The Girl Who Ate Everything

Today I didn't buy any food because I lived off the leftovers from last night's lab. I woke up early because my roommate woke up early to the soothing sounds of Rugrats. [...yes.] Of course, you can't go to sleep to that. So I woke up, ate a lot of wheat products and that was mainly it. I must be chock full of sugar. I don't feel that weird though. I did get some indigestion, maybe from the late night cookie dough eating. :(

Interesting NYT article: Sorry. Your Eating Disorder Doesn't Meet Our Criteria.

Wow, can you believe I actually haven't been updating this every day? WHAT'S GOING ON?

Well. Thursday we had a chocolate tasting in my new student seminar. It was awesome, although it got to the point where I couldn't even eat any more chocolate. It also made me feel...weird. Just not normal. And it made me feel really full. Not feeling able to eat is weird for me. I mean, I can be no hungry but still feel like I can eat. In the chocolate overdose case, I didn't feel stuffed but I barely felt like I could eat.

After the chocolate tasting I went to M2M on 3rd Ave to get jap chae and a Korean spinach appetizer type thing. I also made the semi impulse buy of a pack of 6 red bean filled pancake-things. If you've seen them before, you'll know what I mean. And guess what; I haven't eaten all of them yet. Yet. Haha. I gave one to my roommate but I have a feeling she isn't going to eat it. :( Oh well, I'll see. The jap chae and spinach lasted two days, not bad for $5 of food.

Since I didn't feel so well from the chocolate eating, I guess I didn't eat too much last night. I still feel fat though (if my nutrition teacher heard me say that she'd be semi-horrified). I used to be a lot skinnier and it depresses me. I know my health is worse now. I really have to shape up! Maybe I should cut out all grain products first. [looks at piece of ginger bread bought from the Union Square Market yesterday] ... aw. :(

I ate at L'Annam yesterday for lunch with Diana. If you look at the menu, I got L17 (rice vermicelli). It was deeelicious! I had been to L'Annam once before but now I wanna go again. It's a cheap but really good lunch.

Diana and I went to the Union Square Market where I got a yummy piece of ginger bread (which I've never actually had in non-cookie form) and my first taste of hot apple cider! That is yummy. The cup looks small but it's actually quite a lot.

For dinner yesterday (well, it's 3 AM now) I ate the rest of the jap chae and spinach I didn't finish the day before and half of the ginger bread.

...yeah, I'll never lose weight.

Nothing very special today. So if you're curious:

• 2 red bean pancake things (yup, I like being vague)
• 1/2 of this thing of ginger bread (that's also vague)
• 1 sweet potato
• some tortilla chips
• 1 persimmon
• water

I know I don't drink enough but I don't get thirsty either. It's weird, if you ask me. If only the same would be true about my hunger. I haven't even finished this 0.5 L bottle of water that I started today. I must be dehydrated...ugh.

Due to the even of Diana's 22nd b-day, her, Ava, and I got together for lunch! We went to Quintessence, a raw food restaurant I used to frequently go to when I was a raw foodist. I've eaten there with Diana three or four times in the past and she has taken a liking to it. ;)

raw chips and guacamole

I got the savory asparagus crepe, Diana the sweet mango crepe, and Ava the granola and nut milk. It was pretty good and everyone else enjoyed their food too. Ironically, as much as I love sweet food (in the form of baked goods and ice cream), I'm not crazy about sweet foods in raw cuisine. If I go back on the weekend during brunch, I want to try the spinach pot pie. It would be interesting to see what a raw pot pie is like.

M2M has yummy fooood

We walked around a bit wondering what to do next. I had M2M on my mind because I AM A GLUTTON FOR ASIAN FOODS BWAAHAHAHA! I wanted some kind of bean paste pastry and I got a pack of 6 cute little white bean paste wrapped in some kind of wheat things. (Yeah, thats my description.) They were yummy, kind of like something from Minamoto Kitchoan but less expensive. Which is good. I also got the standard 1 lb of jap chae and spinach appetizer. Oh, and a pack of "Koala March" filled cookies, which you'll definitely know if you've seen em before. I haven't had them in YEARS, but when I was little I'd eat em all the time. The pack I got this time was, I think, chocolate cookie with coconut milk filling. I couldn't really tell it was coconut milk flavored but it was yummy. The cuteness of eating koala shaped cookies made it taste better.

I probably overate today, but I didn't finish all my noodles or spinach. I remember the first time I bought that pack of jap chae I finished it, which made me avoid it for about two months. I have no idea how I finished it that first time because I think I only ate half of it today and the other day when I got it. Hm.

This morning for lunch I finished off the jap chae and spinach. And the white bean pastries. And a few slices of my roommate's yummy pudding pumpking chocolate chip bread. Basically, I didn't eat much in nutritional value.

