Classic comfort staples

This will be short because there are only a few more weeks before winter break and that means TONS of tests, papers, and projects!
Last night I made a yummy sundae with vanilla frozen yogurt, mango, half a banana, cinnamon, and a sprinkle of coconut. YUM.

Breakfast: went for 1/2 cup of oats because during the week, I need a more substantial breakfast: 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup of that weird maple flavored oat milk (i might have to throw this out...), 1/2 cup water, 1/2 banana, some blueberries, flax, and Greek yogurt.
Snack: I nibbled on carrots! It was nice to have this instead of a bar because my mid-morning hunger isn't so severe that I need something THAT calorie dense.

Lunch: I made a delicious wrap, although it got so flattened that it looked more like a sandwich. It had baby spinach, rapini, avocado, a Laughing Cow, and hummus. SO GOOD! Plus leftover broccoli and an apple.

It was practically a blizzard all day! I love snow, but that cancels out all possibilities of running outside. I decided to come home after school and try a different approach- save the homework for LAST, because then you really can't procrastinate. Right when I got home, I changed and went down to the workout room for some elliptical stuff. I did intervals today... 5 minutes warm up, 1 minute hard, 2 minutes easy for 25 minutes, then another 10 minutes of moderately paced training. Intervals definitely make things more interesting! I don't usually trust the calorie burn, but it was about 390 calories.
I went upstairs and had a snack of 1/2 cup cottage cheese, the other half of my banana, and 1/8 cup of grapenuts with cinnamon.

This definitely tided me over till dinner! I practiced an hour of piano and did some homework while my dad made the fastest dinner in the world.
THIS IS COMFORT FOOD TO ME. Pure Chinese homestyle cooking: scrambled eggs and tomatoes and stir-fried string beans.

The eggs, which I need to make sometime, are really simple: you scramble eggs in vegetable oil, then add garlic, ginger, salt, soy sauce, and tomatoes, and stir-fry it and then reduce the heat. The tomatoes burst and the whole thing becomes sweet and soupy-- in fact, many restaurants serve this as a sauce for noodles!
Seconds on eggs:

OH YUM YUM...
and I feel a dessert/fruit craving coming on.
Had hot chocolate, a pear, some grapes, and a small whole grain graham cracker square that tasted like cardboard.

NOTE THE AWESOME ROBOT MUG.

Good night!

Thanksgiving countdown!

This is hilarious... Page put up flyers all over school with MY FACE ON THEM, advertising for Renaissance, our lit magazine. I'm not even on the board... although I did submit some food things from this blog, edited to seem slightly literary. This flyer was on the door of my first period class... she wanted to make sure I saw it.

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday... it's secular and there's a lot of food, and it happens to be during the fall, which is the time for the foods of paradise: pumpkins, apples, carrots, and the like.
I FOUND MY CAMERA, and all I can say is that I'm lucky nobody took it. It was in my French room (no breakfast or lunch pictures because I didn't have my camera then).
For breakfast, I had exactly the same thing as yesterday (my sweet tooth has been running wild!). Maybe it's not the healthiest thing ever... God knows how much sugar is in it, but it holds me over better than oatmeal, if that's even possible: 2 pieces of banana bread with peanut butter, berries, and hot chocolate.
Today the hot chocolate was true Parisian style: I used my special occasion Vosges hot chocolate, which has chiles and cornmeal. I also used 2%, because I feel that this is an instance where it really counts, and boy, could I tell! It was so chocolaty and intense that I couldn't believe this was hot chocolate from home.
Lunch: Leftover vegetables and tofu with brown rice, Kashi crackers, an apple, and a Clif Nectar bar (I ate the Kashis in French).
I so felt like going for a run after school, and we took a nice, long run to the 43rd street playground. Once again, I'd say 5-6 miles, which is long for me, definitely. I'm actually pretty proud of myself that I'm able to run with the cross country people... I'm not the same pace as the fastest, but these workouts don't actually tire me. Compared to swimming, pas de probleme. Speaking of which, guys swimming has started! There are some pretty hot guys on the team... you can better believe that I'll be helping them time at some of their meets.
When I got home from my run I realized I was pretty hungry, and I had almost the same snack as yesterday (all about repeats today...), cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, grapenuts, and a chopped up pear.
My dad and I have been cooking a lot this week, as you can see, so we went our own directions for dinner. After he got back from swimming in the pool downstairs, which I would use more often if it weren't only 15 or so yards long, we made dinner: he just had a Trader Joe's frozen pizza, I made a salad for him, and the best burrito ever for myself! This was my first experience actually folding the burrito so that it didn't fall apart! Whoohoo!
We're trying to get rid of this massive bag of mushrooms, so I grilled up some of the smaller portobellos and actually made portobello burritos.
Inside the whole wheat tortilla, which I toasted: a sliced, grilled portobello that I brushed with sherry vinegar and olive oil (we're out of balsamic!!), homemade guacamole, brown rice, black beans, and a dollop of Greek yogurt. This was so much fun to eat... messy in a good way!
On the side I had my salad and some mango, which went perfectly with the whole Tex-Mex thing.
However, later on I was really in the mood for some dessert (I usually am on exercise days) and had my usual combination of vanilla frozen yogurt and the Purely Decadent Snickerdoodle. I have got to stop going back for seconds! It's almost Thanksgiving and I'm going to stuff my face anyway! Bad idea!
Speaking of Thanksgiving, I spent tonight fabricating my menu.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, grad students are having a potluck, and we're bringing cranberry sauce (my dad just made it-- it smells great, with lots of orange zest and even some blueberries in it!) and I'm making Mark Bittman's Autumn Millet bake.
Thursday, we're inviting back some more grad students and this is what I have in mind:
Salad-- greens with pear, feta, candied pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pomegranate molasses dressing (my creation... the dressing just has lemon, pomegranate molasses, salt, pepper, and olive oil)
Main course from the Flexitarian Kitchen-- Cornish game hens/ pumpkins with a quinoa and dried fruit stuffing
My dad's stir-fried string beans
Cranberry sauce
Cornbread

