34 posts tagged “beverage”
Whenever I come home for breaks, I make it a point to meet up with old friends from high school, since most of us have traveled to various corners of the country for college and rarely get to see one another except for during breaks when we are all back in town. My friend Reid and I have kept up this tradition for five years now, getting together a few times a year, catching up, enjoying each other's company when there's nothing else to do in my hometown, and sharing some good times of course. As I look back fondly on our times in high school, we have certainly grown and changed a great deal since going to and finishing college. But there are aspects of ourselves that never change, and then there are those aspects of us that grow together. I'm glad to have the chance still to continue to nurture this friendship and watch us step out into the real world and fend for ourselves.
Last night, Reid and I went out for the night, stopping first at pretty much the only Thai restaurant in my hometown for dinner. The pad thai there was flavored just right, but the noodles were much too mushy for my preference. I enjoy a little chew to my noodles. I tried to order duck pad thai, but the waitress insisted that it wouldn't taste good (um... that must be why I love getting duck pad thai elsewhere...), so I stuck with chicken. After spending nearly 2 hours in the restaurant chatting away, we headed out for dessert at Friendly's. It's a pretty popular haunt in my hometown, because it's located everywhere, and has both food and dessert at a very reasonable price. Surprisingly, there are no Friendly's in Boston, which made me a little sad. Anyway, I was craving a brownie sundae, so I ordered their fudge brownie sundae, which came with chunks of dense brownies that were not heated up, layered between scoops of chocolate ice cream and hot fudge. I think that was a bit too much chocolate, as I was completely chocolated-out by the time I finished it haha.
Then we went to a movie theater to watch Charlie Wilson's War, which was actually pretty entertaining. I was little bit lost at first, as the film moves fast with brisk dialog and lots of history and politics spun in, but I found the movie to be quite witty and as always, I loved Tom Hanks. You almost start to forget that this was based on a true story, and it's not until the end of the movie that you realize how relevant the content of this movie is to the present state of the world, and then you feel a little sad that so much has resulted from one political mistake at the end of the Cold War.
We didn't quite want to call it a night, so Reid took me to a tapas bar in town that he really liked, called Bocado. It was a trendy, semi-upscale lounge type of bar, and I really liked the atmosphere inside: ambient, busy but not too noisy, roomy, with an air of sophistication but not snootiness. I had never had tapas before, since they tend to run on the expensive side, but we just got an appetizer, which was a roasted garlic, spinach, and feta dip served with warmed pita wedges. I got a sparkling mojito and he got a mango flavored Sangria, both of which were delicious.
The appetizer was also great, although I wish they had given us more pita wedges to go with all the dip we got. It was definitely a nice place to go and relax, and probably also a great first date place as well, which is surprisingly difficult to come upon in my hometown.
Finally, in noting that my glass is empty in the picture below, I would just like to add that I have the rare but coveted resistance to Asian glow :) I have no idea how, as both my parents tend to turn red, but I'm certainly not complaining haha.
9:00AM Kitchen (home)
Happy Mother's Day!!! I thought long and hard about what to do for my mom on Mother's Day, and decided I'd make her breakfast. Well, after I came home I realized that we were seriously lacking materials for breakfast, so I searched long and hard online for a recipe that I actually had all the ingredients to make. That recipe was peach cream pie, which doesn't actually require any cream (something I didn't have). I also didn't have fresh peaches, so I substituted in canned peaches, which the recipe says is okay, but I don't think I'll be doing that again next time. I also used a frozen but uncooked pre-made pie crust, so it wasn't much work to get it going. I wish I had taken a picture, but it did come out looking similar to the picture on the recipe website, although the inside of the pie was a bit mushy since the canned peaches didn't hold up well during the baking. So when I cut it up it became more like a peach cobbler lol. Still, the taste was quite good, the "cream" filling surrounding the peaches was kind of like a sugar cookie-flavored custard with a crispy crust, and the peaches were not tart at all. I baked the pie at a higher temperature than the recipe suggests, to help firm up the pie (15 minutes at 400F, then 30 minutes at 375F, then 15 minutes at 300F).