So I continued the trend for dinner. I ate dinner rather late (10 PM) because I had gone to a taping of the Carson Daly show, not knowing I'd still be on a subway at 9 PM. L&L Barbecue recently opened on Fulton Street (or dangerously close to where I live), so I stopped in. I forget what was previously there but it had just opened last month. It looked clean, food looked yummy, and if I'm going to eat any fast food it may as well be a place I haven't been before.

For about $5 I got a filling dinner of rice, curry chicken kastu (one of my favorite foods from the food court at Mitsuwa, even though its not healthy...oh well), a tiny salad and some macaroni salad. This was the "mini" portion. God knows what the regular one is. It's probably a bad thing I went there because now I want to go back. RIGHT NOW! It's a good deal although I don't know how receptive people who've never eaten that kind of food would be to it. Cheap and yummy and filling, what else would you want?

my chicken pot pie rocks your chicken pot pie

Tonight was my last food lab ever! Kind of sad but it was also nervewracking up until class was done. Each person had to make a chicken pot pie for the final assessment (and perform knife skills and answer questions about cooking). My chicken was overcooked, some veggies oversteamed, and the crust was a tad too tough, but I ate every bite. Maybe food just tastes better when you make it yourself. I made my chicken pot pie semi curry flavored (I should have put chili in it). Besides the chicken the veggies were carrot, parsnip, turnip, kale, mushroom, celery, brussel sprouts, and pearl onions. The sauce was made of flour, butter, chicken stock, and half and half. Mm. The crust seemed most disasterous.

But I finished. I thought I was about to cry at some points but it's OVER and I think I got an A in the class. Maybe. WEE! And chicken pot pie is yummy. Mm.

My room is seriously lacking water. Tomorrow I'm going to buy another case of water from Staples.

Besides the chicken pot pie, I lived on other people's food today. So I didn't spend any money on food, wee! I ate a bite of Grace's cake that she got at Barnes & Noble when we saw Rufus Wainwright perform (aweeesome) and some food in my intro to food lecture since people were giving presentations about...food.

What's the plan for tomorrow? I'm not sure. My mum is coming to bring me some stuff, such as Norwegian foods she got at EPCOT center! AWESOME! That's as close to Norway as I'm going to get, unfortunately.

I haven't been to Chinatown in a while. Scary. I'm going on Thursday though, don't worry. Thursday is Chinatown (well, school and laundry beforehand) and then Moving Units concert, WEE.

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fried Chinese dessert thingy that I love love love

So I don't know what that dessert is called, but it's a bundle of fried goodness. Yeah, I usually don't eat fried food but...but. HELLO! IT'S YUMMY! Okay, bad reason. It's a dessert. I can't say I eat many sweet fried things. I got the dessert thing (2/$1) and three veggie buns (3/$1) at a corner at Chatham Square. That's not very specific, but I know where it is. Right...THERE! Yes. There. This guy sells it outside of a place that sells noodles and tofu.

I was very bad today, food-wise. Over the course of a day I consumed:

3 veggie buns
2 of those fried dessert things
a pack of Ballerina cookies (14 in a pack?)
a bar of Firklover hazelnut chocolate
a bunch of little French shortbread cookies
1 orange
3 persimmons
some corn chips

And I could eat more. Scary. Something is wrong with me. I got the cookies and chocolate from my mum, who in turn got them at EPCOT center. I asked her to get me something from the Norway pavillion. :) Obviously, I can never actually go there. Or Norway. It would be a repeat of the biscuit-binging I did in England.

I stopped by M2M today to look at their noodles and they seem to have everything contained within half an aisle. Then again, they have to cover all the "asians" ...so theres rice, wheat, and potato noodles. I should get something from there.

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I did much fooding today. SOCIAL FOODING! And some non social fooding. First I meet up my old roommate from last year, Kathryn, and we ate lunch at Cozy Soup 'n Burger. It was pretty good, although not having had many hamburgers in the past, I don't know HOW good. I liked the burger itself...it was pretty thick and didn't taste like it was full of crap. I got the California Burger, which was basically a normal burger but specifically said it had lettuce tomatoes, onions, and mayo. So that made it Californian. Um.

...yeah. When I got back to my dorm I finished off the Maxim's cookies and some truffles my mum got me. So all the food she brought me on Wednesday is GONE. I really pack it away. I'm really fat right now.

Andy came by and we ventured out at around 7:15 ish for the Moving Units concert. We stopped by the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory first, since...well, I love ice cream. I got a two scooper, one of taro and one of almond cookie. Andy got the lychee sorbet on a whim. I liked the ice cream (duh, as though I wouldn't) but the taro could've been for flavorful, I think. It was almost like vanilla with some taro chunks. Taro ice cream I've had in Taiwan was much more...taro-ee. The almond cookie one was really yummy. :) By the time we walked to the Bowery Ballroom (in the cold rain, what perfect weather for ice cream) I hadn't finished so Andy helped eat a lot of it. Bwahaha! I DIDN'T EAT IT ALL BY MYSELF! That was the first time I got two scoops though.

