delicious-looking) like this:

(Photo by thenoodleator)

I had the opportunity to first taste and even help make pavlova a few years ago with an Australian resident at my dormitory for a couple Australia-themed events. These desserts were much loved by the people in attendance, but I didn't think about this dessert again until I designed a food newsletter that featured a recipe for pavlova.

While I have had the pleasure of eating this fabulous treat, my boyfriend hadn't, and I really wanted to share it with him by making one for his birthday. While it's one thing to look at delectable pictures (such as Flickr's pavlova group pool), it's totally different to experience the taste firsthand. Part of the beauty of pavlova is its contrast: A crispy shell contains a marshmallow texture inside; the sweet meringue with whipped cream can be topped with different fruits, including more tart ones such as certain berries, kiwis, etc.

I did a lot of research online, checking out different recipes and helpful hints. Here are some that I found especially useful:

• The Joy of Baking - This provides a great introduction/explanation of pavlova.
• Simply Recipes - This has pictures to illustrate each step of the process and is especially useful to people interested in making individual-size pavlova, instead of one, big cake.
• About.com - There are instructions for making a regular pavlova and mini versions, but what I found the most helpful was an article called "The Biggest Mistakes When Making Meringue."

I read a comment to a pavlova recipe somewhere that this is what they must eat in heaven. Wouldn't that be great?

I actually ended up using a recipe from Recipezaar (the website is currently going by the name Food.com) called My N Z Pavlova. I ended up choosing this recipe because it's suppose to make a pavlova that serves 10-12 people (at the time, I thought I wanted to make a large pavlova), and it had glowing reviews. Plus, this is a family recipe for the person who submitted it: In 2005, Jen T said she had been making it for 35 years! She must be doing something right.

I followed her recipe almost exactly, except for the first step:

"Prepare a baking sheet by greasing lightly with butter and placing on it a sheet of tinfoil or baking paper. Grease the tinfoil and then shake on a few drops of cold water and smear around leaving a thin film of water."

I wonder if this would have been helpful to do to make it easier to remove the cooled pavlova from the "baking paper" (I used parchment paper). While cookies have slid off easily from parchment paper without this treatment in the past, the pavlova was so delicate that I was afraid to break it when it didn't come off easily. Therefore, the parchment paper stayed.

To get an idea of what my pavlova looked after it cooled, here's a picture of me getting ready to put whipped cream on it:

(This and the rest of my step-by-step photos are by my boyfriend)

Cooled and out of the oven, it looked like the right color. The cracking of the shell is totally normal. However, it had started to cave in at the top, perhaps from the indentation I made with the spatula before baking it. My boyfriend started snacking on the flakes from the cracking shell, while we were transporting it from my place to his house.

The whipped cream was made with a half-pint of heavy whipping cream, a half-teaspoon of vanilla, and a one-eighth cup of granulated sugar that were whipped into a lightly sweetened cream:

The cream was just enough to cover the center, but nothing else. For such a big pavolva (8 inches in diameter), I should have made at least double the amount of whipped cream if I cared about aesthetics (e.g. covering up more of the collapsing top and spots where the shell flaked off). However, this was just a tester pavlova, and besides, the most important thing is taste!

You can be very creative with your toppings. For mine, my boyfriend happened to have blueberries at his house, and I brought along some strawberries that we sliced up. I had chosen strawberries because I thought they'd make a nice combo with a special ingredient I had made while the pavlova was baking: lemon curd (you know, for a strawberry lemonade effect).

Since a meringue-based dessert like pavlova requires only egg whites, you need to figure out what to do with your yolks. I decided to make lemon curd because my boyfriend loves lemon flavor; he was the one who almost overdosed on lemon bars, after all. In fact, he thought the lemon curd tasted like the filling in those bars. I followed Alton Brown's recipe, except I added six yolks (since I had used six egg whites for the pavlova) and I cooked it on the stove for 20 minutes like some people suggested in the comments, instead of eight. I also found that refrigerating it for at least a few hours before using it helped thicken it:

Luscious, isn't it? After adding more berries and drizzling more lemon curd over the top, this was the result:

Including me, eight people tried some (good thing my boyfriend had some family over at his place). You know what? They loved it, and so did I! You know what else? The texture was just as it should be: crispy on the outside and marshmallow-like on the inside! It was almost like I didn't need to make a test pavlova at all, since it turned out so well. However, I'm glad I did because I definitely learned while making it.

