08.31.08
Posted in Cooking tagged healthy smoothies, ick at 12:15 am by kyrias
I ended up with a huge bowl of chopped spinach tonight and I didn’t feel like dirtying another pan to stir-fry them — so I made them into a smoothie.
I know, I know, I can just imagine the look of “ick” that I’m getting right now. In fact, Caesura told Zack and Kell what I was making just to see their looks of horror.
I got my recipe from Simplycook, mostly because I didn’t have any frozen strawberries or bananas that most other people called for. Other people? Oh yeah, if you Google spinach smoothie you’ll see that it’s actually a fairly common concept.
I had about 6 cups packed of spinach so that was what I used, along with a cup and a half of orange juice and 3/4 cup of vanilla ice cream. I left out the sugar because I don’t like things that sweet.
Caesura says it’s ick, but at least not as gag worthy as my carrot orange juice. I thought that the ick was definitely more because the orange juice didn’t seem to interface well with the vanilla ice cream to our taste, personally I couldn’t taste the spinach at all even though Caesura said there was some aftertaste.
I’ll definitely be making this in the future if I need a quick dinner and absolutely using non-pesticide laden spinach next time. However, I suppose I’ll have to find an alternative to the orange juice and ice cream.
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08.30.08
Posted in Ethics and morality tagged food ethics, Health at 5:54 pm by kyrias
This might be a tad premature, as I don’t know if we can honestly support having a CSA membership. That, and it seems that most farms have sold out their shares and there’s a waiting list. So this might all become moot anyways.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. When you buy a share, you pay a set amount of money at the begining of the year and then you get a portion of produce for either the summer months or the entire year afterwards.
This is a great idea as it helps to support small farms who might otherwise go out of business, although that’s apparently less the case, as evidenced by the selling out of shares for 2009 right now. It’s also a good way to make sure you’re eating local, fresh food, which is a plus for all the treehuggers out there.
That and apparently it can be much cheaper than buying the equivalents from the supermarket, or not really equivalent if you’re comparing mostly organically grown, fresh produce that’s traveled at most 100 miles to mushy produce that’s been trucked in from California.
They even have meat CSAs for those of us who don’t really relish the idea of eating animals that have been raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) but can’t really bring themselves to go vegetarian.
I’m honestly thinking about this and am currently looking up CSAs that have reasonable pick up times to join. I’d stick with farmers markets for now, but the majority of them happen on weekdays and don’t seem terribly conduicive to anyone other than people who work second shift or stay at home wives and mothers.
My only reservation, honestly, is that I have no idea how much I’ll be cooking once I find a full-time job. I’ve found that it’s really hard for me to get motivated to spend an hour or so in the kitchen after 8 hours of work — the fact that now I have to commute perhaps two hours in addition to that isn’t exactly encouraging.
Another problem with CSAs is that when you pick up your box, you don’t really get a choice as to what you’re getting. This would involve creative cooking — which usually wouldn’t be a problem, but when even throwing together a stir-fry is sounding like a Herculean task, I’m not sure how that’s going to go.
On the other hand, I suspect I could just blenderize everything and stick it in spaghetti sauce. 
Problem solved!
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08.29.08
Posted in culture tagged conflict, cultural differences at 6:02 pm by kyrias
Even within the Chinese community in the U.S, I can’t get away from the caste system.
I didn’t really expect it, although reason tells me that humans have ever been fond of classifying and segregating themselves, and I was somewhat shocked when I found out there are very subtle power plays in place.
It used to be fairly clean cut, and I’m speaking from about 10 years back. Further back, I wouldn’t know and even this is severely tainted by faulty memories.
You had the Cantonese immigrants who made up the bulk of Chinatown. Those were the ones who tried to scrape together a living from operating laundry services or anything else they could do.
Then there were the Taiwanese immigrants who usually were somewhat richer and who didn’t live within Chinatown. They were the stuck up elites of the immigrants. Usually they had come for a foreign degree, or they already had practices back in Taiwan and were only here “to give their children a better future”.
There was also the odd second or third generation ABC whose father had come over to work on the railroads or somesuch — but those were so rare as to be negligible.
Now, with globalization and China’s growth spurt, it’s all a bit murkier.
You have the second or third generation Chinese where the children don’t really speak Chinese anymore, much less the dialects their parents grew up with. It’s unlikely to see these ABCs (American Born Chinese) hanging out near Chinatown and some don’t even like Chinese food. Suppose these are the top dogs.
