michee’s blog

 Remember when your parents said that they had eyes in the back of their heads. It's true they do...well sorta. Ever since I started working at a school, with mentally disabled children, I noticed that I can tell who is doing what without even looking. I guess it's all because you know their habits and what noises they make. They really test your patience's, but even if they are annoying and a pain in my butt, you can't help but to love them.

 I'm surprised that this semester is almost over, time flies, and thank goodness it does! This semester seems like a waste since I'm taking classes that I don't even need but that's what happens when you don't plan well. Although I am taking B&W photography, where I get to develop film the good ole' fashion way, that takes a lot of patience too but it's actually very cool.

 In the mean time cooking keeps me happy. I made brownies with a orange cream cheese frosting since I had some left over unsweetened chocolate, which I am very certain I used in the flourless chocolate cake but alas I could not find the recipe so I settled for the brownies which were quite delicious. I also made some coconut cupcakes, once with Daph and another time for Jessica's birthday, sadly the cupcakes I made for Jessica were kinda dry though she said she still liked it. I cooked ma po tofu, a spicy tofu dish, for international food day at work. I was a bit afraid that people wouldn't like it since it had a lot of garlic and chili but some people liked it. phew! I also cooked a dish with red and green pepper with basil, parsley, thyme, salt, peper and balsamic vinegar for yad though. And writing for the yad newsletter is to my great benefit going towards my volunteer hours of dieititics, yay!  hmm that was a big jumbled of food, oh well. One more thing I went to patal brothers, an Indian supermarket, and everything there was so intriging, I had no idea what half of the things were. Lemme tell you though I wanted to buy a lot of things, I was good though I bought only 3 things...maybe next time!

Also, watch "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" It is really cute, silly, romantic, fun film! I love it!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and I am lazy to write,here are the photos from the last post and some new ones as well.

Poor blog I neglected you and left a crazy post too. I shall write before I neglect you even more because of upcoming doom from school.
School is driving me nuts, actually it's the school system test that is driving me nuts, making me so nervous, sad, stressed, scared and ugh...aahhhhhhhhh!! I'm trying not to freak out about it but it comes creeping up in my conscious and all those emotions fill my thoughts. oh dear.   Just keep swimming. Relax, take it easy.

Now to a happier section! Cooking!! This is the reason I delayed posting since I didn't have the pictures to back up all the food I've been cooking, although I still don't have them but I'm close to getting them....Karin. Besides that, on a great Saturday afternoon Karin came over, we cooking and baked! It was so wonderful, probably one of the best days of my life, where I got to do nothing but cook and bake for about 5 hours straight. sigh...I wish I went to culinary school but no, so I settle with dietitian the closest thing to culinary and utilizing all those science credits. Anyways, we cooked risotto with asparagus, pesto sauce, lemon yogurt cake, oatmeal raisin cookies and brownies. Phew! I am so glad that Karin came to help, I don't think that I could have done all that without her. Thanks! This was all made for the dharma class the next day, except for the pesto 'cause that was for Nicole and Ellen, I'm happy to say that everyone enjoyed it. Yay! Plus that same day I went to a cobra starship concert and got my fish eye camera, courtesy of Nicole, thanks! So much fun!
Also, I went to mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey, this past weekend with Christine since there was a fair going on featuring all these different foods from parts of Japan. Unfortunately most of the food they were selling was pretty expensive. Although I did buy two items, which were cheaper and reasonably priced, I bought this triangular mochi filled with a black sesame paste (so delicious and light) and little steamed cakes filled with red bean and ones with black sesame. As you can tell I really like black sesame, unlike some people (just kidding). I really wanted to buy everything there, it all looked so cute, yummy and such nice packaging...maybe next time. I did buy snacks there in the supermarket, some candy(lemon and green tea fused with condensed milk) and green tea cakes filled with red bean and chesnuts (i think). We spent a lot of time there just looking around and admiring all the food. The day before I made chocolate chip cookies for Jessica (daughter #2) at 10 pm, the house smelled so good and it felt really good, in the end the cookies were given to Christine and then Lisa(daughter #1). I should also mention that I went to whole foods today with Jessica, after our museum trip, for dinner and I finally got to eat Indian food, i've been craving that for days, and yes I love whole foods even though it's quite pricey.
I think thats about it....picture will be up later.
 
Have a great day!

I have forgotten what I was going to write in the beginning. But since I'm watching Made of Honor and I've been thinking, which can be very bad since I think too much, about finding someone. That other person who will always be there for you, someone to give you a hug, open the doors, romantic evenings and make it all ok....sigh.
Oh snap out of it! Back to reality! There is no way in hell a guy like that would exist. Maybe back in the days of Shakespeare without all the death and drama. But if there is, only a small percentage of males are like that in the world. In today's cut throat-backstabbing-economic downfall-materialistic-shallow world. No one looks for that "beauty is skin deep" quality anymore. It's all about what people see on the outside now, you need the body, look, and money. This leads me to think that we should all wear blindfolds when we met others so we can't judge the person on their looks and such. Just like Julliard when they are interviewing the new students they but a big board in front of the interviewers therefore they can't judge the students on their looks and judge their talent instead. But I know that won't happen, I guess that is why blind dating was invented.  What a sad world we live in. On the bright side there are a lot of fishes in the sea and the right one is swimming towards you...hopefully.