I had a mini-dilemma when it came to whether I should make pavlova for my boyfriend's birthday as planned: His family will celebrate on his real birth date when they're out-of-town this weekend for a wedding, probably with cake and presents. That means they won't be having a celebratory gathering for him when they return, one in which I can participate. That means that I probably shouldn't make a large pavlova like I did for my "test" -- if I should make pavlova at all.

A dry pavlova can last several days if it's stored properly in a non-humid place, but once you add the whipped cream, fruit, etc., it will only last a few hours before it becomes a soggy mess. I had leftovers after my test pavlova because the slices were fairly large to begin with and no one wanted second slices. It was edible the next day, but it definitely was not as good as when it was freshly decorated.

My boyfriend encouraged me to make pavlova again for his birthday if that was what I had wanted to do all along, instead of feeling discouraged that I wouldn't be making it for his birthday "party" (he said he just celebrates with his family informally, instead of have a party anyways). He certainly enjoyed pavlova the first time around and would definitely look forward to it if I made it again. This time for his belated birthday, I think I'm going to make individual or mini pavlovas, so that we only decorate what we can eat at the time and the rest of the meringues maintain a fresh, contrasty texture for much longer. He wants the exact same fruit toppings as before, especially the lemon curd.

Well, whatever the birthday boy wants, that's what he'll get!

Waiting over Oakland

(Photo by Carl_C)

Today, the national spotlight is on Oakland, California (pictured above) because a verdict was announced at about 4 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) in the case of Johannes Mehserle, a former BART officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009, on a platform in Oakland: guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The trial was held in Los Angeles, due to tension and intense media coverage in Alameda County, where Oakland is located. Some of that tension is related to race because Mehserle is white, while Grant was black. In fact, there were riots in Oakland, not long after the shooting (which has been on YouTube), and people in recent days have been bracing for similar violence after the verdict.

This case, indirectly, has special relevance for me because my boyfriend is covering the reactions and responses to the verdict in Oakland for one of the news agency. I have had mixed feelings about him doing this all along. As someone who also has a journalism background, I understand why he's there: someone needs to report what's going on and capture this news in words, images, and videos. But on the other hand, why is he in a potentially dangerous situation -- an unpaid intern, who I'm not even sure has the same protections and benefits that would probably be afforded to paid employees (e.g. for being injured on the job)?

My boyfriend wanted to go, though.

A year ago, I finished reading a great book called Watching the World Change by David Friend about the various imagery related to 9/11. As I read about certain people who took pictures on that fateful day in New York (in some cases they even went toward the damaged towers to get closer to the scene), I could picture my boyfriend as the type of person who would also go toward the danger for the sake of journalism. Of course, 9/11 and what's happening in Oakland are totally different and separate and not on the same scale, but what I'm focusing on is how my boyfriend would want to cover a breaking news event if he was in the area, or at least find out what was going on.

Today, as some people were leaving Oakland after the verdict, he headed toward it. Days earlier, while his supervisors were deciding if he should go, he once told me that he would go to Oakland, even if he wasn't representing a news agency. He always carries some sort of camera with him everywhere -- you know, just in case something happens. I was with him when he even bought a vest from a store that sells military-related gear. At home, he spray-painted the word, "PRESS," on the front and back to wear for this occasion (and perhaps beyond in similar situations). 

In the days leading up to the potential verdict, he didn't seem scared or nervous about covering the reaction in Oakland. In fact, for some reason, he thought things would be okay, that there would be enough police presence, that people have been preparing for potential violence all along, that we shouldn't assume it would necessarily be very violent. His dad and I were more skeptical than him. Well, if he's not going to worry about himself, then someone has to worry about him -- and that someone is me.

I even called him not long after I found out the verdict. After leaving a message the first time, I got through to him the second time, but he said he was shooting something and that he'd call me later. I called him a third time moments ago, but no reply. I've been following along with live blogs such as this one and even saw some photos he had taken online. Right now, I don't even know if he's still in Oakland, at his internship's office, at home, or somewhere in between.

