Octopuscarwash's Gourmet Adventures

I live to eat. Yes, I am an Asian Jew. My favorite meal is breakfast (oatmeal in particular). I'm only in high school, so I am a complete amateur. Some of my favorite cuisines are Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Japanese and Korean. I eat so much Chinese food that it's hard to say whether I like it or not... all I know is that I don't like what most of America seems to think of as Chinese food, Panda Express. I'm a pescetarian and love coming up with my own healthy fusion food.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Fried rice is back!

God, what an unbelievably filled day! Tuesdays are the days where, yeah, we get out 45 minutes earlier, but I have no free periods. Also, a good 2/3 of my classes are filled with seniors, and therefore slacker classes, but in every class, we stayed on target the entire time. My brain is exhausted. And speaking of exhausted, I thought we were tapering in practice! Today we worked on sprinting 50s, but we did 20 of them. Then we did a cool down, then sprinted a 100 (But only one, so it was okay). I'm just starting to get my breast stroke back-- I definitely lost it in the middle of the season. I just need to swim it the way I swam it during the summer-- glides not too long, upper body coming OUT of the water, head always looking down, arms stretching out, etc.
Without further ado, food:
Breakfast: oatmeal with 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 a banana, 1/2 cup chocolate soy milk, 1/2 cup water, wheat germ and flax (I'm just not going to bother listing that every day, since I always use it), Trader Joe's Decadence trail mix, and a spoonful of peanut butter.
Maybe it was the soy milk or the fact that I only used 1/2 a banana, but these oats weren't bulky at all! They almost seemed like a half portion. But I love this trail mix, and it is definitely decadent: peanut butter chips (which I would never buy other wise), chocolate buttons, peanuts, almonds, cashews, and raisins. The best part is taking a bite of melted chocolate, peanut butter, and oats.
On the side I had strawberries and some milk heated with a Yerba Mate teabag (unfortunately, I heated it too long and it exploded, so I only ended up with half the original amount).
I DIDN'T HAVE YOGURT THIS MORNING! Aren't you proud?
Anyways, I didn't go back for seconds after I ate this, which made me happy, but I was starving by 4th again. Enter Honey Graham z-bar.
Lunch: I made a weird salad sort of thing out of various leftovers and things that were in the fridge--
some kind of pre-cooked durum wheat from Trader Joe's, which I confess smelled weird when I opened the package, but tasted fine later on.
Roasted root vegetables and brussel sprouts (I swear, I am living on that stuff this week)
Some smoked trout, which I'm addicted to... It's just as good as smoked salmon, if not better, and it's cheaper too!
3 leftover ravioli from last night
and a drizzle of balsamic.
I also had the leftover pumpkin mixed with a little cottage cheese and pumpkin butter, but I have to say that I just was not in the mood. I mixed it in too much of a hurry and there were too many parts where there was just plain pumpkin and nothing else, and even I am not that much of a pumpkin fan. It needed to be sweeter, or there needed to be something crunchy in it, or I don't know what. Or I could have put more cottage cheese, since I really only put a couple teaspoons.
Plus an apple, which was kind of bruised. Ps., I can tell that taking photos of lunch in the caf is going to get pretty embarrassing.
So yesterday I know I said that I wouldn't do 2 bars per day, but for some reason, this lunch didn't hold me over that long... there wasn't that much protein in it, so maybe that's why. Anyways, I fell asleep during my second-to-last period of the day, and knew there was no way I was getting in the water without some fuel, so I had a cinnamon roll Larabar.
I love cinnamon and all, but this is not one of my favorite flavors.
When I got home from practice my mom wasn't home, and she had said earlier that she wouldn't be back until later, but I didn't know when. I wanted something fast that I'd been craving for a while-- my dad's trademark fried rice, the (semi) healthified version!
This makes one portion for a swimmer:
-1 cup LEFTOVER brown rice
-about half a chopped scallion
-1 large carrot, grated (I used 3 tiny ones)
-1 egg yolk and 2 egg whites, beaten with a pinch of salt
-1 tsp canola or peanut oil
-1 tbsp oyster sauce
-TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF PEAS! and salt.
Now, the oyster sauce is the key to this entire recipe, and is the one thing that is keeping it from being virtually sinless. I don't honestly even know what this sauce is, except that in Chinese we call it hao you, and I don't honestly even know if it has oysters in it. I guess you could just sub soy sauce, but that would just add an empty kind of saltiness that lacks the almost fermented taste of the oyster sauce. It's up to you, and you can probably find it in Asian grocery stores.
Back to the recipe-- heat up the oil in a wok until it starts to smoke. Add the eggs and start to chop them up quickly as though you were making scrambled eggs, but really ugly, choppy ones (we don't want these soft and curd-like American-style).
Add the carrots and continue to stirfry.
Add the rice and chop up any chunks, adding some more salt as you go. You want the rice to heat up before you do anything else.
Now add the oyster sauce and keep stir-frying until all the rice looks brownish and the sauce is evenly distributed.
Just add the peas (which I didn't even used to like when I was little and ate this dish all the time) and keep heating until they're done!
Yum... it really was just like my dad's, only his uses probably more oil, oyster sauce, white rice, and a ton of egg yolks.
On the side I had some leftover tofo that I drizzled with a bit of sesame oil and sesame seeds.
And if I end up having dessert, I'll add that too!
Happy eating!

EDITED to add dessert: at first, i just planned to have some of our roasted cinnamon pears, but I ended up piling a bunch of stuff and going crazy, because I ate less for dinner than I normally do. I added a ton of yogurt (knew I couldn't live without it for a day), plus a bit of Puffins and Go Lean Crunch, and also some almonds. And a little pear butter. And I confess, I got a refill on yogurt and cereal. This needs to stop!

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Exploding tea???? woah how does that happen? lol.
Wow....I Think you are brave for taking food photos at the school cafeteria! I agree with you on the cinnamon larabar; I thought it tasted a little too *cinnamon-y* if you know what I mean!
I love your fried rice; seriously we need to come up with some fusion recipes to take over the world! haha, have a happy Wednesday, girl!

November 12, 2008 at 10:30 AM  

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