Local food crisis

[21:42] me: i'm really tempted to go to WF and get chips. I have a chips craving right now. dunno if i should give in
[21:42] Steve: you s hould
[21:42] Steve: you need the fat on you
[21:42] me: am worried about the global food crisis and i feel bad spending money on snacks
[21:43] me: it doen'st seem fair that i should indulge myself when other peopel cna't even buy staples let alone nutritious things like meat and veg that i take for granted.
[21:43] Steve: girl, global food crisis is brought on by development of farmland and factors far beyond your control
[21:43] Steve: also, you have a right to food
[21:43] Steve: just like everyone else
[21:43] Steve: not like you are getting fat
[21:43] Steve: you need the extra weight
[21:43] me: yes but i dont' ave a right to spoil myself
[21:43] me: i could just eat a piece of toast or something.
[21:43] Steve: ...
[21:44] me: i don't know what's causing the crisis. The way i was raised, everything is rich people's fault and if i can buy too many snakcs, that means ii'm turning into rich people.
[21:44] Steve: everything is not rich peoples fault
[21:44] Steve: and you are not turing into rich girl
[21:44] Steve: rich girl would have 30 pairs of shoes
[21:45] Steve: and be fat
[21:45] Steve: you are neither
[21:45] me: i have a computer and i just dropped $400 on a new bike
[21:45] me: also, rich girl would be super skinny and tan.
[21:46] me: in poor countries poor people are thin and rich people are fat. in developed countires like the USA it's inverted because thinness is a sign of social status.
[21:46] Steve: ok, another approach: you need to assimilate into our culture. you want to be poor in the US? Become fat. Go eat those chips
[21:46] me: ok
[21:46] me: going to finish stirfrying
[21:46] me: LOL

Vitamin A study

This is SOFA KING ironic. I can't participate in a nutrition study that would provide me with free food because I don't weigh enough.

I'm sorry to say that I can't enroll you in my study because you are too lean! I really appreciate your interest and time.

Thanks,
Ashley
....
....
Tanumihardjo Lab
Department of Nutritional Sciences

Anyway, the point of this study is that the researchers want to look at Vitamin A levels in young, nonpregnant women because they "believe the intake recommendation may be too high".

The study is going to provide participants with groceries for twelve weeks. Deviations from the provided food must be logged, and they definitely aren't allowed to eat anything on a list of Vitamin A-rich foods. (I was happy to see that garlic wasn't one of them...my diet scares vampires.) I spend about $160 per month on groceries...I do eat a lot for a girl and I prefer fresh food, or at least dishes that have SOME fresh ingredients rather than frozen or all-instant meals. I'm not in great shape financially, so the free groceries sounded great on that front even if the menu wasn't all the stuff I like.

I had to fill out a long questionnaire on my eating habits plus the typical short "are you asthmatic/anorexic/alcoholic" health questionnaire. Then I got to sit inside this peculiar chamber called a BodPod that measures body composition...but it makes you feel like an astronaut. (Yes, that's a real picture from the manufacturer and not a starship's lifeboat from a 70s science fiction show.)

Unfortunately, not only am I underweight according to the NIH's body mass index scale, the percentage of fat in my body falls under "Ultra Lean[Women]: 15-18%: Fat levels sometimes found in elite athletes."

WHATTTTT????

I like to go for walks in the woods with my cat. I like cycling with the wind at my back on a sunny day. I like capoeira when I can get over feeling intimidated by the instructors. I swear it's gotta be genetic. My 60+ year-old aunt who's had 2 kids has dresses I can't fit into.

*Looks at bum* There's a little bit of cellulite there! Come on! *pinchpinch jiggle jiggle* The "elite athletes" thing make more sense if I was my sister who's been running cross-country for the last 15 years. It would be more funny if it didn't mean missing out on 3 months of free food...sigh.

Another little irony is that Ms. Valentine told me she's too skinny to qualify as a participant in her own study. Well, if anyone else at Madison reads this, you could try looking up the lab that's conducting the study.

