20 posts tagged “takeout”

I'm home for spring break right now. Every time I come home during breaks or long weekends, my family likes to celebrate by having something special for dinner. The thing is, we always celebrate by having the same thing - fresh crab or seafood hotpot. Chinese folks tend to see seafood as the ultimate celebration food, so it's always a special treat for when I come home. In fact, every time I go home, my boyfriend can predict that I'll be eating crab or hotpot at some point during my stay haha, and he's always right!

In my hometown, there aren't any large Asian markets like there are in Boston, but there are lots of small Vietnamese grocery stores. My parents happen to know one of these stores gets new seafood stock every Thursday, so this Thursday we dropped by and had our pickings of the best and freshest blue crab in the store. They were live and kickin, always a good sign of freshness. Blue crab is probably my favorite crab variety, as they have the tenderest and finest meat of any crab I have ever eaten. While the crab itself is usually quite small (about the size of my hand) and does not have a lot of meat, the meat it does have is sweet and silky. In comparison, other larger crabs like the dungeoness, rock crab, and Alaskan king crab all have very thick fibrous meat, where the fibers are large and sometimes quite chewy. For the most delicate of crab meats, I always go to blue crab. They're nasty little suckers to try and dig into, but you are well-rewarded for your hard work! Right now also happens to be the breeding season for blue crab, as all the crab we bought this week were filled with bright orange crab roe (eggs) that are considered a delicacy.

My family prepares these crab by first giving them an hour or two to soak in a sink filled with tap water. This soaking allows the crab to sort of "wash" their gills with clean water, which helps get rid of any sand or grit that are in their gills. Blue crab are usually not farm raised, so when they are caught they tend to have sandy gills depending on where they were living. Then you simply place the crab in a pot to steam on top of some boiling water, until their shells turn a bright orange (about 15-25 minutes). We also prepare a soy and vinegar-based sauce to dip the crab meat in when we eat it. Delicious! We usually eat about two to three crab per person, and it can get messy just like eating lobster, but it's so much fun :)

Steamed blue crab

We also usually prepare a starch on the side to eat, as the crab alone may not fill you up, or leave you hungry later in the evening. Dumplings are a popular choice, or something like a stir fried noodle dish. This time, my mom had picked up a few packages of freshly steamed flat rice noodle sheets rolled up with dried shrimp and scallions from the Vietnamese market. After just a nuke in the microwave, they were ready to be served with a dallop of hoisin sauce. These rice noodle sheets are delicious and soft, and are used to make the popular chow foon dishes (also called he fun in Mandarin).

Rice noodle sheets with dried shrimp and scallions

Finally, my mom prepared a tasty soup of spinach, mushrooms, snow peas, and pork blood. That's right, I did say pork blood. Now don't freak out on me... pork blood isn't actually liquid blood. It's blood that's been solidified (by congealing I think) into a block whose texture resembles tofu. It's a pretty popular ingredient in Asia. You buy it in rectangular blocks, and then you dice it or cube it into small chunks to be cooked in soups or dishes. Pork blood has a very distinctive texture - something of a mix between firm tofu and liver. The flavor itself is pretty mild, I would say it's similar to a very mild liver. It sure makes for an interesting form of protein in soup. In China, one of the most popular variations is to use chicken or duck blood in soups. For some reason, chicken/duck blood has a very soft and delicate texture, very similar to silken tofu, and is therefore preferred by most people over pig's blood. I know this is probably grossing you out, but it tastes pretty good. Just don't think about liquid blood and you'll be okay... it's sorta like a pate!

Spinach soup with pork blood, mushrooms, and snow peas

Anyway, that was my dinner this Thursday, and it was a mighty delicious way to be welcomed home :)

It's been a busy week, with school starting and coordinating Vday plans, but surprisingly I found time to cook and bake several times, so there will be updates forthcoming as soon as I get off my lazy bum to write them heh. On Valentine's Day, I was pretty excited to get my very own big heart shaped frosted cookie :D Apparently there was a lunch meeting and this cookie was the only one left over, which my boyfriend nabbed and presented to me at lunch. Yum! It was chocolate shortbread with royal icing on top, rich and buttery. We shared the cookie, but I refused to break it down the middle on principle, so we just ate from both sides until we got to the middle lol. I've always thought Valentine's Day cookies are so pretty, and even though it was a left over item from an event, it still made me giddy :)

Heart shaped cookie :)

For dinner, my boyfriend and I got off work early without any concrete plans, and after discussing it briefly we decided to relax and order in for Italian food and watch a movie together. We got our dinner from Stefani's Pizzeria, which consisted of tortellini alfredo for my boyfriend (we ordered fettucini alfredo, but apparently they misheard us), and linguini carbonara for me. We also got a nice complementary Caesar salad, soft garlic bread, and some flatbread to go with the salad. I really liked my linguini carbonara, it wasn't made with a cream sauce like most carbonaras are, instead it was made with a white wine sauce, with olive oil, shallots, mushrooms, and prosciutto. I really liked the flavor of the white wine in the sauce, it was a strong but refreshing taste that went quite nicely with the rest of the ingredients. 

