Monthly Archives: January 2012
薑汁撞奶 (Ginger Milk Custard)
This was made with two of my favorite people/childhood friends back in…2010. It’s backlogged, so if I sound like I’m talking in the present, I’m not really. As with 6F, I’d be super-happy if the three of us were to always stay friends too, because they’re awesome, and have been there for me for the past 11-13 years. <3
I inherited my packrat tendencies from my parents. My mom likes to buy a ton of food and keep it all, whereas my dad likes to reuse every container under the sun. We rewash takeout boxes (sometimes even the styrofoam ones). Sadly, I’m not kidding. :/
Our spice cabinet (and pantry, for that matter) doesn’t make any sense. (The honey jar actually contains soy sauce, the oregano container definitely does not contain oregano, the parsley isn’t parsley, etc.) I was pretty confused when I first moved back home, but I’ve somewhat grown used to it.
Anyway, our pantry is basically stocked for the apocalypse/zombie invasions, and aside from the food, there are empty containers placed randomly on the shelves, so we did an epic cleanse of the pantry while my parents were out.
J: Hey, guys? I’m only asking you guys this because we’ve known each other for so long…but uh, why aren’t you guys wearing pants?
I love the way she asked that. :O
Anyway, she brought over milk for us to make this ginger milk dessert that we’d been craving. Joanne turned lactose-intolerant in college (she’s always been my fellow cheese-hating buddy though), and I suppose I’m slightly intolerant as well, but I can take it. Depending on what it is. (I still stay far away from cheese though, if I can help it. Unless it’s mozzarella/Swiss/parmesan/Romano.) Soy milk will not work for this!
薑汁撞奶 (Ginger Milk Custard)
Ingredients:
-1 cup whole milk
-1 tbsp sugar
-1-2 tbsp ginger juice (grated from a fresh piece of ginger)
Instructions:
1) Peel and grate ginger. Press ginger over strainer into a bowl.*
2) Heat milk to ~80-90 degrees C. Add sugar to heated milk (to taste). Let cool to ~70-80 degrees C and pour into bowl containing ginger juice.
3) Let stand for 5-10 minutes. The ginger will coagulate milk to form a soft pudding. Serve warm or cold.
*Add more ginger juice for a firmer pudding.
BBQ Chicken Pizza
I was trying to use up my ingredients (and needed something super fast)! :O I have cans of shredded chicken, so that’s why the baking time is so short/I’m still alive.
BBQ Chicken Pizza
Ingredients:
-BBQ sauce
-chicken, shredded
-mozzarella, shredded
-corn
-whole wheat wraps
-pepper, to taste
Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 350. Spread BBQ sauce over whole wheat wrap.
2) Pile on mozzarella, chicken and corn. Sprinkle on some pepper.
3) Bake in oven for a couple minutes.
snow!
It hasn’t snowed here (to my knowledge) since the Snowpocalypse in October! When I pulled up the blinds for my window this morning, I thought my eyes had given up on me because it was completely white everywhere. (I also didn’t have my contacts on…)
But once my brain registered that it was indeed snow, I found it super pretty. :D!
Then I trudged through 3 miles of it and felt compelled to fall backwards into it and just lie there (maybe make a couple snow angels) for a half hour or so by the time I finally got to my destination. (I didn’t.) Apparently, snow makes me walk about 12 minutes slower.
What better way to get used to snow than to walk through 6 miles worth of it though, right?
At least it was pretty.
nj public transportation
I stayed up til some unearthly hour last night/this morning wasting time on the internet, but managed to force myself to wake up a couple hours ago so that I could finally commence my wonderful search for a chiropractor.
They’re not all that well advertised on the internetz, although there are apparently a ton of them around here. Out of the 10 I found so far, however, there appear to be only 2 who have reviews of any sort (luckily, they happen to be good). However, they are also the ones farthest from where I live (~8-9 miles).
As I’ve mentioned previously, I don’t have a car around here, so I rely quite heavily on public transportation and my own two feet. I started calling all their offices this morning and was met with pretty grumpy-sounding office staff. I would go as far as to say that some of them were borderlining downright rude.
Unfazed, I talked with the ones who actually answered and left messages with the ones who didn’t. The last office I called was actually the friendliest/seemed to give a crap about me (hooray!). They were also doing a promotion that they let me in on–free consultations! Score!