Yes, I just wrote an essay complaining about being too skinny...I'm sure a lot of girls would want to kill me. I just wish I wasn't so blasted hungry all the time *putters off to find midnight snack*

Unnatural organic

Don't look now, but there goes an organic cabbage wrapped in plastic. As its pesticide- and synthetic-fertilizer-supported brethren were not.

The hypocrisy and oxymoronic-ness of some parties who promote and/or sell organic foods astounds me. Packaging is only one of the aspects where the ridiculous may be found. In the past I've also bought Roundy's organic free-range eggs from Copps that came in a TRIPLE-layered plastic carton, unlike normal eggs that come in recycled cardboard. Are these free-range hens calcium-deficient, that their eggs must be sold in armour?

Another example of packaging madness committed by a store involves Whole Foods itself. I bought fresh salmon burgers from them and observed the counter worker wrap them in something that looked like newspaper, just like in the wet markets back home. Only it turned out to be not newspaper going into a second career, but the same plastic-coated paper normal groceries use, but printed with a fake newspaper design in an incredibly lame attempt to look retro. There goeth the holy and virtuous Whole Foods, wasting energy and ink - not that the cosmetic is going to make shoppers in 21st century Wisconsin feel like they're in 1900s Boston.

A couple of years ago when Wal-Mart announced that it was going to carry organic goods, environmentalists on Treehugger and other websites sneered at this rather than acknowledging it was a step in the right direction. Granted, Wal-Mart is well-known for unethical practices, but at least it's making healthier food available to ordinary consumers, in addition to forcing some of its suppliers to be more environmentally friendly. I've quite happy that the Wisconsin chain where I usually shop, has organic veggies at prices not much more than regular (although I can't say the same for their eggs).

The sort of snobbery displayed by the people mentioned above outrages me. Guess what, wankers: organic farming is NOT going to save the world UNLESS it can be made affordable and accessible to ordinary people with pressing demands on their time and money. Not just a) the wealthy elite for whom environmentalism is a fashion and b) the true hardcore environmentalists who are willing to sacrifice a normal lifestyle to be AGAP (As Green As Possible).

According to my boss, Whole Foods is nicknamed "Whole Check" because that's what it takes to do your shopping there. Screw them and their seven-dollar squashes, I'm getting my organic stuff from Copps.

Greasy palms

(This is all from stuff printed in The Star which is virtually an MCA party organ, by the way. I'm quite disgusted at how they fawned over Chua Soi Lek after he resigned after being caught dicking around. "Brave and decisive" my foot! He didn't have a choice!)
I think we've got a bit of a contradiction -

• Regulation of companies growing palm oil sucks,
• Deforestation, and draining of peatlands is making Indonesian biodiesel decidedly NOT carbon-neutral or environmentally friendly,
• The industry causes an annual cloud of smoke and other airborne crap, known as "the haze" to fall on Malaysia,
• And to cap it all, we've got a shortage of cooking oil to the point where it's been smuggled out of the country

- and the gov't STILL wants to increase biodiesel production, with the industry in the state it's in?

Halal turkeys

*sigh* This is so typical of Malaysians...aping the West, so that finding a halal source of a poultry that's typically associated with Christian holidays (i.e. Christmas and Thanksgiving) becomes an issue.

From theSun:

Halal turkey prices soar

Eunice Au

PETALING JAYA (Dec 21, 2007): If halal turkey was hard to find in local stores last Christmas, there is ample to go around this year.

However, consumers will have to fork out a lot more for the meat, which is imported from Australia by one company.

A check with the Giant hypermarket showed that prices of halal turkey had increased by 50-70%. A spokesman for Giant said prices had risen from RM16-RM20 per kilogramme last year to RM28-RM30 per kilogramme this year. However, he said he could not say for certain what had caused the jump.

Checks with other supermarkets showed that the price of turkey that is not certified halal, which is available in Isetan and Jaya Jusco, is also about the same.

While the Australian dollar has strengthened against the ringgit, this is only by about 6.5% compared with December last year.

