Finals Food

Finals week. It's a time of dread for most college students, a period of cramming, sleepless nights, endless rounds of coffee, and meals of limp cafeteria french fries.

For us Parsons students, of course, it's nothing of the sort. All-nighters are a normal part of our weekly routine. Most of us count ourselves lucky if we manage get to bed at 4 am. It is not unusual to have been awake for a solid 48 hours at a time or more. Our class times run from a minimum of 3 hours long to a maximum of 6 hours, with a mandatory 30 hours of class per week compared to the average college students' 15-18. Our teachers (whom I am convinced the majority of are notorious sadists) are one to every 18 students, which gives them plenty of opportunity to spend special individual time with each student, to instruct us. To critique us. To tell us we're doing it wrong and to do everything over. We spend most of our time outside class buying materials, working on projects, writing essays, and studying for Art History exams. On most days, we are a bundle of jittery nerves held upright only by caffeine and adrenaline, but honor-bound by the snootery that is prevalent in our high-profile school to still look "fierce", to not show what a mess we are, to trek the mile to class, carrying our huge portfolios and tottering in skyscraper heels. This is our regular life, for weeks on end.

Finals are just a step up. Only it's Finals month, not week. One month of shading, vectoring, sawing, photographing, cutting, pasting, and inking. One month of transferring documents from one format to another, trekking to the computer labs at two in the morning to print images due in a few short hours, and redoing spreads when a teacher deems them insufficient. One month of consecutive all-nighters, stress, and emotional breakdowns. No one is forcing us to do this but ourselves, so in a way I suppose only we are to blame. We put our time and energy and (no drama here, sleep deprivation is serious) health on the line to achieve our dreams and goals. And because of this, I can confidently say that a student at Parsons works just as hard, if not more, than any average student at a "regular" college.

Which is why it so completely galled me when I confided in a friend who attended a "normal" college how completely exhausted I was, and received the incredulous response "But you're in art school!"

Excuse me?

The voice in my head bordered on hysteria. I'm sure if he had said that to my face, I would have hit him. I was speechless with indignant shock for a good few minutes. I wanted to scream--and not just at him, but at all the people I've encountered who'd said "Oh, you go to art school? That must be fun!" I wanted to shriek "Just because I go to art school does not mean I sit around doodling rainbows and unicorns all day long!" I could hear the little, broken, emo-kid wail in my mind "No one understands meeeee!" I should have let him have it. I didn't. But at least now you know why I've been so absent, so woefully negligent for the past...months?

It's almost over. Only five more days of torture (and I do mean torture, because I literally cannot conceive of how I will finish all that needs finishing in five days. Which is why I am writing this post, to ease my quiet panicking.) before I pack up and leave NYC, a city which I have grown to completely love, but haven't had time to enjoy.

And with that little bit of martyristic prattle aside, we can get on to the food bits of this post.

I'll be honest, I haven't really been cooking much lately. Aside from during a visit by The Boyfriend over his spring break (tomato soup, grilled cheese, potato salad, lemon chicken, fried rice. In rotation. The Boyfriend is not an adventurous eater), and a last-minute catering gig for a party which I will eventually recreate and blog, I've been throwing meals haphazardly together and subsisting off the generosity of my classmates' huge school meal plans. And here are the results--for the most part, not bad, if a bit (alright, a lot) odd.










Bowl of macaroni with tomato sauce and mushrooms. Looks a bit chunky, because instead of simply pouring the tomato sauce on the drained pasta I stir-fried the whole lot. It made the taste heartier, and better. That pink sausage in the corner there is my finger.




Mushroom bruschetta. Essentially mushrooms, onions, and chives sauteed in a lot of butter, and placed upon toast fried in a frying pan with (you guessed it) more butter. It was heaven. Although The Boyfriend will surely disagree.










A bento box I brought to class, with leftover salmon, steamed rice, grape tomatoes, and broccoli and asparagus I blanched in the microwave with my mom's Pyrex measuring cup.