After the concert (I swear, venues should sell milkshakes insteaed of alcohol) we walked back towards Water Street looking for a place to possibly eat at in Chinatown. I wanted a bakery but New Wonton Garden was open. I had been there once before with Melanie but I wasn't very hungry at the time. I still wasn't that hungry but...their food is awesome! We were there after midnight but there were a good number of people in there (for that time). I got the "Fish Meat with Rice Noodles In Casserole" even though I had no idea what it was, but it was really good. Phew. Maybe you can't go wrong in that restaurant. Andy got curry chicken and it was really good. I know because I ate about a third of it. AND I ATE ALL OF MY FOOD. It's kind of disgusting. The casserole was extremely hot (my mouth is burned) with lots of nice veggies, a good amount of fish, and thick rice noodles at the bottom that I can't explain...you just have to see it. It was all covered in a brown sauce. What was in it? [shrugs]

And the weird thing is that my stomach doesn't seem to fill. Food almost immediately goes into my intestines, making some kind of intestinal...brick...thing. It's gross, actually, since I know it's just full of food. Sometimes I don't think I even have a stomach.

I ate an obscene amount of food today. The fruit alone:

3 navel oranges
4 persimmons...maybe?

When you lose count, that's a bad sign. I also ate six mini meat bun things (because they come 6 per pack, which costs a dollar; I would have opted for veggie buns but there weren't any) and two of those fried Chinese dessert things I talked about before. That wasn't over the entire day though, that was ONE MEAL. For lunch I had fruit and my roommate's corn chips and marshmallows. I ate a lot of corn chips and marshmallows...not because I actually like corn chips and marshmallows but because they're there, and they've BEEN there for ages. I honestly have no idea why my roommate keeps so much food around that she barely eats. I threw out a loaf of her bread today because it was molding and it's been there for weeks (or maybe she's had it more months, who knows). I ate some of her Cheerios too, a no-no considering my cereal eating habits.

Oh, I bought the Chinese food today after trekking through fairly cold windy rain. That's how attached I am to food. Sure, it wasn't a long walk to East Broadway (10-15 minutes) but my thighs felt like they had frozen and my pants and shoes were quite wet. Not a great idea. I shouldn't have even eaten today. :(

I think I must weigh a ton by now but I don't know what to do about it. ...okay, I obviously know what I could do (eat less) but am I willing to? I probably wouldn't even go outside if I didn't have to buy food.

I'm eating this sweet dessert thing I got in Chinatown today. Didn't have any idea what it was but it looked ...safe. So I'm chomping away. And I still don't know what it is. But now I think it's lard. Lard? There's some kind of fat that I can't put my finger on. It's like lard with stuff in it. Wait, that sounds really bad.

...lard?

--UPDATE--

After looking at the mystery food while eating it I noticed every so often LARGE SEMI WHITE CHUNKS, which must be not-very-well-incorporated lard pieces. What? Do chinese people like the taste of pard pieces? Butter I can understand (well, you'd want that in a crust but not just...uh, butter chunks) but lard doesn't taste very good in chunks. I'm picking em out. Yes, I'm still eating this food. I'll never buy it again, but it's okay for now. If I'm dead tomorrow though, it's because of lard overconsumption. Dude, why aren't I dead yet?

--ANOTHER UPDATE---

Ohmygod. I'm going to die. GOD DAMN YOU, CHINATOWN! AND YOUR LARD! OR WHATEVER THE SHIT IT IS THAT I ATE! I FEEL WEIRD NOW. THIS IS BAD.

I woke up at around 2PM today because I went to bed at 5 AM. Not a good idea, but eh. I was working on an essay. The first things I ate when I woke up were clementines. Those are GOOD. My favorite, for the time being. Then my roommate started preparing to bake macaroon ganache sandwich cookies for my dorm's baking contest.

macaroon cookies!

I started eating these kinds of cookies a few years ago (well, before going into raw food) from Wegmans, which has four (or more, can't remember) flavors. La Maison du Chocolat also has these cookies, but they's much larger and don't come in as many flavors. I like the small ones since they're more bite sized. ;)

So much foooood...why oh why?

I ventured into Chinatown sometime after 4 PM to buy food stuffs. My favorite vendor was on East Broadway selling $1 and $2 dishes, wee! I bought $4 of stuff, which I've never done before. I usually buy one savory thing and one dessert item, but this time I bought two savory things (vegetable sandwich and pork dumplings, which I never had before) and the cake (which I had also never had before but I wanted something that definitely wouldn't have chunks of lard in it), the YUMMY CAKE GOD DAMMIT! It's 50% air. I love it. I was listening to Homesick by Kings of Convenience while passing some guys doing construction work on the side of the road and it felt eerily peaceful.

Mm, ganache!