Last year, following a circular from the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) on Dec 7, 2006 which stated that imported turkey at that time was not halal, many hotels and restaurants nationwide had to pull the item from their Christmas menu. ...article continues.

I remember about 11-12 years ago our friends gave us their old microwave/convection oven (the dad is a doctor and the mum was a real estate agent, so they had a bit of money) because it wasn't big enough to thaw a turkey in so they were getting a new one. Looks like lots of other people are jumping on the bandwagon. Roast turkey isn't even the sort of thing that would show up in Malaysian cuisine - way too dry.

Thinner

Tonight, I'm going to have:

• a bacon, avocado, and tomato sandwich
• About a pound of crinkle cut fries
• however much is left of my cheddar potato soup mix
• and a salad with cranberries and blue cheese.

I'm down to 100-101 pounds (about 46 kilos) by my bathroom scale =P I love eating but I also love cooking (even though I'm nowhere near as good at it as my friend Nick) and the upshot of that is that when I don't cook, I don't eat. It's not that I'm a food snob either, I'll happily eat junk food, but the frugal eldest-child-of-pastor-with-4-kids side of me says that frozen chicken pot pies are actually horrible value for money.

It's so flippin' cold here and I have no insulation. The only nice thing about being skinny is being able to needle my boyfriend's bitchy female housemates with it.

No time to cook nice, no time to blog...*sigh* I like my classes but I'm going to be glad when the semester's over and I can just focus on work at work and do other things at home, not focus on classwork at work and work at home.

No, I've never read the Stephen King book Thinner but it sounds interesting and Ken blogged about it a while ago...

Free rice!

Cool stuff: a website called FreeRice that throws multiple-choice vocabulary questions with adaptive difficulty levels a la GRE at visitors, and simultaneously allows them to donate ad revenue to alleviate starvation by showing small banner ads under the questions. I answered 30 right and 3 wrong and am at level 46/50 so far *syiok sendiri.

Have a go:

Packing on the pounds

I've just weighed myself to see how heavy the cat is (if this doesn't make sense to you, try getting an animal to stand on a bathroom scale long enough for the needle to stop moving. You have to tare yourself, then pick up the animal). Unfortunately she's quite stable at 8 lbs, which is under the UW Vet School's 10 lb cut-off for feline blood donors. Drat - they're offering free food, vaccinations, deworming, dental care, and flea and tick repellent for donors.

What sucks even more is that I'M down to 102 lbs (46.3 kg), which makes me technically underweight (BMI of less than 18.5). This is at a time when I'm trying to save money due to having had to recently pay over $400 for this semester's uni fees...so it's not like I can afford a lot of rich food. Actually meat is remarkably cheap here but that would be at the expense of cutting down on fruit and veg, which I like a lot. I'm also trying to cut down on cheese because my dad said cutting out dairy helped his sinus congestion clear up - not that I'll say no to a big ice cream on a hot day.

I already eat several big bowlfuls of rice or pasta daily, so I obviously need more help than just starch. When I Googled "gaining weight" one of the tips that came up, courtesy of the US Army's fine medical officers, was "Spread peanut butter on anything with which it is compatible."

Spread peanut butter on everything? Caaaaaan. ^_^

(Also, just noticed that Lina looks remarkably similar to the imaginary cat in my self-portrait which was drawn a good four years ago - dark, thin, fluffy with green eyes. Kinda freaky.)

Curds and Whey

Yogurt is a great dairy product for people who are lactose-intolerant. I love cheese and creamy things but frankly, they make me pang-pui a lot. Commercially available yogurt isn't too expensive, but it's awfully sweet, and to get unflavoured/unsweetened you have to buy from some overpriced hippy store like Whole Foods. Making your own is very easy, all it involves is mixing some store-bought yogurt with milk and incubating warm (somewhat above body temperature) for a few hours.

However, this time it curdled...it's not spoiled as it still tastes like yogurt. Perhaps it's because I put in both Roundy's (store brand) and Dannon and they're fighting?

