Home Alone

Well, I'm alone this week! Not exactly... my dad left today, is coming back tomorrow, leaving the next day, and my aunt is coming to stay with me during the weekend.
I'm pretty excited... planning on cooking for her and dragging her to see TWILIGHT! 3rd time's a charm (for me-- page has already seen it 4 TIMES!).
I actually enjoy being home alone. the only annoying thing is that I can't drive, so it's the bus and walking in this terrible weather.
Breakfast: For some reason I just haven't felt like oats as much, although I plan to have them tomorrow.
I had 2 pieces of toast with 3 tsps of peanut butter total... I know I'm a moron, but how many tsps in a tbsp? is it 4? I might just look it up. Anyways, there was half a sliced banana on the toast.
I also had 1/2 cup of cottage cheese with blueberries and wheat germ.
Plus Chai tea because I was tired, which I had with STEVIA! I can't believe that this is all natural... not that it doesn't taste natural... but why doesn't it have calories?
Snack once again was carrots, but with celery this time. I find that I just need something to munch on, and this does the trick.
Lunch: leftover eggs and tomatoes over brown rice with more string beans. And an apple.

I got home from school on the bus and it was gorgeous outside, but way too slippery for me to even consider running (I saw my friends' running, but I was afraid they might accidentally fall and kill themselves). Instead, I went home and worked out on the elliptical. That's 3 days in a row that I've done the same machine! Normally I HATE machines... but since I'm getting a workout, I won't complain, although I wonder what caused this sudden change. Because I was finding it a little hard to read actual books, I took some cookbooks and leafed through all the pictures. The time went by super fast! I did 40 minutes doing not exactly intervals, but every five minutes I would go up a level until I was almost on the highest level. I burned 380 something calories. Then I felt I hadn't cooled down, so I walked for 11 or so minutes on the treadmill. Then I did some upper body weights and some bicycle sets.
When I got back I had a pear.

For dinner I couldn't wait to cook! What's awesome about home alone is that I can cook whatever I want... weird vegan things my parents would find strange, make pancakes, whatever!
I decided to experiment with some more Western-style tofu and make a kind of oven-baked tofu, like oven-baked chicken, which is the healthy version of fried chicken.
This was mainly because we have buttermilk in our fridge that I would like to get rid of... I didn't end up using all of it, though. I combined a couple recipes: one from Running with Food and an Ellie Krieger one. I was stupid, though! I took Ellie's idea of using grape nuts and crackers, but I didn't crush them first, so of course they wouldn't stick to the tofu! I dipped the tofu in a combination of buttermilk, mustard, honey and egg whites, but because the coating didn't stick, it became more like a crunchy topping, that was still pretty good.
And this was the most exciting part of the whole evening: KALE CHIPS! I have heard so much about these, but I've always been skeptical. I just baked them for a little under ten minutes with olive oil, salt and pepper, and they actually tasted exactly like potato chips! I haven't even really been craving potato chips, but if I had been, this would have satisfied that craving. I wonder if I could eat them with some vinegar to bring back salt 'n vinegar memories...
I ate the chips and tofu with ketchup.


I really wanted to bake a potato or something, but we don't have any! :( I thought my usual brown rice would make this seem to Asian, which was the opposite of what I was going for, so I resorted to canned butternut squash, which I heated up with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, maple syrup, and salt. The problem was that I always overdo the ginger, which gave it a slight bitter aftertaste... but no big deal.
What a fun dinner! Very unlike the things I usually cook... I used to cook very mushy, soupy food-- mainly bean-based soups and stews. There's nothing wrong with that, but this is more interesting. I've gotten back in the groove!
And because I didn't really have any substantial snacks today I thought it was justified to satisfy my sweet tooth: hence, a nice bowl of the last of the vanilla frozen yogurt and some more Purely Decadent Snickerdoodle.

Good night!
The house is quiet.