My roommate had a lot of leftover ganache from the cookies so I splodged a bunch on my plate. Unhealthy? Yeah. But at least it wasn't like yesterday's lard, which was just...ungood. Believe it or not, I think I actually lost some weight since yesterday. However, tomorrow is another story.

I want clementines.

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I ate way too much. Apparently 50 cents will buy you three pretty huge meat buns in Chinatown. But the meat...is not so good. Of course, what can you expect for 50 cents? Despite it being so cheap, it's probably better than a regular hot dog, which...god, I can't even being to speculate what's in a hot dog. Anyway, if you don't mind chunky meat, you could eat a filling meat for 50 cents. That's kind of scary. If you're wondering, I ate 4, but I picked out some of the meat in an attempt to separate the meat from the "meat like substance". I also ate a sweet spongecake thing. Oh, and fruit...a few clementines, a persimmon, an orange. I bought seven oranges for $2 today. Rock.

I was in Midtown today looking to try out/purchase a certain guitar and while walking around spotted the Hershey store. Hmm. Intriguing. Yes.

...yeah, I went inside. Hershey chocolate isn't that great, but there are worse things. Algae, for example. ...Okay, their chocolate isn't THAT bad. It's fun and the store was cute, although I thought it'd be bigger for some reason. I've been to Hershey Park when I was little and at the time the store over there seemed absolutely gigantic, but then again I was probably four feet tall.

I bought a bag of caramel kisses because Honey recommended them and they are quite yummy. Kisses are a nice little treat. I don't think I've ever actually bought them before, but there are a lot of different kinds. It was something like $3.80 for a 12 ounce bag after taxes. 12 ounces is a lot. Uh oh.

Oh, going back to Hershey Park, if you've been there do you remember the annoying song they'd play on that ride through their "factory" and such, teaching you how chocolate is made? Wasn't that one of the most annoying songs in the world? Yes.

Yes, I cooked today. It was the first time I cooked food in a while that involved more than boiling water and steaming buns.

But that was dinner. What did I do for lunch? I can't remember. I'm going to assume I ate clementines and a marshmallow. My roommate gave me my Christmas gift: a mini-cake and a bag of handmade marshmallows! GOOD GIFT, YES. Really, I'm so easy to get a present for, assuming you don't have to mail it to me. CAKE. MADE OF CHOCS. AND MARSHMALLOW. YES. I gave her headphones, if you're wondering...cos she asked for them.

Digestives. YES. ENGLAND HAS FOUND ME and will now make me fat with delicious junk food.

I went to a food market on Mott Street that I had never been to in search for rice noodles. Among many other foodstuffs in the market there were two nice things I had in England over the summer: digestives and Ribena. Ribena was less nice, but if I wanted a sugar boost that was the way to get it. Of course, I bought a pack of digestives and now I will die from digestive-overload.

All these people want VEGGIES.

Other than the oh-so healthy digestives and rice noodles, I bought a huge bunch of some green veggie. As for what kind of veggie it was, I don't know.

I cooked the veggies until their wilted down to nothing.

I cooked the veggies and splodged peanut sauce on em because that's all I had. Then I boiled about half of the rice noodles and put them in the pan with the veggies. And then I consumed said noodles and veggies in what felt like 5 seconds. I guess it was longer since it would be impossible to eat all that in 5 seconds, but let's just say it was TOO FAST. Do I even chew? Do you have to chew rice noodles? I guess not.

The marriage between two of my favorite food groups: cake (pastries in general) and chocolate.

After more digestive consumption and clementines, I ate the cake...mm. It was damn good. My roommate got it from Polka Dot Cake Studio...it's a STUDIO. Not a bakery. Don't get it wrong, mmkay? I feel like I must go there but at the same time I should NEVER GO THERE, lest I want to become a cake monster.

There are loads more photos. SEE THE LINKY.

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I made the same thing for dinner today as yesterday except decided to not cook the veggies since that make them shrink down to a tenth of the original size. I chiffonaded the veggies (I dunno if I used that term correctly) and plopped the noodles on top (which all seem to coagulate today; how do I stop that from happening? I mixed olive oil with the noodles).

Result: THE VEGGIES ARE SO GODDAMN BITTER. They nearly ruined the noodles, which were tasty. So that's why you have to cook em. Even though I'm all like WEE for cooking, veggies taste bad. It's not like their inedible uncooked (like grains, which are pretty inedible for the most part...yet I just ate a crapload of rice), but they taste bad for a reason. Vegetables aren't meant to be eaten and the ones that taste worse I'm assuming have built up toxins as to ward off predators. BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO BE EATEN! So why am I eating them? I hope I got a crapload of nutrients and water soluble vitamins since I didn't cook em. Dammit. My mouth feels weird. Once I ate raw kale and my throat burned. Kale tastes good cooked.

