I have returned!

Hey, everybody! Happy New Year! Wow, what a trip! I must say, I was a bit sad to return to Chicago... the weather sucks and the city just isn't accessible in the same way. All the same, it's nice to be home. Meanwhile, I have a LOT to update on, and I just don't think I have the energy to do it tonight. We got home at 6 our time (7) NY time and I'm pretty exhausted.
I came home to find my fall quarter grades... STRAIGHT As, BABY! Needless to say I was pretty thrilled... I tacked them on the refrigerator.
For dinner, my parents had what I suppose is "improved instant ramen"-- Literally takes 10 minutes. I guess it's Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee: the Asian version. Ha, I just cracked myself up... didn't realize she already had an Asian last name!
No, but seriously... It looked delicious, but I really refrain from instant ramen... the ingredients list is just way too hard to decipher. I couldn't resist taking a picture though: into it went basically everything in the fridge that was still edible-- cherry tomatoes, endive, cilantro, and egg.
I defrosted some pumpkin and lentil stew and had some bread and celery with hummus.

Sometimes the simplest food is the best. Tomorrow I'll be investing a good chunk of time in doing highlights of New York (in individual posts)... I might do some picture posts while I'm here, though.
Good night!
Oh, and about New Years resolutions...
I try not to make too many. This year I have:
1) While food is a huge part of my life, and I think I may have discovered my passion, I really need to make room for other interests and hobbies I used to devote more time to, i.e. writing, drawing, reading Russian lit, studying languages, etc. etc.
2) Just spend less time on the computer doing "mindless" stuff... especially browsing through food blogs! Other than checking up on my favorite ones, I really don't want to blow an hour just looking at photos. Spend time away from the computer doing other stuff, like in 1)
3) I kind of slacked off this quarter, despite the straight As. I need to be more organized and STUDY for my APs! The problem is that my "AP" classes are actually the ones where the workload is less, which will be bad for the AP grade in the longrun. I need to devote just 10-15 minutes per class reviewing every day.
I think about my old resolutions from my old middle school journals, which I used to write in religiously.
I don't know if this is interesting for anybody else, but this is certainly weird to find (from 8th grade).
"Lida's Resolutions for 2006
1) I WILL try to get at least 8 hours of sleep on weekdays. This means I have to turn out the lights at 11, so get in bad at 10:30-10:45
2) I WILL do 50 situps every day, rain or shine
3) I WILL try to keep my room clean so I can redecorate it. Ditto the playroom (from my old house) so it can be turned into a place to hang out!
4) I WILL care less what people think of me.
5) I WILL NOT go online while doing homework unless it is to get help on said homework
6) number six is middle school relationship drama... basically, don't obsess waiting for a certain relationship to end and "have fun with other guys". AAA middle school...
7) I WILL make at least 2 more friends that are guys (what was wrong with me? Who actively thinks about "making friends" like that?)
8) I WILL keep writing my novel-- a work in progress
9) I WILL try as hard as possible to go swimming every weekend
10) I WILL BE MORE ORGANIZED"

The funny thing is that when it comes to the sleep, organization, exercise, etc. I haven't changed much at all. But in terms of caring what people think of me and making more friends, I've opened up so much more. I 'm just happier in general, and less stressed out. Just seeing these changes in the kinds of resolutions that I have are setting 2009 off to a good start.