With the pie I also served a sampling of English tea cookies (small, crunchy spherical cookies dusted with powdered sugar, pretty subtle, and definitely goes well with tea), and some Walker's hazelnut shortbread cookies which my mom adores. My mom and dad got green teas, and me and my brother had vanilla chai tea with milk. Yum! We all had a great breakfast, and my mom was very happy. I unfortunately did not wake up before her (she was already up at 7am making her own breakfast! I had to stop her and be like okay go do something else I'm making breakfast lol). But hey it's the thought and effort that counts right. This is what the pie looked like (minus the dollop of cream on top), even though the picture is of peach cobbler:
Homemade turkey burgers with an Asian flair. I asked my mom to buy ground turkey for making turkey burgers, and she told me they didn't have ground turkey at the supermarket. So she bought turkey cutlets and ground them herself with a food processor. Haha the woman has determination! I marinated them overnight with a mixture of sauces and seared them in a skillet to make lunch for the family. It was kind of scary cooking these turkey patties (I'll tell you why later), but they came out tasting really good! Since they were marinated they had a lot of great flavor, and cooking them on a skillet gave them an interesting char you wouldn't get on a grill. My family ate these on buns, but I just ate mine with a fork because they were nice and tasty all on their own. Here's a picture that looks similar to my turkey burger patties, except mine came out a lot darker. Recipe included below also. I adapted this recipe from a Weight Watchers recipe that talks about how great turkey burgers are and how you can make them even healthier by stirring in your condiments into the meat before grilling them to get lots of great flavor. Personally, I think you can turn this recipe into turkey meatballs if you just add some bread crumbs or something to it heh.
1 lb. of ground turkey
1/2 onion finely minced (or more coarsely chopped if you want more bite)
1/3 cup of ketchup
1/4 cup of yellow mustard
1/4 cup of barbeque sauce
1/5 cup of hoisin sauce
Directions:
1. Combine sauces together in a bowl, mix well. Add to ground turkey, then stir in onions.
2. Marinate overnight in refrigerator, covered.
3. On medium heat, warm a little bit of oil in a skillet. Shape ground turkey into 4-6 patties, and cook in skillet a couple at a time. They take about 2 minutes on each side, but check to make sure the centers are cooked through and there is no liquid escaping from the middle. Serve as a burger or with a side of vegetables.
(So the complications of this recipe... when you marinate the ground turkey, it releases a lot of liquid. Liquid + oil in skillet = very bad popping. I think grilling is supposed to get around this problem, but I didn't feel like firing up the grill just for this purpose. I mean cooking these in a skillet is definitely doable, just be aware that the oil is going to pop a lot, so use a lid and wear an apron lol. Also, the use of all these sugar-containing sauces (ketchup, bbq, and hoisin sauce) meant that the patties were charring very quickly on the outside. Definitely use a non-stick skillet, otherwise you will be miserable. The insides were nicely cooked though, so don't let a charred outward appearance scare you. Otherwise, enjoy!)
I also ate some leftover teriyaki salmon, ribs, and green beans along with the turkey burger patty, because I made my patties small and didn't quite make enough lol.
6:30PM Baker Dining
1/2 entree of tofu stir fry with mixed vegetables and chili garlic + soy ginger sauces. I've never gotten Baker's tofu stir fry before, and I figured I had had enough meat for the eat, so I decided to do the tofu. It was pretty good, although I was kind of turned off by the sour smell of the tofu while the stir fry was sitting on my desk. I mean, being Asian, I'm definitely used to eating tofu, but that doesn't mean I enjoy its sour smell all that much. Mostly because spoiled tofu tastes sour and really does a number on my stomach. Ah, so happy to be back to using my own pictures :)
Handful of roasted cashews. Mmm I love cashews.