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
There came a big spider
Which sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

I think I'll just skim the curds off the top when I want to eat it...we have clean cheesecloth in lab but I'm not trusting anything that's been in a molecular biology lab to be used with food.

Candle at both ends

My cat concurs with my boyfriend that I'm not eating enough. TWO dead voles? Thanks babe, but I'm having sausages. She seriously intends them for me because she always brings the darn things home and then goes to eat her cat chow.

I had a bowl of soup...then I went to the local botanical gardens with friends and had apple pie with whipped cream...then I came home and made a bowl of salad and ate that with a sausage and some mashed potatoes...now I'm OK.

I wish I didn't get hungry so easily. For most people in this society, their problem is controlling overweight. I'm not exactly in danger of malnutrition, but it seems like after breakfast, the next thing on my mind is when I can take lunch break, and after lunch, the next thing on my mind is when I can go home and how long it's going to take to cook. After dinner I'm okay for a while but around midnight I start combing my cupboards for munchies (vainly, because I don't buy snacks often)...you get the idea.

Ken, who's married to a Filipina, was asking

Do all skinny Asian girls have that? Can eat a whole cow, pint of ice cream, and not gain a pound?

I think what Caucasians don't realize is that between the shorter stature and being built for tropical climates, for Asian - East and Southeast, not those tall Indian girls - women "fat" is defined as something over 60 kg (about 132 lb).

Or possibly less...my father still rags on my "heavy thighs" on occasion. Not that I care...all I want to know is, how the heck do I get my weekly grocery bill below $40?

The annoying thing about grocery shopping is that I could easily fill my stomach if I lived off greasy frozen meals like certain people do. The healthy veggies, fruit, and fresh meat (not preserved or precooked) is what's killing my wallet. And eating out in the US sucks because goods are cheap whereas services are at a premium, so cooked food is also damn ex. They also give you portions that are way too big so you're forced to buy more than you want. Sigh...take me back to where it's cheap enough to eat out every day. Laksa, man, laksa.

Lazy people food III

More on my series of relatively easy-to-make recipes. I've realized that I'm a terrible shopper, mediocre cook, and totally abysmal organizer, and my culinary "creativity" is based on the need to get rid of things before they go mouldy. (If you keep an opened can of coconut milk in the fridge too long, it forms an interesting bright orange bacterial scum.)

Potato/broccoli/duck flavour soup:

1. Chop several cloves of garlic, depending on how much you like it. I like it a LOT. Saute in a couple tbsp of veggie oil.
2. Chop 6 small/4 big potatoes, put in the pot with the garlic and add enough water to come up to about 1 L (this was an bit of an estimate; I think my saucepan holds a bit over 1 L. blender jug holds 1.25 L ) (yes, I'm the kind of grammar nut who will put a space between a number and its unit and capitalize "L" for liter)).
3. Add stock cubes (whatever flavour you like).
4. This is the fun part: add about 1 tbsp duck fat and drippings (the fat's been in my fridge since April(!) before modern preservation processes people used to use animal fat to seal food containers so I figured it'd be safe in the fridge). Animal fat makes things taste freaking awesome. I didn't have any milk or cream and I'm trying to cut down on dairy, so...
5. Boil until the potato pieces soften; throw in chopped broccoli - again, amount depending on how much you like broccoli.
6. Simmer for a minute or so, remove from heat 'cos broccoli cooks fast.
7. Throw in blender and puree.

Spam spam spam spam

It took me a while to realize this was a promotional website (clearly I'm not very observant) but it's a pretty funny game. I'm just sad that we're probably not going to get the collector's edition Spam cans (with Stinky French Garlic) in the US.

Spam spam spam

What I learned today: Spam and mushrooms are a bad combination =P It's good with potatoes, but I didn't have any.

Also, Chinese brands of luncheonmeat like Ma Ling still taste better. This person made a pretty exhaustive list of Spam-like products that they've tried.