But it’s also one of the ones that happens to be 8.5 miles away. I initially tried calling a couple taxi services…
NB: It’ll cost you about $25. Not too expensive.
F: (…What’s your definition of expensive?! That’d only be a dollar off from a roundtrip ticket to NYC. How about no?) Okay, thank you!
Edison: That would be $20.
F: (…yeah, that would feed me for at least a week. No thanks.) Okay, thank you!
Metuchen: If you take the train to Metuchen instead of Edison, it’d cost you $8 instead of $20.
F: (You’re such a nice soul! But that’s still expensive.) Okay, thank you for your time!
But! He did give me the idea to see how far it would be from the Metuchen train station as opposed to Edison (darn my ignorance of geography and the placement of all these towns). 2 miles. Would I lug a 55 lb. suitcase a mile down these streets to save $6? Why yes, of course! So would I walk 2 miles to save 8 bucks? You bet I would.
However, googlemaps, being the blessed soul that it is, also told me of the existence of a bus. For $1.50, I could save about 17 minutes of my life! (Or less, depending on how quickly I walk.)
Back in the days of the car accident, I started school about a week later and rarely went home, so I found a chiropractor in Davis. It took 2 buses to get there at the time, since I never had a car (or license, for that matter) and hadn’t succumbed to the biker-friendliness of the town yet. Apparently, I could also take 2 buses to get to this one (not free, but 5 cents over $3 isn’t too bad) and save 70 cents from not taking the train.
Just for today, I think I may allow myself the luxury of taking the train+bus option, since the consultation is free. If it’s too freakishly expensive there, I’m going to hope with every fiber of my being that the one 0.3 miles away from my house is awesome and not too expensive. (They’re not open yet, so I haven’t been able to reach them.)
I’ll let you know how it goes, but here’s to hoping that these buses are reliable!
($25 down to $2.25-$3.75 is pretty effing awesome. Gotta love public transportation. I’m so glad I talked my parents into letting me live here instead of the other option. Saving $185/month on what would have been their rent and living at a more convenient location? Hells yes.)
miniature guide horses
Classes officially started again two days ago. (For everyone taking Neuroscience, it started on the 6th.) After our biochem lecture where we found out each other’s majors in undergrad (this isn’t really something any of us really discussed very much, but apparently, something like half the class majored in Cell Biology & Neuroscience), a couple of us went out for lunch. By this, I mean that I held down a table while everyone bought food because I brought lunch from home (hooray for saving monies!).
We eventually ended up at my house, where we played 3 games of Settlers of Catan (I think I have a new favorite board game :D ). I slaughtered everyone in the first game, and Luke killed us off in the second two, partly through ruining my life and starting a brick monopoly.
I am somewhat of a master of tangents when it comes to conversations, so when Chris started rubbing his eyes and saying he was going temporarily blind, I brought up the subject of guide horses and was met with blank stares.
“Do they actually exist?”
Shortly after I graduated from Davis but remained on the community service listserv, there was an option to help a center that trained them in Woodland, and you better believe I was all sorts of interested, but since I’d already moved back home, driving there several times a week to volunteer when I had no income to speak of wasn’t financially viable. I was pretty disheartened, to say the least.
Anyway, I pulled up that site for them and we started reading up on just how awesome guide horses are. They live, on average, for 30-40 years, only shed twice a year, don’t get fleas, can see clearly in almost complete darkness, can move their eyes independently and thus have a vision range of almost 350 degrees and have amazing memory. <3 They’re not there to “compete” with seeing eye dogs (that argument has been raised), but it does allow for another mobility option for someone who is blind (e.g. someone who’s afraid of or allergic to dogs, wants a guide animal with a longer lifespan, or one that can live outside).
It was probably around this point in time that Chris fell asleep on one of the couches, so Luke and I spent the next couple hours wading through bunches of websites on where we could adopt a guide horse, because there are a lot of miniature horses out there who have been neglected, abused or are sold to auctions for their meat. ;_;
This kinda led to our somewhat outlandish plan on how we’re going to start a farm and buy/adopt a herd of miniature horses and while we’re at it, we might as well get some hens, and perhaps a cow and some sheep, and he might as well learn to hunt, and I might as well start growing vegetables/herbs/fruit… (This is the conversation Chris woke up to 3 hours later.)
Outlandish (but awesome) ideas aside though, I really do want to adopt a miniature horse somewhere in the distant future, when I have the financial means to care for one (and a place of my own).
fairyburger 