A dry spell

 I only wish I can be as consistent about posting as Carey, but between starting work this week and a 3 hour a day commute, it's hard to make anything more than cereal, salad, and sandwiches. But I hope to do some serious recipe searching this weekend for easy but delicious and filling brown bag lunch ideas. So stay tuned!

In the mean time, I came across this incredible video of a compilation of the Iron Chef America Chairman unveiling the secret ingredient. If you watch the show, you'll definitely appreciate it. But it's entertaining even if you don't.

Baba ghanoush

I got some beautiful eggplants last weekend at the farmer's market. Unlike the big dark purple ones, these are a lighter shade of purple and much smaller. According to my mom, they're supposed to be more tender and flavorful than the bigger ones. But frankly I have no idea what variety I ended up getting. Also, I didn't know this, but China is by far the biggest eggplant producer in the world, growing more than twice what India, the second largest producer, grows.

Anyway, it didn't matter what the eggplants I got looked like, because they eventually ended up looking like this:



And then like this:

Chocolate cake

Growing up in China, I thought birthday cakes were pretty magical stuff. Like, on par with the mooncakes that we ate during the mid-autumn festivals or the garlic pickled in vinegar that would turn blue just in time for Chinese new year. On my birthdays, my granddad would pick me up early from school (and make me feel sooooo special because no one else got to leave school early that day) and take me to the state-run bakery and pick up my birthday cake. Sometimes, those standoffish middle-aged baker ladies would make it on the spot in front of a glass window through which I could watch the entire cake making process, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. She would put this simple yellow cake on a turnstile and proceed to cover it with a thick layer of frosting and flowers. At such a young age, I just couldn't comprehend how a tube of frosting can turn into flowers and other shapes -- it must be magic. Which is why I think people who make their own wedding cakes or that guy on ace of cakes are pretty much the most talented people ever.

Sushi ad

Markets and Pies

I live near an exceedingly lovely farmer's market. It's large, has beautiful produce (especially one cute farmer boy who sells really great salad mix, but that's a different story), and lots of free cheese samples. I was really excited to visit it for the first time in a long while a few weekends ago because I've had strawberry-rhubarb pies on my mind for a while and was really hankering for one. But after half an hour of walking around and trying to catch sight of some gorgeous ruby-colored stalks (and a very embarrassing incidence where in my eagerness I mistook some swiss chard for rhubarb...) I only found some sad, de-leafed and pale rhubarb sitting in a tub. I was out of luck.

Or so I thought! It turned out that my parents had bought a strawberry-rhubarb pie independently. Perfect.

It turned out to be the worst strawberry-rhubarb pie I've ever tasted.

Maybe I'm spoiled. Maybe I've only had them lovingly homemade by Helen Chmura and Emily Hager for sunday teas fresh out of the oven, but man, this "farmstand" pie didn't even taste like strawberry or rhubarb. It tasted like... chemicals. A closer look at the filling ingredients list proved my suspicions correct: potassium sorbate AND red #40. What on earth are those things doing in my pie?? The image of an Amish mother slowly pulling pies out of the oven was completely shattered (wait, can they even have ovens in the first place?) and replaced by an evil cackling machine dumping a whole vat of red #40 into each pie. The worst part was that I could feel the pie sitting in my stomach for the next three hours, which was a problem since I ate it at 11pm at night.

Okay, I'm exaggerating its bad qualities, but only a little.

The fact remains that this pie does not belong in a farmer's market. Sure, I may have an idealistic image of farmers markets. But I also understand that the farmers are not cottage industries making everything in small batches. They are not all like Polyface farm where everything produced there is beyond organic, has minimal carbon footprint, and absolutely delicious. Still, seeing ingredients that I would never put in my own food makes me feel cheated. Isn't the point of selling prepared foods from a market (aside from financial ones) to share a little bit of your home, of your unique recipes with other people? Maybe I'm still romanticizing here but I maintain that a huge part of the beauty of farmers markets is lost when I have to start scrutinizing ingredients lists for those long-winded ingredients that are found in my chem textbook. I do enough of that in grocery stores.

Beets!

Ever since this past winter break, I've been obsessed with putting roasted beets in salad. It only helps that the ruby-red root gets touted as a super food like, all the time. While I'm absolutely fascinated by the wild possibilities of doing things other than roasting them, the simplicity of tossing them into foil, baking and leaving them until they're done and ready to be tossed into a salad can't be... beet. Plus, they make a salad look so good! What's not to love?

Seattle - Pike Place Market

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Seattle and Portland to visit Jimmy. The trip only confirmed my desire to leave the east coast and live in Pacific Northwest. I just loved the feel of the area with its abundance of amazing foods and coffee, the breathtaking scenery, and the laid back, friendly, and often quirky people. On the trip, most of our time was spent eating or in transit between places to eat, with visiting non-food related sites almost as an afterthought. Our excellent guide, Jimmy, herded us to so many restaurants, coffeeshops, and food karts that by the last meal of the trip I could only handle a small bowl of salad. Everywhere we went, whether it was a small Schnitzel kart run by a Czech couple or a crowded Lebanese restaurant that takes the effort to make fresh pita for every table, I got the sense that people were incredibly passionate about the food they prepared and/or served in a very deep way. As a result, the foods we ate were often quite simple, but because of the thought and care that went into them they turned out to be some of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.