West Coast Best Coast: Guac and Margaritas

I think as a half-CA raised child who has now spent enough time on the east coast to have adopted their dialect (trust me, I took a quiz), I have the necessary experience from both coasts to pretty confidentially claim that truly, the west coast is the best coast. Not even just California. People sometimes forget that Oregon and Washington can be as glorious as California. Granted, its a bit more wet, but it has that greenery that some east coast folks find lacking in California.
Thus, I feel pretty ok with posting this picture in an obnoxiously large size.

With that being said, one of the best things about the west coast is that the fantastic sunshine weather makes it perfect for growing, producing, and making, amazing food. I forget the exact percentage but something around 60% of all US fruits and veggies come from the CA. And of course, the one fruit that shines the best amongst those is the glorious avocado. Yes, it is a fruit--quick science fact--fruits are plants that produce seeds surrounded a juicy delicious flesh that we like to eat. For them, its their ovaries essentially. Vegetables don't have this.
Sadly, the east coast, and Yale especially severely lacks in the avocado department. Don't even get me started on my Yale-Dining-what-is-this-crap-you-call-guacamole rant. Since I first realized Yale Dining doesn't know the first thing about guacamole, its been my mission to share authentic, or close to authentic as reasonably possible guacamole to my poor non-west coast friends. When the convenience store on campus had avocados in stock (why, I have NO idea), I of course had to spend all my lunch money (literally) on as many as I could buy (4) for a little guac night with suitemates and friends.

Unfortunately, our store doesn't also sell onions, tomatoes, cilantro ect ect, so I took the easy route and mixed avocado with salsa. Still 10000x better than dining hall guacamole though. To finish it off my budding-bartender friend made us margaritas (frozen margaritas) to enjoy with the guacamole. If only all Friday nights could be like this...sigh.

side note for those concerned about the timing and logistics of this blog: this was all done in early September. I didn't think I had any interesting food related stories until now, so I'm playing a little bit of catchup. Expect lots of retrospective posts.

September College Drank

Special emphasis to Drank, since zomg ~college~ (but not really).

There was a "Labor Day Weekend" post saved as a draft here, but:

1. It is clearly no longer labor day
2. The only thing in the draft was a picture of an Old Fashioned from Ordinary.

I'm struggling to decide what I want this blog to be when I'm not baking. Perhaps I lack the genuine passion for an authentic food blog since I allow the patriarchy that is college dorms hinder my creative baking. Perhaps I could simply review cool foods and drinks I've eaten while out and about? But then I turn into an instagram foodie, which, god forbid, I actually have become. (let me know if you want to follow my instagram!) Feel free to judge me, because I am mad judging myself.

I've never been very good at making decisions--I spent an entire week driving everyone insane over class decisions this year. As a result, I have scattered pictures of food taken quasi-half-heartedly just as incase I ever wanted to post them on a blog. Which I've now decided, heck, why not? I'm not writing deep, emotional posts about my food. I'm not writing for an acclaimed audience. Heck, I'm not even writing. I'm just spewing stream of consciousness onto the internet, and as we all know, the internet REALLY needs less of that.

So to reference number 2 of my short list from above, Labor Day Weekend was the first, and currently most recent going-out-to-bars-with-friends outing I've had. Yea I know, I'm super cool. We went to both Briq and Ordinary that evening. Briq was rather disappointing for several combined reasons of poor drinks, poor service, and strange liability forms attesting that should us, 21+ students get excessively drunk, we won't blame Briq...

Ordinary was great though! I had an Old Fashioned pictured below in grainy, instagram glory. 

look! #nofilter. Its that good.

To be quite honest, I've always enjoyed just the simple act of drinking and having light and reasonably intelligent conversations with friends over the going out aspect of college. There's only so much juice that can mask ethanol-like Kirkland signature vodka (actually, no amount of juice can mask that horrid smell and taste). I'm not much of a dancer either. Say what you will about what that means about my ability to let loose and be confident in myself. (But seriously, my attempts to dance usually involve me trying to be funny and looking like a frightening jellyfish). 

