Fluff

I used to have an AP English teacher in high school who would publicly humiliate individuals whenever they made careless mistakes in their writing and then proceed to make them grab one of the ancient grammar books in the back of the class and correct the mistakes they made along with citing what grammar rules their mistakes violated in the grammar book. This lady was fierce. I sat in the second row in front of her desk, and I remember sitting in that class, hoping she won't call on me to read another set of lines from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale" (from The Canterbury Tales). It was impressive how she demonstrated how Old English was supposed to sound like. Even though I was afraid of her for more than half of the time, her AP English course was one of the most memorable and rewarding classes I've ever taken in high school. I vividly remember that she would constantly emphasize how she'll grade students down for writing "fluff." 

If fluff, in terms of writing, is basically b.s. written to make your carelessly thought out thesis seem loftier than it actually is, what is exactly is fluff for food? For dishes, I think herbal/leafy garnishes for dishes are food fluff. This makes me think of Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail (1998) when she gets annoyed at Joe Fox ("F-O-X") for taking all of the caviar garnish: "What is that? What are you doing? You're taking all the caviar? That caviar is a garnish!" 

Joe Fox scoops up caviar

"That caviar is a garnish!"

To me, the purpose of food garnish is to make your food visually more appetizing than it might actually be, and thus, tricking you into believing that the expensive meal you just paid for is worth the money even more because it looks great - or in the case of You've Got Mail, making your guests believe the food they're eating is worth more or tastes better than it actually does. I don't remember ever trying caviar, but why would you use caviar as a garnish if it's so expensive in general? It feels pointless to use expensive caviar as garnish if you're only going to be criticized for eating it. It's food... it's meant to be eaten, especially after someone takes the first scoop of food out of the dish that's being garnished. The presentation of the dish is ruined; I'm sure it's okay to eat the garnish by then.

Joe Fox at Starbucks

 
The drink garnish I'm guilty of telling baristas to add to my Starbucks drinks is whipped cream. I like my hot caffeinated drinks to be warm, inviting, and fluffy with milkiness and sugary sweetness. I usually order a "grande hot chai tea latte with extra whipped cream" (my order verbatim). I suppose it classifies me as one of those whole tea leaf enthusiasts who probably prefers to go to Coffee Bean and Tea but will settle for a chai tea latte at Starbucks instead because it's closer.

I notice that some guys who try to appear or make themselves feel manlier use verbal fluff. They use words like baller, boned, and bro. With seemingly cute witticisms, frequent references to popular TV sitcoms, and maybe a wink, these guys provide charming (well, depending on how vulgar they may be) distractions to what you're avoiding to do or think about. I don't mind this kind of verbal fluff as long as people eventually open up about themselves, mix up the conversation topics every so often, and not merely try to impress you and themselves with watered down conversations that really lack any substance. Verbal fluff is a part of everyday life and everyone is guilty of using it; it could be good and bad depending on how and when you use them. There's an endless variety of verbal fluff depending on your demographic, upbringing, and geographical location (oh dear... this is crossing over to linguistics, isn't it?). 

Well, lately I've been feeling that our current society is bombarded with excessive distractions ("fluff" as I call it) that even I'm starting to feel like I have ADD. My new cell phone from Verizon arrived in the mail yesterday (it's an LG Chocolate Touch - love that name because it makes me think of this book I read in elementary school), and I must have spent several hours playing with that thing, trying to add mp3s, pictures, and ringtones to it instead of posting a blog entry about food (Trader Joe's sweet potato frites and Archer Farms Napoli style sun dried tomato pasta salad) like I sought out to do about ten minutes before the Fed-Ex guy knocked on the door.

my LG Chocolate Touch

I feel that with so trivial distractions online (i.e. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Formspring.me, LiveJournal, YouTube) and also in life, many people can easily forget or lose focus on the what really matters to them. There are so many snarky hipsters on social networking websites trying to out-snark each other with witticisms that it's starting to get a little old. In the end, no one really actually cares if you saw the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother or how many times you've pulled a "that's what she said" moment. I don't detest social networking websites because virtual communities bring people together, but at the same time, I can't say that I'm not concerned about how virtual fluff or just fluff/distractions in general are cluttering up our lives.