Now refering to the title, I have made ratatouille! along with the the flourless chocolate and pesto. The flourless chocolate cake did not come out the way I wanted it to, it must have been because I didn't put parchment paper on the bottom of the pan, though the cake was actually quite tasty and chocolaty with a light brown crisp top. As for the ratatouille I actualy made three of then since there was so much leftover ingredients and it came so well with this great colourful look. The pesto, as always, a great sauce and it's so simple to make. I am so glad people liked all the food, it just gives me great pleasure to see others happy because of what I made.

I went to see Wicked on Tuesday and it was so good! I had read the book and now to watch it was perfect! Even though I sat all the way in the back in the mezzanine the view was pretty good ,since the chairs were all positioned in a stadium fashion, thank goodness it was because the whole auditorium was packed.
The stage was quite big and nicely decorated with a huge dragon on the top that moved manually, there was also a lot props. The performers sangso beautifully and very clear, they acted so much in character. The show had comedy, drama, romance and action. Although I wish I was there when the original performers were there, when Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda. Besides that you just have to see it!

Cooking time. I made tofu patties that day before I left to go se e Wicked because I had firm tofu and I needed to pack something for dinner. At first when I read all the ingredients to put in the patties I was skeptical, I mean there was cumin, thyme, paprika, basil, parsley, etc... Whoa! that's a lot of spices there and I was afraid that the patties were going to fall apart. No worries, they came out fine and tasted quite good. Although I would have to say that I might omit the flour and oatmeal next time, just cause it sounded weird to put in, though they had a purpose to keep the patties from falling apart. Almost forgot, I also made vegan oatmeal raisin cookies. Those did not turn out the way i thought it would. Though it makes for some good granola.

Next time I will make ratatouille, pesto sauce and flourless chocolate cake all for the monthly gathering. I hope it tastes good :\

Today I did a good deed with Karin, even though it was going to rain. We went to do some community service for Service Nation along with a bunch of other organizations, which was very helpful towards our youth group's goal of gaining more community service hours. Plus we got free things such as green recyclable bags, pens, shirts, rubber bracelets, pencil cases, thyme seeds and tons of useful information. Also, apparently Lil Mama was suppose to be there to give a free concert to all the people who were at the community service but I did not bother to stay that long and I really have no idea who she is except the fact she is one of the judges for MTV's America's Best Dance Crew....I think.

Of course after our hard work we needed a break, therefore we walked around park ave, lex ave (somewhere around there) to a do some sightseeing and to find this Italian restaurant that Karin had been to many times. Mind you there was some drizzling but nonetheless it was pretty good weather. After much walking, and looking, we found the restaurant and It was well worth the walk. The restaurant is called Pescatore, I saw the sign and thought fish? but I'm vegetarian Karin, though I knew she could nothave forgotten that or been that mean to let me suffer at an all meat restaurant. I saw the menu and I knew Karin was very nice, there were vegetarian dishes. yay! The pasta was delicious; I ordered the penne siciliana with sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, olives and a white wine sauce, the right portion and fresh bread with olive oil infused kalamata and picholine olives.

sigh...so yummy!

Now Karin being as nice as she is to show me this restaurant, I decided to return the niceness and bake her fresh chocolate chip cookies!! Which she should share....if she wants to. I'll post up the pictures after I bake the cookies.

Thanks for reading!

After much contemplation I decided to start a blog. A place to let out the ranting, random thoughts, practice my horrible grammar and best of all my cooking adventures!

First things first. A new semester of school has started, with that a whole new load of stress and obligations. Also with the economy going down the drain, poor lehman,merrill, wamu, aig, etc..., the future does not seem too great...at least for them. I must say lehman brothers surprised me since they have been in business for about 158 years, surviving the great depression!!, yet they can't even get through this recession. This just shows how bad our economy is, so sad.

Although the positive side to all this is the site of a new school with a real campus and new friends! Lets just say oh, what a night late last weekend. As for the economy, companies are merging like there's not tomorrow, which could be a possibility for those companies. Merrill merged with Bank of America, Lehman taken over by Barclays from the uk (?), AIG they're still trying to sort things out, wamu...bye bye and who knows what will happen next. Isn't that a scary thought?....Ok not so positive after all :\

As for cooking, the last thing I made was a German dark chocolate cake. (I only say German since it was made from German chocolate but you could make it from any other dark chocolate.) To make it sound fancy here is the original name of the cake Gâteau au chocolat fondant de Nathalie. However I would have to change the name since I strayed away from the recipe and modified it to fit the amount of ingredients. As for the consumers of the cake, I am very happy they liked it...phew!  I should mention that the recipe was from Clotilde, from chocolate & zucchini(so amazing), which she got from another chef. Click the link to see the recipe and the site!
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2003/10/meltinyourmouth_chocolate_cake.php

Wow, I wrote quite a bit. Hope you enjoyed it!...whoever reads it that is.