Day 61: Dim Sum (That's Sum Taste of Heaven)

BBQ Pork Glazed Buns and Sesame Balls

Fried Turnip Cakes

Shiu Mai (which I sadly did not desire to try)

Scallops in Rice Roll (also did not try)

Fried Taro Puffs

Status: Dim Sum--Also known in these parts as Dim YUM. (Elite Restaurant)

Satisfaction: 11. Out of 10.

Associated with: The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom

Perfunctory shout-out to the dim sum diaries crew: Allen, Jen, Sujin, and Jordan...you guys are golden. Like the inside of a gooey golden cream bun.

Okay, so there's no inherent connection between dim sum (yum!) itself and this book, but I was browsing through my pictures and realized a) that it looks like something divinely originated (I'm almost hungry again just thinking about it--or I would be if I wasn't still experiencing a food coma...11 hours later), and b) I took five pictures. Five and heaven? You guessed it. The Five Dishes You Meet in Heaven. Or something like that.

On a food tourist's note, I would highly recommend this place. Not only does Elite give the usual places in San Francisco a run for their money (which is saying something), its ambience also doesn't make you feel like you've just stepped into the middle of a middle-aged-bickering-Chinese-women stampede. Granted, the lack of carts being pushed around and names of dishes being hollered at you in Chinese was disappointing (in that sense, this is an unusually American-friendly place), but it's still really good nosh for the empty stomachs (and wallets).

Day 60 (5.5.12): Chocolate PB Cookie-Center Cupcakes with Sweet Peanut Butter Frosting

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie-Center Cupcakes with Sweet Peanut Butter Frosting

Status: Homemade

Satisfaction: 10! Or at least I hope so.

These cupcakes were the products of combined stress/anxiety over real-life problems which translated into a total baking overdrive (c'est la vie of a graduate student, no?) and a friend's birthday that just passed. So I combined, created, amalgamated a handful of recipes, and this is what happened! The Giant Tower of Babylon. Or more like the Leaning Tower of Delicious. (Seriously, guys--could you resist even looking at it?)

This is essentially what happens what cocoa meet Reese's lovers and they have awesome little PB chocolate babies. Well, really big babies. Huge babies, actually. And prego babies, since they're filled with gooey peanut butter cookie centers. God, I love my life.

And yes, I'm aware that the slightly perverse will think of these little babies as a tower of poop-like proportions. Well, boo you because you didn't get any anyway.

If you liked the photos and/or recipes, feel free to leave a comment! I'd love to hear what you think. (Recipes below the cut.)

Oh, and shout out to Cailey, Kim, Rebecca, and Vanessa--for being honorary-in-the-presence-of-these-cupcakes Scrumdiddlyumptious perusers. Hi five!

Day 59: Greens Salad with Fat Baby Carrots (Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall...)

Status: Dining Hall (Covel)

Satisfaction: Actually, a 10. But then again, I was a hungry post-practice swimmer and it's really hard to ruin a salad that you make yourself. And that's free.

Associated with: Humpty Dumpty

'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.'

There's something slightly eerie about whole hard-boiled eggs. Maybe it's that I've read too much Carroll, but there really is an almost human aspect to them when you look at them for a really long time. 

An entire section of my senior honors thesis was devoted to the famous line by Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland (so it's appropriate that he gets his own day of food for thought):

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

I love that line! If you ever want to have a stimulating, scintillating (I also love that word) conversation about the significance of language mastery and adult authority in Alice--well, you know where to find me.

Day 58 (5.3.12): Gigantic Strawberries! (Just Don't Anthropomorphize Them)

Gigantic Strawberries!

Status: Farmer's Market (for free from my favorite vendor!)

Satisfaction: 9.

Associated with: Gushers commercials

Did anybody else find Gushers commercials vaguely disturbing back when they used to be played every 5 seconds between shows? I did. And while the idea of morphing teenagers' heads into giant pieces of fruit that look gruesomely similar to a case of the bubonic plague sounds like a good idea in theory--oh wait, it doesn't. 

Never mind. Good job, marketing team.

Day 57: Assorted Rainbow Donuts (You Guessed It--It's Rainbow Fish Time!)

Assorted Rainbow Donuts

Status: Brought to class by Rebecca, who has ingratiation down to a T

Satisfaction: 7. It would have been a 10, but the fact that my donut was summarily knocked out of my hand after I took one nibble killed it a bit.

Associated with: The Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister

Rainbows! Who doesn't love them, especially when they're edible, and especially when they're donuts? 

The morals of this great children's picture book:

1. You're special. Just like everyone else.

2. If you're especially special, everyone else who is only averagely special will dislike you for it, so get rid of your bling quick.

Day 56: Pine Nut Cranberry Salmon Salad (Anthropomorphizing Before Lunch)

Pine Nut Cranberry Salmon Salad

Status: Homemade

Satisfaction: 8.

Associated with: Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish"

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

I came across this poem just today, actually, a few hours before I sat down to eat my doctor/family-ordered dose of salmon for the day. (I'm personally not a huge fan of savory-type meats in anything, much less in my salads--but c'est la vie.) It's worth perusing, if only because anthropomorphizing your meals is a good way to  become more environmentally-conscious, i.e. another way of saying that you'll lose your appetite and become a lifelong vegetarian after reading things like these.

Day 55: Hummus + Homemade Apricot "Tamarind" Date Chutney (As Sound as the Flat Earth Theory)

Hummus and Homemade Apricot "Tamarind" Date Chutney

Status: Homemade. A bit of a technical failure.

Satisfaction: 8.

Associated with: Non Sequitur

You know when you try to make one thing and end up making something entirely different? That's what happened with this "tamarind" (read: apricot + dates) chutney. I read online that a blended mixture of apricots, dates, prunes, and lemon juice would make a suitable substitute for tamarind paste, but apparently these were the same people who created the Flat Earth Society because they were dead wrong (i.e. the flat-earth believers and theorists of yore, not the people who created the site dedicated to studying said believers and theorists). It tasted more like a sweet apricot/date jam than anything else. Therefore, in honor of this momentous but still highly delicious failure, a lovely Non Sequitur comic memorializing this grossly overstated movement.

Below the cut: Homemade Apricot "Tamarind" Date Chutney Recipe