Food… and More Food!

Finally home from Hawaii and getting ready for the big move to Canada! I’ll be leaving on the 19th.

Yesterday I spent my afternoon hanging out with my awesome friend Melanie and later, we met up with Lynda. Oh man, I feel bloated yet satisfied just thinking about yesterday haha. I met up with her for lunch at the Counter, which is an awesome custom burger place. We had our burgers as well as some salad (for my guilt issues ), and some sweet potato fries and onion strings. Man was it filling!

My delicious beef burger with a multigrain bun, avocado, jalapeno pepper jack cheese, black bean and corn salsa AND chipotle aioli. Yum Yum.

Melanie's amazing turkey burger as well as the sweet potato fries (to die for!)

The burger pretty much melted in my mouth and everything blended together into a godly combo in my mouth. I’ll probably come back, but I’ll make sure to not order those fries since those burgers are ridiculously filling even though I came in starving since I haven’t had lunch that day.

Oh no! Where did the food go?

We then chilled out at Pink Berry with their awesome watermelon flavor. Lynda then met up with us and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon. I’m glad that Melanie and Lynda clicked so well. Melanie had to go home to take care of her pets, so she left us at about 7 pm. After that Lynda and I wandered around Fry’s looking for some equipment. When the expedition proved to be unsuccessful, we decided to go out for dinner at Pepper Lunch! I’ve always wanted to have some type of hamburg steak and egg sizzling on a hot plate, and Pepper Lunch pretty much answered my prayers.

My Pepper Beef udon with fried egg. I loved how the hot plate made the udon crunchy!

The picture got Melanie to want to eat it, even though she doesn’t eat beef! They put this salty sauce on the noodles, and pretty much the first few minutes of the meal was us just making sure that the beef would cook fully.

Lynda's curry rice beef.

The only con about this is that since Lynda was eating rice on a flat plate, it made a large mess! I also struggled to eat the corn remaining on my plate. But was it worth it? Totally. I had a great time with both of my friends that day. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do something like this soon!

As a random point, I just figured out how captions work. Bleh.

Also, I scrapped my theme idea and I’m hoping to do something with Typography. I need to work hard to have it finished before I go to college, or at least before school starts. Hopefully everything will turn out alright.

The power of tea

To be more accurate, the power of asian tea. Tea really keeps me going when I’m tired and worn out. It’s my version of coffee, sinc I just can’t stand the bitterness. The bottle I’m holding is just amazing. It tastes similar to the tea they use at Tapioca Express. Just mix it with some milk and sugar, and you got yourself some milk tea. Another way of having it is with mango juice. Tea isn’t just tasty, it also has many health benefits, ranging from anti-cancer to even anti-venom effects! This particular type of tea I’m holding, as well as other bottled teas, is pretty bitter and can keep you awake for quite awhile. If you aren’t in it for the caffeine kick, I recommend that you dilute it with some water. The tea I’m holding is Hey-Song Camellia Green Tea, and is sugar free. You can get it at many Asian supermarkets. Just look around, and make sure to get a full bag of them! From what my mom has said, they are selling out fast!

As for the blog itself, I’ve been working on a new header image which will translate into a new layout. Here’s what I have going. Thoughts? Ideas? Click the thumbnail to view it!

My summer is coming along great. With less than a month till college move out, I can’t help but feel a little nervous yet am still very excited. I’m actually going to update this blog. This time, it’s for real.

Chocolate Cake

Last week on 13th of february, my brothers and I made some cake since it was my mother’s birthday as well as a precursor to Valentine’s day. I hate how American recipes use cocoa powder and not real chocolate, so this recipe is a french one. Also, it’s easier for me to actually bake based on the metric system rather than the US customary system, so that’s what the recipe is based on. However, I’m going to add in conversions to help.

Ingredients:

170 g/about 6 ounces of dark chocolate (I used a mix of dark chocolate and 70% chocolate)
120 g/8 tablsp of butter
3 eggs
200 g/1 cup of sugar
a small cup of water (I’ll explain later)

First things first, preheat your oven to about 440 degrees F.

I put broke the pieces of chocolate into a large bowl and mixed in about 2 tablespoons of water. I then covered it with a paper towel and put it into the microwave at HIGH for about 1:30-2 minutes. I then mixed the chocolate until it was smooth.

While that was going on, I measured out the butter and put it in a bowl, which was then soaked in a bowl of hot water. Honestly, you can just use a microwave to melt the butter, but do make sure you’re attentive and put it in a medium-ish bowl, since I had a bad experience cleaning the whole microwave when a bowl overflowed with butter while melting it. My brother, who loves butter, as the one who melted it. xD

Crack the eggs into a large bowl and mix in the sugar. Then, add the butter and finally, after letting the chocolate cool a bit, fold in the melted chocolate. Mix well. If you want to, you can dissolve a small teaspoon of instant coffee and put it in to put some depth in the flavour.

Get the flour, and as you mix (either with an electric mixer or by hand), gradually sift in the flour. Don’t overdo the mixing, since it will cause the batter to stiffen. Sadly, I made that mistake, so I poured in some water to thin it out.

