First bento of the year

Hello again!

Little did I realize that I have entered my last year as an undergraduate. And I have been in college only for 2 years. Sometimes I wish I could graduate normally like others, but tuition is expensive. Why not graduate in 3 years when I can do that?

That being said, my schedule this semester has been very hectic because at least three out of seven courses I am taking right now only exist in Fall semester. Which is to say that once I miss those classes right now, I will have to add another year of expensive tuition and housing and living fees.

Taking 23 credit hours (the normal limit is 18) is more painful than I thought it would be, considering that I'm taking one graduate level course, three 400/senior-level courses, one 300 level course, one 200 level course and only one 100 level class (which apparently takes a lot of my time because most 100 level courses have tons of homework even though they're not that hard).

And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have classes starting at 9:30 all the way till 3:20. Six hours with no break. On the first week, I thought my brain got burnt. The moment I came back to my apartment I just collapsed on my bed, unable to think about anything.

Anyways.

Here's my first bento of the (academic) year. School starts in August, ending in May, so, yes, this is going to be my first bento of the year.

Very simple. Rice seasoned with basil, thyme, salt, mirin, and rice vinegar compacted into squares and a big heart shape. The heart shaped rice actually has a piece of lime and clove seasoned pork chop inside. Simple decoration this time: sliced cheese and nori for the rice, cup cake papers for the rest.

The bottom compartment is the dessert compartment. So it's whole wheat bread decorated with Nutella spread, sandwiching sliced cheese and nutella in between. With a couple of Lorna Doone crackers.

The reason why most of the stuffs here are bite-sized is because as I told you earlier I have no breaks on Tuesday and Thursday. So it has to be something that is easy to eat within 5 minute break in between my classes.

Okay, bento time is over. Time to get a grip on my mind and start doing my homework >.<

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Chicken and Beer

It was actually quite some time ago when my friend left a case of Stag beers in our hotel room. She left earlier than I did, and I called her to ask if she still wanted those beers and she said no. I hate wasting things off, so I took them with me and I didn't know how to deal with them since I don't drink beers.

Chicken breast cooked in beer and herbs on rice vermcelli and sauteed squash

It was a little scary to see the beer foaming up as I heat it up on the saucepan. So basically I boiled a piece of chicken breast with a can of beer, and I added dried basil, thyme and parsley. I added a pinch of black pepper and salt to season. And I actually boiled the rice vermicelli together with the chicken. I added the vermicelli much later than the chicken. To put it simply, all the remaining beer got absorbed by the rice vermicelli.

I like the fact that the chicken had a herby feelings in it, but I don't think children will like this chicken beer >.<

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Bye Bye Bye, Forest

Today was the last day of internship. I'd say I will miss living without a TV, newspaper, internet and phone service. I'm serious. Okay, I did get some phone service in the kitchen and sometimes in my room. I did get unreliable internet service at the lab and at home (but it's always gone whenever it rained because it was a wireless connection). But seriously, no TV and no newspaper. We had some old magazines from like.. 2005 at our house. That's about it.

Work was tiring in the morning - it was hot, and physical work was not really my forte. Mowing the grass, weed eating... picking tomatoes, blueberries, blackberries... No. Not my thing at all. But I do gain some field knowledge from those days, like pruning tomato and apple trees and such.

Dinner was always my joy. It's a pain to think of what to eat. The closest restaurant was like 20 minutes away and rather than driving I'd rather cook at home. Thankfully, we often got lots and lots of tomatoes from the field, and they're really good and sweet!

I think during the past 11 weeks I ate a lot of tomatoes. I normally make tomato sauce by crushing the tomatoes and cooking them under low heat for at least 30 minutes on the stove. When there were some peppers from the field, I'd normally put those in too. There was one time we got onions. I cooked them with the tomato sauce. Yum~

Freshly made tomato sauce with broccoli, cauliflowers, carrots, yummy orange peppers, green pepper and meatballs, seasoned with dried basil, parsley and thyme.

Dixon Springs. Shawnee Forest. I'll miss them :)

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Forest Treats

Well well well! I'm back again from my deep slumber.

I've been living in a forest again for another month, and that explains why I don't really post anything on this blog. I do have internet access but sometimes I'm just too tired to post pictures.

And lately, sad to say, I haven't been making bentos. Sigh. I do have my rice cooker, but since I'm sharing fridge with 3 other people in the house, I don't think I could get as many ingredients to put in a bento. Plus, I don't feel like hogging the kitchen to myself.

I've been working on blueberries. I picked quite a lot of them for my project, and I also helped my company with U-pick sessions where people from all over the place (one lady told me she drove for an hour to get here) went to our company and pick blueberries. These blueberries are sold for $1.50 per lb (which is VERY CHEAP, if you compare them to those in groceries stores).

When I went back to Urbana one time I decided to make beignets (some kind of french doughnut) with blueberries. And so I did! Unfortunately, since I'm not so friendly to baking, I didn't have confectionery sugar in stock, so I had to use granulated sugar instead. But that still does the trick :)

I bought the beignet mix from New Orleans Cafe Du Monde. You can actually buy the mix online and now they sell those mixes at Far East, an Asian store in Champaign, IL. So there's actually no need to go all the way to New Orleans to buy these >.<

And of course, the blueberries were fresh from the tree. The cultivar that I like the most is called Bluetta, which is actually the one I used in the picture above. Another one is called Earliblue, but at that time I hadn't realized that they're sweet, so I hadn't been picking on those. These two are far sweeter than those commecially sold blueberries. One time I brought back a quart of these blueberries and gave them to my friends, and gosh, they liked them so much! They can tell that the blueberries that I picked are far more flavorful and sweeter than the ones they normally buy from the groceries.