P.S. Happy Birthday, sis!

I'm Green da ba dee da ba die

Today is the one the day of the year that's easy for Kermit the Frog to be green. For St. Patty's Day, I made corned beef and cabbage rolls, which took a lot of work to make.

 the rest of the slow cooked corned beef not used in the cabbage rolls

boiling quartered potatoes and corned beef

Potatoes had to be peeled and boiled for a good 2-3 hours (I know I said that I'm kind of sick of potatoes, but mashed potatoes inside of these cabbage rolls I had today were sooo good). I didn't use savoy cabbage like the recipe I got from Whole Foods asked for (I got some other kind of cabbage that was on sale instead) so wrapping corned beef and mashed potatoes seasoned with egg, salt, and dill didn't go as smoothly as it could have. Cabbage leaves had to be boiled in the potato and corned beef broth beforehand so it was a pretty oily experience working with the cabbage leaves when it came to making the cabbage rolls.

extra cabbage boiled with corned beef and potato broth

 baking the cabbage rolls for about 45 min.

yummy corned beef and cabbage rolls

The good thing is that the cabbage rolls didn't fall apart on my family and me when we ate them. Next time (heh, next year maybe?), I'll be sure to put more beef in each roll because the some of the rolls had more mashed potatoes than corned beef and so the mashed potatoes made these rolls a little bit too hot to hold. Even though the recipe says that it serves 8 people with 16 rolls, the 4 of us managed to finish 10/16 cabbage rolls. It was an awesome meal, and I was way too full by the time I was done eating. Bebe B seemed to like it even though he was grumpy and sleepy; if he didn't like it, he would have definitely spat all the food back out. Luckily, he didn't.

 mint chocolate chip milkshake

My mom bought some mint chocolate chip ice cream because it was on sale the other day so I made mint chocolate chip milkshakes :). It tastes much better and healthier than the McDonald's Shamrock Shake (there's no scary bright green food coloring in my milkshake, thank goodness!) After 2 days of cooking and 4 loads of dishes (today), it was a very successful dinner. I'm just not planning to do some hardcore cooking for a while (meaning maybe about a week or two). Maybe I'll make a salad to post about sometime. Salads are a bit more low maintenance to make and much, much healthier to eat. Okay, well, time for a little night cap with some Irish cream. Ta-ta!

P.S. oh dear, I'm definitely exercising tomorrow.

And the world's like a science and I'm like a secret

I'm beginning to understand a small fraction of how people who work at restaurants or fast food chains feel like - always smelling like food. Right now I smell like corned beef brisket and I cannot wait to take a warm relaxing bubble bath so I can smell clean - like juicy pomegranate, mangoes, and green apples I suppose. Speaking of juicy apples, I have a Desperate Housewives poster to my right with all the DH ladies laying on top of apples, with a tagline that says "Tempting, isn't it?"

Today I tried some of Fresh & Easy's lemon saffron Israeli couscous. Fresh & Easy is basically a British owned version of Trader Joe's except there are fewer Fresh & Easy stores around here and they only have self check out lines inside of these stores. Fresh & Easy has an amazing roasted banana gelato. For the longest time I have been hoping for something else that tastes like Dreyer's Slow Churned banana ice cream (I think this flavor is discontinued... or I just have trouble finding it for the past few years), and Fresh & Easy's roasted banana gelato comes very close to that same yummy banana ice cream taste.

Anyways, back to the couscous... I really liked it. It's very flavorful with a tangy citrus-y taste. I even added some cashew halves in with the couscous. Lunch was good with couscous, a glass of organic soy milk, and Julie Andrews in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). If I were to screen a Julie Andrews double feature, I would screen Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and Victor Victoria (1982) back to back. Julie Andrews is amazing; too bad The Sound of Music (1965) and Mary Poppins (1964) overshadow some of her other work in films.

Guess what? I finally got to use the new slow cooker that has been sitting around the kitchen for who-knows-how-long. For about half of the day, I slow cooked this corned beef brisket I saw at Costco. The corned beef brisket smells fantastic, and even though the brisket broth itself is pretty salty and somewhat oily, it tastes great like mom's homemade soups (I should know... I burned my tongue trying to taste-test it :P).