White wine linguini carbonara

We watched the Bucket List while we ate dinner, and it was such a sweet movie and it made me cry at the end. I don't know why it was given such poor reviews, but we both really liked the movie, even though it's not really a Vday kind of film. I'm a big fan of both Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, and the both of them were just wonderful in their roles. Yes the plotline is mostly formulaic and yes it moves a little slow, but the movie isn't meant to be action-packed, and I feel like both actors did a great job telling their story, and it was certainly moving. Critics might be right most of the time, but there are still many times when you should just let your own intuition do the judging.

Then for dessert we shared a decadent molten chocolate cake together, which I whipped together in no time at all (recipe to follow, with less blurry pictures). It was a delicious way to end the day and I liked being able to add a homemade touch to our meal.

molten chocolate cake

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On Friday night, we had made reservations to eat dinner at McCormick & Schmick's, which is a chain seafood restaurant similar to Legal Seafood. There was a coupon for $20 off any entree, so we thought it would be nice to get dinner at a pricey restaurant without breaking the bank. The atmosphere was a bit stuffy for me, and not very romantic, with the place catering mostly to the older folk (something like a men's club). We had a pretty crazy meal that night... first we were seated in a center table, surrounded by cozy wrap-around booths, which made us feel like we had gotten brushed aside in the seating department. Next our table tilted heavily to one side if we both leaned on it (poor weight balance on the legs?), and our table candle was not lit. We ordered our food and started off with soup, clam chowder for me and Maryland crab soup for my boyfriend. (Sorry for the black & white photo... I accidentally had my flash on, after setting the white balance, so the whole thing came out with a terrible tint of blue that I couldn't fix in photoshop... so I just discarded all color information altogether haha). The thing with this restaurant is that they are very heavy with the salt in everything. The chowder itself was not bad, but a bit too salty (I definitely prefer Legal's chowder) and not as creamy as I expected it to be.

McCormick & Schmick's clam chowder

Next came the entree ordering mayhem. They have a special menu every day, based on the fresh seafood they get, which I thought was a nice idea. I was especially interested in their Atlantic salmon special, which was salmon stuffed with blue crab, shrimp, and brie. I ordered that, and Greg ordered their broiled seafood platter, which had salmon, shrimp, scallops, crab cake and stuffed clams. Later the waiter comes back to tell me that they were out of the stuffed salmon, so I had to change my order to their jumbo seared scallops instead. Then 10 minutes later, the waiter comes back to tell Greg that his dish was also out, so he had to then change his order to a yellowtail sole. Well, after all this, it's been about half an hour and our orders for dinner were just going in. Plus, we never got bread and butter, which every other table had gotten, so we had to ask for it ourselves. Finally, a server came with our dishes, and puts down a plate in front of me that I don't recognize... I stared at it for a minute, and that moment our waiter just happened to be coming by and said to the server that it wasn't my dish. Turns out, it was the broiled seafood platter that Greg originally ordered but they had run out of... interesting. So the waiter was clearly very embarrassed and confused, as the other dish the server was carrying was Greg's yellowtail sole. So the waiter gave the original seafood platter to Greg, and took back the yellowtail, and then shortly thereafter brought out my scallops entree. Very confusing.

Seared jumbo sea scallops with saffron risotto and lobster sauce

I'm sorry that my updates seem sporadic lately, it's not intentional, I promise! There's no point in making excuses, because I am pretty much always "busy", but I have been good about taking all the necessary pictures. So without further ado, I present a collection of things I've eaten, seen, or done in the past month since graduation!

Chicken teriyaki from food court

Lunch shared with my boyfriend during a lunch break at work. We both work in the same area, just down the street from one another, so when we have time we try to have lunch together. There is a food court nearby that has the popular Japanese chicken teriyaki lunchbox meal, so we occasionally share one. The chef that cooks the chicken is pretty funny, he has this thick accent and says enthusiastic things when he serves the food. He often says "chicken ready! yummy yummy!" and "yummy sauce! yummy sauce!" It's quite amusing hehe. I try not to eat out too much for lunch though, as it is a money sink.

Mango

I've been pretty excited about the delicious assortment of exotic fruit available now that it is summer. One of my favorites is mango, especially when it is fully ripe. I'm not very good at slicing one open and avoiding the large fuzzy pit in the center, but when I finally get around to eating the soft sweet flesh it is an amazing flavor. I also like gnawing on the flesh surrounding the pit at the end, but if I do that then I always have to floss because the fuzzy fibers always get stuck in my teeth. I wish I had a blender in my dorm, because I would definitely be making my own mango smoothies. The ones I've eaten are incredibly ripe and sweet, so I imagine the smoothie would be quite flavorful.

Kashi TLC chewy cereal bar

These little babies are what most of my breakfasts consist of this summer. I tend to always wake up too late to eat anything substantial before heading off to work, so these bars are perfect for my always on-the-go schedule. The one pictured above is trail mix flavored, and the others I've bought are honey almond flax, and peanut peanut butter, all of which are fantastic. These are so good for you, and they fill me up for most of the morning too, unlike other cereal bars (ahem, Special K).