I'm still waiting for his phone call.

Updated: After numerous phone calls and tweets through Twitter, I finally heard from him at 2:40 p.m. today.

4th of July -- Turlock & Philly-style

 

 (Photo by Daniel Peckham)

This is pretty late, considering that the 4th of July was on, you know, the 4th. However, I had the pleasure of having a busy-and-tiring-yet-fun-and-active weekend with my boyfriend and his family in Turlock, California. I got to visit his maternal grandparents' retirement community (and spent the night in a guest suite). Plus, I visited the farm of his aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I got up close with chickens and cows (not to mention a hyper, energetic dog named Mitzy), played board games in the house and a ball game in the pool, ate so much food at a backyard BBQ, and lit fireworks. Earlier that day, we had bought fireworks from a stand in Turlock, such as this one:

(Photo by chotda)

I had grown up seeing (and hearing) fireworks in my childhood neighborhood on Independence Day. Sometimes I would watch from afar when a neighbor lit a firework on a street in my neighborhood and colorful sparks would burst not too far above the ground, sometimes making whistling or exploding sounds. This year, it was my first time being a part of it: Besides lighting some fireworks, I played with sparklers for the first time. Something I learned was that fireworks were illegal in San Jose and most of the Bay Area. In fact, my boyfriend said he had only seen these kinds of stands when he visits his grandparents during the summer. It was hard for me to imagine this because back home, churches, school groups, and other organizations would use these stands as a fund-raising tool.

Considering how I didn't originally have any plans for the 4th of July weekend, I'm glad that my boyfriend had asked his family about inviting me (without my prior knowledge) and got permission. This definitely ranks has one of the most memorable 4th of July holidays in my life. Another memorable holiday was last summer, when I was living in the birthplace of it all: Philadelphia.

These are Mummers, which are part of Philadelphia's cultural heritage. People dress in elaborate costumes for the Mummers Parade on New Year's Day, but there were some Mummers in the 4th of July parade, along with the usual sights of marching bands, uniformed officers, and various vehicles. There's also a Mummers Museum in Philadelphia that's dedicated to this tradition.

The year 2009 happened to be the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, so there were some festivities across the street from Independence Hall. There were people dressed in clothing from that time period and Civil War reenactors, an interesting contrast to the usual sight of "colonists" in Independence National Historical Park. 

This reenactor in this Civil War-era camp seems to have an easy job of pretending to sleep, doesn't he?

One of my favorite exhibits at the different Abraham Lincoln booths were letters from school children across the country aimed toward the 16th president. Isn't that a cute drawing of Honest Abe with his famous hat?

Here's another letter:

In the meantime, there were a bunch of people near Independence Hall:

It turned out that they were having a Tea Party protest against President Barack Obama:

These Tea Party protesters weren't the only ones who were making trying to make a statement in this area, which was conveniently located next to the long line to view the Liberty Bell:

I had no clue what was going on until I read the back of these T-shirts that belonged to people who were with the group:

In the evening, I took the subway from my South Philly house to City Hall and walked along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a beautiful boulevard lined with flags representing different countries. This area contains some of Philadelphia's most famous sculptures and museums. There were so many people walking in the same direction as me; I had never seen the parkway so crowded before. The gorgeous sunset made for a striking scene:

Everyone was heading toward the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a free outdoor concert with vendors lined up along the way. While I was making my way to find my roommates, The Roots, a famous hip-hop group that originated from Philadelphia, were performing. The headliner was Sheryl Crow. Can you see her? She's wearing a white T-shirt and playing a guitar:

Afterward was the part that everyone was waiting for: fireworks above the art museum!

Overall, it was an incredible experience to be in Philadelphia for the 4th of July. It's great that I can look back at it fondly because I had been feeling homesick earlier that day and almost didn't go out that evening! Now, though, I have pictures, stories, and memories from just getting out there and making the most of my time in the City of Brotherly Love.

