LazyCreations...

Heyyall!

So Tumblr sucks at mass uploading. So here are the links to a few of my albums!

First week in CIA!

Farmer’s Market!

Meat class!

yeah. Sorry guys, it’s the only way to get them up without uploading like 600 pictures 1 at a time onto tumblr…

I wish they made a plugin for tumblr on Lightroom…sigh.

ENJOY!

This post is dedicated to my ex-roommate Colin Quek. I miss the good times we cooked together.

ma por tofu

porkchops =)

bak choy with chinese mushrooms

Miss cooking with you colin!!

Last Spring break I went to Colorado to Garth’s place to ski (for the 3rd time). This time, we went to Winter Park and while we were there, we stayed at a Lodge at YMCA. 

We bought cheap vodka, and therefore I was like, lets try to fuse it. Partially unwilling and not caring too much, my friends let me experiment.

Step 1. Separate the skittles by color.

Step 2. Place the skittles in clean and washed empty bottles. We were ghetto and put em in empty water bottles.

Step 3. Pour Vodka in. So You want a good even amount of Skittles (about 60 pcs) per 6 ounces yields 8 ounces. I found the recipe here! Go check it out.

Shake em, and soak em overnight till the skittles dissolve. 

Step 4. Filter em with coffee paper and you’re done!

Sorry I don’t have a picture of the end product. I forgot to take the picture. But yeah. I believe what we liked was purple, and maybe red or yellow? I forget. It’s been a while lol.

DANGGGITTTTT. 

so I JUST found out that I’m allergic to peaches. =( So sad. My upper lip started swelling a little and right below my lip started itching. 

The peaches were delicious too! It was fresh from the farmer’s market and it was SO SWEET!

BAH sighhhh POOOR ME =(((

A very interesting Machine that shapes ice. I forget which bar this was at…

Step 1. Place a cube of ice on the machine. 

Step 2. place the top on top

Step 3. Wait.

 

Step 4. Diamond!

But yeah, basically the shaper pieces are very heavy and I assume a bit warm, which is why it melted through the ice beautifully

Peter Lugers. 

During my graduation week, I was fortunate to go here to eat. My dad had a friend in NY and he took us here!

For starters. We got these raw Tomato/ White onion slices. The tomatoes were delicious and surprisingly, the onions did not have that strong raw oniony taste! It was really sweet and yummy!

baconnn yum!

yum.

steak! And to be honest, it was okay…The meat wasn’t aged that well so it was….okay.

On another note, something pretty cool is that they heat up the plate so much that if the meat was too rare, you could cook it on the edges. 

Looks good

gravy

potatoes

asian glow like father like son

fam =D

dessert!

cheese cake

strawbs and cream!

So yeah, I think overall, Peter Luger’s is a bit overrated. I believe it was a family ran restaurant, and maybe because of that, the service wasn’t really that good? There were a lot of elderly men serving us, it was a bit slow, and they weren’t that warm/ friendly. Maybe also because Peter Lugers is also known for having the steak that quality is compromised and that they’re not trying as hard? (that sometimes tend to happen when restaurants get famous. It’s not as good as it was before it was famous). But anyway, that’s just my 2 cents. 

Experimenting Flash about half a year ago when I got the speedlite

too direct

not warm enough

egg wash too shiney =\

breaded

green beans, too dark in the front

better =)

fail lighting

meh. kind of fail too.

hmm. decent i guess?

I made this like last fall or something, for Kat’s potluck. And if you guys don’t know Kat, yall should check out her food blog here because it is AMAZING!

Anyway, because everyone else made main dishes, I made an appetizer. 

sliced up a baguette at home really thin. 

 

A mix of white and portobello mushrooms/ground beef/white wine/shallots/cream/cheese(I forget what kind of cheese I used, but it was somewhat melty)

Toast the bread and done!

If only I had a little parsley. 

Hello Fig & Olive. This is a really yummy restaurant in the Meatpacking district, NYC. 

3 different olive oils.

Beef Carpaccio

I think it was cheese something puffs with figs.

Clockwise. lamb chops, seafood paella, mushroom pasta with truffles, and lamb skewers.

destroyed.

I forget what this was.

also figs

great food with great friends =D

So I’m getting really tried of using tumblr. They don’t really have a friendly way to upload multiple pictures at once, rather, I have to do them one a time when I post. And so because I haven’t been posting for a while, I have a ton of food things I’d like to share, however Tumblr makes you do it 1 at a time. argh.

Got any alternative suggestions?

HAHA. GUESS WHAT! I have time to post again! Haha. I must say, it really is because I’m in the middle of nowhere, I don’t have a car that I have more free time to do so. LOL. So anyway, I’m just gonna post up a bunch of random pictures I never posted when I was busy. 

So Yeah, I will do my best to post more now, bu who knows. I might get busy again and not have much up later. =\

So here are more homecooked meals. I believe this was the last time I was in HK during Christmas…@_@. Wow that’s a long time ago….

 

Can you tell what this is?

Brisket and Turnip

Oyster Omelet. LOL it actually doesn’t look that appealing =__= fail. 

Braised mushrooms + chinese cabbage.

Steamed fish

Garlic spinach

ta da!

 

I’ve wanted to update for a while but…laziness got to me…
Anyway, I’m actually at the CIA in St Helena (North of Napa Valley). And I just had my first day of orientation/class yesterday! I’m jet lagging, and therefore I’m up at 5 am working on my homework….ahhaha.
So the update:
So before I was going to apply to culinary school, all I thought of were the next possible steps that comes after college. Jobs. What else right? And having to not get that Marriott Job was quite saddening to me. Because I was really sure I was going to get it. But like everyone told me, if God closes one door, another door, a better door will open up. However, at that time, I really couldn’t believe what “job” would be better tham that Marriott job. I really respect the company a lot and the culture it creates. Other jobs around that I looked into were smaller companies, yeah, maybe some were good restaurants but at the end of it, I thought to myself the training might not be as good and that there was no possible way that these “doors” that i’m looking at could be as good as marriott’s “door”. The only way that one of these “doors” would be better is if I were to be very optimistic.
So originally, I always thought of wanting to go to culinary school, however I wanted to work first then go to culinary school. My dad brought up the idea while i was searching for jobs, and at first, I was really against it, because I thought it was a cop-out for me. Then, I went to Basileia, an Intervarsity Leadership retreat. During this retreat, there was a section called the “retreat of silence” which is when you spend 3 hours in silence trying to seek God and whatnot. So it was during this time where I really laid down everything to God, I prayed all my worries out and at the end, I felt at peace. I felt at peace about my future and I felt that God will take care of everything for me. And what I realized was that the reason I was struggling so hard was because I was trying to find my identity in my accomplishments and in what I can do verses in God. And when I realized that, I tried to cling back to Him.
And suddenly, God’s plan became slightly more visible. 

I looked into the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) and they have an accelerated program specifically for kids like me with a hospitality degree. However, according to the website, most kids applied by April and get accepted in April/May. I didn’t complete my whole application till mid-May, and had my interview at the end of May. And I finally got accepted into CIA beginning of June, which is actually pretty late, because the program starts in July.
So yeah. God is awesome! And I am definitely at awe every single time He works because of how crazy and good He is. 
And also, giving it a lot of thought, it started to make more sense. In a sense, it is better to go to culinary school rather than working for a few years and then going back to school, then back to work because it would kind of interrupt the flow. 
So praise God and THANK YOU CPR (my small group) for always supporting me!