Another bento, in my new special onigiri bento box (I am slightly addicted to buying bento boxes and supplies--I now have 3, as well as a whole stash of little picks and bottles). This one had onigiri, grape tomatoes, a boiled egg, and apple bunnies. The apple bunnies were surprisingly hard to make! There are only two because I wrecked the rest of the apple with my failed bunny attempts.


My first-ever wild salmon filet. The farmed stuff will forever suck in comparison. Totally worth the $6.88. Drizzled in a little lemon juice with salt & pepper, I picked it apart with my fingers and annoyed The Boyfriend with my rapturous texted comments. I have to note that the color was amazing. I had no idea "real" salmon was supposed to look like that--this photo is completely unedited!

Fried potato and onion. This was just because I realized I had a huge sack of potatoes and onions in the fridge. A delicious carb overload paired with rice.


Lemon chicken. I really will have to give a detailed recipe on this eventually, because I've altered it so much since the first time I made it.


There is no name for this dish. It's a bizarre combination of grits, butter, and peas, topped with tobiko (flying fish roe). Comfort food. It sure photographed well in my desk lighting.









Chicken-veggie soup. I had no noodles, so instead I substituted more peas, more carrots, more celery. I stir-fried everything, first the chicken, and then the vegetables, along with some diced spring onions, and then tossed everything into a cup and a half of boiling water and simmered for a few minutes. It was delicious.


Sometimes I really believe that food is the only thing keeping me sane through all this. No matter what anyone says, dieters, health nuts, whatever, there are inherently good feelings associated with food, with the act of eating. And in the middle of everything right now, it's so good to sit down for a few minutes and eat something.

Oh No She Di'int...

Let me let you in on a little secret. Lately I've been trying to develop healthier eating habits. Me, championer of Hot Pockets and Shin Ramyun, bacon addict, lover of cheesecake, donuts, and anything containing chocolate. I'm 5'3" and at this exact moment 107.5 lbs, have always more or less eaten anything and everything I've wanted, be it 3 times the recommended serving of Totino's Pizza Rolls or an entire family-size bag of salt and vinegar chips in one night (and trust me this has happened far more than once or twice), with no more consequence than one or two additional pounds that magically drop away overnight.

Needless to say I'm aware of and profusely thankful of my better-than-average metabolism, which I can only assume is what I should be thanking considering I'm no more active than the average athletically-challenged college student and far less active than some. I've been away at college for roughly 4 months now, and during this time I have managed to put on 6 pounds to pad my original 105 lbs. While I'm not exactly freaking out about it, should this trend continue over the course of my college career it would mean by the time I graduate with my BFA I would be at a rather hefty 153 lbs (12 lbs. per year of college x 4 years = 48), which I find to be a somewhat unsavory prospect. Furthermore, I've noticed lately that I've been constantly down, not quite depressed but hovering around a state of exhaustion no matter how much I eat (sleeping more is not an option), which I can only attribute to my almost-purely sugar and refined-carb diet. The best possible remedy (or perhaps it would be better to term it preventative) to these issues, present and future, would be a combination of regular exercise and a healthy diet.

Unfortunately, in reality the fact is I barely have time for 3 hours of sleep a night nowadays, much less exercise beyond the daily mile-and-a-half walk to and from classes and occasional trek for art supplies. So modifying my pack-a-day instant ramen habit seems like the next best thing.


*WARNiNG!* I am far from the nicest/sweetest person on the internet, and although I do make an effort not to be senselessly cruel and rude the way some people are under the guise of anonymity, as some of my acquaintances have discovered I do have controversial (and pretty strong) opinions about many things. Eating habits are one of them. I will probably insult a lot of people with what I'm about to say/write next. If you read on and discover that you are one of these people, don't say I didn't warn you. This blog is my brainchild and an extension of my general thought process, and what I write on it is simply what I think. Opinions. So feel free to get all offended, just know that if you do I'll be laughing at you on this side of the internet, because I *did* warn you.

That is all.