MIT triple decker from Ankara Cafe

Okay, this is one of my guilty pleasures in terms of takeout foods while at MIT. Ankara Cafe was first introduced to me because all the students know that it has amazing frozen yogurt with endless varieties because of their long list of blended mix-ins (see below). One of my favorite dinner items from Ankara happens to be the MIT triple decker, which is a 3-bread-slice sandwich with pastrami, roast beef, smoked turkey, swiss cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing. I know, it sounds terrible for you, and I assure you that I am well aware it is. But it tastes amazing, always hitting the right spot after a long day. I usually can only eat half of it at a time (or sometimes I will eat the whole thing and feel too stuffed afterwards), but I find that it will taste even better after I microwave the leftover half. Yum!

Blended frozen yogurt with white chocolate and brownie

So this is the well-known Ankara frozen yogurt with mix-ins. They have a list of over 50 different mix-in options, and I've tried many of them in various combinations, still yet to decide on a favorite. This particular yogurt today happened to be vanilla, with white chocolate and brownie mix-ins. The white chocolate chunks are nice, but the brownie mix-in was not quite what I expected. I was imagining small chewy chunks of brownie, but instead it was more like brownie crumbs (see the general light brown color of the yogurt and the small brown specks? that's the brownie...). Still though, the flavor was quite good. A great dessert to follow any takeout items from Ankara :)

Grilled salmon sushi with cucumbers and carrots

Another lunch option at work is the sushi bar in MIT's Stata center across the street. They make boxed sushi rolls that I can just pick up to go. I usually like to get their salmon avocado roll, which has raw salmon in it, but I also really like their grilled salmon roll, whose texture and flavor is completely different from that of raw salmon. They break up the grilled salmon into small bits so that it's easy to chew, which I appreciate.

Cream of spinach soup

I sometimes get a soup to go with my sushi, but the cream of spinach soup overpowered the sushi quite a bit. It was very salty and the spinach flavor was strong, probably because it was frozen spinach instead of fresh. I only had a third of this soup before I had had enough. Probably not a bad soup if you were to have it alone or with a roll for lunch.

Lettuce wrap filling: stir-fried pork, beef, and onions, with fried rice with carrots

Greg and I made Chinese style lettuce wraps one day, using iceberg lettuce as the wrapping and a stir-fried mix of pork, beef, and onions, along with fried rice with carrots as the filling. It doesn't take a lot of effort to prepare, as the meats need very little marinating and cooking time. To make a lettuce wrap, we smeared some hoisin sauce on the inside of a large leaf of lettuce, then topped it with a scoop of rice, followed by a few pieces of meat and onions, just enough to get meat into each bite and give extra flavor to the rice. The purpose of the meat in the lettuce wraps is to add variety and flavor, not to act as the base of the meal. That is the job of the rice! Overall the wraps were pretty tasty though, and I got a second meal out of it too. It was an easy first meal to make with Greg, as we both were a bit rusty on our cooking and kind of lazy too. We always take several meals to settle into the routine of making dinners over the summer, as it is rather inconvenient to cook in my dorm, having to bring everything down into the large single kitchen in the basement.

Vegetarian Vietnamese summer rolls

The Asian food truck that I adore, Goosebeary's, sells these vegetarian summer rolls for lunch. I like to get them occasionally when I want a small lunch in anticipation of a big dinner. The rolls cost $1.50 each, and are usually sold in triples, along with a small container of peanut dipping sauce that I like. The rolls themselves are similar to the ones I previously described from Pho Pasteur, except instead of shrimp and pork, these rolls have tofu, carrots, and shitake mushrooms. The rolls are a refreshing treat for lunch on a hot summer's day, and the peanut sauce enhances the flavors quite well, making this vegetarian roll much less boring than it might look or sound. On the particular day that I bought these rolls, it was towards closing time for the food truck, and I only intended to get two of them. But the lady who was serving me was really nice and charged me $3 total for 3 rolls. I guess they wanted to get rid of their rolls because it was going to go to waste anyway if they couldn't sell them all. Good deal!

Pink flowers

Magenta flowers

Purple flowers

(6/03) Today was supposed to be our "movies 'til midnight" event where they'd be showing movies on a big screen while the students lounged on blankets on a big grassy lawn area of campus. I was looking forward to watching Casino Royale at the event. Unfortunately, it was a cold gloomy day filled with promise of rain, so the event committee moved the location to an indoor gym. That of course made the event 10 times less appealing, so Greg and I stayed in and ordered out for dinner from Stefani's House of Pizza. And um, well Greg convinced me to get some pretty unhealthy food lol. See for yourself...

Fries with gravy and cheese

Stefani's House of Pizza is probably the only pizza place in Boston that sells this side dish. It's literally french fries soaked in gravy and topped with melted mozzarella cheese (a side order of heart attack that is). In Canada, there is a similar item called poutine, although the cheese is not melted like this, and is instead in soft chunks. I had this when I visited Canada two summers ago, and it looks pretty gross, but tastes good, if you're into indulging in unhealthy food anyway haha. These fries from Stefani's are an awesome side because they're moist and savory, so they really go with whatever you're eating. So you must be wondering what we ate with the fries...