I also made some Irish cream to celebrate St. Patty's Day tomorrow. Since not too many of us at home drink alcohol, I made 5 servings worth, and also since this particular recipe that I used doesn't ask for eggs, my Irish cream drink can last for about 2 months if I refrigerate it (woot!).

ingredients for the Irish cream I made

For once I wish I had Jameson so that way my Irish cream would be authentically "Irish" but instead I used a Scottish whiskey that I got from my sister called Chivas Regal because I don't normally drink and if I do drink, it's definitely not hard liquor on the rocks like Jameson. I was kind of repulsed by almond extract because ever since I was a kid, I hated almond jello, which both my siblings LOVE. I cringe at the smell of almond and what's worse is that once my aunt and uncle from Palo Alto brought over an overwhelmingly smelly almond scented soap; that thing itself made me shudder at the strong stench of almond.

Irish cream inside of a blender

I've had Irish cream before (and the whiskey taste is strong enough to cover the almond flavor anyways) so I'm not too worried about how this liqueur I made will turn out tomorrow. Alright, it's Cinderella-time (midnight!) ... and I gotta finish cleaning up the kitchen. *yawn* Maybe I'll take a little nip of some Irish cream before I go to sleep... that sounds really good right about now. Oh and this new song I'm obsessed with sounds great too.

Irish Invasion

I know this is supposed to be a food blog, but I must say that the last Office episode ("St. Patrick's Day") makes me happy. Two of my favorite sound bites from last week's episode are:

1. "Green M&Ms. Nature's viagra." -Michael (Isn't that supposed to be the voluptuous M&M's color? :P It's like Joan in M&M form.)

2. "Erin and I have our first date tonight. And it has to be perfect. Why? Because according to How I Met Your Mother, that's the date that your kids are going to wait patiently to hear about and you'd better have a good story to tell them." -Andy (awwww, love Andy! How can you not? He wore a faux-kilt AND he watches How I Met Your Mother.)

Well, in anticipation of St. Patty's Day, I made Irish boxty pancakes. I chose a recipe that doesn't require buttermilk because I never know what to do with excess buttermilk after using it for a new recipe and it feels like such a waste to get an ingredient you know you won't use too much of. I really wish I did prep work beforehand, but I didn't and it took forever to make the pancakes mainly due to how the grater was nowhere to be found and so I had to improvise with a potato peeler instead.


I was so afraid that this new food experiment would turn into a Bridget Jones's moment (remember her blue soup?), but fortunately it didn't and my parents both really liked the boxty pancakes. It's not too flavorful, but it is very fragrant and it does have that fresh potato taste to it (I think Spaniards would appreciate this dish since it's simple in flavor and not heavy with rich sauces like lots of French dishes are). I liked eating the boxty pancakes I made (*in the most non-matrimonial tone* I do!) but I guess since I'm tired and I've been working with potatoes a lot today, I'm a pretty sick of potatoes (haha).

These pancakes are supposed to be thinner, but it's my first time making them... so please be kind :P. I would have made a fancy sauce or stew to go along with the boxty pancakes but I didn't have the time to do that. Instead, I added apple sauce to go along with the pancakes. I read somewhere that either apple sauce or honey would go well with boxty pancakes, and I chose apple sauce over honey because it's not overwhelmingly sweet.

I think generally boxty pancakes goes well with lots of things; it's just like how crêpes could be eaten with practically any other food you can think of. If you're craving an amazing boxty dish and you're in the OC area, I would recommend going to The Auld Dubliner, although I'll have to warn you that the restaurant's service may be on the slow side, and it can get pretty loud inside that place. It's a treat to try one of their crème brûlée desserts though.

It's interesting how I kept on seeing this one poem when I was looking for Irish boxty recipes:

"Boxty on the griddle,
boxty in the pan,
If you can't make boxty,
you'll never get a man."

I'm pretty sure I can get a man regardless of whether or not I can make boxty, but this little poem about boxty is kind of cute :P. Golly, I'm a tired lassie right now. Expect lots of green and a post on corned beef brisket on Wednesday! (because I'll be slow cooking that for about 8-12 hours on St. Patty's Day)

P.S. I'm tempted to make corned beef and cabbage rolls instead of just cooking corned beef brisket with some other stuff. Hmm... do I want to precook corned beef a day beforehand?