Then you have the first generation Chinese where the kids were born elsewhere, usually in Taiwan, and their parents brought them over at a young age. Depending on what age they came, they can either mingle with the top dogs or they’re kicked to the bottom of the pile. After all, it’s hard when you have a strong accent, tendencies to butcher the pronounciation, and when you like to eat such things as “stinky tofu”.
With China coming into the picture again, it’s interesting to see the elite students coming abroad. These were the ones who went to the International Schools because their parents could afford it and it shows. They’re not like the usual “fresh of the boat” Chinese who embarass themselves with their cheap clothing and unfashionably long hair. They’re chic, dressed to the nines, and speak English almost flawlessly. They’d be mingling with the top dogs unless the circle they’ve arrived into looks down on them because they’re from the mainland. The mainland where the heathens eat bananas without peeling them and the un-washed heathens run amok. After all, even if you put a monkey into clothing, it’s still a monkey.
Now, I’m the odd one out.
I’m technically first generation, since I came over when I was two. However, I’m slightly odd because I speak both Mandarin and English fluently. Most first generations don’t ever manage to lose their accent or they throw out Chinese because it’s easier to live with one culture.
Then again, I look FOB with my long hair and unfashionable clothing. No one, but no one would be caught dead with hair this long that was unpermed, uncolored, and untouched by style. The single braid down the back doesn’t help, or so my brother tells me. *grin*
The fact that I have more American friends than I do Chinese makes my parents fear for my soon-to-be over-Americanized soul. It also makes all the other Chinese who stick together in clumps wonder about my loyalties.
Pwah. So complicated, no?
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08.28.08
Posted in Cooking tagged food as medicine at 10:54 pm by kyrias
I keep hearing about how good bitter melon is for you, how it helps detox the body, how in Chinese medicine it’s considered “cooling” for the body, and even how it might be useful regarding HIV, cancer, and even weight loss.
Until recently, however, I’ve always been unable to bring myself to eat it. Or perhaps, more accurately, I’ve never been able to bring myself to prepare a recipe including it before this.
Part of this, is because whilst I’m perfectly willing to try something that someone else has made, I’m particularly reluctant to spend time, money, and effort on a dish that I’m not certain that I’d like. Especially with bitter melon, as my mother has never cooked with it within my memory.
As I’m not particularly in favor of chasing after the latest fads, one of which includes a weight loss diet involving eating copious amounts of raw bitter melon, I had never really made an effort to try it. However, I had heard some time ago that making a smoothie out of it would be a decent idea.
Smoothie — now that was an idea I could get behind. That would involve marginal amounts of preparation and effort on my part, and if it turned out inedible, I could easily pour it down the drain with a modicum of discomfort.
So yesterday, when my mother’s friend gifted me one at my request, I chopped it up, added honey to taste, and whirred it up in the blender with ice.
I really enjoyed it. But then, it wasn’t exactly a “pleasant” taste. The honey gave it some sweetness, but it definitely still had a bitter edge to it. Surprisingly, it was that edge that made it enjoyable.
The bitter melon was very ripe, as evidenced by the brilliant reddish orange seeds and its colour itself, that was green fading towards yellow. I don’t know if that made it more palatable or not as I’ve heard some say that it’s more bitter when it’s more ripe and others say that it’s less bitter when it’s riper. I’ve also heard conflicting stories on whether cooking it makes it more or less bitter.
Regardless, I think I’ve added another smoothie to my list and I’ll be eating bitter melon more often from now on. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that as it’s considered “cold” by Chinese medicine, women might want to shy away from eating too much of it, as it might cause worse menstrual cramps.
Even if one doesn’t believe the “woo-woo mystic crap” of Chinese medicine, Western doctors also note that eating excessive amounts of it could cause abdominal pain and diarrhea.
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08.27.08
Posted in culture tagged cultural differences, familial relations at 12:06 pm by kyrias
It’s been six days since I last updated, but I might or might not be ret-updating just to fill in the blanks. I’m somewhat ashamed of having broken my resolution to blog at least once per day.
However, I have somewhat good cause: my mother and brother decided to pay me a surprise visit, all the way from China. My mom decided, practically the day before they emailed me about it, to arrive in three days. Considering that it’s a 20 hour flight just to reach the shores of the U.S, not even to get to the East coast, it was a pretty big surprise.
My friends weren’t too enamored of this. Caesura, for one, was cranky about her “popping out of nowhere and inconveniencing” me.
It was interesting to note the difference between their reactions and mine.
I didn’t mind them popping up like that — I suspect it would become a much larger problem if my mother would pop up periodically in my kitchen and was inspecting how clean I kept my dishes — but it wasn’t a huge thing.
