Pavlova!

Backlog.. so busy lately!

Been so busy with crew, classes and such. Seems like I have a pretty significant workload this year. But today was my first day after crew practice where I got to come home, since dropping 9am French C&C. I managed to whip up some chicken and asparagus, in the bacon I'm still trying to get rid of. Not the healthiest thing, but whatever, it's tasty. Lined everything with some cucumber and just some plain rice. Simple, quick. I didn't even manage to eat this until dinnertime cause I was so busy with class and stuff and crew physicals. Ate in the new Charles Commons dorm place thingy. They certainly have a problem with lines, but the place is nice. Very comfortable seating and it certainly doesn't look like a dining hall. I think I'll hang out there for more than just the food, do some studying there sometime over dinner.


This one was from a while back, on the 8th. Made some fried rice with egg, mixed frozen veggies and of course bacon again. Then sauted some green beans with bacon, and then took one of my frozen scallion pancakes and heated it up and cut it up. Fast and easy. Sounds like the theme of my unfortunate eating habits lately...

Fishies!

This is my new bento box! It's way cute. and the little chick at the bottom holds rice seasoning. But anyway, my bento for today was just some rice, some tortellini with alfredo sauce, bell peppers, and italian sausage, then for some more vegetables, I took a little bit of bacon in a pan and kinda stirfried that up with some frozen mixed veggies. I know, it's all way fat, but it was super good. Here's the pic:

MY FIRST BENTO!!!

Ohmygosh, my bento box came in today! It has fishies and says "Happy Together"... I'll take a pic of the cover later. This was my bento for today, I only had like 45 minutes to make it because I was in a rush to get to the DMC to work on crew dvd stuff. But made some sushi rice, sprinkled with nori furikake, stir-fried some chicken, asparagus, onions and garlic with some dark soy and a tiny bit of corn starch to make it thick. I also tried out my new egg molder, so I have half a hard-boiled egg there between the cucumber slices, in the shape of a teddy bear! Apparently JUMBO eggs are too big to fit in the mold, so next time I buy eggs I'll downgrade to large so I don't do a lot of nasty squishy squishy to the side of the eggs.

On another note, I'm glad orientation is finally over with. So over being an SA and stuff, now I gotta concentrate on school, GRE's (i mean, start), and of course crew. And crew's already starting to be a bit of a bore. Maybe it's just cause we're not on the water yet and doing all the usual pre-crew buildup crap.

Who knows... I don't need any more drama right now. Save it for later. Or I'll break down. I'm already sick, at least it's not strep like J had... I was really worried the reason why I wasn't getting better was because it was bacterial, in which case I would need to take antibiotics, which would really make my system shot. I can't mess it up anymore right now, my goal is to eat healthy and smaller portions, go to the gym more, and study lots. School is starting, I need to get my act together. And be where I need to be in crew too.

Red Bean Paradise

So if you've ever been through an asian grocery store, or an authentic Chinese place, area, people, whatever.. You might've heard of this infamous "red bean" stuff that we people use as dessert. Beans? For dessert?

Well to first start off, it shouldn't be THAATT weird of a concept. Beans are treated like a basic starch oftentimes. Their texture, mushiness (yuck) etc. And besides, JELLY BEANS? HEHEELLOOOOOO! Haha. And vanilla "bean"? So the concept of sweet/dessert with the word bean isn't completely unfounded and exists in even Western food culture. But back to my concept of a starch, many types of starches can be both savory and sweet. Rice pudding is a prime example.. since the basic flavor of rice is pretty simple and modifiable, adding some shuga n' spice is all that you need to kick it up to being a dessert. Same things with beans.

I grew up with red bean soup, Cantonese style, all my life. Its one of the standard desserts that they give out after Cantonese banquets, or something to have on the chill at home for whenever, or to mix into ice cream or milk to make a red bean ice drink. ANything to sweeten it up will do well. J even suggested putting it on greek yogurt.

But until recently, I only knew of it as some bean.. just as red bean. But apparently it has a real name: azuki beans! They're tiny and much smaller than typical beans (more on this later and its implications on the flavors), and are dark red like so:


So to make red bean soup, one washes the beans first, they're relatively clean to begin with, but just for good measure. Then let them soak in water for however long you like. The longer the better, just makes cooking time that much shorter (or maybe that's just a myth). Then into a big pot, with lots of water, and boil. Sooooo simple. BUT from how I learned, not through the hard way, but just being taught, you boil for several hours, more like simmer, until they reach the desired softness.. I like them as mushy as.. well.. cooked beans, but my mother likes a little chew, so you can actually feel like you're eating the bean. At that point, you add sugar to taste. I went through almost half a pound of sugar on my last batch, but it was big.

Another thing you might want to add is some sort of citrus peel. My mom adds orange peels, a little bit, supposedly to offset the unfortunate side effect of beans (you know.. GAS). Perhaps there's an interaction between the citric acid, or some other chemicals in the skin. I like zesting a lemon, finely mincing the zest, and tossing it in with the beans once they're a little more concentrated. It ends up being fairly sweet (to your taste of course) and interestingly, to me it doesn't taste like beans. My THEORY on this is the fact that these beans are so small, so their surface to volume ratio is much greater than normal beans. As a result, its the inner starchiness that gives the bean flavor, and because these have less, less bean flavor! Voila!