Listening to my Body

Today I ate light. I didn't work out, but I still ate less than what I would have if I hadn't eaten out. Basically, I was careful. I ate slowly. I thought about whether I was really hungry or not. And surprise surprise, I ate probably half of what I would have otherwise.
Breakfast-- I wasn't that starving, so I had 1/4 cup cottage cheese, 1/4 cup yogurt, half a banana, some raspberries, 1/4 cup grapenuts, and a tsp of flax. As you can see, this isn't deprivation or anything, but is definitely lighter than what I would have gotten. If I had been truly still hungry, I would have gotten more, but since I wasn't, I stuck with it. It was a great feeling not to feel stuffed after breakfast.
The thing is, I was so focused on thinking about eating slowly that I FORGOT TO PHOTOGRAPH MY FOOD! Ha... I find that really funny.
After breakfast I went to Istria, the yummy cafe/ gelato place by my house, to write my first art history paper. I made big mistake # 1 of the day: I ordered a cappuccino. I remember that my mom loves their cappucinos, but the "small" was honestly the size of a soup bowl. I know most of it was foam, and I had no problem finishing it, but I honestly felt nauseous and had a stomache ache for the rest of the day. This is why I really shouldn't drink coffee. Anyways, it was still a good idea to go there because I just sat down and wrote my paper. You have to pay for wireless there, so there was nothing to distract me.
I came back and we ate lunch a little while later. My lunch was also maybe a 1/3 of the size of my usual one... I had one piece of pumpernickel with hummus, spinach, and 2 triangles of lemon thyme tofu, plus a carrot, some cucumber and celery with the rest of the hummus. I also had a bowl of Trader Joe's roasted pepper and tomato soup. I ate very slowly and even noticed that all the different flavors were more pronounced... the tofu is definitely DELICIOUS in sandwiches. The chewy texture made it so satisfying!
I didn't finish all the vegetables.
A big later, I decided I just HAD TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. I decided to go downtown for no apparent reason and run some errands. The problem is, I am probably the only moron in this country who has never heard of Black Friday (my mom explained it when she called later), so I didn't understand why 1) I had to stand squished on the bus the whole way there 2) I could hardly move walking down the street and 3) there were tons of sales.
I WAS ON MICHIGAN AVENUE, for crying out loud. How stupid could I be?
Talk about unobservant... I mean, I knew people were here for Thanksgiving break... It was weird, because listening to all the different languages, I mainly just heard Chinese and French, the 2 foreign languages that I speak, being spoken... EVERYWHERE. It was like I was in China and not America, that's how many Chinese people there were.
I stopped in Nordstrom and got some shirts (didn't even want to think about buying pants), eye makeup, and body butter. Then I walked to the Borders by Watertower and bought Interview with the Vampire, which I am already really into. Then I walked really far north, realized there were no bus stops, then walked all the way back and over the bridge. I would say I got a good 3 mile walk in today, so at least I wasn't totally sedentary. I'm going to swim tomorrow, I think.
When I got home, I had to acknowledge the fact that I was pretty hungry. I didn't want to completely spoil my appetite, but I needed something more than just a piece of fruit. I had an apple (sliced, to make it last longer), a spoonful of peanut butter, and a few crackers with some milky tea. When I finished, I saw there were some crackers that I'd missed. I was about to eat them when I stopped myself-- I was full for the time being. I think I'm going about this the right way.
Dinner was very fast-- we just had leftovers and my dad stir-fried some zucchini really quickly.
For protein, I had some black beans with a bit of yogurt. My plate also has the zucchini, cranberry sauce, corn bread, and some of the squash-millet bake.
I ate slowly and DIDN'T HAVE SECONDS. I was tempted, but honestly my stomach has been feeling weird since the coffee and I didn't.
However, I do feel some hunger pangs, so I'm going to have a small snack. I don't feel deprived-- I just feel pure. Of course, I'll eat more when I exercise and eating is still my life... I just don't feel overstuffed anymore.

UGH, for the second time since my mom left, I tasted spoiled milk. I guess the problem is that my dad doesn't drink milk and I don't drink it that much... Maybe we should just stop buying it? I used the other milk, which is even older but somehow hasn't spoiled yet... I wonder what they put in it-- I'm slight suspicious (it was the 2%)-- anyways, even though it's caffeinated, I had some hot chocolate. When my stomach feels strange some warm milk usually makes it feel better. I had some grapes and a tiny piece of Green and Black's dark chocolate to feed my sweet tooth. And off to bed I go!

