I can't think of a title for this post

Wednesday is piano day.
Caught a ride to school with some extremely nice neighbors.
Breakfast: 1/3 cup oats, 1/2 cup of my butternut squash from last night, 1/2 banana, the rest of our cranberry sauce stirred in (this didn't look as pretty, but at least it wasn't cold) 1/3 cup oat milk, 1/3 cup water, Greek yogurt, candied walnuts.
I didn't have a snack today, but I did grab a carrot from my lunch box.
Lunch: tofu sandwich with hummus and spinach! It was kind of bland... maybe it needed mustard (weird with hummus though) or something. But super satisfying!
I was really craving hummus, so I had more carrots and celery with more hummus.
And a pear.
The lunch spread you see includes snacks for music.
I took the bus downtown after school to music... I got there about 45 minutes early, so I went to Starbucks because I was literally FALLING asleep. I couldn't decide what to get, but I didn't make such a good decision in the end. Whereas I like the sweetness of mochas, the pumpkin spice latte was just NOT for me. I thought it tasted way too sugary by the end... and what's in it, anyway? It was orange... was there actually pumpkin in it?

I had an apple. I was originally going to have a larabar too, but I thought that was overkill.
Quartet went well, but because the coach is a cellist, there wasn't really much I could do...
Private lesson was the opposite-- in an hour, we only got through 2 pages of a nocturne!
So my dad picked me up (back from his trip, but he leaves tomorrow) and we went home, where we had the world's fastest dinner.
He stir-fried some cauliflower, we had leftover brown rice, string beans, and those salmon sausages I bought at Whole Foods.
The verdict: DELICIOUS! Tasted just like meat to me! It's not that you couldn't tell it was salmon, but the texture was very convincing. It's not even meant to imitate meat, I don't think, but it was great. I ate it with ketchup and mustard.
I was starving, given lack of snacks and being out of the house for over 12 hours, so I had seconds.


And thirds on cauliflower that I didn't photograph.
I still wanted something sweet, so I had grapes and a zen soy swirl pudding... I still can't decide if I like them or not. I like the first bite, and then by the end I already feel like I shouldn't buy them again.

I love my Sailor Moon spoon...
tomorrow is my friend Kaitlyn's birthday, and I'm making her a special lunch :) Nothing fancy, but it'll be fun for me, because I'll pack her stuff I would never make for myself (she's the opposite of me... carnivorous, junk-foody, etc.): I'm thinking a marshmallow, nutella and banana sandwich. I'll also leave her a little card and maybe some other cute things.
Good night!

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.

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

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?