Honey BBQ chicken wings

Yeah I'm not sure there's a whole lot more to say except to lower my head in shame haha. These wings from Stefani's were pretty good, and a good deal at 9 wings for about $5. I got honey BBQ flavored wings, while my boyfriend got the buffalo wings. They're nice and crispy, and the honey BBQ is sweet, which I liked. Plus, the wings went really well with the salty savoriness of the cheese fries. I only ate 7 wings before feeling stuffed haha. They sure were good though. Sorry for the icky looking picture taken with flash, the lighting in Greg's room is pretty poor, so I couldn't get a good picture without flash.

(6/04) Six Flags trip! Today was an ENTIRE day of pouring rain, and yet me and my friends still bravely went on our class trip to Six Flags. Haha it was definitely an experience. I smartly kept my camera at home because I was worried it might get wet. At least I brought an umbrella and a rain-resistant jacket, as many others had neither and got soaked at the park. The original trip was supposed to be from 10am to 8pm, but due to the rain Six Flags announced an early closing of 6pm by the time we were leaving campus.

At the park itself there were very few people, and many of the rollercoaster rides were closed. I stayed off the rollercoasters all day because I'm not too fond of them, but it was convenient that everything else was mostly open and had no line at all. I first went on the carousel with my friends while we were trying to get out of the rain. That was pretty goofy, as we were the only 6 people on the entire carousel haha. Then I stood by and watched as my friends went on the Scream, which is basically the Hellavator/Tower of Terror type ride of Six Flags. Next we went on a ride called Nightwing, in which you lie flat on your stomach and rotate in a big vertical circle. I think it was trying to mimic flying in circles like Batman, but you could definitely feel the G force on it and I had to keep my eyes closed for most of it so I wouldn't get too scared/dizzy. That ride got my completely wet from head to toe though lol.

By the time it was 1pm, we heard an announcement that Six Flags was now going to close at 3pm. Oh my god now we were going to get practically no time at all to ride things. To get out of the rain, my friends and I went to watch an indoor Chinese acrobat show where I watched some people twirl little rugs on their toes and play with Chinese yo-yo's (some girl dropped it haha that must have been embarrassing). I also saw a lionhead dance, but it wasn't done too well as the head and the body kept making mistakes. After the show we went into an arcade for a little while, and then Greg and I left to ride Teacups on our own (my friends were not into this haha). It was really fun riding the teacups! They spin pretty fast on their own, and you feel like you're going to fall over, but Greg was holding me so I felt pretty safe. All the teacups spin in different directions so it's pretty chaotic, and you can spin a wheel in the center of your teacup to make it go faster. I saw a teacup where there were 2 couples and the guys were spinning the wheel like mad, making their cup spin so fast it was insane! Their girlfriends looked pretty horrified haha.

When we got off the teacup ride, we realized that the bigger rollercoasters (like Superman) were open again, but Greg and I decided not to go on them. Greg usually likes rollercoasters, but he was feeling like milder rides that day, which of course I was happy about lol. We wandered around and went to ride bumper cars twice, and then we went on this spinning swingseat ride called "Gotham Crime Wave", which I also rode twice. I had a really nice time at the park, the rides were all moderate so I didn't have to freak out, and it was fun to just walk around and see all the different things in the park. The rain definitely kept most people home, which meant the park didn't feel crowded or overwhelming, and all things considered, we probably got to ride the same number of rides as if we had been at a full park all day, because the lines would have been huge.

On our way back home from Six Flags, our bus made a stop at a rest stop, so I got some McDonald's (I didn't have lunch, and just had a cereal bar for breakfast). I'm not that fond of McDonald's burgers, I'm more of a Burger King girl. My favorite burger at BK is their Whopper Jr. So when I was at McD's, I got their Big & Tasty burger, which mimics the Whopper Jr. It was really satisfying to sit down and eat McDonald's after a long rainy day at a theme park haha I stay away from fast food as much as possible, but I can't make myself dislike it :P

Later on at night back on campus, I ordered out with Greg for pasta from Blackjack Pasta Bar. I got the whole wheat pasta again, with carbonara sauce. I know, terrible combination, but I just like the way the nutty flavor and chewy texture of the whole wheat pasta goes with the creamy carbonara. Of course, right after I finished eating it, I promptly fell into a deep food coma that ended up lasting all night haha. Gosh, Blackjack sure makes wonderful fresh pasta. I just wish it was a little bit cheaper (my pasta dish was about $9 before tax and tip).

Whole wheat pasta with carbonara

(6/05) Today was a lunch cookout for the seniors, with a catered bbq and some entertainment with a DJ. The bbq really wasn't that great. My favorite part was the hot dogs haha. They also had chicken wings, burgers, veggie burgers, chips, salad, corn bread, chocolate chip cookies, fudge, and iced tea. I took a little bit of everything to try, and really everything other than the hot dogs were boring. Why did I like the hot dogs so much? They were really flavorful! I don't know how else to describe it haha. The texture was nothing unique, but it was like they threw MSG in the hot dogs or something, that's how perked up the flavor was. Very savory. It went really well with some onions and bbq sauce haha.