11:00AM Mala's PhD Thesis Defense (Building 6)
Half a plain bagel from Dunkin' Donuts, with cream cheese. 6 oz of orange juice. I kind of forgot that we were going to have Whitehead's usual Friday Forum at 12:30, but when I remembered I stopped eating my bagel to save room for lunch.
12:20PM Whitehead Friday Forum
1 medium pasta shell filled with ricotta and topped with marinara sauce (it was like the size of half a fist). 1 coconut chocolate chip bar. 1 bottle of spring water (17.5 oz). The actual entree for the forum was a beef burrito, and I seriously hate burritos, so I went for the vegetarian option of stuffed shells, which also isn't all that exciting to me. But I guess it all worked out, since I wasn't very hungry after that half bagel earlier.
7:30PM Home Sweet Home
I went home for the weekend because my family wanted to celebrate my belated birthday with me, and it also happens to be Mother's Day weekend. I again suck lots for not taking food pictures :/
I think I nearly fainted from the glorious smell of home-cooked food when I first walked through the door of my house. Seriously haha. My mom made Shanghai-style glutinous rice ovals with pork and Shanghai bok choy stir fried with soy sauce (炒黏糕), steamed whole blue crab, steamed corn, and tossed iceberg lettuce salad with tomatoes and Vidalia onion vinaigrette dressing. Yum yum. I love my mom's rice oval dish, it's savory and slightly sweet, and the ovals are perfectly soft and chewy. And the crab were delicious. Blue crab is usually the most savory and delicate of the crabs, but the ones today were even better than the ones I had before. It had a saltiness like fresh ocean seafood should have, and it was so good that I didn't even need to dip my crab in any sauces. This is how good seafood should be! I had 3/4 of a glass of Khalua mixed with lots of milk, which is not alcoholic enough to do anything to me, but just flavorful enough that it feels like a special drink to go with a special dinner.
After dinner we had fresh papaya, one of my favorite tropical fruits. It's very refreshing and not too sweet, but also not tart at all. It's flesh is soft, unlike that of other popular melons, so it's kind of a melt-in-you-mouth fruit.
10:45PM
Birthday celebration time! Before I came home I took a trip to Japonaise and bought my beloved green tea macha cake and adzuki cream puffs for my family to eat. It's way expensive though, considering that buying 4 cake slices and 4 cream puffs cost $25. Still, I wanted my family to try the best, and they really loved them. It didn't matter to me that I didn't have a birthday cake, you'd still just end up cutting it into cake slices right :P So we each had a slice of green tea cake and I had half a cream puff, with a cup of green tea.
I got some great gifts from my family too, a purse from my mom, a laptop webcam from my dad, a jewelry box from my brother, and a pair of 1/2 carat diamond earrings from my family as a graduation gift. I loved all the gifts, but seriously omg at the earrings! My mom says that I'm all grown up now and they wanted to get me something big for a graduation gift (even though I won't graduate for another month lol). I adore these earrings! Diamond also happens to be my birthstone, not to mention that I love them because they have the most beautiful glitter I have ever seen. My boyfriend tells me that I'm like a fish because I like shiny things haha.
11:00AM Molecular Biology Lecture
1 strawberry Special K bar.
12:00PM Building 4 Cafe
1 box (12 half-sized pieces) of spicy salmon sushi with cucumber. 1 bottle of spring water (17.5 oz). Wow this sushi was way too spicy for my taste. Usually when I get it it's got a kick but it doesn't make me stop and pant and gulp down water. Today it was just nuts, I felt like I was trying my best to eat spicy Korean food or something.
7:00PM Baker Dining
2 chili dogs with a few onion rings and salsa on the side. I was pretty hungry because the sushi didn't go a good job filling me up, so I went for the unhealthy but filling and yummy comfort food for dinner :P Boy did it hit the spot.