Dessert: I really wanted to try Gourmet's pumpkin souffles with bourbon molasses sauce, but 1) it only serves 8 and we have 9 people in total and 2) I don't want to screw up a souffle on the first try. My mom is known for making the best apple pie ever, but I guess that's not happening this year :(
I think we'll settle for apple and quince crisp with rum raisins (this was from Epicurious)

How does it sound? Good? I actually have a lot to do over this break-- in addition to finishing Moby-Dick, math, and a French reading, I have 2 ART HISTORY PAPERS to write, although I suppose it's my own fault for procrastinating...

Delicious oatmeal and dinner at Noodle Loft

Last night I stuffed myself so full I felt nauseous. It's been a long time since I've let myself get beyond a 7 on a hunger scale of 1-10, but I hadn't had lunch, due to an intense day of shopping (bought 2 shirts, 3 pairs of pants and a skirt). But let's work backwards.

This morning I made myself an extra delicious bowl of oatmeal. It's a trick I use when there isn't any milk or I don't feel like using it. I suppose you could call it "Vitamin C Oatmeal": (oatmeal doesn't photograph well. Actually, it never looks all that appealing. But I'm sure you knew that)

• 1/2 cup oats (or other dry cereal)
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 banana, chopped up
• a few mango slices (or pineapple, or whatever you have on hand)
• cinnamon (I used a stick and grated it because they don't have powdered cinnamon here, for some reason)
• brown sugar, if desired
• yogurt

Microwave or cook oats, orange juice, water and fruit on stove top until desired consistancy. Garnish with cinnamon, sugar and yogurt. What's good about Chinese yogurt is that it's really more of a drink, so when you pour it on it's almost like a sour, thickened milk. This is good, because the skim milk we drink is so thinned out that you can practically see through it.
I had this oatmeal with some additional mango slices and half a glass of Chinese soymilk.

This breakfast was good after stuffing myself with noodles last night at Noodle Loft, a chic but rustic Shan Xi noodle restaurant. Actually, an artist we know (my dad is a curator) designed the place, and the layout is pretty awesome. You can sit at the bar or at tables, but the point is that the kitchen is out in the open-- a circular space lined with wooden tables covered with dough and giant metal pots of boiling water. The noodle chefs wear chef's hats, and EVERYBODY takes pictures, so nobody thought my taking photos was strange at all.
This is because of the amazing variety of noodles that Shan Xi cuisine has to offer. Before, I always thought of noodles and pasta as boring and safe. Especially with industrially dried pasta like penne and macaroni, every single piece has the same bite and shape, so that it becomes monotonous, by which point I would much rather just have a giant bowl of pasta sauce.
Fresh pasta and handmade noodles are another story. When you eat them, you can feel that the noodles are slightly assymetrical and absolutely not machine-made. They're chewy in a way that normal noodles aren't, and they make you realize that the same dough can be shaped to have a million different shapes and textures.
When it comes to these noodles I'm not talking about the shapes we know: fusilli, spaghetti, linguini, etc. etc. Here are some of the types of noodles you can choose:

• Yi gen mian-- this is literally a giant bowl of what looks like thick spaghetti, only the entire bowl is one strand. Old people eat this on birthdays to represent longevity. A challenge to eat!
• Dao xiao mian and Dao bo mian-- a giant hunk of dough is chopped or shaped by a giant cleaver
• Jian dao mian-- the dough is literally snipped into strands with scissors
• La mian (ramen)-- not gonna bother to explain this one
• Mao er duo (cat's ears)-- lumps of triangular pasta dough
• Ti jie-- Pasta shaped using a chopstick
• Yu-- noodles shaped like fish

All of these noodles are available with any of their sauces, some of which include: egg and tomato, vinegar sauce, pickled cabbage and soy bean, eggplant and pork, stewed pork belly, and some other meat sauces.
I was upset because I wanted to get one of the cool alternative grain noodles, such as buckwheat mao er duo or sorghum yu, but they were out! However, they did have a vibrant green spinach yi gen mian, which is by far the most fun to eat, so I ordered that with egg and tomato, already
imagining the colors (BY THE WAY: stirfried egg and tomato is one of the most delicious home-style dishes in China. I know it sounds weird, but the dish is probably about half egg and half tomato with ginger and garlic, unlike an omelet with a few cherry tomatoes thrown in).
My dad and one of the artists (The guys) both ordered seconds! I don't think I'm going to list all of the combinations of what we got because I don't think you care enough, but I'll post photos.