But I'm liking the trajectory my last year of college is heading towards--less dark dance floors, more dim-lit conversations.

Simplicity: Plain Old Biscuits

Simplicity is a word deeply twisted in the notion of nostalgia. We all feel that looking back, things were easier, less complicated. But it's only because we're looking at them through rosy hued glasses, to use a cliche. But at the end of the day, things were hard and not simple then, and nor are they now.

 I mean, when I see biscuits I think, oh, Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, well mainly when she was still just Laura Ingalls. And man, those were not simple times. Come on. But even Laura wished for easier days. One story line that sticks out to me from the series was in the books after she married Almanzo, they move in and start a life together that is essentially a struggle bus. I think this was in the book The First Four Years, but basically their farm is a total fail, Almanzo gets sick, one of their babies dies, and there's a huge ass fire that burns everything, and the most important thing that Laura saves is this huge shiny plate they got as a wedding present. I really don't know why I remember that plate. But yea, those were hard years. And I'm pretty sure I thought they would have gotten a divorce at some point, but I guess divorce wasn't really a thing back then.

Lucky for me and my random impulses to bake biscuits, biscuits are 20000 times easier to make than farming or running a little house on the prairie. Probably because they needed all that time to well,  actually farm instead of whip up intricate macarons or something.

Recipe from Joy of Baking. As one would expect, best served hot. Also #nofilter #toolazytoiphotoediteven #suchapro.

Food Update: Yes I've Been Eating

In case anyone was wondering, yes I have been eating. Albeit, its been a scattered mix of being lazy and eating out at various places around New Haven. 

Anyways, without further ado, some pictures and rambling comments!

Chicken Arepas from Ay Arepas. My favorite food cart around these parts of town. I forgot HOW much I loved these until I too my first bite into that sweet, cheesy, corn goodness.

Peach Pancakes from The Pantry! I really really wish I could just still live in the fad that is The Pantry, but while these pancakes were good, they weren't trekking-1-mile-worthy-good. The peaches weren't ripe enough, and the batter was a little salty. All in all, tasted very homemade, which is good, but also, I could have done better homemade. Oh well, I'll just stick to Benedict's and cinnamon roll pancakes next time.


A dinner of homemade cheese sticks and a roasted sweet potato. Cheese is a weird thing when melted. It looks so alarmingly sweaty and wrinkly when heated into a gob. Well, a delicious gob.
Mozzarella sticks recipe from Skinny Taste.

Anddddd a mug cake that could actually pass as a mug cake!

Yellow Mug Cake recipe from the book Mug Cakes: 100 Speedy Microwave Treats to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth. This was in one of the first preview pages. Needless to say, I will be buying this book at some point in my life. If I was cool and a pro-blogger, this would be an excellent giveaway. But I swear, I will never ever ever ever force you to like a page on Facebook for me. Hell, I won't even make a Facebook page since thats my own personal peeve about the giveaways I never win. That doesn't mean you're off the hook for things like twitter or tumblr though. Bwahahahahaha.

Mac and Cheese Pizza: a la Parks and Rec

If Ron Swanson were here, he wouldn't even call my Mac and Cheese Pizza real food, let alone pizza. He'd probably call it rabbit-food, or no, Magikarp-food. Well, if he was into pokemon. Which he wouldn't be. Because, you know, real men hunt real animals.
Anyways, this pizza isn't about Ron Swanson. Maybe next time I'll make a bacon pizza with bacon-infused cheese with a bacon stuffed crust, but this pizza is for Leslie.

As a principle, I don't usually go for the carbs on carbs food combinations. Its typically way too bland for my taste. More specifically, mashed potato pizza is the worst. Even when its garlic mashed potato. Fortunately for mac and cheese, its cheesy goodness helps makes up for the carbs and carbs dilemma on this pizza. Oh, and the spinach and mushrooms I needed to get rid of anyways that I tossed in probably helped too.