Take a deep breath... here we go

So I've decided to try it: posting every day. Yes, I know that my family members think that reading sporadically about restaurants and strange ethnic experiences is more interesting than making lists of my every day breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but what I've found in my experience as a blog reader is that I love the repetitiveness of the blogs that I read. I like coming home and seeing that these peoples' lives are going on the same way mine is, and that they all have different comfort foods and interesting recipes that they can fit into their busy schedules.
Whew. That being said, here goes my (boring?) day.
Breakfast: pumpkin oats! 1/3 cup oats, waaay more than 1/2 cup of pumpkin (I could just eat that stuff all day long), 1/3 cup of soy milk, 1/3 cup water, wheat germ, flax seed, a handful of pecans, some Greek yogurt, and a few crumbled Honey Graham Sticks.
Also Yerba Mate tea.
I must confess that I nearly always get seconds on breakfast. I'm sure this is a terrible habit, but I can't help it! I'm always still hungry! Usually these seconds are on cereal toppings or yogurt/ whatever other dairy product I'm using. I also think these are the food groups I probably get too much of. Any other ideas on how to make my breakfast super filling? (sometimes I also eat peanut butter on a spoon Kath-style).
Because I wasn't entirely sure if I would be blogging today, I didn't take a photo of my snack or lunch. Should I start doing that? People will think I'm even stranger.
Snack, which I had at the beginning of 4th period French (10:45): Kashi cherry dark chocolate chewy bar, which was great! I like it more than the trail mix flavor.
My French teacher is awesome: on my returned composition he put "99.9847 bar (don't know how to do that on a computer)... pour ne pas dire 100 %).
Lunch: sandwich on whole wheat with 1 Laughing Cow, hummus, avocado, and swiss chard, leftover brussel sprouts, an apple, and a plain Chobani with Puffins (see what I mean? Too much cereal and yogurt! This is why I need to start eating meat to add some variety to my diet).
I've decided that since we only have this week of swim season left until Sectionals and this week is our cool down week, that I really don't need a bar midmorning AND before practice. I think some of those pre-practice Larabars, delicious as they were, were probably unnecessary.
Anyways, practice was great! It was definitely still a workout: 400 warmup, then our usual 8 40s kick, swim, drill, swim, IM order (sorry if you don't speak swim language-- that means butterfly, backstroke, breastroke, freestyle).
After warmup we did kick sets WITHOUT SHOES! Freestyle down and IM order kick back. My legs felt so free! It's amazing that before I wore the shoes I completely depended on my arms to get me anywhere.
For the rest of the practice we focused on sprints with a LOT of rest, and then splitting up 100s into 20s and 40s with rest in between. Cool down was only a 200! Usually we have a 400 with up-downs (Basically push ups) or sit ups at each end, which is pretty tedious. But no! Here comes an easy-ish week!
SPEAKING OF SECTIONALS... I GET TO SHAVE MY LEGS FRIDAY! Although, I must say, it's been nice not having to shave or feel obligated to shave... then when people say how hairy my legs are, I can just say, "oh, my coach isn't letting me." But I don't have that much hair on my legs anyway, being Asian. You should see some people on the team... definitely hairier than some of the guys I know.
Dinner: so fast and one of those meals where my mom and I (dad's in Barcelona) kept saying "Oh, my God, this is so good," every few bites. Of course, I take no credit for it, but I do take credit for the idea. My mom made a pasta sauce with the leftover roasted root vegetables, olive oil, leeks, wine, and parmesan, which we tossed with butternut squash ravioli (Rising Moon Organic). The ravioli was great! It was definitely too bland to be eaten plain, but delicious considering it doesn't even have cheese in it.
On the side we had sauteed swiss chard (from our friend Paola's garden) with olive oil, capers, pine nuts, hot peppers, and raisins. This method was suggested by Paola, who comes from Naples and is also a pescetarian. The key to the dish was SHREDDING the swiss chard, which we've never done. By doing it this way, you could actually eat the stalks without choking! Epiphany!
I should have known that my dinner was slightly lacking in protein-- hence, a big-ish dessert that I was really craving (I use swim team as an excuse to indulge a little every night): a small glass of Silk Light chocolate, some Stoneyfield Cookies 'n Dream frozen yogurt, and strawberries. Oh, yeah, and chamomile tea.
Was only able to practice 30 minutes of piano.. I'm trying to go to bed at 9:30 every night this week, so it's posting these photos, reading Moby Dick, and lights out. Good night!

Some of the most unhealthy food in existence, here for your viewing pleasure

We had a four-day weekend, which the swim team spent on an away trip in Bloomington, IL for a giant swim meet. The meet itself was pretty fun-- PRd on my 50 free but NOT my 100 breast! I don't understand... It seems like the more I think about the stroke itself, the slower I go. I need to just feel the motion in my body and go. We still have a week till Sectionals, and our coach announced that this week we'll really be perfecting our stroke and cooling down... AKA NO MORE SHOES! EVER! Well, at least for the rest of this season! ALSO: Friday I get to shave, finally! Apparently shaving (this is all psychological) your legs right before your most important meet will make you glide more smoothly and quickly in the water.
Anyways, back to the food. The trip itself was only 2 days, but the food we ate... we ate so much crap I could hardly believe it. I did the best I could, and was happy to see that I no longer beat myself up about things beyond my control. I must say though, it was an interesting experience for me, considering my family never goes on road trips, to the suburbs, or to diners. I'm pretty happy I don't live in Bloomington.
Before we left for Bloomington, we stopped for lunch at Jimmy John's. Since roughly half our team is vegetarian, we all ordered the Gourmet Veggie: avocado spread, double provolone, sliced cucumber, alfalfa sprouts, lettuce, and tomato. I ordered mine on whole wheat without mayo, plus hot peppers and a pickle. They wrapped everything individually, including the pickle, which is a huge waste of packaging, but was really cute.
As for the sandwich... I wasn't aware that "double provolone" was code for "Try to compensate for lack of meet by piling as much cheese on the sandwich as you would turkey." There must have been 10 slices of cheese on that thing! I took off roughly 8 of those slices. It isn't even that I don't like cheese, but that much is just unnecessary, and I'm not a provolone fan because it doesn't seem to have any taste.
The peppers were HOT, and I mean really hot. I ate everything, but I was definitely feeling the lack of protein, since I had gotten rid of almost all the cheese. I was still starving by the time we got back on the bus and had to eat the bag of nuts, dried apricots and Kashi crackers that I'd packed (no photo).
We arrived in Bloomington approximately 2 hours later, after a long bus ride of crazy hairstyles (here we see me at my most Asian).