That being said, I've always been the kind of person who quietly scoffed at people who went on all-cabbage binges or avoided carbs like they contained swine flu. If you expect me to now say that I no longer regard these people and these diets at ridiculous, you're at the wrong food blog. I'm not going to deliver saccharin sweet lies about how I think these "diets" sound very interesting, because frankly I think they sound rock bottom stupid. A diet by proper definition isn't a bizarre eating habit that you embark on for a short period of time in hopes of miraculously dropping pounds--that is just an unfortunate development of connotations in society. A diet a part of a lifestyle, and because of this I loathe to say "I am on a diet", because it simply isn't true. I'm on "on" a diet as if I may be "off" it tomorrow. A diet shouldn't be something so absurd that a person only tolerates it long enough to obtain the desired effects before abandoning it for their previous eating habits. Rather I'd like to think that I'm making better lifestyle choices and improving my diet and eating habits.

You're of course welcome to secretly think that I'm just a unthankful naturally skinny bitch secretly panicking about gaining weight and desperate to believe that I don't "need" to be on a diet to lose it. But this is my blog, so humor me and try to believe that this isn't *just* about losing/keeping off unwanted weight. Try and believe me when I say this is about developing better eating habits, learning to cook things that don't involve stabbing cellophane with a fork or microwavable sleeves, and raising beautiful children with discerning gourmet palates who call me "Mummy", daintily pat their mouths with a napkin, and ask to be excused from the dinner table.

Okay, maybe not that last one. But should I ever have children (god forbid) I would like to keep them out of the 1/3 of the children in America who are overweight-to-obese.

Because can we be honest and blunt here? (of course, it's my blog.) I don't care what you say about you or your kid being "big boned" or it just being "puppy fat" or "running in the family" or "pleasingly plump" or "big and beautiful". From where I'm standing way over here, it's just plain unhealthy to have that much fat around your arteries.


Take a deep breath, the super-offensive part is over. I'm sure that 20 years from now, standing face-to face with my kid's friend's big-boned mother and her pleasingly plump offspring, I will regret this post. For now, it's all good.


So, started as of...about two weeks ago, I will be (attempting) to implement these changes in my daily food intake:

~more fresh fruits
~more vegetables
~more protein in the forms of chicken, beans, pork, and beef (surprising, because the fact is most Americans eat far too much protein than is healthy, but actually I haven't been getting enough protein because being in art school makes you too poor to buy meat. And yeah, I am aware that meat is not the only protein available. It is, however, in my opinion the most delicious.)
~more salmon (this is in a category by itself because it is DELICIOUS)
~fewer over-processed foods (as much as I hate to admit it, delicious as they are, they're not good for my health or my waistline)
~more water (okay here's what's up with this: I am no scientist/doctor/nutritionist, and thusly have nothing creditable to say about the whole 8-glasses-a-day-yay-or-nay debate. I do, however, believe that 8 glasses or not for the majority of the time I'm most likely not imbibing enough water, because it constantly seems like I'm pissing out far more liquid than I'm taking in, and my usual daily water intake is at a mind-boggling 0 glasses a day. So yes, I will be drinking water.)

Furthermore, here's what I will not be doing, and I don't want to hear about how much more weight I would lose if I would eliminate the following habits, because I maintain (somewhat desperately, many would think, and many would be right) that this isn't [just] about losing weight..

~eliminating refined carbs such as white bread and white rice (it just isn't happening. I don't care about the increased health benefits of complex carbohydrates and the detrimental ones of refined carbs. I'm sticking with my white bread and white rice so get over it.)
~banishing butter, oil, and saturated fats (again: let's be reasonable. This is me we're talking about--and if you don't know what I'm talking about, might I direct you to my last post, an ode to butter)
~forsaking sweetstuff, including baked goods (everything in moderation, people.)


