A Link To My AAS1100 Project

HEY GUYS! Guess who's still alive??

So YEAH...since I still have a billion and a half things to do before the semester ends, I will keep today's post extremely extremely short but leaving you all with the link to my AAS 1100 project website I said I was going to do months ago. You may notice that a lot of it, style wise is similar to this blog but I hope you get a chance to take a look at it and read about my journey cooking through some of our most favorite Chinese American dishes in restaurants today.

And with that note, here is the link to my short blog, Redeeming Chinese Takeout. 

YOLO Baking Challenges: Ep. 2 - The Ispahan Macaron

So spring break was last week and while everyone was off traveling to beaches, Disneyland, basically anywhere but Ithaca, I decided to stay here and work. And work. I mean, it's what I've been wanting to do anyway but still...it was sad for the first few days...until I decided to start another crazy baking project. 

Remember in July when I wrote this extremely long, passionate, rambling thing about macarons? And how I haven't really mentioned it since then (which is weird, considering how basically obsessed I was about them for months before I started this blog)?

China 2014 Reflections

Because my huge midterm for AAS 1100 was this past Thursday and because recently I've been feeling rather reflective and nostalgic, I thought it would be appropriate to write down some thoughts about my trip to China during my winter break. I know this post was supposed to put up last week but I'll be honest, I had a lot of difficulty writing this. There were just so many feelings that I didn't know how to articulate into words. But hopefully, I was able to do it some justice in the end.

So why is my trip relevant to this class, you may ask? Well, if you take a closer look at the semi-essay/reflection below, here are some thoughts I've been bottling up for quite some time.

Introducing My New YOLO Series and Ep.1: Chocolate Irish Cream Cake

Despite what I said about my mission to direct my blog in more academic directions for this semester, there are sometimes those days when I need an excuse to let loose and bake whatever the heck I want, no matter how much time I don't have to spare or the amount of butter that goes into the recipe. After all, that's what ~procrastibaking~ was originally about right? Can't stray too far from my roots. 

SO...what I have decided to do is, in addition to my weekly academic posts, I will be starting a new blogging series simply titled "YOLO Baking Challenge" for now, in which I get to do something that's not very much not part of my normal baking repertoire, something so indulgent/fancy/overly-ambitious that I can only try it once for both practical and financial reasons. They will not be weekly posts. but I guess at minimum, they will probably be once or twice a month, depending on how busy I am with exams/papers/lab (although that hasn't really deterred me in the past hehehe).

Teriyaki Chicken and Pineapple Fried Rice

I feel strangely, wonderfully invigorated today after deciding to restart this blog yesterday (as I was well...supposed to be studying for my Human Development exam), like I just came off of an adrenaline high. Guess blogging does bring more meaning in my life after all.

As I was thinking about how to make today's post relevant to both my blog and to the topics we discussed in class Thursday and going through my notes, I suddenly decided to re-watch one of the video lectures we discussed in class about "Dubious Gastronomy," narrated by Robert Ku, an Asian American Studies professor at SUNY Binghamton. I will post the video below (it's pretty long) but basically Professor Ku's whole lecture was focused on the stigmatization by Asians of certain culturally-adapted Asian-American foods, like Chop Suey, California Rolls, and dishes made with SPAM, distinctly "fake" and "unauthentic" foods created to appeal to the conservative American palate and how inaccurate and ignorant it is to even label something as "authentic." As Robert Ku says:

             "The Asian presence [in America] is a dubious thing, neither legitimate nor 
              authentic, neither Asian nor American. It is perpetually liminal, always 
              conditional, never value free, and unnaturally hovers above, below, and in between 
              easier discrete categories." 

Returning to Blogger-Universe and My (Overly-Ambitious) Future Plans

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted a new blog entry. The last time I posted was October 16 and here we are now on February 27, almost four months later and I haven't fulfilled a single promise I made to you guys. So many things have happened over the past few months (finished another semester of college, went to China, started my penultimate semester of college etc.) that I'm not sure where even to start.