In addition to noodles, the restaurant also has great rustic homestyle dishes that you can't find everywhere. We got 4 appetizers: sliced tofu with hot sauce, lotus root, potato and pickled vegetables, and my dad ordered donkey meat! although on the menu (I had to get a photo of this) it's displayed as "hand shredded ass meat."

For hot dishes we ordered the house specialty, the most tender, fragrant and meatlike wild mushrooms in some kind of soy-based sauce. It was truly one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. We also ordered a (very) rustic stirfry of chopped, partially pickled vegetables.
I was so full by this point that I was finding it hard to stand up, but our friend, the male artist's artist's wife, Yin Xiu Zhen, insisted on ordering a dessert of what is basically sugar-spun Chinese mountain yam. I had had the dessert as a kid, but totally forgot that it existed and how delicious it is! Basically, yam (it actually isn't yam-- it's called shan yao, but in English it's always translated as yam. It's a long, almost triangular starchy vegetable with white flesh that's crunchy until cooked) is briefly fried, then coated in sugar. The sugar caramelizes so that it stretches out in strands when you try to take a piece. The yam is burning hot, so you dip it quickly in a bowl of cold water. This allows the sugar to harden, so that when you bite into it you get this wonderful, sticky crunch, with the mealy goodness of a potato underneath. Vegetables for dessert... that's more like it.
AND PS: I am trying to upload a photo of the chefs at work. Let's see if I succeed.

Molecular gastronomy exhibit at Le Laboratoire

Sorry for the delay... I've been having a lot of technical difficulties. Blogging is hard work!
Anyways, I promise that this is my last post on Paris, and it's going to be a short one. I'm getting so behind on what's been going on in Beijing that I absolutely need to write this. Now. It feels a bit like an obligation, what with the food-science fad going around. I had the amazingly good fortune to eat at Moto this year, and for my birthday my parents got me a giant encyclopedia on the science of cooking.
This was probably the best excursion our Culture and Cuisine class ever went on (the Paris and the Avant-garde classes also went). Anyways, by the Louvre, there is a small space called Le Laboratoire that combines art and science; I don't even know if I would classify it as a museum. It has a small glass door with its name on it, but aside from that, it would be easy to miss when there are places like Angelina in the area.
The current exhibit is about what else... food, organized by Thierry Marx, molecular gastronomist and chef. When you buy tickets for the expo, you can sign up for any amount of dishes to try (obviously, you have to pay). Assuming that all teenagers eat is dessert (not true), we were signed up for the dessert course.
Before we ate, we explored the space: the room was dimly lit by various neon lights and other awesomely cool gadgetry. About half the space was filled by screens and machines explaining how caviar-like balls of mango gel were formed: I still don't completely understand, but here's a picture of the machine. You can see for yourself.
Next to this strange apparatus was a coffeebar, where waitresses served espresso shots with something called the whif, which allegedly allowed you to "inhale the essence of chocolate without eating it." So basically, chocolate drugs? We tried two flavors, both of which came in brown plastic tubes that reminded me of those blowpens from the 90's. We inhaled and initially coughed, as though smoking cigarettes, but in my opinion this was a bit of a hoax: these were really just tubes filled with cocoa powder that some guy decided to breathe into his lungs instead of dissolve in milk. It still felt cool though, and it tasted good: the flavors were orange and caramel, and they went great with the espresso.
As for the food, we were served dessert on a narrow, rectangular plate divided into three sections: one with the mango beads that we had seen formed earlier, one with "grapefruit essence," and one with a perfectly geometrical square of pudding. The pudding was made of layers of raisins, cassis, yellow cake, and was dusted with orange powder. Although I loved the tartness of the cassis against the sweet, rather bland cake, the powdered orange reminded me exactly of those dissolve-in-water vitamin C tablets. Not a good thing. On the other hand, the mango beads exploded in your mouth, leaving nothing but the cool flavor of fresh mango. The grapefruit essence was basically fruit juice in mousse-like form. If I ate it in a restaurant I probably wouldn't have thought much of it, but considering the fact that you could have food like this at some exhibit, I was pretty into the whole thing.
The other courses were a tomato mozzarella salad with olive oil basil beads and some sort of chicken dish.