Thanksgiving

Every year thanksgiving comes around and brings with it an aura of good food and family. Turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing litter American kitchens as they prepare to feast. However, the early pilgrims that are said to have made famous our thanksgiving dinner placed little importance on turkey. As a whole they at venison, lobster, clam, mussels and fish. Yes there was turkey, but not at all the staple of the American thanksgiving that it is today. So I ask, why? Why do we celebrate with a dry and bland bird doused in gravy and sauces when we could easily replace it with a much juicier and overall more enjoyable chicken, or perhaps clams and mussels? Venison too would be an apt supplement though you could not call me an avid fan. Would that not make our thanksgiving celebration infinitely more enjoyable? And what is with this stuffing and cranberry sauce? The way I see it American’s are abiding by an early Victorian principle of what the perfect thanksgiving looks like. We are emulating an idyllic scene that is not only wholly false but completely off base. Sure we can keep the hearty mashed potatoes and gravy, and I have to admit, I would be completely disheartened if my mother’s chocolate pecan pie disappeared, but I believe we have the complete and utter right to make substitutions. America as a whole should take a step forward and rid our tables of the squishy pumpkin pie and stuffing that makes me wonder what I am eating. If the ideals of thanksgiving are to appreciate what we have and give thanks to God for giving us just that, I would much rather thank him for the delicate lobster he puts on my plate, just as he did on that of the New England Pilgrims.

The House of Nanking

I walked through Chinatown in San Francisco with my good friend Reed. We were scanning the streets for a small popular restaurant that both of I had heard of several days before. I saw it “The House of Nan King”. We were shocked to see a line outside. It seemed like a night club with its fluorescent sign and dark windows. We waited in line for twenty five minutes to be let in. By this time the line had not only grown, but it had almost doubled in size. We walked in and were quickly seated. The waitress said “drinks”, nothing else. She seemed rude and both of us thought that it was quite possibly the start to a terrible meal. Our drinks got to the table and we were again shocked by the brusque nature of our waitress. She asked us if we were ready and we said no and she told us to order anyway. We would choose something and she would say no. It was absurd. The whole situation seemed too delusional to be true. After our painful ordering process, we were quickly brought food and to our surprise it was nothing that we had decided on with the waitress. We decided to just eat and get out. There was no point to fighting this battle. We had already lost several times. I took a bite of the Onion Pancake in front of me and was astounded. It was absolutely amazing. The mix of red, green, and white onions with shallots inside of the crispy pancake was truly delightful. There was an unknown brown sauce on top that was also phenomenal. We were ready for our next course and dished began to come to the table before we could finish the previous thing. It was not the right amount of dishes and nothing was what we ordered, but it was quite possibly the best Chinese food I have ever had.

It was a lovely beginning of term in the Dining Hall that was capped off with an even better weekend. The week started off with a decent menu. The presence of some type of non processed meat is always nice. The chicken Marsala on Friday night was decent until it became lunch on Saturday and most recently dinner on Sunday. Whoever had the bright idea to chop it up and reserve it assuming no one would realize well bravo. The biggest downfall of the week however was the breakfast. Not necessarily what was served but rather how much and how long it was served for. I am a big fan of the dining hall breakfast, always rising early in hopes of finding hash browns and possibly bacon. This however did not happen this week. I was instead greeted with empty pans of food at 7:20. Why is it that hot breakfast is now one third as long as it was my freshman year? It seems that every year the mealtimes get shorter and the ever watchful eye on those of us who “take too much food” becomes more stringent. Between the removal of the dishes that had some nutrition such as the salmon and the replacing them with freeze dried tilapia encrusted in red and green bread crumbs, the food itself has gone far down hill. Of all the things that could have been chosen to cut back the budget on why the dining hall and its already lacking food? Why couldn’t it be something unnecessary like mandating an art class? Everyone has to eat so why not cut spending somewhere else. As a hole the week was not out of the ordinary lots of pasta and corn based food and little if any none processed items. Maybe the coming weeks will have a new menu item of possibly an improved dish, I however tend to doubt it.