Lemon bars overdose

(Photo by EvaSan)

Yum, don't those look delicious? If you had asked me that question last week, I'm not sure if I would have given much enthusiasm. I've rarely eaten lemon bars in my life. Earlier this week, after making a batch from scratch for the first time, I can now certainly give a resounding yes! There are a lot of recipes for lemon bars out there; I ended up using one from Joy of Baking:

Lemon Bars
Recipe Courtesy of Joy of Baking
Yields 16 bars (2 inches each)

Shortbread Crust:
1/2 C unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 C confectioner's (a.k.a. powdered or icing) sugar
1 C all-purpose flour
1/8 t salt
Lemon Filling:
1 C granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 C fresh lemon juice (approximately two large lemons)
1 T grated lemon zest (the yellow outer rind that contains the fruit's flavor & perfume)
2 T all-purpose flour
Garnish:
Confectioner's (a.k.a. powdered or icing) sugar

Tip: Always remove the zest first before halving and squeezing the lemon. Use a fine strainer to remove the seeds and pulp from the juice.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Butter, or spray with a non stick vegetable spray, an 8 x 8 inch (20 x 20 cm) pan.

2. Shortbread Crust: In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the flour and salt and beat until the dough just comes together. Press onto the bottom of your prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool while you make the filling.

3. Lemon Filling: In your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the sugar and eggs until nice and smooth. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Fold in the flour. Pour the filling over the shortbread crust and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the filling has set. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. 

4. To serve: Cut into squares and dust with powdered sugar. These are best eaten the day they are made but can be covered and stored in the refrigerator for a day or two.

From what I've read in different lemon bars recipes, they seem basically the same, minus the measurements and small differences, such as using baking powder instead of flour for the filling. One of the things that I like about lemon bars is that they're really easy to make: The ingredients are essentially things you may already have (which was the case for me). The process takes less than 1 hour, and most of that hour is when your concoction is in the oven (That hour, though, doesn't include refrigeration after it's all done, if you want your lemon bars cool instead of warm).

Here's a picture of my lemon bars (the filling with the crust) fresh from the oven before they got powdered with sugar:

I didn't have a 8 x 8 inch pan, so I ended up with a 8 x 11 pan, making 20 bars (some larger or smaller, depending on you look at it, than others). I thoroughly enjoyed eating the leftover crust dough from the bowl and spatula that I used for mixing, as well as getting the remnants from the dish after I powdered and cut up the lemon bars before putting them into containers. If you want to make a good presentation, you may need to powder the individual bars again, in case the powdered sugar came off. Here's a picture of the completed yummy, lemony goodness (excuse the quality of my cell phone's camera):

Now, who overdosed on lemon bars? Why, it was my boyfriend! After my previous experiences with lemon-related food, I found out from his mom that he likes lemon bars. After seeing how simple the recipe was, I decided to give lemon bars a shot just for the heck of it. When I mentioned to him earlier in the day that I made lemon bars, he decided to come over after his internship was done. His more than 1 hour commute was just enough time for me to make a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few items, rush back, and cook something on the fly for dinner. No, we're not just going to eat lemon bars for dinner:

The bottom of the picture shows fried egg in toast. My boyfriend snacked on half of the (formerly) heart-shaped bread on top, while I was finishing up making mine. The top of the picture shows something I created from what I had on hand, plus that quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things, beans & rice with ground turkey & veggies:

• In a pan with oil, I cooked chopped garlic and onions on the stove on medium heat for 5 minutes. Then I added 2 small chopped up jalapeño pepper, 1 drained can of kidney beans, 1 small drained can of corn kernels and 1 can of diced tomatoes with the juice to the same pan. 
• After cooking that for five minutes, I added ground turkey to the pan, crumbling it with my cooking utensil. I then added leftover cooked white rice to the mixture. Salt, black pepper, red chili flakes and curry powder are added to taste. 
• When the meat is all cooked (which should take a few minutes), it's done. It's a colorful dish with a little kick to your tastebuds, and it can be a whole meal (generously serving 4 people) or a side dish (for maybe 6).

My boyfriend said it was delicious, but he was even more impressed with the lemon bars. In fact, he probably had about 10 until his poor tummy hurt! It was interesting to me that he had so many bars in one evening because he's the type of person who is concerned about portion sizes and eats small snacks or meals throughout the day when he's hungry, instead of three square meals per day at the requite times. Apparently, lemon bars are a weak spot of his. For me, making lemon bars helped me to better appreciate this treat. I can definitely add this to the list of yummy lemon dishes.  

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)!