UMF

Great music all the time. Festival weather. Pendulum, Infected, Mstrkrft, Moby. Heck, everyone! I'm so exhausted it hurts to move.

So marks the turning point of the semester and the end of Dance MagIK. Wait, what was I thinking?!

Maybe not forever, but for a very long while. humm

Oatmeal with strawberries!

And then some!

Healthy Heavenly Foods. It's by Bear's Lair. Two summers ago, I really enjoyed their grilled tofu, egg sandwiches, and green lychee-coconut drink. Recently, I was surprised to discover that they sell Spam musubi- yummy, but I kinda wish they used plain steamed rice as opposed to sweetened varieties.

Yesterday, I decided to treat myself to their mushroom and pork dumpling and a slice of their tapioca-coconut dessert.

[Taken before I tinkered with the camera settings]
The Dumpling.
The desserty thing.

Now, I'm not the biggest critic of food because I just don't know what to critique! But these were so bad. The dumpling had like a 1:8 filling to glutinous rice ratio; I like glutinous rice most of the time but in this case, it was just too plain and greasy to handle. And the desserty thingie was stale! :( It was hard and chewy and while the flaky crust could have made up for those shortcomings, the toilet flushed before the keys could be salvaged. (hahaha, what?!)

I was in utter despair in PH150A because of these greasy globs.. until I saw this on my desk

Thank you, worm-looking thing. What a reliever of sorts.

Absolutely perfect for a Monday morning..

We love the all the all of you
Where lands are green and skies are blue
When all in all we're just like you
We love the all of you

-Spacehog "In the Meantime"

Friday, Saturday, Sunday Food

I woke up a bit late for work on Friday, so I got my breakfast from Starbucks. I've been very particular about oatmeal these days, and I'd say I'm quite fastidious when it comes to quality breakfast oatmeal. [Now, can I make quality oatmeal? Not really. But people in my life sure know how to! But I digress...] I've seen Starbucks's oatmeal advertisements all around, so I decided to give it a shot.

I also bought a morning bun for insurance.
Blurry, but it has all the toppings in it! I was sorta disappointed to see the barista open up a package of oatmeal and add boiling water. But, the toppings did make up for this drawback.

I got my Friday lunch from the City Center Soup Plantation.

Roasted pumpkin soup beside half of a tuna sammich. The pumpkin soup made me nostalgic; it totally reminded me of last semester and my mad dash for all things pumpkin. Yet, while I was eating it, I did think the pumpkin was a little unseasonable. (Don't get me wrong, though. I will talk-up pumpkins 'til the day I die.) Tuna = ummers.

Moving along... Tom and I are still cleaning out our kitchen as thoroughly as possible. Come Saturday evening, I pulled together a few things from the pantry.

Ta da!
"What's going on there?"
"Ah, I see."
The Spam worked! In fact, I thought the sauce was a little too sour for my tastes, so all in all:
Spam 1, Sauce 0

And this evening...

Tom pulled together a greasy platter of yummy. Using Trader Joe's potatoes (who knows how old they were!), parsley (I have a buttload of parsley), shredded cheese from taco night (...wow, that was a while ago), and bacon from the Grocery Outlet (hah!), Tom created something you'd find at a nice bar 'n' grill. hahaha

Grocery shopping, we go!

Oh! And..

However this semester pans out, I will make it out alive and kicking.
[Postcard hanging in Ajarn Kepner's office]

B is for Balance

... and blogging!

Tom and I are admirably cleaning out our refrigerator before we restock. So for lunch, we enjoyed Costco dinner rolls and fresh guacamole (sans cilantro and onion ::sigh::). I forgot to take a picture of today's batch, but here's a photo of a batch I made for Alex and myself when we, too, were scrounging around for food.

Alton Brown recipe
+ a little extra virgin olive oil
This was Alex's creation. It's a quesa-taco-chicken nugget-dilla thing. =)

After discovering I didn't completely fail my epidemiology midterm, I purchased a peanut butter shake from Brewed Awakening on Euclid to celebrate. I'm not a big fan of their coffee drinks, but their other menu items are taaasty.

Man, that's a big shake (24 oz. to be prezact).
Shake, meet Snack Options. Snack Options, Shake.
I capped off my Thursday with a dinner at Battambang. To the left, we have a beef, yam, green bean, and coconut meat curry aside grilled chicken and some yummy sauce of sorts. Steamed rice a'yonder.