A Fly in Your Soup > A Strand of Hair in Your Omelette

It has been an extremely productive day... I woke up early, spruced myself up for breakfast with a friend at Mimi's Cafe, and walked a total of about 2.6 miles (I would've ran but I was carrying a purse and my Canon EOS Rebel XSi). For the most part, I had a pretty pleasant breakfast. My friend ordered the Blueberry Stuffed French Toast "Inside and Out" Breakfast, and I had the Five Alarm Santa Fe Omelette, which was roughly about 530 some calories.

Blueberry Stuffed French Toast "Inside and Out" Breakfast

Five Alarm Santa Fe Omelette

My breakfast was going fine until I was halfway done with my omelette and found a piece of hair inside of it. I'm just relieved that strand of hair never entered my mouth. It was gross; I had to ask for a new omelette. Other than having someone else's hair in my food, I had a good meal especially since I was pepped up on two cups of coffee. My friend's rant about her stubborn tween sister made me think of Twilight, Animaniacs' Katie Kaboom, and Britney Spear's "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," which made both of us laugh.

We went to Target afterwards, and after browsing through the makeup section, I have a new fascination with the names of different Maybelline lipstick shades (i.e. Born With It, Crazy For Coffee, Let Me Pink, and Are You Red-dy). Seriously, who has this job of naming lipstick shades?

Also... I'm not normally a headband person, but I saw this one headband that actually looked decent on me and reminded me of Zooey Deschanel so I ended up getting it.

The only reason why my hands are like that in that pic (I don't have an evil plan to take over the world, I swear!) is because I'm holding a very small yellow flower. I really like that cardigan but it makes think of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) because of how the cardigan has stripes and drapes down:

Oh great. Now I have "Moses Supposes" in my head.

A good part of the afternoon was spent at Costco, which I kind of loathed. Costco on a Sunday for me is feeling suffocated with too many people and carts around, and also watching people wait in line for key lime pie flavored Yoplait. If I wasn't shopping with other people, I would have totally grabbed what I needed from Costco and left ASAP. le sigh.

Walk, Don't Run

"Here I go again, smiling too sweet / Can't seem to hold it in every time that we meet..." is what I think whenever I see an adorable doggie while I walk back home. I smiled and gave a little chipper "hi!" to a small dog earlier.

The dog I saw today kind of looked like this lovely doggie I had the pleasure of meeting last year.

The pet owner was an elderly Asian lady. What a lucky pet owner! The cute pup was white and fluffy. I walked and ran (more walking than running at the end) for about a good 2+ hours (I probably covered about 5+ miles), and I love it. Time flies by so quickly when you're walking with a friend and chatting about things like GREs and library science programs (hehe. future librarian in the making here! ^^). We walked probably more than a mile to a Starbucks up in Sierra Madre. I confess, I got an iced cherry mocha because cherry's my favorite fruit and I had to try it. If this helps, I got a tall iced cherry mocha instead of getting a grande sized drink like I usually do (ugh, but then again, there was whipped cream on top ^^;; mea culpa!). It was a very pleasant walk to Starbucks even though it was a very long walk. I love how Sierra Madre, like Old Town Monrovia, is such a quaint, small town where there are little shops with adorable things you probably don't need and interesting local restaurants. The area is very suburban Americana. Cés, a native Madridnik (hehe. Woody Allen uses that word in Love and Death (1975). I used to know a boy in high school who looked like a young Woody Allen; his name's Sam), is right about one thing; people (unintentionally or not) tend to take the area they live in for granted and so they don't explore it as much as other places they visit. I admit it, I'm a small town girl at heart. I find simplicity in such a small town lovely and charming. I'm one of those people who love curling up in bed with a good book.

Star Star avec Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart - read it! You'll love it.

Don't get me wrong-I also love going out with friends and dressing up to go dancing (or go watch men fight it out on the ice rink in hockey games); I'm not strictly a homebody. I love traveling...