On the other hand, it seemed that once you’ve left the parental home in the U.S, parents are considered to be more “other” than not. At the very least, it is more couth to give at least a day’s notice if you’re going to descend upon your offspring, more if you’re going to be staying for a while.
Not that my mother and brother were living with us. But even still.
That’s an interesting contrast to what I’ve always observed with my relatives. The parental units can drop in at any time, indeed, your other relatives may drop in at any time without much warning. You might very well come home to find your mother standing in front of your house dangling a pot of soup from her hand or if you’ve given her the key — standing in your kitchen butchering a duck.
Furthermore, it was both entertaining and slightly irritating that it was assumed that I would be put out by them suddenly showing up, and if I weren’t put out, it was a result of “filial piety” going too far.
I would beg to differ.
I live in the U.S and all my family lives 36 hours away by plane. I’m not about to be less than happy about them visiting, even if it’s stressful to be trotting along behind my mom constantly. Even that’s mostly because my mother seems to have an inexhaustible store of energy once she gets her mind set on something and I’m definitely a lot more laid back than she is.
If my mom lived in the U.S, it’s very possible that I would draw the lines a lot more clearer. As of now though, I’m just playing it by ear.
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08.21.08
Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged College of Wooster truths at 8:48 pm by kyrias
Supposedly, the College of Wooster has the “second best senior capstone project” in the nation, according to the US News and World Report.
Nora pointed out that it’s the best “required” senior capstone project.
I was fairly disappointed with my Senior I.S experience.
I learned a fair amount, I’ll give it that. But I definitely think that it could be done better.
I would have preferred to have only Senior I.S and only one other class. Even just two other classes would have been better than having a three course load with a lab and then having Senior I.S on top of that. Honestly, perhaps it was a personal thing, but there was so much stress tied up in Senior I.S that I was a walking vibrating tangle of nerves that entire year.
I feel like I would have enjoyed and learned more my senior year if I wasn’t that stressed. I would have wanted to be “able”, on a personal level, to visit my advisor more and have had more energy to spend on my I.S.
Perhaps most people don’t have that problem, but I know I’m not the only person who think that they would have liked to have had the ability to only take Senior I.S.
That quibble pales before the other one though.
I know it’s impossible to have the same sort of grading guidelines across majors — but it’s terribly stupid to not have the same standards across the board.
If it’s required for graduation, if it’s being touted as a “capstone thesis”, then make it count.
I know someone who graduated, even with an I.S which recieved the comment to the gist of: “I have no idea what your thesis statement is, I don’t think you actually have a main theme.”
Then there’s another person who had an I.S which used Disney’s Mulan as a primary source.
Then I know there’s a lot of people who don’t do their work until spring break, pull it out of their pants within that two week period, and still manage to graduate anyways.
To a certain extent, I feel cheated. I went to Wooster for the Senior I.S and now I feel as if it wasn’t worth it. Both a failure on my part and the school’s: I think I could have done more work, put in more effort, tried harder to overcome the debilitating stress I was experiencing…something and anything. On the other hand, I think that the school could have done better with preparing us for I.S, both in teaching and telling us what was expected of us.
Then, there’s the disappointment in that, how can I feel proud of what I did when I have the same grade as someone else who just pulled it out of their ass during the last three days?
Maybe, with the amount of work I did, I did deserve the same grade as some of the people who finished it within the last three days. I can’t imagine I deserve the same grade as someone whose I.S was deemed to have no “thesis statement”.
I think that the I.S has been cheapened by grade inflation, same as everything else, and that is the most disappointing part of my college experience.
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08.20.08
Posted in Money tagged frugal at 8:57 pm by kyrias
Going to the salon to have hair professionally cut seems like a large expense for many people — especially for women.
Alright, to be honest, paying someone $15 dollars to whack at my hair is way too much for me. Then again, I know someone who spends about 200 dollars every two weeks to keep his dye job and cut fresh.
Obviously, we should all just grow our hair long and cut it ourselves. At, say, $15 a pop per month — that’s $180 per year, which is not inconsiderable.
For apparent reasons, this would only work for people who have truly long hair.
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08.19.08
Posted in Money tagged clutter, waste at 11:07 am by kyrias
In the spirit of not being stupid and frittering away my money on things I don’t need, think Latte Factor but a bit more insidious than that…
- 13 bottles of lotion (!?)
- 7 bars of soap
- 5 nail clippers
- 3 chapsticks
- 3 wooden combs
- 2 brushes
- 2 bottles of multivitamins at varying stages of empty
- 3 tweezers
And I’m not even fully unpacked yet.
