Life on Easy Street Continues

I'm beginning to sense that Easy Street for me involves a lot of napping and cooking and eating. And there's nothing wrong with that. While the mother is here I am trying to prepare nice foods for her that she probably doesn't eat much of on her own. So for lunch yesterday, I stirred together a mushroom risotto (see below), which looks kind of gross but is one of my favorite easy meals. For dinner, I fixed my standard pesto/tomato/goat cheese pizza but didn't bother to take any pictures because I already have so many pizza pictures on this blog. Also because I forgot to.

This morning, I got it into my head that a tasty diner breakfast was in order. The first three slices of bacon stuck to the pan and had to be chipped loose, but as more fat was rendered, subsequent slices remained intact and pretty. Naturally, the sensible thing to do is to scramble eggs in the bacon fat, so this was carried out more or less successfully. I'm sure I lost at least one egg to the bottom of the pan, but I had adjusted for this and am pleased to report that my scrambled eggs emerged creamy and full of bacon flavor. Ferret nicely brought over a freshly baked loaf and this together with the eggs and bacon accounted for a marvelous breakfast. (Oh, he also brought over extra eggs because of course at the last minute I realized I only had 3 eggs to serve to 3 people. This would not do).

After breakfast, Ferret was a good sport and tried on a jacket we bought for my cousin Ping while my mom angled her laptop precariously so the image could be sent to Ping's mom in Taiwan. This was not quite successful so I took a picture to send instead.

After a couple of hours in lab for a meeting, I sprinted home (umbrella aloft) and literally threw together a dinner of baked salmon, red quinoa and green beans with candied walnuts. For once I managed to have everything finish cooking at around the same time. This was helped by the fact that I hardly had to prep anything. I believe dinner came together in half an hour. And that's my life on Easy Street.

Life on Post-Defense Easy Street

Yesterday was my first day back in lab since my defense. Since I wanted to minimize my hours in lab so I could rush home and spend some time with the mother, I woke up pretty early and had a nice mug of coffee with the Tony. As you can see, the mother is still on California time. Our days are sandwiched between some morning conversations with the relatives in Taiwan (usually about one particular delinquent cousin) and evening conversations with the same relatives (again, about this cousin). I try to stay out of these skyping sessions since it involves a lot of speaking at massive volumes to be heard.

I was able to wrap up my work in 6 hours or so and rushed home to drag the mother out for her daily walk. After some resistance on her part (walking makes me tired!), I successfully bundled her out of the house, although I was unable to get her to wear my cute gray peacoat that fits her perfectly in place of this horrifying baggy jean jacket she brought with her. It's really testament to the mother's adorableness that she can pull this look off at all.

Our first stop was at the neighborhood community garden. It was a lovely day and there were a couple of people out tending their plots. I'd expected to see more veggies and herbs, but perhaps it was still too early in the season for that.

After this little stop the real walk began. By real walk, I mean a nice slow amble about 2 miles long. One mile there and another mile back. We wandered up the Schuylkill River trail to the Waterworks and took a few more pictures. By the end of the walk my mom had somehow broken out in a sweat despite the brisk wind and very moderate temperature. So the walk was a great success!

After a bit of rest and some frantic eating of rice cakes and banana/blueberry smoothies, the mother decided to attempt a yellow pudding. Unlike the Bunny's tasty flan, this pudding consisted of a similar sugar syrup combined with a bland egg/milk custard. The end result was kind of a disaster as the mother burned the sugar syrup and refused to start over but cooked it together anyway. We ended up having to pour it away and eat the pudding with a separate sugar syrup I had previously made for my burnt sugar cake (despite the title, there is NOTHING that is actually burnt in the recipe). All in all, the texture of the pudding was lovely, but the flavor left something to be desired. I think the ideal compromise between the Bunny flan and this recipe may be the use of half a can of condensed milk with a dash of vanilla. Attempt number two will take place this evening perhaps.

Here is my little cat after two different photoshop manipulations. I think the first picture is the soft and faded action and the second is the seventies action (both from pioneer woman). I'm still not sure how much I like the seventies one but I'm really into soft and faded. Mostly, I like the cat and have been blowing kisses into his tum all night long. I'm just glad he's getting better and I hope to still be companions for at least ten more years.

Tasty Fried Rice Cakes

This dish has been a favorite of mine for quite some time. I would try to order it at dimsum places but whatever they served before me was never as good as my mom's. The last time she was here (3 years ago??) she made them for me but I had since mislaid the recipe. Now that she is visiting again, I lost no time pestering her to make these for me again. They are as good as I remember and this time I will engrave the recipe in as many places as possible to mitigate against potential loss. I had planned on taking an artistic picture to please the Bunny but my mom piled so many on my plate and they were so mouthwatering that all I ended up with was this hastily taken picture. Oh well. A new camera does not a photographer make, obviously. Better luck next time!

Tasty Fried Rice Cakes

Some taro, chopped to small cubes

Some dried onion

Vegetable oil

Cook the above together until soft. add a splash or two of soy sauce for color and a hint of flavor.

1. In separate bowl, mix 1 package of rice flour with 8.5 rice-cups (this seems to be a typical unit of measurement amongst my relatives. i believe 1 rice-cup is about 3/4 of a normal cup) of water. Add this mixture to the pot and cook until thickened (sort of mashed potato looking). Stir constantly during this time.

2. Scoop up thick mixture into containers, cover loosely with plastic wrap and microwave. For the containers i used (a 8x8 glass baking dish and another smaller dish) and my microwave it was 15 min.

Sorry about the vagueness of this recipe; this is often what happens when I learn how to make something from my mom. It's all "some of this" check it, add "more of that." Most importantly, I know how to make this dish for myself now. Too bad for the rest of you!

Update: The next time we made this we used 9 rice cups of water and fit it all into the glass dish and microwaved for 18 minutes. Perfection!

Note: The microwave I used here is weaker than the normal microwave.  You basically want to poke the rice cake with a chopstick and see if anything sticks.  When I make this again in a normal microwave I will update the time.

New Camera!

The kind bunnies generously gave me a new little camera as a graduation gift (yes I successfully defended and am actually a fake doctor now!). It's the Canon PowerShot SD1200 Elph and it's perfect for me and I love it:

In addition to camera, Bunny was here visiting so she also gave me a quick tutorial in photoshop. I hope to be posting better looking pictures than I have previously, but I make no promises. Sadly, I've eaten several meals already since the Bunny left but I kept on forgetting to take pictures. Too hungry I guess. More posts to come, I promise.