For lunch I cooked the rice noodles and veggies again. No more rice noodles. Something tells me it was supposed to last longer than three servings. I was completely stuffed after lunch and though, "Crap, I really have to eat less. Yeah...YEAH! That's it. Diet time.

British junk food-ness

I received a lovely box of British foodstuffs from Lee today! So the aforementioned diet plan is over, but who cares? Yeah? YEAH! The package filled up my whole mail box. ;) The contents of the box:

two Aero bars
a Flake bar
white hot chocolate powder + mini marshmallows
milk chocolate coins
box of six packs of mini Jammie Dodgers
ginger candy

I definitely was NOT expecting so much! So I thank Lee to death with my stomach. Bwahahaha. Or whatever receptors in my brain that respond to yummy things. I'm looking forward to trying the white hot chocolate (er, hot white chocolate?) so I think I shall buy some milk.

Mm, banana sushi

I went to Ginger with Vassar friend Amy. She wanted to eat Japanese food so I set out to find a good Japanese place in the East Village (out of 20-something or possibly 30-something in the area). I'm glad I stumbled upon sushinyc and the nice review for Ginger. The banana crunch sushi sounded intriguing (also has the tempura flake stuff and spicy tuna) and was surprisingly yummy. I want more. MORE! I was afraid the spinach sushi would be boring since...well, it's spinach, but there was a huge hunk of spinach in the sushi and it was YUM. I haven't been to any other sushi places in NYC but so far Ginger is my favorite. Um. YES. By default, but it's very nice. They take your coat and give you warm towels when you sit down. :)

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I met up with Diana for some fooding in Chinatown since she had to get stuff from Pearl Paint. We wandered around a bit, entering a bunch of restaurants that were too crowded and almost getting stuck at an impossibly small, cornered in seat at New Wonton Garden. Um. NO. So we went to Moon House Restaurant, which wasn't crowded when we went but became more so after we got there.

I hadn't had fried rice in ages. It's good. Duh.

I got fried rice and Diana got seafood noodle soup and veggie dumplings. I didn't expect to get so much fried rice for $4.25. Gah. I remember getting a fried rice dish in Chinatown in England and...well, everything there was much more expensive. A lot of people at the restaurant were eating meat buns or scallion pancakes so I want to go back and try those in all their unhealthi-ness. Mm.

After fooding we went towards East Broadway so I could buy oranges. Tomorrow (well today, rather) will be mainly FRUIT! I SWEAR! Please. Yeah. Or who knows. No one knows. On the way to the fruit I pointed out the $1 bags of cake that I luurve and Diana told me her mum makes that stuff! WHY DOESN'T MY MUM MAKE THAT? Rather, why doesn't she make any Chinese food? It's amazing, she tells me about all the stuff her mum made but my mum never picked it up. And neither will I. I know how to make chicken pot pie though. I WIN.

Part of my dinner. Erm.

I ate some oranges, chocolate, and ice cream for dinner. Yeah, why am I still alive? I have no idea.

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I've decided to cut out (or at least cut down) my wheat and rice consumption. That includes cookies and cakes, thus I have not eaten cookies and cakes in at least 36 hours. 36 HOURS! YES! Actually, I won't eat any more of that stuff for the rest of the day so that will stretch to a whole NON IMPRESSIVE 48 HOURS SANS WHEAT/RICE!

So what did I eat yesterday?

• three (or four?) oranges
• one persimmon
• one Aero bar
• a cup of hot white chocolate with some marshmallows

The last two items were from Lee, so because of him I gots me some SUGARRRS! Not that I really need it, but you know...SUGARS! The hot white chocolate is yum. Milk tastes much better when it's sweet. If I drink any more milk I think I'll heat it and shove some sugar into it because I have a bag of cane sugar that will otherwise go to waste.

Oh, today's subject is brought to you by SCRAMBLED EGGS! For my entire life I didn't like scrambled eggs (or eggs in general). The only eggs I could bring myself to eat were hard boiled. Scrambled eggs resembled vomit in my opinion (well, not really, but they made me feel nauseous so I associated the two) and I'd certainly never choose to eat them. However, I bought eggs today as my wheat replacement (because they're EXACTLY THE SAME, not) and decided to do some scrambling for the first time in my life.

And...they're good! My view of different foods has probably changed due to my intro to foods course but scrambled eggs are nice. They're fluffly happy yellow plops that cook in what seems like two seconds. And they're fluffy and cute. And they're plops. They're awesome. My previous scrambled egg eating experiences may have been bad. I whisked in what may have been too much milk with the eggs but the milk makes it better, and I didn't cook it until it was all brown and junk. Cos that means you did it TOO LONG, and I've definitely seen browned scrambled eggs before. Of course, maybe people just like em that way. But I like mine in fluffly happy yellow plop form. Like this:

( p l o p )

If scrambled eggs said plop, that is. I bet I could eat a dozen eggs today. I wonder how much worse that is for my health in comparison to other bad eating things I have done, such as eating entire loaves of BREAD or boxes of cereal or raaar. Eggs. Mm. Oil.

