Gluttony

Ke: I overate.

Ke: Now I am sleepy.

Kt: WELCOME TO MY LIFE!

I Be Cooking

Deep Fried Cauliflower.

Pesto Spaghetti

This year's self-improvement theme—aside from the continuing last year's theme of becoming a pro at air travel—is cooking. I've been regularly making food since coop summer and started doing the "Wine Dinner" thing senior year. This 2011, however, I'm turning up the heat (har har).

This weekend required new techniques and stuff that I can actually say I'm more comfortable doing again when I need to. (A lot of this was a first attempt on my own, and I was honestly a little scared of deep frying stuff.) The deep fried cauliflower required use of my new whisk and tongs, both of which I purchased not even two weeks ago. The pesto spaghetti required the use of a blender for the sauce.

I suppose I'll get a little more serious into food photography as I try to get better at both cooking and making photographs.

Check out my Flickr set 'Food and Cooking'.

Taiwan 2010: Random Thoughts 1

So it's been raining every day since I got here. It kind of sucks, but it's kind of nice. It's a mild 80 degrees or so everyday, and not 95. Definitely could be worse.

1. Life is so simple here. I forgot how little international news they follow here, among other things.

2. By itself, Chinese is a nice language full of idioms to describe nearly everything. Chinese, however, is a terrible language to translate into, from English. Or, English is too rich a language to be adequately translated into an Asian language. Watching American movies on TV, I find that reading the subtitles doesn't do justice to the actual dialogue of the movie. I was watching "The Davinci Code" on TV and felt the Chinese subtitles destroyed much of the subtleties of what was said. ("Subtleties" is a weird word.)

3. The food here is amazing.

4. Drivers here have no regard for what's painted on the ground. Still, they are all pretty amazing drivers to not collide with anything and to be able to navigate through a two way street that's wide enough for only one-and-a-half cars.

5. I've been following the World Cup games and the NBA finals, watching most of it live. The Korea-Greece game was the best. Germany did well because Australia was pretty terrible. The USA game was expectedly terrible.

6. I've been successfully fighting my Pepsi "addiction". Not even craving it anymore.

Water Diet?

About seven years ago, I resolved to ignore any desire and to forgo any offer of fast food to the extreme of even refusing to enter a McDonald's to use its restroom. For the first few years, I was successful, but later on, I was more relaxed on this personal dietary policy. I started to participate in base fast food affairs again, but to a point. Then a few years ago, I returned to my fling with Dunkin' Donuts. It doesn't help that I've only recently taken coffee somewhat seriously. Still, I don't routinely drink coffee as a casual beverage or for its bitter, over-sweetened flavor; I only drink it when I need it (on the order of once a week), which is different than my approach to alcohol. With alcohol, it's completely reverse. I do not drink beer or wine, etc., for their utilitarian effect, but for flavor and taste (mainly because light-weights like me can't hold alcohol well, but then again, I am stereotypically not expected to).

I am now turning to devoid myself of soda (I had unsuccessfuly tried this before), potato products, and junk food (namely sugar conglomerates like soda, chocolate, and cookies). I was going to declare it a vegetable-and-water diet, but it wouldn't be correctly named. I don't know what kind of name it deserves besides simply "eating well," but I do know that I'll get right on it as soon as possible ... just after I finish these last two Entenmann's donuts for breakfast.

(I've been consistently drinking about 2.4 L of water a day.)

Potatoes for Breakfast

Everyone probably knows that potatoes work really well as a sleep aid. Warm milk is on the list as number one. Why, then, does the typical American breakfast have a whole lot of potato in the meal. Think McDonald's. Tater tots, potato hash, French fries, mashed potatoes, and baked potatoes. Okay, not necessarily the last three, but definitely tater tots and potato hash.

Now that I've had the benefit of eating a hearty breakfast everyday before going to class, I've only now learned my lesson now to eat any of enticing tater tots for breakfast at Cook House. Yeah. I'm going to try to avoid potatoes in the morning.

(I was craving potatoes last night, which satiated me well.)

TED Talks: Who was General Tso?

During this holiday time of eating, I came across a very interesting presentation about Chinese food in America. I have long differentiated between authentic Chinese food and 'Chinatown' Chinese food, and I have pointed out that the beef-and-broccoli dish is part of the 'Chinatown' Chinese cuisine. The video below elaborates further.

Jennifer 8. Lee, a New York Times reporter with a number 8 for a middle name, "talks about her hunt for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes -- exploring the hidden spots where these two cultures have (so tastily) combined to form a new cuisine." (from TED.com)

Some of her facts may be wrong, but it's still an interesting thing to think about. Is this unique to Chinese food because of the broad reach of the Chinese? And what defines a dish to be even partially Chinese anyway?

Cooking on a Sunday

Yesterday, I had said I cooked the "most elaborate dinner I have cooked for myself this summer." Today, I claim to say that again. I spent two hours on it today. It was okay ...

For breakfast, I had potato hash with egg and buttered whole-wheat toast.





For dinner, I had chicken and green beans with rice. The marinade was made with water, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, green onion, and corn starch.

Going Meat-free, Sort of

I recently came across a New York Times article titled "Putting Meat Back in Its Place", under the Dining and Wine section. What struck my attention was that I have been thinking about the same points as the article brings up, namely:

1. Forget the protein thing.
2. Buy less meat.
3. Get it out of the center of the plate.
4. Buy more vegetables, and learn new ways to cook them.
5. Make nonmeat items as convenient as meat.
6. Make some rules.
7. Look at restaurant menus differently.

My reason for reconsidering meat is simply a practical one. Vegetables are generally easier to cook, and easier and quicker to prepare. Cheaper too. The drawback, I think, is that it is harder to make an all-vegetable dish seem more impressive, by virtue of point #3 from above; meat generally claims the center of the dish.

I'm not going to claim to become a vegetarian, but I will also not try as hard to get meat in to every night's dinner.

Having started cooking for myself this summer, I don't think I have eaten this healthy in a long time, since I was away from home. I have put aside Collegetown food for a while, to save money, and to eat healthy.

It also saves gas and helps fight against global warming, or at least I'd like to think.