More lazy people food

Roast duck:

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Cut duck up into pieces. Put in metal pan.
3. Sprinkle duck with salt and pepper.
4. And put lots of honey.
5. Roast in oven for about an hour (if it's not cut up, you'll have to roast it longer and keep checking the temperature, which is why butchering first is the lazy option). Don't be too lazy/impatient and turn the broiler heating element on too like I did, because then you end up burning the nice crunchy skin.

Yogurt:

1. Microwave milk until boiling.
2. Let cool to about 40°C or 115°F (yes, I know they're not the same, but it's a rough range, and I'm too lazy to convert properly). If you're too lazy to buy a cooking thermometer, agak the temperature at which you can rest your hand on the container without pain, but it still feels hot.
3. Throw in a container of yogurt and stir. Make sure you picked yogurt which has live bacteria.
4. Cover the container and keep it somewhere warm overnight, like a gas oven with a pilot light or electric oven with a very low setting or on top of a radiator. Worst come to worst, wrap it in a towel.
5. Add jam, stir, eat. (I could have said "add sugar to taste and fruit as desired", but jam has both...and need I reemphasize that this is lazy people food?)

Food for lazy people

I tend to spend a fair chunk of my time at home cooking and doing the subsequent cleaning up. This is more because I'm inefficient, not because I'm a big gastrophile like my friend Nick. However, I do prefer to cook my own food when I can, even though it's only marginally cheaper than buying frozen prepackaged meals in this part of the world. That means I usually end up eating extremely un-fancy meals: usually rice with stir-fried veggies (always ALWAYS with garlic) and some kind of meat.

Whatever I cook has got to be straightforward and not take too much attention, not because I'm an incompetent cook - to quote Dr. Aiken, "If you can't cook you're not worth a damn as a biochemist" - but simply because I'm lazy. So, here are some quickie recipies for lazy people.

From me: pork souffle

1 large	egg
200g	ground pork
1 tsp	sesame oil
pinch (ok, 0.5g)	salt
1/8	large onion

Beat the egg in a bowl. Mix in the pork, sesame oil (for flavour; my mum puts it to add fat to the minced lean pork but seriously, you don't need it if you bought ground pork), and salt. Steam either on a metal rack placed over water in a covered wok, or if you're cooking rice, just chuck the bowl on top of the half-cooked rice. While it's steaming, chop the onion roughly (domestic violence!) and fry until brown. Sprinkle on top of pork/egg mixture. Mmm, porky, eggy, oniony comfort food.

From Angela: leche asada (translates loosely as "baked milk")

1 tin	condensed milk
1 small carton	heavy cream
1 tin volume (i.e. use the condensed milk tin)	regular milk
4	eggs

Mix everything together, pour into baking dish, bake at 425F for about 50 minutes. Makes a solid custard, quite sweet yet not too sugary.

An aside: Baked custard is super easy to make. It's the [misnamed] "boiled" variety that's so hard - you have to heat the pot very very gently - NOT boiled - otherwise the egg will coagulate instead of remaining suspended and cooking into a nice colloid. I always screw this up becuase I'm impatient.

From Aba: milk caramel - so easy it's almost idiotic

1 tin

condensed milk

Boil UNOPENED tin of condensed milk in a large saucepan full of water for 3 hours. Open tin, roll caramel into little balls.

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Lotta new things in my life this month...new house, new boyfriend, new school, new lab, new computer...new wok!

It came with instructions on several ways to season a wok - something that my mum's never done at home - and I'm fairly amazed at how well the process works, even though I just used the stovetop seasoning method. The bottom is pretty much as nonstick as Teflon. I've decided to stop using Teflon-coated frying pans due to my tendency to burn stuff (usually a combination of overenthusiasm and laziness). With a steel wok, if the oil coating burns, you can scrub off the black bits and reseason.

I'm really curious as to the chemistry behind this...the layer of "seasoning", whatever it is, is bonded pretty well to the surface. It doesn't come off with dilute dish detergent.

One old thing that's still with me is my good friend the Xenomorph (21st birthday present to self - 21st birthday was very lonely). He's taking up abseiling as a hobby.