Thanksgiving

This post is exciting for a few reasons:
1. I've been checking out other blogs, and most of them show relatively traditional Thanksgiving food. Of course, I did kind of miss the turkey, stuffing, and apple pie, but I also love how we mixed it up and created a menu that still had a lot of Thanksgiving-ish ingredients, and yet was definitely modernized.
2. Last night was also my first official time as "head chef." I mean, my dad made the chicken and string beans, but I made everything else by myself. I feel now that I've "entertained" once, I can do it lots more in the future! It was really fun!
So yesterday I started cooking first thing in the morning. First, I had a very good breakfast: Thanksgiving oatmeal!
It had 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup soy milk, some leftover pumpkin, 1/2 a banana, maple syrup, pecans, cranberry sauce, and a dollop of yogurt.
Then I started cooking. All the dishes were spread out over the course of the day, so I didn't feel pressured. I popped the Autumn Millet Bake back in the oven because it hadn't finished cooking, while I worked on the other baked dishes, that I figured I might as well do now if the oven was on. I made 101 Cookbook's Firecracker Cornbread and a recipe I got on Epicurious for Apple Quince Crisp with Rum Raisins. I modified that one a bit-- we didn't have rum, so the raisins became bourbon raisins. I also changed the topping and used Deborah Madison's, since I prefer my crisp topping to have oats in it. I also included walnuts and used half butter and half walnut oil in the topping. Flambee-ing the raisins was awesome, although it doesn't really show in the picture.
My dad couldn't resist taking some really unflattering pictures of me.
For lunch I wasn't that hungry, so I definitely ate more than I should have. I made a big salad with a bunch of random things-- spinach, some leftover cauliflower croquettes from the night before, some rice and beans, and hummus. I also had a piece of bread with cucumber and laughing cow, and then, just because I wanted something sweet, I had a zensoy pudding with half a banana and a drizzle of peanut butter. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach, and for some reason I always finish what's on my plate. I'll get to that in a minute, but this is definitely a bad thing.
I also had an apple.
I only went out of the house once-- how sad is that?? I really really really hate being cooped up in the apartment, which is why today I'm just going to get out for the sake of getting out. Anyways, at around 3 I went running with my friends-- the friends I went with yesterday are super fast, with 5 minute miles or something. I was really afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up with them, and there were stretches when I couldn't, but I basically stayed with them the whole time and felt like I pushed myself without hurting anything. Also, we didn't go that far-- I met them at the Point, and then we ran to just over the hill (before the playground) and then ran back not quite to the Point and did a bunch of striders, which we used to do when I was a sprinter, but they were obviously longer (for distance). Then I ran back to my house. I was thinking about having a snack but realized I had to get cooking and forgot all about it, which was VERY good, considering the amount of food we had later.
We actually changed the main course, because I realized that if we were going to have the autumn millet bake, our original stuffed pumpkins would be too similar. My dad took care of the Cornish hens, basting them with some kind of marmalade marinate, while I still tried out a Flexitarian Table recipe for Lemon Thyme tofu. I was a little worried about this, since I've never had "Western-style tofu" before. I also ended up using two kinds of tofu: both extra firm, but one was silken, and it kept falling apart :(
I also realized when the guests showed up that I was the only American-born person there! I guess Thanksgiving wasn't a tradition to any of these people: most of them were either Chinese or Korean, and one was Belgian.
Inspired by Kath, I made menus: check out that sparkly paper!
My dad also made his traditional turkey centerpiece:
First course (too lazy to write it out-- just check the menu).

For some reason I perfected the dressing this time by using balsamic instead of lemon juice. The combination of salty, sour and sweet were perfected. This was really good, if I do say so myself.



Meanwhile, my dad stir-fried the string beans and served up the chickens. It was too hard to get everything out at once, so we ate everything gradually. For some reason, I got full much more quickly than usual! I can normally eat HUGE amounts of food, but yesterday I couldn't. My downfall was either a) being the cook-- real chefs hardly ever eat because they're around food all day. Not saying I'm a real chef, but you know what I mean. b) the HUGE AMOUNT OF STRING BEANS MY DAD GAVE ME in order to compensate for lack of chicken. I really shouldn't have eaten all these, esp. since they're not a "special occasion" food, but they're so good... and they are vegetables.
I had a tiny sliver of cornbread, two helpings of cranberry sauce, and a small piece of the millet bake. Everything was really good- the cornbread especially, since I rarely cook with butter. The butter was infused with cayenne and made the cornbread spicy and moist. It was also good that I used millet because they use it a lot in China and Korea, and I think it was interesting for the students to see it in a Western way instead of just labeling is some kind of hippie dish, since most of us think of millet as bird food.
As for the tofu... It was a little strong for me. It absorbed the flavors so thoroughly that I think it would be better on a sandwich or in a salad. Still, it was definitely interesting, and eating it in bigger chunks made it feel more substantial. I had one half triangle and I didn't end up eating all of it.
One student made some kind of Chinese buns with gluey rice flour on the inside. I had a bite, but honestly I've never really liked Chinese baked goods.