So this seems to me so far, a good plan. If you've done the math from the beginning, you'll have realized that so far I have lost a total of 3.5 lbs--and my current weight was taken after an unrestrained Chinese New Year dinner. So, 3.5+ lbs in two weeks? Not bad at all. We'll see where this goes and how often I scurry around protocol and reach for the instant noodles. But I think it's important to not see it as depriving myself of things, so much as saving my stomach space (bottomless as it is) for better things. And is it lame that I feel a tiny twinge of pride for bypassing the allure of the Hot Pockets in favor of peanut butter on toast and a handful of grapes? Maybe a little. But I'm hoping that the extra nutrients from my new healthy lifestyle will contribute to better creative productivity and a happier me. And hopefully a happier me for you. Is that too much to wish for?

Butter makes Everything Better

"Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter." -Julie Powell, Julie & Julia.


This morning, I made a grocery trip to M2M, my local Korean food market. Along with a 5-pack of Shin Ramyun, russet potatoes, butter, rice, and strawberries, I also got a carton of baby portobella mushrooms.

I love mushrooms. The Boyfriend hates them. Hates them. He tried one spoonful of my Wild Mushroom Soup (after much coaxing) and pronounced "tasty, but I don't like mushrooms" and refused another sip. It's vexing because I could very happily eat mushrooms in every meal.

Part of my mushroom love is because they are very easy to cook and to make delicious. I've already had mushrooms with my Shin Ramyun for lunch today...but they were so delicious I couldn't help but pick them for a late-night snack again. And what better to make a compliment to mushrooms than the food of all foods, butter?


Mushroom Bruschetta

4-5 baby portobella mushrooms, sliced
2 1/2 tbsp butter yes, it's a lot of butter. the amount of butter applied is directly proportional to the deliciousness of the finished product. not for the fainthearted.
1/6 of a small red onion, diced
the green part of a green onion, chopped
1 slice of bread

~Heat up pan over stove. Melt 1/2 tbsp butter in pan.
~Saute onions until golden brown.
~Unceremoniously dump mushrooms and green onion in pan, add another tbsp of butter to pan and saute until brown and about half their original size. that's the sad thing about mushrooms, actually. their water content is so high, when cooked they shrink as the water evaporates.
~Spoon mushrooms and onions out of the pan into a bowl and set aside.
~Melt the last tbsp of butter in the pan, and use it to fry the piece of bread.
~Spoon the mushrooms and onions onto the toast. Indulge in buttery, mushroomy deliciousness.

Christmas Dinner

Yes, I actually did cook food for my family's Christmas dinner. Real cooking, none of that pansy toss-together-a-salad-out-of-a-bag or shove-some-rolls-from-a-tube-in-the-mini-oven stuff. In the process of my epic journey of real cookery I dirtied no less than 1 saucepan, 2 large pots, 4 mixing bowls, and 2 pyrex baking dishes. And that's not counting all the utensils I used. It took over 4 hours to do everything. And I loved it. We've still yet to see if I'll love it 365 days a year when I have my own house, but...one thing at a time.

The Menu

Wild Mushroom Soup
Simple Potato Salad
Lemon Chicken
Yumi's New York-Style Cheesecake


And now I shall proceed to go into each menu item in depth. Because I assume by the fact that you are reading this blog, you care as much about what I'm eating/cooking as I do.

The mushroom soup was something I was extremely excited to make. I've never made it before, but I chose the recipe (from Epicurious.com) based on the review that it was exceedingly like Panera Bread's Forest Mushroom soup, which I adore. The recipe itself was more complex than any soup I've made before (for one, it actually sort of mattered in what order you chucked the ingredients in the pot--gasp!), but obviously not too complex as it came together without a hitch. So, was it like Panera's soup? Well...it definitely had the same feel, but it wasn't exactly the same. Which isn't surprising, seeing as I skimped on the mushroom portion of the recipe a great deal (no nearby Italian grocery+no desire to search for one on Christmas Eve=no porcini mushrooms). But I liked it. Which is all that matters.

Potato salad is sort of more of a summery dish, but I made it anyway for two reasons: 1. I love the stuff any time of year, and 2. I promised The Boyfriend that I'd make it. Oh, that's right, I haven't mentioned that he was having dinner with us yet, right? Well now you know. The potato salad requires a lot of chopping, which I handed off to The Boyfriend, which made my mother joke about "slave labor". As if I care, as long as I get my ingredients chopped (he ate half of the kielbasa he was supposed to be dicing for the salad, so I'd say it was fair compensation). As I've said before, I don't think potato salad is a dish that can be messed up. And it wasn't.

