Forgive me, oh culinary gods, for I have majorly sinned...

P.S: btw folks, HAPPY FALL !! :)

So. I knew I was totally lying when I promised I would post regularly every week and keep you guys updated on all the shenanigans I have been up to this semester. Turns out this semester has been crazier than I had originally planned it to be and well......here we are a month and a half later, with no new blog post. I honestly should be sent to hell for making promises I know I can't keep. BUT I have been cooking/baking/doing culinary explorations I swear! I kinda have to, or else I'd really starve. It's just really hard to blog when you just want to eat dinner and get onto the next 10 million things on your to-do list. 

Hopefully I will have time this semester to update you all on the things I have been up to this semester but for now, I leave you all with more Pusheen and a real promise to blog more in the future! So that's it for today, hope y'all have a great, great day!  

Lemon Almond Madeleines

I wish my life was as simple as Pusheen's

So several things happened when I arrived back to school:

• I moved off-campus for the first time into a 9-room house 5 minutes away and realized that the house was absolutely disgusting and that my room smelled like a wet dumpster.
• I then had a tiny breakdown on the phone with my parents, where they promptly told me it was all my fault and I had to suck it up.
• I went shopping for tons of Lysol and Febreze
• I cleaned for two days straight.

So yeah, it's been quite week. But at least now I'm almost settled which means I can finally go back to my beloved baking. Which brings me to these madeleines.

Summer 2013

Pusheen had a way better summer :P

Guess who's back??

That's right, me! I'm back and ready to blog again!

Due to my test and unexpected family issues, I've been on bit of hiatus for the past two weeks. Sorry for the hold-up, I swear I haven't abandoned you all!

Since I'm at the airport now and not really in any mood to blog about food, I guess I kinda wanted to write a short thing about my first summer away from school.

Crazy-Good Lemon Bars

Who here, besides me, has been keeping up with the latest season of The Next Food Network Star? 

Wait--that's right, nobody is because you know why? It freaking sucks balls.

Excuse my rather vulgar language but honestly, the Food Network isn't what it used to be. Don't get me wrong, I love the network and most of its shows and chefs. BUT, this latest season of FN Star made me seriously want to gouge my eyeballs out. 

What was so frustrating about it is that it had so much potential. It had a great batch of finalists, with several particularly strong cooks like Viet Pham (who once beat Bobby Flay in Iron Chef America, for heavens sake). They all had good points of view. They (mostly) knew how to cook. But as the ridiculous challenges came on, they were all picked off one by one, some for the most retarded of reasons. Some finalists, like the snotty and angry Danushka, they left on to create "drama" and some finalists weren't even given a fair chance (I feel so bad for poor Daniella, who was kicked off in the first episode). Now, I'm not saying the three finalists still left aren't good. I'm just mad that the ones I was really rooting for got booted out just because they didn't do particularly well that week

Maybe I really should learn to care less about these things. Because so what if one of my favorites got to be the next FN star? I probably won't watch their shows anyway. 

In yo face, Food Network.

Anyways, the real reason I mentioned this show (and went off on a crazy rant) is because on one of the episodes, the contestants were asked to taste a plate of food and describe it as best as they could without using generic words like "good" or "delicious" or "tasty," things that apparently "mean nothing to viewers." Which then got me thinking about just how many times I used those terms in my last post about NYC. And how terrible of a food writer I was. I mean, at least I could do some creative brainstorming beforehand. 

So as of now, I have resolved to become a better food blogger and save my special collection of overused food terms for only things I think are truly great. For example, these Crazy-Good Lemon Bars.

Pigging Out Around the Big Apple

Today was quite a close-to-perfect day.

Pretty quiet and uneventful but peaceful and happy. My parents fussed a little in the morning but soon enough, they left me alone to my own devices. My dad went shopping for a cake and came back with the cutest Asian fruitcake, just like the ones I used to have as a kid. He also brought back roughly my weight in fresh fruit, because there was apparently a great sale going on and he "couldn't help himself." 

Well, at least the fruit was delicious. Especially the Japanese Nijisseiki Pears. Let me tell you, these things are heaven. So juicy and succulent, with a smooth yellow skin that you don't need to peel. I think I may have to temporarily separate from my beloved mangos for a while, because I think this is all I will be eating over the next few days. They were so good that I decided to do a little research online for any Asian-pear related desserts. Unfortunately this fruit is traditionally best enjoyed fresh as it is, but I did find an interesting recipe for ginger-pear ice cream that I thought would be fabulous as a custard cream for macarons. But then I found a recipe for these beautiful yuzu-ginger macarons and...pretty soon I had forgotten about my original endeavor and wound up for an hour on dailydelicious. Such is life.

Anyways, today we will venture from the recipes/boring stories of my life and head into a blog-adventure around NYC, to some of the places I have visited and loved the food from.

Guess someone else wants to go too.

The Cupcakes of Birthday Eve

Birthdays. They can elicit a variety of responses from people.

"Oh cool, it's my birthday? Yay!"

"Guess I can really party tonight!"

"No way, already? I thought I just had one."

"Looks like I forgot again this year."

"Who has time for this crap? Because I certainly don't."

"I'm sooooo old now...."

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, everyone liked it when it was their birthday. No one threw sad faces or moped around or threw up their hands and complained. No, they simply wore their pretty clothes, received all well wishes and presents, and smushed cake into their faces. It seems to me the older we get, the more we all like to hate growing up. And sure, it's understandable. To an extent. But I think some people take it a tad too far. They really should just take a shot or something, relax, and enjoy their special day.