I don't know why I was so full at this point! But I knew it was Thanksgiving and I was really looking forward to dessert.
In addition to my crisp, people brought a blueberry cheesecake and some ice cream. The only thing I really felt was worth splurging on was the crisp, and I really wish my mom had been there to try it. YOU WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS, MOM.

I was afraid it would be too boozy, but the bourbon just added another dimension to the filling. The contrast between the apples and quinces was subtle but definitely there-- the quinces were chewier and more tart. I had the crisp with some full-fat Greek yogurt and it was great. I went back for seconds. I thought it was justified.
By the end of the night I was full but not actually stuffed-- I think the problem was the massive amount of fibrous green beans sitting in my stomach.
Afterwards, we all signed the menus-- not sure why, but I think my dad is going to save it-- he joked about framing it as a way to document my first real dinner party. Actually, it wasn't really, since I've cooked for friends before, but I've definitely never made so many dishes at once.

However, this is the unfun part to say. I'm realizing that I have gained weight. I don't regret not being stringent and borderline Orthorexic (do people actually use this term? I've only recently heard about this), but I do regret not treating my body well and listening to myself when I'm not hungry anymore. It's not just that my jeans are tight, but also that I don't feel good when I keep eating when I'm full. My goal is to not stop myself from eating one thing, but to start with smaller portions and get more if I'm hungry, rather than setting out a huge food spread for myself and devouring it all, because I'm just not the kind of person who can leave food on my plate-- maybe it's an Asian thing. Either way, this isn't going to be an "I'm going to lose X pounds" type of thing, although I would guess it's probably around 5 pounds. If I were really going to go back to how I was at my thinnest, it would be around 10, but I was too thin then, I wasn't healthy and had to go to the doctor, and I also didn't have as much muscle mass... also, I was an inch or two shorter. Anyways, you see my point.
I just want to eat more slowly and really savor everything.
What advice do you have?

Sepia

Last night was my dad's birthday and we went to Sepia, another hip restaurant in the West Loop. Seriously, all the good restaurants are there: I think it's something about the contrast of the starkness of the meatpacking district to the comfort and upscale quality of the restaurants that seem almost like oases (is that the plural?).
Some great restaurants in the area: Avec, Blackbird, Meiji, Moto, Otom (haven't been there), Follia (my parents have), Sushi Wabi, De Cero. The list goes on.
How to define the cuisine at Sepia? Of course, it's categorized as "Contemporary American," but I hate that term with a burning passion. I would say that it's a lot like the food at Avec: both classic and modern, rustic but with interesting combinations.
The food was great, although very protein-focused. I was at least glad that I ate fish, and even then it turned out to be a little complicated to negotiate my way out of bacon grease, etc. It will certainly make things easier when I start eating meat again.
My Aunt Claire came up from Madison, and since she didn't do anything for her birthday, which was in October, we decided to have a joint birthday dinner.
One of the exciting aspects of Sepia is the location: an old print shop. You could tell that they had tried to keep its vestiges in all their glory: an old accordian camera, a rough-cut wooden door with a brass knocker.
Speaking of cool locations, Spring is located in an old bath house, and it's another restaurant I've been meaning to visit.
The inside was dark and noisy, with a definite modern-retro feel: there were chandeliers surrounded by glass and in the corner, a light made of a thin mesh design of metal, a bit like the Olympic Bird's Nest.
Our waitress was incredible, and unlike most waitresses, who look like they never eat their restaurants' food, she looked like she had enjoyed every dish on the menu, and she could describe each distinctly.
To start with, my dad ordered one of the craziest cocktails ever, and which my mom pronounced the best she had ever had. My tastebuds probably aren't evolved enough when it comes to alcohol, but it was so strong that I could mainly taste only bourbon. It was called the Chipotle Old-Fashioned: smoked chipotle pepper-infused ridgemont reserve 1792 bourbon, triple chocolate and balsamic vinegar bitters, muddled orange and cherry.
The chocolate was so subtle that you could barely tell it was there, but definitely added another dimension to the aftertaste. The bourbon was firy enough, but the chipotle added extra heat.
We also ordered red wine, which I had a few sips of, but decided for me, wasn't really worth all those extra calories.
To start, my dad, against my will, ordered STEAK TARTARE. It's not even because I don't eat meat that it grosses me out... the idea just seems so unsanitary, and with the addition of the raw egg, just too much. Aunt Claire, who doesn't eat red meat, and I decided we needed to construct a brick wall between us and his plate.
Originally, I was going to order the charred baby octopus with roasted tomato sauce and baguette, but also didn't want to order too much food. Aunt Claire ended up ordering it and said she would share. Although it was maybe a little similar to the food I eat at home, thanks to my squash obsession, I ordered the market squash with serrano ham (minus the ham), arugula and walnuts. The squash was red kuri squash, which I had seen at the Farmer's Market that morning and been excited to try. It had been seared in a little maple syrup, and the whole dish was light and fresh, and definitely a good choice for a starter, since the rest of the food we ordered turned out to be quite heavy. There was something about the dressing the made the salad great, although now that I look back, it seemed to be just a simple vinaigrette with the addition of some secret ingredient.
The octopus was INCREDIBLE! I would go as far as to say that it was the dish of the night. I almost regretted not having ordered it, but once again, I didn't want too much food. I had never had octopus with tomato sauce before, and the bitterness of the burned octopus and the sweet tomatoes paired perfectly. The presentation was also breath-taking: a stack of tiny tentacles and crostini arranged on a pool of sauce. Octopus has an incredible chewy texture and smoky flavor that really does remind me of meat.
My mom ordered the sea scallops with pork belly, knob onions, and brussel sprouts... at first I thought it was strange, since we eat a lot of scallops at home, but she wanted to try the pork belly and brussel sprouts.
Of course, the portion turned out to be two humungous scallops, which looked great.
Between the appetizers and mains, we realized that they had forgotten to bring us bread and asked for some. The bread turned out to be some of the best multi-grain bread I had ever had: warm from the oven, with a crispy crust and chewy inside. I was good and only had two bites.