Yoochoy, choy sum.. hiza-wha?!?!?

Mothers always tell you to eat your vegetables in American culture right? Well, my mom always told me to eat my choy. Choy, in Cantonese (maybe other dialects as well), refers to most types of leafy greens that the we, Cantonese people, often steam. Well, its not so much steaming, but quickly boiling.. like parboiling without the cooking afterwards part. The use of really hot boiling water, and throwing washed and picked greens, like the above choy sum (literally, heart of the greens), until they're just cooked through yet still very tender and crisp, and quickly taking them out again. A light coating of "cooked oil" (my mother always made a huge pot of boiling oil, would fry up a bit of potatoes or garlic into it just for flavor, and then reserve the oil in a bottle specifically for use in this purpose), and soy sauce would complete the dish. It leads to a very pure taste in the greens, not at all overcooked, and leaves a lot of texture to be savoured. Unlike many Western cooked greans, they're not a mashed up pile of.. who knows what. No cheese, no excessive use of cream. Pure, simple, healthy. Its the Cantonese counterpart to a crisp salad, nutrition wise, and is often the primary side-dish to most meals.

I was surprised to find this at Korean grocery store.. not so much cause it would be an unlikely candidate of their produce department, but simply that I hadn't seen much of this at all since not living near Chinatown. On my receipt from HanAhReum, this was named yoochoy as well. Never seen it like that before, but perhaps... I looked it up on wikipedia, and apparently its sometimes referred to as yu choy sum, as a whole. Interesting...

Well, this was a half of my lunch.. I made more onigiri today as the starch component of my meal. This time instead of splitting the rice into 3 obscenely large triangles, I went with 4 and decorated each differently. No need for pictures, they were gone immediately :)

Why Splenda is Safe

I finally looked it up on Wikipedia, and this is why sucralose, or otherwise known as Splenda, is safe.

Safety

Sucralose has been accepted by several national and international food safety regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives, The European Union's Scientific Committee on Food, Health Protection Branch of Health and Welfare Canada and Food Standards Australia-New Zealand (FSANZ).The acceptable daily intake for sucralose is 5 mg / kg of body weight per day.

"In determining the safety of sucralose, FDA reviewed data from more than 110 studies in humans and animals. Many of the studies were designed to identify possible toxic effects including carcinogenic, reproductive and neurological effects. No such effects were found, and FDA's approval is based on the finding that sucralose is safe for human consumption." (FDA Talk Paper T98-16)

There is evidence that Sucralose can cause cancer. "Sucralose was weakly mutagenic in a mouse lymphoma mutation assay" (from DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Food and Drug Administration, 21 CFR Part 172, Docket No. 87F-0086 http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr980403.html)

Concerns have also been raised about the effect of sucralose on the thymus gland, a gland that is important to the immune system. A report from NICNAS cites two studies on rats, both of which found "a significant decrease in mean thymus weight" at a certain dose.^[1] (These and other studies were considered by regulators before concluding that sucralose was safe.)

It should also be noted that the chlorine atoms are covalently bonded to the carbon atoms in the sucralose molecule, essentially making it a chlorocarbon. Many chlorocarbons are toxic; however, sucralose is unlike these chemicals because it is extremely poorly soluble in fat and does not store in fat like most chlorinated hydrocarbons. Sucralose does not break down or dechlorinate either.[1]

The bulk of sucralose ingested does not leave the GI tract and is directly excreted in the feces. The small amount that is absorbed from the GI tract is removed from the blood stream by the kidneys and excreted in the urine. Sucralose is digestible by a number of microorganisms and is broken down once released into the environment.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose

But according to this following website, in which the above graphic was taken, splenda is oh-so-not-safe-because-it-contains-chlorine and is written by some hippie named Shirley.. :) source: http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/nutraswt.htm

It just pisses me off how people don't understand science and can make claims that something is unsafe based on scientific animal-modeled studies in which dosages are often 100-1000 times more than normal human consumption. Not only that, but they take those results out of context, for food safety tests have completely separate guidelines than toxicity level tests. EVERYTHING we eat has a certain toxicity and is consequently studied, and I have full confidence in the FDA for determining that sucralose is perfectly safe. Sure, no long term studies have been made regarding it, because it's only been in research for less than a few decades. But if it were a drug that would save your alcoholic hippie friends from killing their livers, would you wait for long-term results (postponing a much needed thing for half a century) before you released the drug, just to make sure it's safe, despite conclusive animal models and short term clinical trials that determine its safety?

In response to the thymus gland shrinking, well.. it naturally does that after you reach a certain age, and in response to weight loss as well. So naturally, one can say.. splenda causes severe weight loss and thymus shrinkage over time. OH NO! ;) Well, of course the rats were losing weight, it's calorie-free! WHatever their normal diets were, the calorie content of those sugars were being offset by splenda so naturally this would occur in studies. Noone's telling you to eat Splenda all day. And the fact that these were all taken into consideration before the FDA approved Splenda means the circumstances in which the studies were performed were not directly comparable to typical human consumption. Duh.

What BSt :) Get over your natural foods kicks, people. Food chemistry's where it's at.