Now that it reached the end of July, we no longer have the U-pick sessions. No more blueberries hanging on the bushes - they're all green :(

I miss them T__T

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Happy Re-Birthday!

You see, today is officially my birthday :)

Since I was born in Indonesia, it was officially 12 hours ago. My mum called me when I was about to finish my lab stuff, so I couldn't talk to her for too long. I didn't feel quite right because it's just not June 24th yet in US. But you know, technically it was my birthday.

So, uhh... I went to my friend's house to celebrate his sister's birthday (it's more like his mom who invited me to the house). She made a cake for her daughter, but later on she added my name and her friend's name on the cake. Again, I feel quite not right yet because it's technically not June 24th yet. But it was a fun time down there!!

I ate lots and lots of very very good Indonesian food. Ahh. Such a bliss xD

And then I went back home because I was afraid of the storm (and I was kinda tired too - I almost slept when I drove there since I just got back from the lab). It was storming really really badly. The wind was blowing so strongly, and lightning stroke across the sky.

That was about 10 pm.

Then I made some sweet rice ice cream. You know, it didn't really turn out good. I should have strained the rice away. And it still doesn't give that much rice flavor into the ice cream. That's probably because I used 2 egg yolks, and the richness of the egg yolk just killed the rice flavor :(

Well, no one really celebrated my birthday today, with exception of my friends all across the world (I find it weird yet I'm touched). I'm very very thankful to my friend who BlackBerry Messenger-ed me all the way from Singapore, and my friend from Warwick made sure it's 12 am down here and sent me a message even though her exam was coming in the next few hours. My other close friend, unlike other people on Facebook, sent me a birthday message through Facebook private message instead of instantly clicking my wall and writing two-word birthday wishes.

I'd say I'm very very very blessed. God loves me!

Anyways, a birthday celebration is never complete without blowing a candle. I don't really care about cutting the cake. I just have to blow the candles.

So, to brighten my very special day, I scooped the ice cream I just made, and then stick a small birthday candle from other people's birthday. Well, it's new, but they're kinda like the leftover candles from someone's birthday. And thank God I have a lighter!

I sang a very quick birthday song, a "blow the candle song", and then blew the candle. I didn't have a wish when I blew it. I didn't think of any.

Well now I guess there is only one wish: I hope for the happiness of people who care about me. May they be happy, and may smile be with them. I think that would be the greatest birthday present for me this year!

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Pretzel Ice Cream

After graduation, lots and lots and lots of people left. They also left me tons of stuffs - some of which are plainly junks, some are just awesome: just like the ice cream maker.

I hate to admit it, I'm not an ice cream eater like the rest of the population. Unless it has some unique flavor or texture that can make me remember how yummy it is.

The first and only time that I made ice cream was in my public speech class. One of my classmates taught us how to make ice cream in a ziplock bag using ice and salt as the cooler. He told us that it was normal for high school teachers to do this trick as a demo, but hey, I haven't done it before. Rather, I didn't know it works!

So here I am, stuck in wonder with the ice cream maker. I thought the machine works like magic, like it has some kind of cooler or something. Lucky I read the manual first before I began: it turned out that I had to freeze the freezing bowl before I begin making the ice cream. LOL.

When I was at Walmart two days ago I keep thinking of what unique flavors I can make. I mean, sure, vanilla or chocolate will never go wrong, but I want more than that. I began thinking up random stuffs - fruits, oatmeal, peanut butter... and suddenly it popped out: pretzels.

A salty ice cream. Heh. Why not? Pretzel it is!

I first crushed  low fat pretzels (about as much as a sandwich bag of those) with my drinking cup made of glass (I think you can use anything heavy to pound on it - glass jars works pretty well too). I heated 1 cup of goat milk (omg yes, goat milk! I just found it at Walmart and I thought I'd try it again) in low heat (out of 9, it's about 4). I let it simmer for a while, added about 1/4 cup of sugar and whisked it. Then I added 2 cups of heavy cream and stir it. Oh, a little bit of pure vanilla, too.

And then off we go with the ice cream maker! It took around 30 minutes to make it solid.

One of the greatest mistake was that I forgot to add some salt into it, so I added the salt as the machine swirled my ice cream mix. And yes, it didn't mix properly, so I kept adding more and more salt into the mix.

The result? OVERLY SALTY. I made my friends try them, and well, they're more surprised of why it's salty rather than wondering why it's TOO salty.

Is a salty ice cream such a weird idea?

Well, at first I wanted to top it with freshly pan-fried bacon bits. I think the hot bacon and the slightly salty pretzel ice cream will make a good combo when done properly.

So, things to do for the next pretzel ice cream: use more pretzels to add more flavor (it kinda died as I added the heavy cream) and color, and DON'T ADD MORE SALT!!

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I miss home

I miss my home. I miss my home in Indonesia, and I miss my home in Champaign. Right now I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, doing my summer internship. I can't say it's the most exciting job ever, and it's even hard for me to go through one day after another.

I've never shared kitchen with other people before, so I'm afraid to make a mess in the kitchen. My housemates are all nice people, but it's just me and my personality.

I didn't cook much here. I made fried beehoon once. I couldn't even remember what I had for dinner the past two weeks. That's how sad I am.

Today I made some heavy breakfast that is not cereals nor instant food. That made me happy :)

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