1:00PM Goosebeary's Food Truck
Cambodian seafood, again. This stuff is good! I got one for my boyfriend also to convince him that it's good, but he thought it wasn't salty enough for his taste. He liked the fried fish in it though, which is actually my least favorite part of it lol. He also picked up some random mini-danishes from his lab and shared them with me. There were three different fillings: almond, banana, and chocolate. Not sure which one I liked best, it would probably be a tossup between almond and chocolate.
6:15PM MIT Faculty Club - Biology Senior Dinner
Glass of white wine (Chardonnay) while chatting with friends and professors.
Dinner started at 6:30pm, and it was a buffet style serving (this dinner was not as fancy as the one I had at this place last week with my boyfriend's class). Here is my plate of food, including some Caesar salad, a roll, some green beans, a few mushroom stuffed ravioli with mushroom cream sauce (the striped things), and a small piece of grilled chicken teriyaki. By far my favorite entree item was the ravioli, which were flavorful and moist, without being weighed down by lots of cream sauce or too much ravioli dough. The chicken was far too dry. The rest of the sides were okay, though the roll was a bit too dense.
Afterwards we enjoyed dessert and coffee while an acapella group performed for us. I had half a cup of coffee mixed with half a cup of milk and 2 Splendas (I really don't like coffee, so I dilute it a lot to make it bearable haha), and a slice of lemon custard tart. The tart was okay, but I think they overdid the lemon custard, which came off too sour at first but then too sweet at the end of a bite, which also effectively made my coffee taste bitter the whole time haha.
2:45PM Baker BBQ Pits
1 hamburger with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ketchup, and mustard. Small handful of Lay's bbq flavored chips. 1 cup of coke. Yay for getting free bbq the day after senior ball! You know I would have been too tired to do anything else.
My boyfriend has been eyeing my Russell Stover chocolate egg for a long time now (I bought it last month right after Easter weekend when the candy was on sale), so we agreed to split it as a little snack. It's basically a small brownie covered with milk chocolate and shaped into a flat egg. It wasn't bad, but it was not quite as good as a piece of regular chocolate nor was it as good as a freshly baked brownie square.
1 piece of broiled salmon (5 oz), steamed broccoli, and a tiny bit of mashed potatoes. The salmon was actually quite good, since the broiling helped seal in a lot of the juices of the salmon. I generally find grilled salmon to be too dry and I'm not fond of charred bits. The lacking aspect was flavor. The salmon filet had not been marinated, and was not brushed with any sauces during the broiling, so while it was "clean" seafood, it was a bit bland. I got a little bit of honey Dijon mustard to go with it, but Simmons makes such a poor honey Dijon it's funny. It basically tasted like honey. Which obviously didn't go well with the fish. The broccoli was also kind of gross (why won't I ever learn with Simmons dining?), and the mashed potatoes were terribly dry and powdery, hence why I left most of it untouched.
12:45AM Pacific Java Cafe at Simmons
Devil's food mini-bundt cake covered with chocolate and Heath bar candy pieces. This is literally a small piece of heaven. Pacific Java microwaves it for you to melt the chocolate and heat up the cake, which makes it even more dreamy. It reminds me of molten chocolate cake, except the melted chocolate is on the outside. The Heath bar pieces also give it a really nice toffee flavor and candy crunch. Seriously delicious and indulgent...
11:30AM Campus - en route to Kendall Square
1 strawberry flavored Special K bar with a big gulp of water.
I went to bed at 7am this morning because I was up late writing a paper for a humanities class. I only got about 4 hours of sleep, and woke up at 11am. No time for breakfast/lunch! This is the last minute of the last minute prep work I needed to do for senior ball. I had to go to the Cambridgeside Galleria to buy jewelry and some miscellaneous senior ball supplies:
Appointment to get my hair done in an updo with my friend Karen. The stylists were really nice, and even brought me a cup of tea with honey while I was in the middle of getting my hair done. I brought in pictures of the hairstyles that I was interested in, but the stylist kind of went off and started doing her own thing. Oh well haha. It took an hour and a half to do the whole updo, but I liked how it turned out. It was a non-symmetrical updo, with a mixture of curls, pinned up sections, and even a mini-braid added for variety, and the stylist left my shorter hair in front as a soft side-swept piece to frame my face.