I've had too much milk today. Flatulence has never been so disarming. hah

PP 157 Office Hours

"Hi, Professor, I'm --"
"Dance MagIK, I know."
...

[well, how it felt like it went]

"I'm a little uncertain about how I'm doing with regard to participation in lecture."
"Yeah, I remember you, you don't say stupid things."

::utter relief::

Gotsta support!

If you're in LA on the 22nd, I highly recommend that you come out.

You can't stop the snacking!

I snack. Like a beast.

Which is why my heart cries when libraries/lecturers/other places prohibit eating. I mean, I get ya, I really do. Snacking on crunchy, noise-making, messy things can be bothersome and sometimes destructive; I'm definitely not the cleanest eater on the block.

But, I'm in the ER right now [I'm okay, it's Snowflake who's in minor cahoots (but he's okay, too!)], and I couldn't help but whip out my apple.

I did think twice, though. Nosocomial infections are no joke!

But I ate it anyway. [I did, however, snoop the walls to see if Alta Bates has any "No Food" signs. I couldn't find such impediments.]

And just as I was pulling out my baggie of carrots to continue the snack-a-thon, I read, "No Food in Waiting Area." Ugh, it's in bold yet stealthily embedded in an unrelated sign! You don't put a "No Food" sign on an informational Medicaid placard!

Curry and Tortillas

... simply when all naan is lacking.

I really prefer using this specific kind of mechanical pencil. Since time immemorial, I've always bought this type and used it to its fullest extent.. sorta. The cap to the eraser is probably its trickiest part because if you're like me, a lost cap to anything (a USB drive, pen, or said pencil) irks you. A ton.
So much so I usually have to get a new one.
::shakes head in shame::

I think I'm making progress, though. It's starting to seem that little imperfections like these can be overlooked.

Until, of course, this pencil loses its cap. We 'll just see about that. o_o

update (4 hours later): OK, well, I officially can't find the cap. CRAP O_O

Las Vegas Food = Bread Pudding Time

from Lucky Cafe in the Stratosphere Hotel

It was a bread pudding extravaganza during the Vegas trip. I had bread pudding with every single meal, and some meals really just consisted of bread pudding. Did I end up tiring of this delectable confection?

I'll have to get back to you on that.

Rio Hotel brunch buffet
Plate 1 (bread pudding front center)
Plate 2 (bread pudding back left)
Mimosa, mint chocolate chip and cookies 'n' cream gelato
At this point, there was some pretty painful stomach distention.
But like most things in life, you have to go in with a positive attitude :)

Post-Tryst meal.
You guessed it.

Bread pudding.

Dinner at home

Alex and I tried to make a fancy dinner a few weeks ago and decided on bruschetta and linguine with clam sauce. After an expedition to Whole Foods, we prepared everything with a beat-the-clock attitude.. even though there wasn't a clock worthy of beating that evening o_0.

We're no wine connoisseurs, so we had Arizona Iced Tea. =D
Alex successfully made the pasta and sauce (recipe courtesy of his Mama).

This was all capped off with a decadent bowl of Moose Tracks ice cream.

Wonderful experiences

I think I'll need quite a few blog posts to capture the last week and how amazingly eventful, eye-opening, and rewarding it was. Since I don't have too much time to start now, I might as well post up something that made me exhale a comforting "wow."

"'The world's movement is always forward, darkness turns to light; ignorance to wisdom; it is said that man took his form from the fish and the bird; man, it is said, was a monkey before he became a god.

'What I mean is we should not be impatient, Rome was not constructed in just a day; rice is half-cooked or burned from too much fire under the stove; the same is true with fruits, they are acrid and bitter when made to ripen out of turn.'...

Like a spring with a generous flow of water, Lantay and Dupil are twin streams coming from the mountain, at times flowing apart, sometimes merging; they are forked streams certain to reach the sea together.

As if in answer to Dupil's question, they saw the darkness broken by the light, 'Morning has come...' The two friends returned to their quarters while the guerillas one and all, were still deep in slumber."

-"The Forked Stream" ("Magkasangang Agos") from Free Country (Bayang Malaya) by Amado V. Hernandez (1970)

Of course, I should include at least one photo in this post!

CSHC's conference had a great apple theme, which also carried over into CSHC and CSNO's School Health Day at the Capitol. While the buttons cutely conveyed the appled-up motif, the conference break snacks did, too! Apple pastries (turnover? flaky goodness? two utterly yummy things?), apples, apple butter (OM NOM NOM), and apple cider!

More soon..