The hotel was pretty nice! Our original plan was to see a movie, but since nobody could agree on anything we decided to hang around until dinner time. For dinner, we went to Avanti's, your typical Italian-American pizza/pasta joint, which was perfect for pre-meet carbo-loading.
I ordered the veggie lasagna with marinara instead of al fredo and a house salad. One of the girls at my table is a really picky eater as well as a vegetarian.
Her: can I have cheese ravioli with no sauce?
Waiter: No sauce? Are you sure?
Her: yes...
Him: Not even on the side on a little plate?
Her: No, I really hate sauce.
Him: Okay. Do you want salad or soup?
Her: salad.
Him: what kind of dressing.
Her: None, please.
Check out those lonesome ravioli with only the white bread to keep them company.
The lasagna was good in that airplane food kind of way. It was extremely rich and creamy on the inside, but once again, didn't fill me up! I ended up having to eat some of the pasta that had come with my (gluten-free) friend's chicken tenders. I don't know what was wrong with me that day, but it seemed like I just had to keep eating.
Even worse, after dinner we went to DQ! DQ as in Dairy Queen... when was the last time I even went there? I think it was back when I lived in China when I was 7 and there was a DQ at my favorite ice skating rink... I remembered getting the vanilla soft-serve dipped in chocolate... delicious. That was what I had planned on getting (DAIRY OVERDOSE THAT DAY) until I saw the giant sign advertising their PUMPKIN PIE BLIZZARD. The second I saw the word "pumpkin" I knew I was done for. I had to order one, despite how dense people said blizzards were (believe it or not, I had never had one before!). But if it makes you any happier, I ordered it with no whipped cream. The "small" was approximately a pint of soft, pumpkiny-goodness, tasting of nutmeg embedded with crunchy pieces of graham cracker crust. I asked Page to split it with me, but she loved it so much she had to get her own. I regret none of it. It was so extremely delicious-- granted, I didn't eat all of it-- I shared it with various people and then ate the rest.
UGH, check it out: DQ uses LIQUID PEANUT BUTTER... whatever that is.
THE NEXT DAY... Breakfast at Bob Evans, your classic greasy-spoon breakfast joint. I was probably the only one who was excited to go to a breakfast place with huge portions. Not many people are breakfast people. At first, I thought I should just get oats, but I realized how stupid that was, since I have them every day. Even though I knew it would be a huge amount of food, I ordered the multigrain hotcakes with apple topping and a fruit cup. Is it true that people from the city talk more softly in restaurants than suburbanites? I don't see why that would be the case, but since Page said so and the waitress couldn't seem to be able to hear me, maybe it's true.
Page was feeling really sick and ended up having to go home and not swim! She ordered grits and that was it.
The other people at my table ordered blueberry crepes (CRAYPS, according to our waitress) and French toast. People at other tables were even more decadent, ordering hot chocolate, cinnamon buns, sausages, biscuits, eggs, gravy, you name it.
As for my fruit dish, it contained approximately 4 pieces of fruit. I relished it.
The hot cakes... well, I completely regret that apple topping. It was so disgusting that I couldn't stop eating it, if it makes any sense. It was basically corn starch, cinnamon, and a few pieces of apple dispersed throughout the gluey mess. when I poked it with my fork, it WRINKLED!
The pancakes were good, and definitely whole grain, which I suppose made me a bit happy. I tried to eat them slowly, since there were three pancakes the size of a trash can lid. I ended up eating 2 OF THEM. YES, 2. And while I didn't even feel too full, I felt incredibly nauseous. So did the entire swim team. All of us were moaning in the car on the way to the pool, since we had to warm up directly afterwards and all of us stumbled to the bathroom and felt terrible. We felt okay eventually but wow. Our coach said we should just "relish the fatness after eating a Bob Evans meal."
The meet was huge (8 schools), so it was about 4 or 5 hours. Check out the awesome signs we made for our school!
My sign:
Also:

We didn't eat lunch, and while none of us thought we would ever be able to eat again, of course we were hungry when it was over. We went to STEAK N' SHAKE. I wanted to go just to say I had been inside one. Being there was pretty funny... I knew I had to have some kind of shake, but I wasn't up for a real milkshake, so I ordered a strawberry-banana yogurt one instead (PS, I know that none of these things are actually healthy, but I was searching for a protein source and I scooped off all the whipped cream), a chicken salad without the chicken, and a side of cottage cheese. The cottage cheese, which arrived first, was topped with a canned pineapple ring and made us all laugh. My coach said, "did you honestly order cottage cheese?" It made me think of back when the vegetarianism movement was a novelty and all restaurants could serve their vegetarian patrons was cottage cheese and pineapple.
The salad was fine: it had apples, grapes, iceberg lettuce, sugary walnuts and a raspberry vinaigrette.
The shake was great, and definitely not lowfat, since it was so rich I would have thought it was a milkshake if I hadn't known.
Actually, that's not true. When I sampled the various milkshakes that people had ordered (vanilla-mocha, cookies and cream, even turtle), I could taste the difference.

I know you're probably thinking, who is this person? Since when does Lida eat food like this, or have tons of nibbles of other peoples' food? But we had just had a meet, we were all together and feeling like a team, and this was no time to be a health freak loser. But as you can see, I did what I could in the given situation.
By the time we got home it was around 8, and while I wasn't really that hungry, my mom had roasted brussel sprouts, and a medley of onions and root vegetables (sweet potatoes, pumpkin, turnips, and celery root). That was all I wanted to fulfill my vegetable requirements for the day. I had a big plate of vegetables and I relished it with every fiber (pardon the pun) of my being. I couldn't wait until the next day when things would be back to normal.

CARB LOAD

A thousand apologies. I'm not sure why I haven't been posting as much... it's not that my interest in food is diminishing, but my interest in photographing absolutely everything I eat certainly is. Because of this, I'm going to focus on posting highlights rather than daily eating habits.
On Friday we had a pasta party at my house for swim team! It was honestly the most fun I can remember having in the past few years. 14 out of the 18 girls on the swim team showed up! After practice, we headed over to my house in groups, where my parents were already busy cooking. I owe them so much for this, since the food was fantastic. Instead of making the usually boring meat sauce and no meat sauce spaghetti, we decided to carb load Asian style.
My dad made two kinds of sauces: one with ground pork, soy sauce, ginger and garlic, and the other my favorite ji ma jiang, or sesame sauce. With your choice of sauce, you got chewy Chinese wheat noodles and could top your bowl with cucumber, bean sprouts, bok choy, and additional soy sauce/ vinaiger.
One girl is allergic to gluten, so we made her rice noodles, which I almost would rather have had.
Just in case there were people on the team who found Asian food unappealing (do those people exist?), my mom also made a simple spaghetti with a tomato and pepper sauce.
We also had salad, and people kept munching on our many varieties of Chinese candy.
It was great to be around other people that eat just as much as me! Everyone had at least two giant bowls of noodles.
Dessert was brownies and Haagen Dazs! Not at all the kind of thing I would normally have, but my eating habits are changing so much. Not at all as health crazy as I used to be, which is SUCH a good thing I can't even put it into words. My obsession used to be an obstacle in the way of enjoying food, and I couldn't take a bite of a food I didn't consider "healthy" without imagining its harmful side effects on my body as I chewed.
Speaking of which, I'm considering stopping my vegetarianism. It's become too hard to get full on what I'm eating, despite a high-calorie diet. Also, I am going a bit crazy with these limitations. On the other hand, I still have strong opinions about the meat industry and its effects on the environment, not to mention the idea of biting into somebody else's leg. The concept behind hamburgers, the number one meat dish that I crave, is so disgusting: mashing different cows' bodies together and sandwiching them on a roll.
One of my best friends is also a vegetarian and on the swim team, and feels the same way. We both want to eat only organic, humanely killed (although I still considering that an oxymoron) meat, and we want to break our vegetarianism together. We're thinking between november and december, so she can have done it for one year and I can have done it for two. I still haven't made a definitely decision. What do you think?