For dinner I went out with my parents to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. My brother was taking a piano examination in Boston, so my mom thought it would be a good time to have dinner together. This restaurant is called Hei La Moon, and it's located right outside the great gateway of Chinatown. Therefore, it gets much less patronage, which my parents really like (they always talk about how important it is to have "elbow room" when you're eating at a Chinese restaurant). Personally it kind of freaks me out when we're there for dinner on a weekday evening and we're literally the only table in the entire restaurant until like 3/4 of the way through our meal. No seriously! But the food there was pretty good, and the service was fine, considering that we were the only table anyway...

My parents decided to get the "dinner for 4" tonight, which is popular among the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. They have these dinner sets for 2, 4, 6, 8+ people at a set price, with a certain set of dishes that are chosen. I often get the dinner for 4 when I go out with friends, as it saves us the hassle of picking out a good family style meal.

Fish maw soup

We started off with an egg drop fish maw soup with lobster bits. What is fish maw? Well it's going to sound gross, but it's the "dried stomach lining of a fish", which is also known as its swim bladder that holds air to help the fish float in the water. The fish maw itself has very little flavor, and isn't fishy at all, but it has an interesting texture that is kind of like eating a soggy fried tofu puff. It lends an interesting chew to the soup, which in itself was also pretty bland. But I didn't mind. Too much salt in Chinese restaurant food bothers me.

For our dishes we got:

Tender sliced beef with Chinese broccoli

King To spare ribs (京都排骨)

Steamed fresh whole fish with soy ginger sauce

Fried rice with pork, salted fish and salted egg

And finally, dessert, which was a coconut milk soup with sago (small clear tapioca balls) and sweet potato. I really liked this dessert soup. A lot of the Chinatown restaurants offer a complimentary dessert soup after dinner, and I've often been given a red bean based soup. But the coconut milk one is my favorite. I've had it with taro also, which is delicious. The coconut milk soup base is sweet and creamy, but not thick or rich at all. It's served hot but it's refreshing, especially after the salty and savory flavors from dinner. The sago balls are not chewy like the tapioca balls in boba (a.k.a. bubble tea), but are cooked thoroughly so that you can either swallow them whole or chew them apart. Their texture is pretty much like soft jello.

Coconut milk soup with sago and sweet potato

Yum, a good dinner with my family with good variety. Plus Chinatown Chinese food quality is always better than the regular Chinese takeout that I get. And my family always lets me take home all the leftovers, which we often have a lot of since nobody in my family has a particularly large appetite. I usually bring the leftovers back for Greg to eat as his dinner. Ah, isn't he lucky?

12:30PM Greg's Room
2 slices of Papa John's pizza that I got from the Baker pizza & ice cream social on Saturday (whee leftovers!). One slice of sausage, one slice of Hawaiian. I think the uh, pineapple on that pizza was the most significant source of fruit I've had all weekend... how sad!

7:30PM Greg's Room
Leftover part of calzone from takeout on Friday night, with marinara sauce. What a lazy long weekend... leftovers and relaxation and most importantly, no work done! Too bad my boyfriend was in lab every day until past 11pm :(

Calzone

12:45AM Greg's Room
Leftover King To pork chops with some rice and canned chili. lol at least chili is really good for you...

3:30AM Greg's Room
1/2 mug of hot chocolate, with 5 Teddy grahams.

One week until my 22nd birthday! Wow I feel old... I want to stay 21... :P

9:30AM Dorm Room
2 Special K bars (strawberry and chocolate drizzle). I had to present a really important powerpoint presentation to a different lab that our lab is collaborating with, in order to show them the data from all the experiments I've been doing since January. The meeting was at 11am, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't hungry and my stomach wasn't going to be growling during the meeting. It turned out quite well actually.

12:30PM Whitehead Friday Forum
1/2 cup of Indian curry with chicken and vegetables, mixed with rice. 1/2 cup of ziti baked with ricotta and marinara. 1 chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips. What a relaxing meal after I gave my presentation. I practically fell asleep during the seminar part of the lunch haha.

7:30PM Greg's Room
Some leftover orange chicken from Kendall Square food court (Beijing Cafe). Maybe 1/2 cup of chicken chunks and 1/2 cup of fried rice.

1:00AM Greg's Room - Takeout from International Pizza & Mexican Food (what a weird name)
1/2 a calzone with grilled chicken, roasted peppers, and cheese. Vanilla frozen yogurt with frozen cherries and chocolate mix-ins for dessert.

3:30PM Dorm Room
1.3 cups of drunken noodles (300 calories). Done with all my Thai food! It's a good thing there's no more, because the drunken noodles today were a bit chewier than I would have liked them, probably because they've been in the fridge for a few days now.

