Korean food

I moved last week. The experience was a pain in the butt, but I'm fully settled-in now and am enjoying my new place. This place is wonderfully convenient too, with lots of restaurants close by. I went to one a few days ago called Buk Kyung II, a Korean restaurant. Its my first time to any Korean place, as a matter of fact.


First up was this, which was an assortment of Kimchi's. From left, its daikon, cabbabe and cucumbers. Not bad.


This was quite good! Its fried pork pieces in batter, and the sauce was lovely. Its very similar to Chinese style pork though. The next few pics are blurry; I guess I was quivering with hunger which resulted in shaky photos.


Bibinbap. This was my dish. I came here with Korean friends, and at first I was a noob and innocently eating the ingredients in my bowl, seperately. My friends took one look at me, squaked "Nooo!!!" and proceeded to teach me the proper way of eating binbinbap.

Apparently, you are supposed to stir stir stir! There is hot sauce in a bottle that you squish over the rice, then, stir like mad!!! The dish is packed with stuff; beef, carrots, taugeh, mushrooms, fried egg, lettuce and rice underneath. It takes quite a lot of stirring to get everything homogenized and the sauce properly incorporated.

We had other dishes too; they all came out blurry, but I'll post one more.


Bulgogi. I tried this, it was good too. I liked mine best, as it had hot sauce!

Buk Kyung II
151 Brighton Ave
Allston, MA

Garibaldi biscuits

I was walking around the chinese grocers the other day, and I found....garibaldi biscuits! I have not eaten these biscuits in ages, so I bought a large bag with about individual 40 packs. For those who don't know what garibaldi's are, they are thin square biscuits with a layer of raisins or currants sandwitched in the middle. Very delicious, I tell you. Allow me to introduce them to you:


Sadly, these biscuits that I bought were a sorry excuse for garibaldi's. First off, they are called "grape biscuits", which is rather odd. Secondly, there should be raisins squashed in between the biscuit. Instead raisins are squashed on top of the biscuits; the brown layer in between is just brown colouring! There was a huge grapey smell too, like grape soda. Eww.


Of course, these flaws did not stop me from eating every single piece. Hehehe!! My search for genuine garibaldi's continues...

Couch Potato

Apparently, couch potatoes come in many different shapes, sizes...and species.

Wazzuupp??Bring me a beer.

HIIT

Wow...its been over a month since my last post... I have been cooking, and I do have some lovely pics, but I am just too lazy to post. My doctor put me on the pill last month (not for birth control actually, long story..), and I put on 10 POUNDS since then. Yes, its been freaking me out. One day I was tugging on my jeans and it was so tight. I went to the gym and weighted myself and almost died when I saw the readout. Oh well....which leads me to my title. HIIT.

I tried out a new exercise program today called HIIT, which is High Intensity Interval Training. I read on the internet that HIIT is really effective at burning fat, because it throws the body into an anaerobic state during exercise, so it burns more fat than a slower paced, cardio workout. Also, after exercising, the body burns fat at a higher rate than usual becuase HIIT elevates the metabolism too.

HIIT is basically a 15-20 minute workout where you interplay 30 seconds of really intense, maximum-heart-rate workout with 1-2 minutes of workout at 60-70% heart rate. Man was I energized!! I have never felt so gooooood during and after a workout before! HIIT can work with lots of activities; running (interspearse sprinting with jogging), elyptical, biking, swimming....whatever.

I chose to do the stationary bike today. I rode so hard during the 30 sec bursts I am surprised that the bike did not hop a few steps forward. For my virgin effort, I did only 19 minutes. I felt like SuperGirl afterwards, so I did 80 crunches in 1 minute (usual is 70), ten pushups (usual is 7) and 40 leg lifts (that's usual). After that, I still felt really gungho, and was scanning around eagerly to see what else I could do. Then a little voice at the back of my head told me to stop and go home, because from experience, I know how easy it is to go from feeling like SuperGirl today to ShittyGirl tomorrow becuase of overexercising.

I plan to start slow, so for the first couple of weeks, I am only going to do 2-3 HIIT workouts per week. I can't wait for Thursday! =)

Chocolate chip cookies

I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies (CCC) today. Halfway through baking, I got bored looking at all the CCC clones I was making, so I tried getting creative. I took some dough and added cocoa powder and coconut flakes to it. When the cookies baked up, it tasted.....just OK. The coconut flavour wasn't that robust, and I couldn't detect the cocoa taste at all. But I think it made for preety cookies, with all the little coconut shards poking out. The CCC's were good though. I used the Nestle Toll House recipe as a base, but swapped in some Crisco for the butter. From previous trial and error, I find that Crisco really helps in retaining the shape of the cookie, and prevents over spreading.

Lilliputian city

I found this picture on the internet of a city skyline and modified it to create a "toy trainset" effect. The original:



And the modified version:

Crazy oblivious driver

God did a disservice to the human race by putting everybody's eyes at the front of their faces.

Really-man! Some people should have one eye at the front and the other one at the back of their heads. Or one at each side of the face like fishes so that they can scan all around them before they move.

So what happened today was this. I was peacefully running through some neighborhood and was about to run past a driveway behind a bush. All of a sudden, this stupid car came reversing out at top speed and almost knocked me down. I was only 1 foot away can! A split second later, the brainless girl driving swung her head my direction, and for a few seconds we just stood there; me with a "OMG she almost ran me over!" look on my face, and her with a "ZOMG I almost killed her" look in her eyes.

Aiyah, you live in that house, you know that there is a big bush obscuring your driveway, so dont shoot out like explosive diarrhea out of the driveway and knockdown any joggers/walkers who happen to be passing at that time. YOu know-ah, if I had an iPod with me, I would definitely have been knocked down like a skittle because I would not have heard her coming. As it was, when I heard her car, I only had time to take one step back. No toes crushed, phew...



So after running, I cooked dinner. I made pizza again. This time I added olives. I wanted to make other things, but I was too tired. Oh, I made brownies too. Its not dense enough. Its rather cake like.

Hmm, my food escapades are becoming boring. I should cook exciting foods next week.