When you’re finished, the batter should be nice and smooth with no lumps of flour in it (that’s why you need to make sure you sift the flour!). I personally like to whip it a bit more in order to put in some more air bubbles to make it fluffier.

Get a small piece of butter and use it to butter the cake pan. You only need a small piece. Make sure not to pressed too hard against the pan or the butter will stick to it.

Finally, put the pans into the oven! Approximate cooking time is 18 minutes, or until a skewer stuck into the cake comes out clean. I personally took around 20-22 minutes, and the cake ended up being slightly blacked with a crunchy texture. Keep in mind the if you added in some air bubbles, the cake will rise a little in the oven (or a lot, if you put the batter in a small container).

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the finished cake since it was eaten soon after. If you buttered the pan well enough, the cake should be easily put onto a plate. The cake is best served warm. If you make it the night before, just put a slice in the microwave for 15 seconds, and the cake should be ready to go!

Hope you try out this recipe. This cake is really great and my mom wouldn’t stop going downstairs to get a tiny slice of it.

Happy Lunar New Year?

I know I’m late by nearly a week already, but I’ve been so busy just playing catchup this week since we finally came back to school after an amazing 10 day February/President’s Day Break. Sadly, I don’t have many images since I left my camera at home, but here’s a quick recap that I’ll add to later with some images once I get home.

I spent most of president’s week at home, or at Robotics, but I did enjoy myself on Thursday by going on this painful hike around the Steven’s Creek Reservoir. Though I was totally worn out, it was pretty around the area. Who knew that Steven’s Creek Boulevard was named after an actual creek right next door? I know that statement sounds stupid, but honestly, people don’t tend to notice the obvious things around them, and this is an example of that human tendency.

I spent most of my hike thinking about this amazing Innocent World JSK I wanted to get. As much as I love Angelic Pretty, I think I’m starting to get diabetes from the blinding amount of sweets and happiness exuding from their prints. I’m hopefully going to get Wonder Party soon, and then my AP chasing days might be history. Anyways, this is what I got as soon as I got home. *_*

Isn’t it pretty? It’s in a pale blue/aquamarien color, and I don’t think the picture does it justice. I just love it for the slimming cut, and how it’s a long JSK, so it should hit me a couple inches below the knee.

My weekend was spent really just celebrating Lunar New Year. What is really great is that instead of hosting it at our home, which incurs that we have to do a ton of cleanup, we simply went over to my cousin’s house instead. The food was amazing, and it’s nice to have an occasional large family gathering every sometime.

The night before, while my parents were out to dinner, me and my brothers made some delicious chocolate cake. I’ll be posting up the recipe later tonight. Look forward to it.

Finally, on Monday, I went to meet up with my boyfriend at Valley Fair. Nothing amazingly interesting. We just chilled out for a couple of hours before I had to run home to take care of my brothers and do some errands.

Overall, last week wasn’t out of the ordinary, except for the fact that I got to sleep in. However, a little break here and there is nice right?

This week was just working for most of the week. However, since it’s Fashion Show week, today is really humdrum, with classes doing nearly nothing since half of the school is out. At least I’m not late to school since it’s president’s week break for most schools, which means a lot less traffic on the road. Sadly, that’s not going to last, so I’m going to have to learn to wake up earlier once more. Oh well. C’est la vie… right?

Cucumber sandwiches

I’m sure some people are groaning right now since they know my love of this sandwich.

Yum…. Great for midnight snacks. It’s typically bread, cream cheese, and cucumbers, but since we had a giant bowl of greek style yogurt spread, that’s what I used. Honestly, I prefer the yogurt to teh cream cheese, mostly since it’s less guilt wracking.

Rather than just talk about this sandwich… I think I should eat it now.

Robotics

Cookie and Mandarin towers are great when you’re trying to waste a little time in Robotics. The fact that they were home made cookies makes it so much better. If I don’t make sense, this is me just thinking back to last week during Marther Luther King Weekend working at Robotics during build season. Fun.

Then again, we’re quite the crazy bunch. From using zip ties to everything to sporting extrusion necklaces, Robotics team is like a little family to me right now, especially during build season during which people wish they could sleep on campus. Or… Put mustaches on cameras:

Or just use our failures (such as someone’s attempt creation of a target by taping pieces of paper together) to create some form of entertainment (like a dart!):

We’re actually doing great progress right now. Electronics should have finished the the E-box by now. This year, we’re actually doing pneumatics! Electronics finished early enough for us to start playing with the stuff. I’m so excited! Oh yes, and here’s an interested way some people decided to park…. Then I realized that they were still in the car. How embarassing.

And finally, what am I doing right now? Okay.. What *was* I doing? Installing locks on my bass. Yay for non-slipping straps now.

Also, I’m currently learning how to overtone sing, which is pretty much singing with that high whistling noise. A fast google search should explain what I mean. It was raining heavily all this week, so I wasn’t able to wear anything frilly. However, I have learned that Californians are lost in the rain. Looks like everybody’s forgotten about all the rain back when I was in elementary school. Well, rain is great, no matter how late it makes me to school. It must be a great breather considering the drought we’re going through…