Holy Mole

Dinner tonight was, as my dad called it, "an experiment." I actually disagree with him there- it was a complicated recipe that turned out exactly how it was supposed to, and I enjoyed it. I just don't think I tested it on the right audience.
I'm getting ahead of myself:

Breakfast-- A piece of peanut butter and banana toast
Yogurt and cottage cheese with blueberries and grapenuts, and a drizzle more peanut butter (that was what I wanted this morning!)
And biology.
Tuesdays are the hardest days because I have no free periods and ALL my classes. Psychologically I always feel I need a snack, but I knew I had eaten a lot at breakfast, so I didn't have anything.
Lunch was leftover gumbo, Kashi crackers, an apple, and a Zensoy pudding.

The weather was awful: rainy, gray, and freezing, but I knew I had to run outside. If I did another damn elliptical workout I would kill myself... so I went with my friend Josey. It was a good pace for me, but also let me push myself. Instead of running on the lakefront, where it would be too windy, we ran south. While we were running, it started hailing... it stung a lot. I also jumped in a really deep puddle and got soaked. We didn't stop at all to stretch, so while the run wasn't THAT long, it felt longer because it was continuous. I felt GREAT when it was over: I was actually sweating (I don't sweat that much usually), and I could feel it in my legs. I'd say it was only 4 or 5 miles, but I definitely burned a fair amount of calories because I was starving when I got home.
I think my snack probably spoiled my dinner... in fact, I don't know if I should have had this for my snack anyway, since I had it for breakfast. I had more cottage cheese and cereal... but I figure I'll eventually get sick of it, so it won't really be an overload. I had it with some cinnamon Puffins, slivered almonds, and a tangerine on the side. But I waited after finishing and I was still hungry, so I had some more... I felt perfectly satisfied, but even when we ate at around 8:00, I wasn't THAT hungry. The recipe I made was COMPLICATED.

It was kind of Mexican-Indonesian-Vegan fusion: I made the mole from the Flexitarian Table with the tempeh. The mole itself had so much in it: dried poblanos, chiles packed in adobo, onions, almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds, raisins, pumpkin seeds, cumin, cinnamon, and MEXICAN CHOCOLATE, which I so very conveniently had on hand.
This was complicated because everything had to be added in stages, soaked in water, and then blended. I also had to panfry the tempeh, simmer it, simmer the mole, add the mole to the tempeh, and simmer some more. I garnished it with lime wedges and cilantro.
I also made some brown basmati rice and my dad stir-fried some kale, which pretty much disintegrated, he cooked it so long. It was also way too salty, but he couldn't taste it at all! Should I be worried about this?

As for the mole, it was SO RICH... I guess I shouldn't be surprised... this was one of the more protein-packed meals ever. Plus, there were all those nuts in it, not to mention the CHOCOLATE. The flavors were so complicated: the chocolate came through, but all the different spices and nuts were also apparent. As my dad also put it, "it looks like mud." But what can I say... he's never really had Mexican food... I haven't either, really. I think my mom might have appreciated it more. But I couldn't even finish what was on my plate... so incredibly filling.

Dessert: a pear to cleanse the palate

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.