The service was pretty fast! They were really good at getting everything on to the table at the same time.
On to mains: My dad, being extremely carnivorous when not cooking for a vegetarian, ordered pork chop with arugula and apple.
My mom almost ordered fish, but my dad convinced her that we don't eat much meat at home, so she ordered braised veal short ribs with mint noodles and truffle butter, which sounded like one of the heaviest, most decadent items on the menu. She didn't even end up eating a quarter of it when she found out how big the portions were. She said the noodles were great, but that the mint flavor didn't come through.
Aunt Claire doesn't eat red meat, like I said, but she was so tempted by the roasted cod, spaghetti squash, and wild boar sausage with paprika sauce that she decided to go for it. Truth be told, that was the entree that appealed most to me too, and that's what I'm looking forward to about not having such strict restrictions on myself: when there's something I really want on a special occasion, I'm going to go for it.
I was disappointed at first, because the dish I wanted, skate wing with braised greens, carrots, and grape-pine nut sauce, had bacon fat in the greens. I didn't want the other fish options, so I asked if the could sub the greens for another vegetable, and they ended up giving me sauteed spinach, which was nice.
Once again, huge portions (probably only ate half of the fish). My favorite part were the carrots, which were tiny and obviously locally-grown: you could tell that they were young enough that their skins didn't even need to be peeled off. The addition of grapes was interesting, but I would have preferred if the pine nuts and grapes had been cooked and blended a bit into a sauce, rather than I got, which were halved basically raw grapes on top of the fish. The idea was a good one, though, and the skate wing was perfectly cooked.
For extreme decadence, they also ordered a side of duck-fat fried potatoes. Wow.
Because they had had wine, bread, potatoes, and heavier appetizers/ main courses than me, I was really the only one interested in dessert. I convinced them to at least get one to share for the table. The dessert of the night was an insane chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse the size of a dictionary, that the surrounding tables were all ordering... TOO MUCH FOR US!
The dessert we ordered turned out to be the perfect portion: sweet potato spice cake bread pudding and caramel thyme ice cream.

See what I mean about heavy dishes? The portion wasn't outrageous like that cake, but served the four of us perfectly. The sweet potato flavor didn't come through too well, but there were small chunks of sweet potato buried in the spice cake, which was out of this world. It was like extremely decadent French toast, and the ice cream was also great, although I couldn't taste the thyme. At these restaurants, it's all about the descriptions.
I can't decide which restaurant out Blackbird, North Pond, and Sepia is the best. However, Grandma, if you're reading this, Sepia is the place to bring you-- one of the dishes on the menu was amish chicken with acorn squash and serrano ham.