Me, personally? I love it when it's my birthday. 

Pusheen likes her b-day too.

Baking With My BFF: Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Today will probably be a short post, since I just wasted about 2 hours fixing up my blog and making it more...well "me" hehehe. 

As you can see from the lovely new additions on the top and sides (especially the lovely fat Madame Pusheen), I have added tabs to make it easier for people to navigate by posting links to recipes and useful tips as well as links to all my favorite blogs in the world. I assure you, it by no means is complete, it's just the ones I can think up of on the spot. I will be adding to it as I go. Hopefully.

Anyways, onto the CAKE.

Screw da germs.

Korean Food Adventures: Ep.1 - Rolled Omelette with Seaweed

Today was supposed to be a great day. I woke up extra early and jumped into studying as soon as I finished breakfast so I could food blog later. 

Sitting outside and smelling the roses

Today, however, I discovered how horrible I am at food blogging. Meaning that I cannot take pictures and cook/bake at the same time without screwing something up.

I thought it was gonna be easy. I had an easy recipe and all the ingredients (thank god I did not see that pack of seaweed last week). Set the pan on low heat to keep the eggs from cooking too fast. Prepared everything before hand. Tried to take it slowly, step by step.

I was so wrong. 

The Ten Commandments of Procrastibaking

I think today is definitely one of those ugh days. 

I mean, it was fine. Nothing special, but nothing very exciting either. Maybe it's because it's almost August. Maybe because I'm about to go back to school in 20 days. Maybe it's because my birthday is Sunday and I feel terrified of beginning a new decade in my life. Or maybe it's because I'm in withdrawal from a two-day long writer's high. I dunno. 

Gosh, I hate being a girl sometimes. It makes me so damn moody. 

So...the Ten Commandments of Procrastibaking:

Or you could try Pusheen's way.

Procrastibaking, according to Urban Dictionary, is really what it sounds like. It's what a compulsive, passionate baker does when they don't want to do whatever they're really supposed to be doing. I stumbled upon this term a few months ago and I knew, as soon as I read it, that I was one of these guilty bakers. Who probably should not have made those 20 banana bread muffins at 10 o'clock the night before her Biochemistry test. But in my defense, everyone needs hobbies right? Especially college students. They have it the worst. At my school, you'd probably need to go to an insane asylum just to catch your breath and mentally recover from a really grueling week.

Point aside, whether you are a procrastibaker or just a person wanting to satisfy your midnight heroin-like craving for chocolate chip cookies, there are still a few rules to baking that you need to observe. 

(In hindsight, I really should change my title to just "the Ten Commandments of Baking" because technically there is no difference between the two, other than the fact that one is slightly bad and the other one not)

Lessons Learned from English Class

Day 2 of blogging and all is going well (except my studying). Yesterday was a very exciting day for me as I had a magical epiphany about baking that somehow came together into a Treatise on Macarons (see below). 

On a different topic this fine day, I was sitting in my yard trying to concentrate on practice problems when I had another slew of inspirational thoughts come to me about future blogging ideas/things I would most definitely write about in the future. And one thing I have picked up so far in my short life is that when inspiration hits you, you don't let go. Ever. Because it's like that perfect piece of clothing you find at the mall. If you don't buy it, you will probably never find it again. 

3 pages of bullet points later, I also realized several things:

1. How am I going to have enough time to do this?
2. Whatever, this is going to be awesome!
3. I think some of these ideas stray a tad too far from baking/cooking.
4. Oh well, that's okay! I did say this was going to be about baking and random epiphanies about life.
5. Now...what to blog on today?

A (unrefined) Treatise on Macarons

So. I will confess. I did not intend to post more than once today but I have to admit that the only reason I started this again was because this summer I had absolutely nothing to do except study for this dreadful standardized test that will probably drain away my life and soul in two weeks and waste time on the internet. So I went and looked for foods online that I really really wanted to try to make once I got back to school. This included not only food blogs but also wish-list shopping on Amazon, FN.net videos, countless Youtube tutorials. Yup, I'm pretty desperate.

In my many wanderings I discovered macarons and immediately I knew I wanted to make them. But I was stuck at home, with no baking supplies and very unsupportive parents, so resigned, I waited it out on my macaron ambitions until today when I finally cracked, said "screw you" to my review books, and wrote this stupid thing on macarons. Actually I think it's kinda awesome. It's what I've surmised about macarons after two months of leisurely internet surfing and I think it's pretty entertaining to read. Note though that it's not really about recipes or flavor suggestions but mostly about really what a macaron is and what it means to people. And I apologize for many parentheses. I like making self-comments on stuff I write.

Warning: it's long and if you're not interested in macarons than forget it; go read something else.

The Brownies That Started It All...

First blog post yay! (If anybody reads this things haha...)

Nothing much to say other than "Hello, stranger!" from me (and also my favorite stuffed animals)! I hope you will enjoy what I have planned for this second blog attempt. For more info on me, please read the side description -->

This blog will not be just on baking/food but will also be about random things that happen in my life that I feel I should record for...unknown future purposes. I hope it will be as enlightening and constructive for you as it is sanity-saving for me. I'm sorry, but I don't handle college very well. The anxiety gets to me.

Having said that, for the record, I am an entirely normally human being and I love baking for my friends and family. I only started the summer of my sophomore year and have been baking consistently + food porn researching only for the past 12 months. I am still only a beginner and hopefully going through with this blog will make me a less amateur baker.