Roasted maple pork loin

7:15PM Baker Dorm Dining (Yay!)
Roasted maple pork loin with orange marmalade glaze (8 oz pork loin, ~450 calories), 3/4 cup of corn (125 calories), and 1.5 cups of broccoli (80 calories). Wow I sure missed Baker dining's fresh food. Their roasted pork today was really tender, pretty much melted in your mouth. I especially enjoyed the maple and cinnamon crust on the outer surface, which the light orange glaze complemented quite well. I was lucky enough to be there right when they were cutting the end piece of the loin, so I got that piece, which has the most maple flavoring of all! Mmmm :) And it feels good to be eating lots of vegetables again. (The pictures look better when they're bigger, don't you think?)

1:40AM Dorm Room
Salmon salad on 5 bagel crisps (185 calories). Small handful of milk chocolate chips (~15 chips, 40 calories).

Total for today is 1180.

I decided to give my blog a little overhaul, since it's spring and I was getting tired of my pink and purple background. So I went with something more pleasing to the eye, enjoy :)

Haha so for my next several meals you will see lots and lots of... Thai food. I ordered out from Bo Thai (isn't this the cutest name), but the minimum for delivery is $15, so I ended up ordering THREE entrees, all for myself. So um... yeah there will be lots of Thai food to eat. But the good news is that I love the dishes and I never seem to get sick of Thai food, seriously. Whenever I talk about ordering out, it's probably the first cuisine that comes to mind. Maybe because it's always refreshing to eat, and doesn't get sickeningly greasy and meaty like Chinese or Italian takeout.

Pad see ew with duck

1:00PM Dorm Room - Bo Thai Takeout
1/2 entree of pad see ew with duck (1.3 cup, hard to pin down a nutritional value since it has duck in it, but I'm going to err on the high side and estimate it to be about 350 calories). I had pad see ew for the first time in February, at a Thai place called Chili Duck (one of my favorite places in Boston). I totally fell in love with it! It is made with wide ride noodles (like Chinese 河粉), and they are sauteed with broccoli, carrots, onions, some egg, and a type of meat, along with a sweet soy sauce. I've said this so many times already, but I love savory foods that are sweet-ish. So yes, love this stuff!. (The little bits you see in the picture are chopped up scrambled egg, one of the best parts of this dish because it soaks up the flavors from the sauce so well!)

5:15PM Dorm Room
1 cup of black milk tea (20 calories). It's starting to taste better to me heh, I'm getting the hang of it! Though, I'm not too fond of my nonfat powdered milk. Maybe because the expiration date was in 2005 (though I thought these things could last forever), maybe because it's Shaw's brand, but it sure has a funny flavor to it that makes me wonder about it. I once tried to make hot chocolate with it, since the cocoa called for milk instead of water, and boy did it come out gross. The bitterness of the tea probably hides the nastiness of this powdered milk. I think I should invest in a better box sometime :)

Pad thai

6:30PM Dorm Room - More Thai Food!
1/3 entree of pad thai with chicken (1.3 cup, 250 calories). Mmmm I love pad thai. The flavoring from the tamarind and the fish sauce really brings out this sweet and sour flavor in it that I haven't had in any other types of dishes. Oh and I adore bean sprouts, of which there are many in this dish :D The pad thai from Bo Thai isn't greasy at all, which is great too. The only complaint that I have about it is that the chicken could use a little more flavoring, and could be more tender too. I realize it's just chicken breast, and that the noodles take center stage here, but I like my protein to be savory too. But oh, a yummy pad thai topped with crushed peanuts makes my day anyday.

Drunken noodles

10:30PM Dorm Room - Still More Thai...
1/2 entree of drunken noodles with beef (1.3 cup, ~300 calories). This Thai business is very tasty... but not very heavy on calories. Which is generally a good thing, but it means that I get hungry sooner, so I have to eat more often. Oh well, eating more is better than eating just once and getting too many calories right :P I've gotten the Bo Thai drunken noodles a few times before, and it's always been pretty good, with the exception that I'm a wimp so it's always too spicy for me to handle. By the time I'm done eating it, my tongue feels shooting needles of pain when I simply touch it, so it gets to be kind of miserable. Today I remembered to ask them to make it milder for me, so yay my tongue doesn't have to fall off! Drunken noodles are kind of similar to the pad see ew, in that they both use the wide flat rice noodles and have the bits of scrambled eggs in it, but because of the sauce, it's a completely different flavor experience. It also has bell peppers instead of broccoli. Yum! (p.s. don't be an idiot like me and rub your eyes when you have drunken noodle chili oil on your fingers...ow...)

3:15AM Dorm Room - A Little Relaxation
1/2 of a ruby red grapefruit with a little sprinkling of sugar on top (50 calories). Just 1.5 more grapefruits to go haha. Not sure what else I should eat tonight though. I am still quite a bit short on calories, because my estimates come out to just shy of 1000 so far. I don't know what to do! I definitely have the appetite to eat more stuff, but I'm not particularly hungry. I don't know if I just estimated my numbers to be too small, or if I actually haven't consumed enough today. I worry that if I purposely eat another 200 calories worth of food I might be sabotaging myself if my calculations weren't quite right, but I also worry that I'm sabotaging myself anyway by eating too little (and thus slowing down my metabolism too quickly). I sure wish I had an accurate gauge as to how much I was eating every day.