I've gone to several places in Europe,

gorgeous Lucerne, Switzerland

went to the Cannes Film Festival for an internship in May 2008 and had a blast,

moi with blah hair and a new liking towards tonic

James Cameron in a Skype conference before the world was exposed to Pandora

spent about a month in Spain (oh, how I miss salmorejo!),

@ the Park Güell in Barcelona

and had gone to China and Hong Kong.

That was one long, tough workout of a walk up the Great Wall. It's way too steep for my liking (though you really wouldn't be able to tell that about me with me smiling like that)

It would have a been a crime for me not to stop here.

Anyways, today's suburban excursion was very calming. Listening to music while walking brings about a nice sense of clarity because it's just me and A Fine Frenzy or the occasional No Doubt or opera music I have on my cheap mp3 player. (I have never ever owned an iPod in my life. It's not that I'm against iPods but I never really felt the need to buy one. I'm not like Janeane Garofalo who said that she'll never own a cell phone a good many years back on some late night show; she probably has a cell phone by now, one would hope.) Well, I leave you with A Fine Frenzy song called "The Minnow and The Trout" that I enjoy listening to while I'm walking or running. This song makes me feel like I'm top of the world, like I want to get along with everybody and sing, "Please... I know that we're different / We were one cell in the sea in the beginning / And what we're made of was all the same once / We're not that different after all." (hehe, I finally got the piano book with all the songs from A Fine Frenzy's first album the other day, and I'm ecstatic about trying to play those songs soon! ^^)

running, running as fast as we can

Today is a beautiful day to have a nice run/stroll, bright and sunny like the world is saying "hello!" and pushing me forward to better things. I think it's funny how I'm excited to go running/walking with my fellow Arcadian pal and I tried to double layer two tanks (one grey and the other a v. light pink) to be all BSG-like (hah. that screams 'geek' right there, doesn't it? *sarcasm: Oh, who will want me now? *cheeky smile*).

I stayed up last night watching parts of one of my favorite movies Sabrina (1954). You gotta love Billy Wilder because I don't think there are any other screenwriter/director as amazing and witty as Wilder and Preston Sturges anymore nowadays. Last night I kept on thinking about the cooking class scenes in the film, when a French teacher tells Audrey Hepburn and her fellow classmates to crack an egg with one hand cause well, "an egg is not a stone. It is not made of wood. It is a living thing with a heart. So when we crack it, we must not torment it. We must be merciful and execute it quickly, like with the guillotine."

"One, two three, crack! You see? It's all in the wrist."

and also when the class is making soufflés in all different shapes and sizes.

soufflé inspection

My favorite part of this particular cooking scene is when the wise old Baron St. Fontanel notices that Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) didn't even turn on the oven, telling her that "[a] woman happily in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven."

a woman unhappily in love

Voilà... a lesson on love and food. Am I either one of these women? Or am I neither? :P

P.S. By the way, in case you didn't catch that, "running, running as fast as we can" comes from this song.

Aromatherapy and Juicy Things That Smell Like Fruit

I realize that a lot of fruit/food smelling soap products are geared towards female consumers (Bath & Body Works and The Body Shop products come to mind) but I'm sure there are more guys than we think who like things that smell like fruit. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because today I was looking at my body wash (Softsoap's Juicy Pomegranate & Mango Infusions) and shampoo (Suave's Juicy Green Apple shampoo), and both of them included the word "juicy" in the product's name.
Why does it matter whether or not my soap is "juicy"? I can't ingest it. When I smell fruity soaps, with supposedly "juicy" scents, are those scents supposed to be so appealing, so "juicy" that I cannot help but want to quench my thirst with something as sweet as my body wash or shampoo?

Back then (which was last year) when I did my research paper on consumerism and gender binaries in 80s cartoon shows, I noticed that even though I thoroughly enjoyed Strawberry Shortcake television specials as a kid, the whole entire series itself was like an early age diabetes trap with characters named after sweet confectioneries and houses that look like desserts.

chez Strawberry Shortcake

chez Blueberry Muffin

chez Huckleberry Pie

Strawberry Shortcake sends off the message that the stereotypical role for females is to be domestic, soft, dealing with problems by talking about your feelings, and I guess, sweet-smelling... just as sweet as her strawberry shortcakes.
One of the most appalling things said in that show is when the character Angel Cake is eating candy and says, "I always say, if you don't think about it, the calories don't count." Oh hon, the calories are so there.I like how the other day when I was watching How I Met Your Mother, I kept on seeing this one Old Spice commercial, where the guy is telling female viewers to tell their men to use Old Spice instead of "lady scented body wash." What's wrong with guys using fruity smelling body wash? If anything, the smell of food/fruit is aromatherapeutic and calming. Isn't that why Glade makes tons of food/fruit smelling scents like Creamy Custard & Blushing Apple? The scent of comfort foods from candles, soaps, and air fresheners allows us to indulge ourselves without making us gain any calories.