I didn't just eat eggs for lunch. Also steamed some veggies from Chinatown which means I don't know what kind of veggies they are, but be sure that they're green. Dark green. I equate dark green to minerals and vitamins but who knows. I also equate dark green to "makes you want to puke if eaten raw". Steaming is the easiest way to cook, I suppose. But scrambling eggs is pretty damn easy.

Oh, I forgot to buy butter. Dammit. I have to buy butter. I knew I was forgetting something when I was at the supermarket (Wholesome Market on University Place and 11th if anyone cares to know). Oh, I also bought quinoa, so maybe I'll eat that tonight.

Eggs and veggies; the lunch of champions. Or not.

That was my lunch. On to dinner:

Quinoa = good, oh yes it's good

I bought red quinoa (about $5) today because of my goal to not eat wheat or rice (however I'll probably eat some tomorrow since I'm eating out with friends) but eating a cup of quinoa probably defeats the purpose of that. I also ate veggies but they steamed a lot faster than the quinoa cooked (duh) so I ate that first. My mum recommended quinoa to me and I know I like it. Too much. Good lord, I can't cook anything or buy anything in large quantities. A cup of quinoa is four servings. I ate all of it with varyin degrees of seasoning (plain, with oil and sauce, with oil and another sauce) and I know I could've eaten all of it plain. It's good, has a nice texture to it and cooks very quickly compared to similar foods, such as rice.

Quinoa gets a big thumbs up. But next time I have to make less. :(

I think I ate a million calories today:

• two eggs
• one cup of quinoa
• three navel oranges
• one persimmon
• a 6 ounce bag of spiced taro chips
• a bunch of some green veggie (twice of what's pictured here)
• some of my roommate's low-fat no sugar ice cream that could probably kill someone from it's lack of real food-ness

Seriously, I need to buy my own ice cream just so I don't eat that crap. I AM SO BAD AT CONTROLLING MYSELF! Isn't that a problem? A mental one? Of course I have a mental problem. I'm crazy.

So overall I didn't eat anything very bad besides the chips (I put sauce on the veggies and quinoa but I don't think it amounts to much. Also ingested OLIVE OIL, but that's good fat, mm), I just eat a whole lot. I took a nap today for god's sake. Now I have to cram for my test tomorrow.

I started my day with the same food I ate yesterday: veggies and eggs. YUM. It is pretty good, but I was still hungry. Since I suck, I went to Jubilee (the closest supermarket, although rather expensive) and got a 5 oz bag of olive oil potato chips and a pound of organic unsalted butter. It costed nearly $8, which seems like a lot for a pound of butter. WHY DID I BUY IT?! Oh well, it will last me a looong time, figuring I'm just using it for cooking and not to make pastries.

So eating the whole bag of chips was not a good idea. Uh huh. Remind me of that the next time I get the urge to buy chips. I almost bought a bar of dark baking chocolate but I put it back at the end. YES! So I have some sense! A tiny amount, but it's still there.

Soup dumplings from Joe's Shanghai

For dinner I went fooding with Vassar friend Joan and her brother Ronald who are visiting from MD. And we went to CHINATOWN of course. We went to Joe's Shanghai, which is known for it's soup dumplings. They were yummy, although I didn't like putting vinegar on it like you're "supposed" to, methinks? Each one of us also got a noodle dish and since we finished everything, we were appropriately stuffed at the end. I thought I couldn't move due to over noodled organs, but of course I was fine less than 10 minutes later.

Someday I'll buy this Chinatown Ice Cream Factory shirt

So we got ice cream afterwards, of course. There's a separate, secret compartment for dessert hidding in your digestive system. We went to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and I ended up getting pistachio. YUM! It's GOOD! YES! PISTAAACH! Every time I go there I get a different flavor; so far I've had ginger, almond cookie, taro, and pistachio. What to get next, hmmm.

Back in the dorm I had a piece of cake Joan got me from Taipan Bakery. Aw. CAKE! Cake = happy Robyn. Maybe more sickly feeling Robyn, but damn...good cake. I love Chinese bakery cake, it's so not-very-sweet and nice and soft.

Another food related thing: my nutrition and health final. I think I passed. I'm rather sure I passed. And that's all I know. But it's over and that's what matters.

Oh, I didn't get to mention the comments. Yup, they're splodgey. I would get spam in ALL MY BLOGS when I used MT 2.something so now I'm using the typekey majiggy. Either that or no comments at all, so I hope you all decide to register with typekey and give them your soul. I mean. Uh. Whatever. :) As for corned beef hash, I remember having it once in my life in a buffet in southeast asia. I swear, I think it was somewhere there in a hotel. It tasted pretty good. It was probably full of life threatening things. I like being oblivious to vegetable names and just picking them out, but yeah Amy, you could help me sometime!