4:45AM Dorm Room - Late Night Appetizers...
Salmon salad on garlic bagel crisps (5 crisps, 100 calories, 2 oz of salmon, 60 calories, 1 tbsp of low fat mayo, 25 calories). I got desperate to find something that is not terrible for you but still tasty and will help me meet about 1200 calories for today. The answer? My ridiculous stash of canned food from freshman year. I have never eaten canned salmon before, so I decided to open a can from Trader Joe's that I've had forever. To my disappointment, it smelled and looked pretty much identical to canned tuna. Not too much excitement to be had there. So I was like well if I'm gonna use this canned salmon, I'm gonna make it taste damned good! I pretty much did it by eyeballing and tasting as I went along, but here is an approx recipe:

Salmon salad on garlic bagel crisps

Salmon Salad Recipe (Vaguely)
1 can of salmon (6 oz.)
3 tbsp of low fat mayo
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of Parmesan cheese (I used grated parmesan and romano)
1 condiment packet's worth of mustard
generous sprinkling of black pepper
(Optional) Japanese rice seasoning

Mix well and spread on roasted garlic flavored bagel crisps. Top with Japanese rice seasoning (nori fumi furikake - consisting of sesame seeds, salt, sugar, and dried seaweed). Makes 3 servings of what I ate, listed above.

I found that the mustard and parmesan cheese gave the salmon salad a distinct flavor from your everyday tuna salad. It was richer from the parmesan, and bolder from the mustard. I really enjoyed it on the bagel chips, especially along with the rice seasoning. The original purpose of that was to give it a little garnish and some texture variation, but the flavor of the seaweed and the extra salt & sugar really fit well with the seafood theme of the salad. Though now that I think of it... does anyone ever make salmon salad??? I've never heard of it before. Anyway, today totals happily to about 1150. Yum!

2:00PM Dorm Room
2/3 cup of white rice (130 calories), 3 oz. of lobster sauce (100 calories). I swear, this is last of the lobster sauce hahaha. What a sad sad spring break. I sure wish I was off vacationing somewhere and eating fun foods instead of this leftoverfest and being holed up in my room all week.

Black (milk) tea

6:15PM Dorm Room
1 cup Lipton black tea (milk tea style, 20 calories). I steeped a Lipton tea bag in hot water, but I generally don't like the flavor of tea by itself, nor do I really like the watery sweetness when there's just honey added. So I poured a little bit of nonfat dried milk powder into it, along with a little honey, to make it into sort of a milk tea. Tasted much better that way. I'm not a big fan of tea, but I've always known that it's good for you, so I'm trying to make an effort to incorporate more of it into my diet. That plus the fact that I could sure use the caffeine to keep me focused on my studying, since it's so boring and overwhemling that I always want to just crawl into bed and nap lol.

Seafood dumplings

7:20PM Dorm Room - Dinner & an episode of Will and Grace
14 seafood dumplings (580 calories), 3 tbsp of hoisin sauce (150 calories). Last time I made seafood dumplings my boyfriend complained that they were too fishy, but this time I thought it tasted just fine. The filling has pork, napa cabbage, shrimp, and shitake mushrooms in it. I think the flavor is pretty nice, it's not as strong as regular pork dumplings, plus it's healthier than the straight up meat dumplings.

I don't understand why some people insist on calling these gyoza, because that term is only applied to Japanese dumplings, where in actuality, dumplings between the Asian cultures really don't differ much at all. I do, however, make a definite distinction between dumplings, wontons, and the Americanized "potstickers". The difference is all in the skin, because the fillings are literally infinite. Dumplings have a thicker, starchier skin than wontons, but they have a soft chew to them when cooked, and compliments the filling. Wontons have those practically breaking off, tender skins that are slippery and sometimes mushy. The skins of wontons basically fade into the background to give way to the flavors and textures of the filling. Now potstickers, first off, are cooked differently, since they are pan fried. But potstickers have the thickest, chewiest skin of all three, since it is made from the same kind of dough that is used to make steamed buns. Have you ever noticed that the meat filling of a potsticker is quite small compared to the bulk of the skin? The potsticker is generally eaten for its pan fried skin, and the meat inside is merely flavoring to compliment the dough.

Speaking of potstickers, it reminds me of a famous Shanghai dish called 小笼包 "xiao long bao", or also known as Shanghai meat buns. The Chinese name for it literally means buns in bamboo steamers, which is exactly how these buns are made. They have a meat filling, and when the dough for the skin is wrapped around it, the maker usually adds a small ice cube inside. When the buns are steamed in a bamboo steamer, the ice cube melts and the meat filling's juices combine with the liquid to form a super savory pocket of soup inside the bun, waiting for you to bite in and spill into your mouth. The skin is also made differently, using some glutinous rice flour, so it has a chewier texture than dumplings. These are absolutely divine, especially when you get them fresh in Shanghai. Mmm. Now I want some of these haha.