As a woman, I actually find it pleasing when a man smells good. Maybe it's a pheromone thing? (Oh, gosh I found this thing on pheromones. ew. Love Potion #9 much? ...Yes, I'm a sucker for old Sandy Bullock ^^ll. Yes, I own While You Were Sleeping. I am such a "chick." Guilty. No, I have not seen The Blind Side and I'm not sure if I want to watch it.) It impresses me when a man is naturally hygienic because there are probably ten times more women who are hygienic than there are men with good hygiene. I admit that the two scents (that I'm conscious of) that attract me to men are non-fruity scents... so maybe the Old Spice guy does have a point there. Oh, in case you're wondering what scents those are, it's the smell of Nivea shaving cream and Irish Spring soap.

P.S. I have this amazing smelling shaving cream called Cashmere Rain. I always thought Cashmere Rain was such a random but clever name for a shaving cream scent. Who gets to name all these soap products? Can I have their job?

Cupcake Porn

After a job interview (I hope I hope I get it! *knock on wood*), I rewarded myself with half a dozen mini cupcakes from dots cupcakes. The last time I walked into this adorable pink shop, I got 3 different kinds of cupcakes: berry berry (a cream cheese frosted chocolate cupcake with berries baked inside), strawberry lemonade (lemon cupcake topped off with lemon cream cheese and strawberries), and apple pie (which tastes like its namesake except sooo much better because it has cream cheese frosting and caramel on top).

Here's what I got this time:

a red velvet cupcake called fleur de sel (salt flower)

cappuccino cupcake

dulce de leche cupcake (which I'm dying to try after this prelim post)

strawberry shortcake cupcake

pina colada cupcake
(I would like to rename it the snow princess cupcake because of its cutesy heart on top of all that frou frou-y white coconut. The word 'the' is there because the coconut makes the cupcake look so impressive and oh, so important that a 'the' must be a part of its new name.)

chocolate lovers' cupcake

I haven't tried any of these yet so if you'll excuse me I'm going to indulge myself with some delish mini cupcakes. I'll be back to edit this post once I ate most, if not all of these yummy little things. toodles!

03.11.10 u p d a t e
It took me about 3 days to finish eating these mini cupcakes because my parents either gave me semi-dirty looks of discouragement or made judgmental comments. My maximum limit of cupcake intake was 2 per day because my parents had practically instilled a fear of becoming diabetic in me ever since I was a kid. In my own defense, I no longer have my daily latte like I did a year ago when I was still in college; the last time I went to a Starbucks was about 2 months ago near the Burbank airport. I've been eating considerably less than I did back in the days when I pulled all-nighters with my roommate, writing essays and occasionally taking breaks to bake some Trader Joe's cookies (my favorite was TJ's cinnamon oatmeal raisin cookies). The days of baking batches of cupcakes for people at work or for hungry college friends are gone.

Anyways, about those cupcakes from dots... they're all v. good, but the two that stood out are the dulce de leche and pina colada flavored ones. The dulce de leche cupcake was just heavenly with cream cheese frosting and caramel, and the pina colada one was surprisingly very good considering that I'm not usually very fond of coconut. I really like the pina colada one because inside there are little bits of pineapple baked into the cupcake and the combination of pineapple, cream cheese frosting, and coconut worked well together. I think I'm starting to warm up to coconut. You know how Pillsbury has funfetti frosting mix to put on top of holiday cupcakes? Well, decorative coconut should be called coconut-fetti just because it's more fun that way. Well, I think overall my favorite cupcake from dots so far is the apple pie one because its granny cake mix has a cinnamon-y taste to it and plus, I gravitate towards cream cheese frosting and of course, caramel (yum).