Yesterday I ate lunch at Ukranian restaurant Veselka with my friend Joan and her brother Ronald who were visiting for a while from Maryland. Ronald had heard of the place and since the weather was craptastic and we didn't know where to eat, we popped in. Very nice place and for $10 the vegetarian platter is a great deal. I was full (yes, FULL, that happens sometimes) from the split pea soup, salad, four perogies, and stuffed cabbage. I've never had perogies before (or Ukranian food) and as a dumpling lover, of course I'd like perogies. I like the cheese ones more than the potato ones, since the cheese ones had a touch of sweetness to them.

I agree with the comments on menupages that the service isn't spectacular, but I feel like after fooding in Chinatown so much, I've become less concerned with bad service. The service in Chinatown isn't that bad but sometimes I think I've just become accustomed to it all. Restaurants in Chinatown are good for being very quick most of the time (in order to accomodate as many customers as possible...hey, why not?). Anyhoo, I'd definitely go to Veselka again since I didn't get to try their blintzes or their baked goods, which looked DELISH! I bought rugelach for my mum cos she loves them. I did take some of the samples they had out and their blueberry tart is ....is mmm. MM. So good. Maybe I'll buy one next time. :)

Before going to Veselka, we wandered on Bleeker Street and came upon Magnolia Bakery. I had wanted to go there for quite a while as I heard about it from some friends and was told the sugar content of the cupcakes would take a while to get used to, or would kill me. Which goes to show my body chemistry is probably way off because I ate two cupcakes (one vanilla, one chocolate) without any problems. I like the vanilla one more cos it was sweeter (I could SMELL the sugar before I took the cupcakes out of the box) but the chocolate one was good too. As for whether the cupcakes are as good as "everyone" says they are...well there's no way they could have lived up to the reputation. Cupcakes are simple, which makes them great. Cupcakes are always good! I mean, they'd have to be quite bad for me to not like them. I thought the cupcakes tasted like most cupcakes except maybe for being sweeter. The icings were different on the two cupcakes as the one on the vanilla cupcake started getting crusty while the chocolate one was still soft (no sign of crusting). I don't know what that means, although having taken my intro to foods class, maybe I should know? Damn. Would I eat the cupcakes again? Sure, but I think I'd rather try their other baked goods, all which looked delicious. I went to the bakery sometime between 10:30 and 11 AM and there were only a few customers in there (also, the weather was crap). More impressive was how many employees filled the tiny bakery, aka, a LOT. I can remember at least six people, so there were probably more.

And now I am back in NJ for MORE FOODING. For dinner I went to local Japanese restaurant Cocoro with my family. I haven't eaten out with my entire family (mum, dad, bro) in a long time. It was my dad's b-day, by the way. I'm afraid I wasn't nice enough to him considering a birthday comes just once a year, but it's hard not to become annoyed by my dad. But that's a whole other problem not fit for this blog. I had yaki soba for the first time in ages and the restaurant was nice enough to give each of us a free mochi ice cream ball for dessert (for the holidays, methinks). Very cute restaurant to check if you're ever in Franklin Lakes, NJ, which you will never be in. GOOD. STAY AWAY. :)

Merry Christmas, to those who celebrate Christmas. And if you don't, I still hope you had a merry Christmas, aka December 25th. I don't really celebrate Christmas but it gave my family an excuse to cook more than usual. So, the fruits of my labor:

After having to make chicken pot pie for my food lab final I decided I'd never make it again. Instead, I made one TWICE AS LARGE. Hm.

Sorry, that's a really unexciting photo. The crust wasn't so great. It was more mealy than flakey and I think that it was made with whole wheat instead of regular ultra-white refined wheat made a difference. But I still enjoyed it. When my brother first bit into the crust he made a face and asked if I put any butter in it. NO, IT'S JUST FLOUR AND WATER. Duh, I put butter in. Isn't my brother nice? No.

The full table.

I just ate the pot pie and the rice noodles. Can't say I'm very into duck. I bit into a piece and it seemed to have a funny texture. Back on my mum's plate that went.

I ate ice cream for dessert. And clementines. Can't forget clementines.

Overall, dinner tasted fine. I don't like eating as a family for certain reasons and my brother was in an especially foul mood...which was kind of funny. But annoying. Christmas isn't a big thing in my house though so it doesn't really matter.

Tomorrow I'm going to make sweet potato ice cream. I think. The ice cream maker bowl is freezing now.

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Even though I am a bit sick today (er, yesterday) for the first time in ages (as in I think there are massive amouts of mucus swimming around my brain), I made ice cream and macaroon cookies. This probably isn't going to make me any healthier but eh.