I suspect it’s going to be a good idea to keep track of just how many of each item I have an make an Anti-shopping list. Things which I am not, under any circumstances, allowed to buy before I have either consumed them all (vitamins and lotion) or somehow broken them.
It’s a real problem — when the room gets untidy, little things tend to get lost behind the bed, under laundry… you know the shtick. Certain things I really have a need for, such as the combs and chapsticks, so I just pop out and buy another. Before you know it, I have double digits of both items.
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08.18.08
Posted in Reviews tagged food critique at 12:42 am by kyrias
I never thought that I’d start critiquing resturants, but sometimes the soapbox just needs to come out and play. Not to mention that not very much has been sticking around in my brain regarding “blog-worthy” ideas and so I’m just going to hop on the critic bandwagon and see where it takes me.
Zora and Nora and I went to Pho Hoa, a Vietnamese resturant in Chinatown.
Overall, it was a decent experience, I wouldn’t be averse to eating there again.
What is really interesting though, is how they market themselves as “the health-conscious choice” and yet one of my biggest problems with their food was how the chef seemed to have an inordinate love of sugar.
The pork chops that I got were good, but not overwhelming, but the sour shrimp soup that I ordered tasted like a pineapple shrimp cocktail gone terribly wrong. The sweetness was almost cloying, it coated the tongue and I almost suspected them of dumping an entire can of canned pineapple in heavy syrup into the bowl.
The avocado shake was surprisingly good. I had read about them on a food blog once and had filed it away as something to try when I got the chance. The shake was very good, extremely sweet of course, but then it wasn’t sweet to the point of being nasty. Zora ordered a strawberry shake and I think her eyes all but crossed at how much sugar was in it.
The shrimp tempura was very good — it had that crispy loveliness with salt and pepper. But then it’s almost difficult to mess up something fried, although Olive Garden did manage that with their fried calamari…
The chicken curry was sweet, again, and it wasn’t very “curry-ish”. I didn’t try much more than a slice of chicken as it was distinctly underwhelming and at that point I was sick of the sugar.
Nora had ordered chicken soup with noodles, which she slurped up with great glee. However, when I tried the broth — more sugar.
Overall, I’d go there again, but I’m not sure I’d recommend this place to another person.
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08.17.08
Posted in Comfort, Spirituality, culture tagged cultural shock at 4:25 pm by kyrias
Zack refused flatly to take off his shoes when entering the house.
I was going to wipe down the entire apartment with a cloth, but that statement scratched that idea out for me. I wasn’t about to wear myself out wiping down the house on my hands and knees just to have people spread more filth around immediately afterwards.
It’s perhaps just as well that Zack does not see us living together for more than two or three years.
If the rest of the house supports him in this, I’ll just buy house slippers and wear them indoors, but I’m most likely going to want to move out next year.
Which would be very unfortunate, as I really do like the apartment we’re living in right now and I do enjoy their company. But this is a deal-breaker for me and I’m not going to compromise on it for next year.
It’s a cultural thing, I suppose. I’ve poked around and did a quick Google search on what people thought on the matter.
I’m just going to state right here, if asking my guests to take off their shoes in my house is rude and makes me unfit to entertain them — then they can bloody well find other people to entertain them, because I’m not doing it. I’ll ask beforehand so I’m not smacking someone in the face with it unsuspectingly when they have hole-y socks - but if you’re not comfortable removing your shoes in my house, I’m not comfortable having you there. We can meet somewhere else if we need to.
Especially in the city, where you’re walking around on people’s urine, spit, dog excrement, discarded chewing gum and God knows what else — I would NOT want that in my home at all. Talk about revolting. It’s also, literally sickening.
Some people seem to be saying that bare feet and smelly sweaty socks are ickier — I honestly don’t know about that. Perhaps it’s because your feet are cooped up all day in shoes and that makes it likelier for them to get stuff such as athlete’s foot? Considering that the prevention measures are “keep feet dry and take shoes off so feet can breathe”, it seems highly likely.
I also like to go barefoot in the comfort of my house and I’m not going to feel comfortable if I know people have been tracking in all sorts of nasties.
Right not the floor feels slightly sticky — ick. There’s also little bits of lint and whatnot and I honestly can’t bring myself to care about it anymore — since they’re just going to track in more filth if I clean it up anyways.
For me, my home is my sanctuary, it is a place apart. Consider it semi-sacred space if you will. When I go home, I want to leave the outside, out, as much as I can.
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