Painting my fingernails and toenails (two different shades of pink), then eating part of a salad topped with grilled sha cha (Chinese satay) seasoned chicken while waiting for the polish to dry. I didn't want to go to senior ball starving, but I also wanted to save room for the dinner which was in about 3 hours, so I ate about 3 oz. of the chicken and 1/3 of the salad greens dipped in a vinaigrette dressing made with sha cha seasoning, sesame oil, vinegar, and scallions. According to Wikipedia, sha cha sauce/paste is made with soybean oil, garlic, shallots, chilis, brill fish, and dried shrimp. Interesting, I couldn't tell from the flavor.
7:30PM The Sheraton in Copley Square
I met my boyfriend at about 6pm and he gave me my corsage. It was so pretty! We went to the florist to order the corsage and the boutonniere together so that they'd match. I got light pink roses of different sizes for my corsage, decorated with purple accent flowers and a white satin ribbon. I didn't know which dress I was wearing when I chose the corsage, so I tried to get one that would match most colors lol.
Dinner started off at the Sheraton with a basket of rolls and a plate of little balls of butter. The bread was okay, but I was slightly weirded out by the butter balls. I prefer other butter designs much more. The little balls just seemed odd.
Next came a salad of baby greens, baby yellow beets, sunflower seeds, dried cherries, and a slice of goat cheese, all drizzled with champagne vinaigrette dressing. The salad was actually pretty good, I really liked the combination of sunflower seeds with the sweetness of dried cherries. The goat cheese was soft and mild, which gave the salad some creaminess to balance the vinaigrette. Even the baby beets were good, they were subtle, and reminded me of squash.
1:00AM Baker Dorm 4th Floor Lounge - Senior ball afterparty, a.k.a. watching a movie, munching, playing foozball
2 drinks of peach Schnapps mixed with Mountain Dew, 1.5 powdered sugar covered crunchy round things that looked like donut holes, and a small handful of pretzels.
All in all I had a fun night, and a lot of fun prepping for the ball this past week. It was like re-living the excitement of prom all over again, except this time I didn't have parents to fuss over what I wore, who I went with, what I did, etc. I also loved seeing all my friends and classmates dressed up really nice, you don't get a chance to see that during the rest of the time at college because our formals are never quite that formal. All the ladies had such beautiful dresses in all these pretty colors! And men in tuxes make me weak in the knees :) Here are a few pictures from the ball:
1:00PM Goosebeary's Food Truck
Cambodian seafood lunchbox: scallops, shrimp, mussels, squid, fried scrod, crabmeat, and seasoned ground chicken simmered in a savory, slightly spicy sauce with coconut milk. I actually had no idea what this dish would turn out to be like, but I wanted to get something that was seafood based. The menu doesn't list the fried scrod, but I found a big filet of it in my box haha. I nibbled on a little bit of it just to see what it tasted like, but set it aside. The rest of the dish was actually really fantastic. It was basically like seafood stewed in this Asian sauce that reminds me of a mix between pad thai sauce and thai chili sauce. The ground chicken was in the stew also, and complemented the seafood quite nicely. I also had a small side of fresh mixed veggies on the side that helped cool off the slight heat from the dish. The lunchbox comes with a good deal of white rice that I didn't eat, but the seafood alone filled me up. So yummy! Had 3 cups of water with lunch (24 oz).
Mediterranean chicken entree: 4 oz. of chicken breast braised Mediterranean style with olives, capers, tomatoes, and basil. Came with a side of steamed corn, broccoli, and seasoned brown rice. I was pretty tempted to get other dishes for dinner, but it was the night before my senior ball, I had to hang in there and keep eating healthy. I was pleasantly surprised by the chicken entree though. I picked off all the olives and capers on top because I dislike the taste of them, but they did in fact impart an aroma on the chicken that was braised with them. And since the chicken was braised, it was quite moist and really delicious when paired with the brown rice and vegetables. The seasoned brown rice was much more tasty that usual, reminding me of rice pilaf almost. Even my boyfriend thought it was good, and he hates brown rice with a passion. I wonder what they seasoned it with to make it so palatable. Shared a Nalgene bottle of water (16 oz).
