baking upon arrival

My roommate wanted to bake cookies for a cookie party at her work and enlisted my assistance. Kudos to those who bake from scratch for cookie parties, rather than resort to default pansy maneuvers like buying from store. If you buy from a bakery, that is a step up. I wanted to be adventurous and made these five spice cookies. I really liked them, and I think that was the consensus of those who tasted them too. 

 M selected this peanut butter, chocolate chip number. They were also tasty, but I think our first couple batches could have stayed in the over for a little longer. They were more crumbly than the above variety. We ended up with a lot of cookies.

decked out

New York City is like a tourist trap for much of Manhattan below 59th Street. Due to mild winters, I think it must not deter tourists from approaching in the winter. Oh, the hoards of foot traffic obstacles! I cut my losses this last year I'm here to check out the festivities near Rockefeller Plaza. For this holiday season, there were sleazy Santas, heightened security, extra fences, and photos aplenty.

                       

 

school events

This building is normally closed at night. I figure if I can walk through looking like I know what's going on, no one will be any wiser. These school security guards are pretty on top of the ball. Fundraiser for children somewhere. If you're going to make a pretty walkway, do you really expect no one to walk up?

train track art

Love the colors in this. Waiting for the last express purple line into the loop from Evanston. It's like Siberia out there. But it was completely worth it. Had a grand time with my brother! He's the best.

cheaper in NJ

On the off chance I'm forced to go to New Jersey for a class field trip I can't excuse myself out of. There's a bunch of the buildings downtown that are all connected with bridges starting from the train station. So if you work in one of those buildings, you literally never need to go outside. There's food courts and vendors in there too - so really - never have to sully your shoes with NJ pavement. But we did go outside to visit the City Hall. We stopped at an intersection outside the train station to breathe in the bus exhaust. This is the intersection with the most public transit activity in NJ. And they told us to excuse their messy upkeep, because they were in the middle of filming the next DARK KNIGHT!

seasoned my first wok

super duper smoky! make sure to have excellent ventilation!

somewhere in Brooklyn

I'm doing site visits to record parking habits. I've passed this Pikachu 16 times today. Pika pika.

study time

So many copious notes! I am the queen of smart sounding large worded papers! Haha. Haha. Oh, please. You should know me better than that. 

monkeying around

I understand monkey bread is just about the least healthy thing ever for any living thing. But, my goodness, it's so worth it. And since livingto100 is telling me I'm living to 100, I'll take whatever I can to shorten my number of years taking up space on this fine planet.

brother sushi

 This is what happens when my brother visits. Outside of watching too much tv and rotting our brains, we make sushi. Now I'm not sure if he even likes it that much, but we make sushi quite frequently when both of us are present - like when I come home, and I guess when he visits me. Brothers and sushi just make a nice pairing. Mostly I like making it, so he can eat it. Never underestimate the stomach capacity of a Chinese boy to eat lots of rice. Regardless, we always have leftovers. Sushi is one of those things I haven't quite figured out how much of everything to make so that there are no limiting factors. But I think we overestimated every ingredient in this case. A ended up taking sushi for lunch all week.

My brother is the best. Happy travels!

holy pie plates, batman!

The cat gets to go in and out whenever she wants. You're supposed to open the door when she waits there.

 This is from making dough (for pie) lesson of the week. Can you guess who made the Batman?

found downtown

 The bus drops me off at the Embarcadero, and when I have time, I like to walk the rest of the way into Powell. Embarcadero is pretty much the financial district, and there's more excitement at the commercial district at Powell. It's not a bad walk because there's plenty of public spaces and art pieces that keep things visaully interesting, aside from the suit monkeys - but let's face it, business casual in San Francisco would be anyone else's definition of casual.

Berkeley hills

Hats off to Berkeley Hills real estate. Even though it's all on incredibly unstable land and looks like it could all go rolling down at any minute, it sure makes for interesting tresspassing treks.

Our first destination was Indian Rock. And, my genius thinking, figured we still had time, a beautiful day, and the general direction of the Rose Gardens was 'that' way. My midwestern logic has only ever assumed grids. There are no grids. Never underestimate the power of winding roads to throw everything off course. We found it eventually. We tresspassed hiked into someone's backyard a waterfall. We cardboarded down the concrete slide and mingled with the people the slide is actually supposed to be ridden by.
 We also saw/heard chickens and the jasmine. Oh, olfactory bliss, the jasmine.

in the heights

I arrived at 7am to wait in a line that was going to open at 10am. So B and I got a time slot for 4pm. But they did provide entertainment. There waws a street artist creating this as the line snaked around him.

We had some time to kill, but because they just gave people wristbands at the beginning, we didn't have to be in line the whole time. B and I got to zipline across the Embarcadero for free. It was a Canadian tourism company that was doing this. Per usual, the gloomy day got sunnier. Nothing but blue skies.

swanky library

This is the public library in Milpitas, CA. It's a suburb in the whereabouts of nowhere. Okay. Not quite nowhere because the BART does almost reach there. But clearly, they have enough money. This library is amazing! The lighting was gorgeous.

 There's a new modern part, and an older classic style part. There's lots of empty space, which could be utilized by a lot more books. But seeing as how libraries are jumping on the techno-bandwagon (much to my chagrin), computers are climbing up the priority pyramid.

More with kitchen chemistry

Experimenting with popovers. Half of these are with all-purpose flour, and the other half are made from a batter with 1/2 whole wheat flour, 1/2 all-purpose flour.



This is dulce de leche. Notice how it's drippy because patience is simply a virtue not everyone is endowed with.

My homework

I'm taking this class about the chemistry of cooking. Our first assignment was to make pizza on a regular baking pan:
and compare it to a pizza on a pizza stone (terra cotta tile):
Both were tasty, but the crusts were texturally different.
lesson learned: pizza stone pizza > baking pan pizza

Hello, December

Certainly my favorite time of year. I've come to love the frosty breathe of winter's air. You can't find that in San Francisco, but I take solace in counting down the days to when I can once again mark my path in the season's snowfall.
I guess moderate temperatures can have its advantages. Sitting outside is more comfortable and it is more likely people will sit outside. Look how they've left seat cushions for people to sit on. It's nice when they consider features like that to make public space more inviting.

In the oven

Yeast is so demanding of patience, but worth it. I made bread last weekend. My obsession with hummus continues.

Roll Model

University of California, Berkeley claims the record for longest California roll, taking it away from somewhere in Hawai'i. All it took was 102 pounds of dry rice, 582 sheets of seaweed, 67 pounds of avocado, 65 pounds of cucumber, and 167 pounds of imitation crab meat. The whole thing was 330 feet long. Of 57 tables, the last two were vegetarian. It was verified by Japanese Consul General Yasumasa Nagamine. This event was part of a year long celebration for the 50th anniversary of the Center of Japanese Studies.