Flattening out the pizza dough was probably the biggest struggle bus of the entire process. I bought premade dough, but it still needed to be rolled, or in this case stretched, tugged, yanked out into some semblance of a pizza shape. I then proceeded to not oil the foil enough and then slightly overcooked the pizza, resulting, in another struggle bus of cutting the pizza and peeling away the flow.

check out those poorly distributed breadcrumbs, yo.

Nonetheless, if I ever want carbs on carbs again, this is the way to do it. With maybe even more cheese next time. Man Leslie Knope is lucky to have Ben Wyatt.
Mac and Cheese recipe from SkinnyTaste (sorry, I couldn't bear the idea of whole-milk mac and cheese AND pizza).

Belgian Beer Collage Round Up

While in Belgium, one is obligated to drink beer. Prior to Belgium, I was really not a huge fan of beer. I could enjoy it in certain contexts, such as while out with my parents. But cheap college beer? Horrifying. While I still don't know what a trappist beer is exactly or the main difference between dark/amber/blond/pale or wheat or whatever (yea, so much for learning from those brewery tours), I do appreciate beer and enjoy it much more now. That being said, maybe I've become spoiled by Belgian beer and will hate any beer I try here.
Below is a sampling of the many beers I had over the course of my 9 weeks in Belgium.

This really makes me look like an alcoholic at first glance, but this was over the span of 9 weeks. There were a number of other beers that I had (probably another 5-10 kinds) that were not photographed since I was a bit haphazard about when I felt like being silly and taking my phone out to photograph at a bar. Also, Kilkenny is technically an irish beer, and Douglas is actually a cider, both of which I had at an irish pub while watching futbol in Belgium. There was some Swedish Cider I had while in London too, but I'm going for the just things I drank in Belgium theme here. Oh I'm going to miss the beer.

Goodbyes and Speculoos Rice Krispy Treats

Last Friday was my last day in Belgium. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how I enjoyed it. I certainly don't think it was a "life changing opportunity," but at the same time, I have zero regrets deciding to accept this internship. Sure, there were certainly facets that were not as great (paying for bathrooms, work being a little slow), but there were also lots of good things (biking, awesome PI, waffles). So, I guess my issue with being asked how I enjoyed Belgium and if I would go back is that I don't like thinking of good/bad as being summed together to net an over all +/-/0 experience, but rather as separate groups that cannot be combined. Perhaps this is simply the glamour of traveling abroad being wiped away. Because for all the cultural differences, on a day to day basis, life really isn't that different where you are. Maybe if I were older, with more responsibilities, staying for a longer period of time, I would have noticed myself adjusting more. However, I feel that I probably played the role of observer more during my time than actual lets pretend I'm Belgian.

As I mentioned previously before deviating into culture and my uncertainty about everything, my last day of work was last Friday. So to say goodbye, I decided to bring some present to my lab/office. Some interns who had previously worked there who left a few weeks earlier than me brought in pastries from a bakery. However, biking to work with a box of pastries sounds like quite a recipe for heart broken croissants and rock studded muffins.
So I had to think of something else that fit my critera:

• Something that wasn't quite so stereotypically "Belgian" (aka chocolate). 
• Something that had a slight American connotation.
• Something that was easily transportable via a backpack.
• If homemade, something that wouldn't require lots of ingredients.

For a while, I resigned myself to just buying chocolate since all I could think was "AGH, if only you could bake cupcakes or cookies! That would be so American!" Luckily while taking a break at work to peruse the internet, I was inspired to make rice-krispy treats. And then, since only in Belgium, I decided to make them speculoos flavored.

Not having tupperware, I had to wrap them in saran wrap. It felt very much soccer-mom (futbol-mom) esque to be giving people individually wrap krispies. They were a surprising hit among people, although many of my co-workers were very very confused what they were initially. I guess snap, crackle, pop aren't so big in Europe as they are in the US.
"Protocol" (as a post-doc in my lab calls it) from Rice Krispies website here. Just replace peanut butter with speculoos.