1:40AM Dorm Room - Studying MCAT Stuff...
1 asian pear (100 calories). Fruit... the only good for you thing I've had all week hahaha (if you don't count the teas). I still have 2 pears and 2 grapefruits sitting in my fridge begging to be eaten, except I finicky and don't like to eat the same fruits over and over again within a short period of time. What I need is my own personal fruit and vegetable market so I can always pick exactly what I want without buying a ton of it lol. I could totally go for some grapes or mango. Cantaloupe would be nice too. I'm thinking of all this because I'm still hungry after I just ate that pear lol. I mean yes, I've only eaten 1100 calories thus far today, so I need to eat some more stuff... but what? (Don't even mention the oreos...)

2:40AM Dorm Room
Handful of lightly salted almonds (~10 nuts, 70 calories). I didn't really have anything else to eat, and I was craving random stuff, such as sweet snacks and meat. Figured I probably just needed something to fill me up. And these babies really do the trick.

Total for today is about 1150. It's below the lower limit, but I'm about to go to sleep and I am already full from the almonds. It's okay though, after yesterday's food-fest I'm sure I had more than enough calories to make up for today lol.

Sweet osmanthus, lotus, and lily Chinese instant breakfast

9:00AM Dorm Room - Getting Ready for a Morning Practice MCAT
1 packet of Chinese instant breakfast, prepared with hot water and a sprinkling of brown sugar on top (~200 calories?). I'd forgotten that I still have some packets of this stuff, which I bought 2 years ago at my dad's suggestion for a breakfast option. I was getting sick of eating oatmeal all the time, and this was a really nice alternative. It doesn't have much texture to it, so I suppose it's similar to cream of wheat, but the flavor is not nearly as bland. It's called 桂花莲藕白合糊 "gui hua lian ou bai he hu", which is a compound term that literally means sweet osmanthus, lotus, and lily in a creamy soup (sorry, I read a poor translation from somewhere, so what I thought was laurel is actually osmanthus). I used to love a certain type of breakfast soup that my mom would make, using crystallized osmanthus flower sugar and water chestnut powder, which was so incredibly fragrant and delicious that I still have really fond memories of it. Unfortunately osmanthus sugar is really hard to come by, and a small jar of it costs a pretty penny, so I haven't really gotten a chance to eat it again. This instant breakfast comes sort of close in terms of flavor, and it sure has a nifty ingredients list: lotus root powder, Job's Tears (coixseed), lily, lotus seed, Chinese yam, tuckahoe, gorgon fruit, brown rice, sugar, grape sugar, and fresh sweet osmanthus flower. Haha, oatmeal doesn't even compare.

12:30PM Dorm Room - Lunch Break
1.5 cups of white rice (300 calories), 6 oz. lobster sauce leftovers (210 calories). Yeah... I told you this lobster sauce business lasted a long time didn't I. It's almost done though haha there's enough left for one more meal.

Chai tea latte

6:00PM Starbucks
Tall Tazo chai tea latte with nonfat milk (170 calories). I was in Central Square and didn't have anything to do for an hour before my friend's Korean meatfest dinner, so I took up a space in Starbucks and did some MCAT studying. The latte style Tazo chai is a lot better than the regular chai I had a few years ago from Starbucks, which was more watery and stronger in flavor. I enjoyed it more mellowed out with the milk. I was surprised, however, to find my tongue tingling after a few sips of this latte, and it was a pretty strong tingling that lasted throughout the entire drink. Must have been the spices in the chai.

8:00PM Minyoung's Apartment - Korean Meatfest
1.5 cups of white rice (300 calories), and lots of korean style meat haha.

I'm terrible and didn't remember to take any pictures, but one dish was bulgogi, which had a steak type of meat (thinly cut and marinated), sauteed in a red Korean chili sauce that was mildly spicy, along with some onions and mushrooms (my best guess is that 1/2 lb of bulgogi, which is 8 oz, is about 450 calories).

The other dish was samgyeopsal, which are lettuce wraps with thin pieces pork bacon, all wrapped up with some sauteed garlic, sesame oil, and some sort of sweet/spicy Korean red paste (ssamjang?). Mmmm yummy! I usually don't like spicy food, but tonight's dishes were just mildly spicy enough that it wasn't overwhemling. Can't figure out the nutritional value of the lettuce wraps, nor do I have an inkling of exactly how much I ate of it, but suffice to say that it was not low-cal fare haha.

I also had a small glass of red wine (4 oz, 84 calories), half a glass of white grape juice (6 oz, 120 calories), a little bit of skim milk (4 oz, 40 calories), and 5 soggy Entemann's donut holes (275 calories, damnit Tony!). Boy the calories from the drinks really add up. I think I should try to stick with water in the future haha.

Definitely went over the daily allowance today, probably by a good deal, since everything I ate, not including the meat dishes, came out to be about 1700. Man. But I made an exception for the little get-together, to see people I haven't seen in a while, and to eat free food of course.