11:00AM Molecular Biology Lecture
1 Bosc pear, 1 medium banana, 1 Promax mini-bar. 1/2 bottle of water (8.5 oz).
3:00PM MIT Northwest Shuttle
1 Promax mini-bar. 1/2 bottle of water (8.5 oz). What's with the non-lunch today? Well I have a mixer to go to tonight at Harvard Medical School, and there's going to be dinner provided, so that means I gotta eat carefully throughout the day.
6:15PM Harvard Medical School - Toteson Building
Assorted Thai food from Brown Sugar: pad thai with shrimp and chicken, thai fried rice with chicken, assorted vegetables in coconut curry, cashew chicken with vegetables, and thai basil chicken with vegetables. I got a plate with a bit of each dish, and they were all really good. None of the dishes were very spicy, and the pad thai and the fried rice were both not greasy, which was nice. Flavors were savory-sweetish all around, which I liked, and the vegetables were not overcooked or boring. The only complaint is that the chicken was a bit monotonous. The same strips of dry white meat chicken were found in every single dish. But since it's a free meal, I still can't really complain haha. I had 2 cups of Pepsi One with dinner (14 oz). No pictures, sorry! Wasn't an appropriate place to take any, and plus it was just random food piled onto a plate, not too pretty.
12:00AM-3:45AM Dorm Room
22 oz. of water.
10:00AM Lab Meeting
1 medium red delicious apple, 1 medium banana, 1 Promax mini-bar. Aha! I got smart today and brought my own food to the lab meeting to eat instead of relying on their usual fare of bagels, cream cheese, and juice. Admittedly I was green with envy watching everyone else munching happily away at their bagels and cream cheese (I could practically taste it in my mouth), but the fact that I was sitting on the opposite side of the room as the food prevented me from having any second thoughts. Oh, well that plus my willpower, of course :P Had 2 cups of water (16 oz.) while at lab.
12:00PM Goosebeary's Food Truck
Baked swordfish with lemon and pepper (10 oz.), with a small side of mixed vegetables. No rice eaten. I usually try to stay away from food truck fish, since they usually overcook it, but today I was desperate for something healthy and not laden with salt and sauce, so I saw this swordfish special and got it. Turns out their baked swordfish is actually quite good. A little bit too peppery at times, but mostly okay, and even moist in some places. Baker dining was serving baby back ribs tonight, so I decided to eat a nice lunch to prevent myself from being too hungry at dinnertime. Have to forgo the ribs tonight :(
5:00PM Fletcher-Maynard Academy - Girls Club for Science
Today was the last day this semester that I volunteered at the Girls Club for Science in Cambridge. We had a little science fair and lots of kids came by to look at our booth, at which we had wave bottles, tornado bottles, and a preserved starfish specimen. They were all pretty fascinated by it. Afterwards the volunteers had a little celebration party with Carvel ice cream cake, and we all had a piece (I know, I know). At least the piece was pretty small... (and boy was it good! I haven't had ice cream cake in ages!)
6:30PM Baker Dining
Contents of 1 regular wrap, eaten in a lettuce wrap. The wrap had roasted turkey, roasted chicken (total about 6 oz of poultry), lettuce, tomatoes, roasted zucchini, squash, eggplant, onions, mushrooms, and red & green bell peppers. I had mustard mixed with a little bit of ketchup as a condiment for my wraps. Here are the guts of my wrap all spilled out and not looking too pretty:
7:30AM Dorm Room
12 oz. of water from the water fountain (bubbler lol). Staying up late to write a paper sure is tiring.
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