The ice cream came out GREAT for the first time out of the three times I've made ice cream at home. I don't know if it was the recipe but it may have been because I overcooked the ice cream mixture/custard. I mean, it was becoming quite custardy and lumpy while I was heating it. While using the "coat the back of the spoon" test my spoon was being coated in little lumps. Crying seemed like a good idea. I mashed it all through a china cap to break up those vicious clumps of coagulated egg proteins, ending up with a less lumpy but not completel smooth ice cream base. After I chilled it it was a bit gloppy and custardy (definitely not that liquidy) but after 20 minutes of running it through the ice cream maker it was SO GOOD. UH HUUUH. OH YEAH. I was very happy to eat the best frozen bits from the bottom.

Mm, the bottom of the ice cream machine. I've hit the jackpot!

Since the ice cream only called for egg yolks, I wanted to do something with the egg whites. In comes MACAROONS:

• 1 cup blanched almonds
• 2 egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

1. Preheat ovent to 300F. Lin baking sheets with greased parchment paper.
2. Grind almonds finely in food processor (or anything else that will grind nuts. SQUIRRELS!)
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk egg whites until they form soft peaks. Fold in sugar, vanilla and almond extract, and ground almonds. The mixture should just hold its shape. If it's too soft, chill for 15 minutes.
4. Place heaped teaspoonfulls of the mixture, spaced well apart (THIS IS IMPORTANT), on the prepared baking sheets and flatten slightly. Bake for 20-25 minutes until just firm. Transfer to wire rack and allow to cool

You can make chocolate macaroons by adding 2 ounces of melted chocolate at step 3.

Splodgey cookies, oh yeaaah.

These didn't come out as I expected them to. Maybe I overwhipped the egg whites. The cookies were quite flat although some cookies had huge air pockets inside. Probably baked them too long also. But they're still good! Mm. That's what matters.

On Tuesday I ate at Istanbul Restaurant in Ridgewood with my mum. We wanted to eat out somewhere and I had been interested in that restaurant for ages. It had this COMING SOON sign while it was being built, but it wasn't really that soon. It should've said COMING LATER. I became a raw foodist before it opened. But I got to try it and like most food, I enjoyed it. MM, TURKISH!!!

Yummy appetizer described as a flaky pastry with cheese, which I would compare to a spring roll but lighter. And with cheese.

My mum and I got two appetizers because we're pigs. Mm, pigs. And we also had a basket of warm pita bread. Pita bread is one of the happier breads. Its round, soft, and does not need to be hacked at with by a knife resulting in wayward crumbs/unattractive bread corpse. This happens sometimes with other kinds of loaf-ee breads. Or is it just me?

STUFFED CABBAGE! It's the tastiest way to eat cabbage.

So within one week I've had stuffed cabbage twice for the first times in my life. It's good stuff. Stuffed things are nice as long as it's not one of those turducken things, which is just frightening.

So if you're ever in Ridgewood and you like light cheesy foods with very light spices then check out Istanbul. My mum and I were there at around 6 and it was empty (it was also very cold and a bit snowy though). Howevey, the place soon filled up and many people came by for take-out.

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Yesterday I went to Golden Unicorn with my mum and Diana for lunch. Dim sum is always best with as many people as you can gather, in this case three people. So not a whole lot. A lot of dim sum dishes come in groups of three (because it's a lucky number I think?) so it was perfect. It's probably the closest dim sum restaurant to my dorm since it's at the beginning of East Broadway and I (and my mum) had heard good things about it. It was a little smaller than I thought it would be and thankfully not really crowded when we went (a little before noon). It got more crowded while we were there and we were surprised at how many non-Asian people were there. Not that they were necessarily tourists, but it's a pretty popular place.

The first cart that came by had dumplings. So we decided to try...er, a lot of them. All yummy, of course.

I know there are people who don't like dim sum but seeing all those little carts with cute little foods all the time screams out EAT ME, YOU KNOW YOU MUST EAT ME and then you eat them and you think YES THAT WAS YUMMY, MORE MOORE and those ladies are always coming around with those carts. So. ...that was a very poorly constructed sentence but dim sum does that to you, maybe. If you're psychologically impaired to begin with.

Dumplings we got included seafood, shrimp/shark's fin, veggie, leek, and other things chopped up and stuffed in little pouches of love. Pouches made of rice and wheat. That's love to me. I need help. We also got the flat rice noodle thing with stuff in it (if you've seen it you know what I mean, right?), sticky rice in lotus leaf, soup dumpling (rather strange...not bad, but I thought there would be more dumpling than soup), meat (beef) balls (my mum loves em) and possibly other things.

Fried sesame rice balls are one of my favorite desserts. I guess if you're not used to the texture you may not like it. BUT IT'S SO YUMMY! ARE YOU CRAZY?! Oh wait, that's me.

I don't eat dim sum that much but it's easy to get carried away. The three of us ended up plowing through 13 or so dishes. I almost wanted to puke by the end of it (being a little sick didn't help) but it was worth it. I think. I didn't puke, if you're wondering.

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