Archive for Food

Revelations of Rice

{ August 14, 2008 @ 6:55 pm } · { Food, Health, Personal }
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Needless to say I have a love/hate relationship with rice. I hate carbs and have been trying to do away with them completely but it’s not just that my favorite foods are carbs (mainly cereal). It’s that they’re filling, a crucial detail that’s missing in most low-cal, vegetarian menu plans.  I can eat very little and plan healthy, no carb choices if I know I can come home to a bowl in the evening. I love rice not only because it complements anything, and I mean anything, it absorbs flavors and fills me up like my once a month, comfort food indulgence: oatmeal. It’s soothing, smells wonderful, and takes me back to my study-abroad term. I know it’s a carb–and white at that–a double evil but all of Asia lives on it and they don’t have serious dietary complications as a result. I can’t live without it–maybe it’s the Chinese in me and the fact that I watch TV-Japan everyday but it’s just….wonderful!! The same inexpressible joy I get from miso shiru–it’s hilarious but look up food blogs related to miso and you get the same euphoric descriptions: “Earthy, wholesome, delicate aroma, buttery texture, warming…” I don’t know why but Japanese food really gets to the core of who I am and helps settle my mind after a long, hard day. Maybe that’s just an excuse and for some reason I never really ate rice until this year but now I can’t seem to live without it. True, I never eat mixed-rice, couscous, tortillas, or pasta fan but white sticky rice…*sigh* It’s like the smell of freshly baked rosemary bread…irresistable!

Um…weird head avoidance???

{ July 30, 2008 @ 3:36 pm } · { Food }
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Um….this might sound a bit weird but I found out something else about my food squeamishness last night. My mom saved a tiny octopus from a dinner she went to since I mentioned I like tako (octopus) salad. It was about 2 inches long with long, thin purple tentacles. It was actually quite pretty and looked like a pickled alien sitting on a petri dish. I stared at it for a minute, wondering which part was the head. I like the tentacles–that wasn’t so bad and it had been cooked in a delicious broth. But then I reached the main body part which I thought was the head. So I left it on the plate and when my dad asked why he laughed and said I’d already eaten the head. Feeling distinctly nauseous I quickly disposed of the decapitated invertebrate and tried to finish the rest of my tofu. 

NOTE: for all those who find this disgusting please stop reading. I only eat seafood, and a select few at that, so I’ve been trying to be a bit more gastronomically adventurous…which isn’t working

I stayed up all night, haunted by the thought that I had eaten it’s brain. When I looked up the anatomy of an octopus I was relieved to find that I might not have eaten its head–its eyes and small brain are located on the upper portion about where the body meets the tentacles. But thank goodness I didn’t eat the body where all the organs are. For my birthday my mom ordered whole lobster—which came….whole. Cracking it open its guts had to be removed which makes for lovely dinner conversation. I was so sick I finished my cocktail and excused myself.

Is this weird? It’s not that I feel bad for eating other creatures–I would have to hunt to obtain protein anyway as it’s been since the dawn of time. I won’t make a vegetarian argument since I’m only a pesco–but why do I have such an aversion to eating anything whole??

Jam Determination

{ June 10, 2008 @ 7:13 pm } · { Food, Gardening }
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I’m determined to make jam this summer—I always thought that it was a super complicated process involving fancy, expensive machinery when actually it came be done at home in about 20 min. My mom has a deep pot for boiling water and a wide saucepan. We’ll have 2 full trees of apricots in about a week or two and one of plums.

What I need:

~Glass jars w/lids

~Bottle grabber, magnet lid grabber

Just simple tools to help you retrieve sanitized, super hot glass jars. Other than that all the recipe calls for is 3 cups to 1 cup sugar and spices like candied ginger if you like jam with a little zet. 3:1 makes about 1 8oz and 14oz jar or about 12oz total. This will come in handy when we have tons of ripe fruit sitting on the tree. I’d love to try this with berries too!

“Vegetarian”

{ April 22, 2008 @ 3:29 pm } · { Food }
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My fav.–zaru soba with tsuyu =)

I’ve been eating vegetarian since I was 16. It’s not really a pro-animal decision although that’s really important too. I just don’t like the taste of meat >< My family eats a ton of meat products almost every day–I just got burned out. Plus–there are SO many other fun, amazing, and delicious things to eat!

Usually I have cereal in the morning or granola, salad or veggies for lunch, and a veggie burger or some type of protein for dinner like tofu. It’s fun—and my favorite cuisine is Japanese which incorporates a lot of soy. OK—honesty time. I’m not a strict vegetarian–I’m a… what is it? Pesco something? I eat fish–I’ve always loved fish and went fishing with my dad almost every weekend during the summer when I was little. Of course, I rarely eat it–it’s a hastle to cook for myself so I usually just eat some shrimp and crab here and there which is easier to get in small quantities.

I’m a taste person–I completely support free range and non-cage practices but I put a few drops of milk on my cereal, eat egg substitute, and enjoy ice cream. Yogurt very rarely, my main dairy is in a slice of ff cheese now and then and ice cream XP I just don’t like meat….lol Don’t know why exactly—my cousin’s finicky 4 year old Ethan absolutely refuses to touch meat and can tell when you grind it up and add it to something. Mine’s not as instinctive but I absolutely never want to eat meat ever again. Even the Boca burgers that “taste like meat” are repulsive. I’m happy as I am =)