Out of all of these, what worried me the most was the chicken. The recipe is courtesy of Tammy Donroe of Food on the Food, which made me feel a little better--I've found that recipes posted on food blogs are oftentimes less likely to bomb since they've (presumably) already been tested by real people. But still. Protein that is unprocessed (read: not kielbasa) somewhat frightens me, because I'm afraid I'll cook it too long or too hot or too wrong and it'll by one mistake or another, come out tasteless, chewy, and revolting.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried, because the chicken came out just fine, despite my forgetting various parts of the recipe (such as the sliced lemon and half the lemon juice. Ah well). I loved the acidity of it (I love acid. Salt & Vinegar chips. Pickles.) and can't wait to make it again.

The cheesecake...well, it was the usual. I forgot the vanilla extract, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. The most unfortunate thing was that I'd forgotten that 16 oz. of cream cheese only makes enough filling for one thick 11" round pie, and I had to make two (one to take to a party the next day). So the cheesepies were woefully thin since I split the filling between two pies, and while no one besides my dad cared, it's something to keep in mind. Always have enough cream cheese.

Aaaaand...that was Christmas. After dinner The Boyfriend and I ensconced upstairs and locked ourselves in the TV room. And watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Kung Fu Panda. It was an amazing night (and both are excellent, if you haven't seen them I highly recommend it).

Thanksgiving Treats

A weekend home means oven access, which I intend to take full advantage of. In addition to churning out a few cheesecakes as per my parents' demand (not without mistakes, I forgot the eggs, but they turned out great anyway), I decided to try something new.

As you might have guessed, I'm not the most careful of cooks--eggs forgotten, 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice added instead of 1/2. Baking, a science which requires accuracy to ensure success, is not exactly my forte. So browsing my virtual library of recipes, I decided to try something that wasn't too easy to fuck up.

Meringues. The most challenging part of this recipe, to me, anyway, would be getting the egg whites to foam. I've tried twice before without success, and was beginning to think the ability to whisk egg whites into a perfect fluff was just something you were either born with or without. This time, I Googled "how to whisk egg whites into peaks" and came up with the following list of handy tips:

-make sure your bowl and beaters are completely clean, because oil will keep air bubbles from forming.
-make sure there is absolutely no egg yolk in your whites. Now we know where I went wrong last time.
-use a copper bowl, which will help air bubbles form. I have none, and am unwilling to go out and buy one, so a plain metal mixing bowl will have to do.
-use an electric mixer. Duly noted.
-use older eggs, which, due to chemical changes that take place in an egg overtime, will be more easily whipped into foam.
-add a pinch of salt to the whites at the beginning of beating to stiffen the proteins.

So...how did they turn out?

Meringues
From REC(ession)IPES

3 egg whites
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

~Heat oven to 225 degrees F.
~Beat egg whites and vanilla until the mixture begins to stiffen and form small peaks
~Slowly add sugar while continuing to beat until the sugar is more or less dissolved and the mixture is not grainy
~Place spoonfuls of batter on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 4-5 hours until they are hard, crunchy, and the centers are not chewy.





Bento Stream

Stir-fried noodles with mushrooms and carrots, romaine lettuce salad from a bag, italian dressing, hardboiled egg, mochi.

Rice with salmon furikake, cut kielbasa, hardboiled egg, mochi, three apple Kasugai gummies.

Egg omelet sandwich, veggie-grits croquette, persimmons. Not pictured: Teriyaki dipping sauce.

Scallion and kielbasa omelet, kielbasa on the side, mashed potatoes.

Plain rice, octopus hotdogs, raw broccoli florets, Ranch dressing for dipping.

Fried potatoes, octopus hotdogs, tomato and romaine salad, mango cubes.

Random bowl of macaroni.