Dry Aging Steak

During Thanksgiving break, I had gone back to Korea to stay with my family. The day after my arrival, my sister and I visited a famous steakhouse in Seoul named Twin Creeks for dinner. The restaurant had a magnificent view of the public park beside it. After eating some bread and a Caesar salad, a delicious and juicy medium-rare steak was served with horseradish sauce and whole grain mustard. Unlike the crispy surface, the inside of the steak was very tender. This steak was cooked by using a technique called dry aging. Dry aging beef is a method used to make steaks more flavorful and soft. In order to dry age beef, you must put the steak in a temperature of 34F to 38F and humidity of 50%-75% for10 to 28 days. This causes moisture to evaporate from the meat and eventually becomes softer due to the meat’s natural enzymes that break down the tissues of the muscles. Dry aging also decreases the amount of fat in the meat and makes the remaining protein compounds more concentrated. It is also helpful to use a fan or cooler to circulate the air around the meat, which would assist the process of dry aging. Dry aging will cause the steak to shrink because of the loss of moisture but also causes the meat to become tender. You can also use the growth of certain fungi, such as Thamnidia, on the meat to enhance dry aging. These fungi help increase the flavor of the meat; they make the meat more “juicier.” The fungi are cut off from the steak before it is cooked and are harmless to the human body. Although many steakhouses are beginning to use this method to improve the quality of their steaks, dry aging was rare in the past because it required much time and effort. There was also a possibility that the steak would be spoiled due to the fungi. Though people today use ultra-violet rays to prevent the meat from being spoiled by such fungi.

The Gingerbread House Disaster

So, a couple of days ago, my friend and I attempted to make a gingerbread house. I have never made one before, but my friend has make tons of houses. Her family has made one house every year at Christmas, ever since she was a little girl. Before we made the house, we made three colors of icing; red, green, and white. While we were making the icing, my friend’s mom kept telling us to add more water because the icing was too thick. I thought the icing was perfect, but I listened to her because I figured she has more experience making gingerbread housed than I did. As we started to assemble the house, our problems began. After putting icing on the edges of the walls, my friend and I wrestled with them, trying to keep them standing up, rather than falling over or caving in. We waited a couple of minutes for the walls to dry together, but my friend and I quickly realized that we did not wait long enough. As we placed the two roof pieces on the house, the walls began to cave in. My friend and I had to undo the entire house, scraping the icing off, and start the whole process over again. As we began our second attempt, my friend and I decided to let the icing fully dry between the walls before adding other pieces. We were finally able to assemble the house and keep it from falling down. Once it was safe, we began adding decorations like peppermint swirl candies, on the roof top, and gum drops, on the walls. Once the house was finished, it looked perfect, or at least I thought it did. Considering all of the challenges and problems we faced along the way, the gingerbread house was great and I’m glad to call it my first gingerbread house.

Instant Noodles

I often see many students at Kent, walking around with cup noodles in their hands. Of course! What could possibly be better than a hot bowl of noodles in these cold, snowy winter days?

Instant noodles were first invented by Momofuku Ando, a Taiwanese under Japanese colonial rule, on August 25, 1958. They are precooked and dried noodles covered in oil in a shape of a block. When these typical block-shaped noodles are boiled in water for about 2-5 minutes, the hard noodles loosen up. Usually, people insert a packet of favoring to try different tastes. In 1971, another very creative invention, the cup noodles, was introduced. Pouring boiling water to the polystyrene cup is all we have to do cook them. By the way, I have seen many who cook cup noodles in a microwave, but that's not how it's supposed to be done!

People enjoy instant noodles for their convenience, but they also just love the amazing taste. Instant noodles are produced globally and a variety of flavors are now available in many countries according to their preference: from chicken, pork and beef, popular in United Sates to shrimp in Thailand. Among these diversities, my favorites are of course the spicy ones, such as kimchi flavor, enjoyed mostly in South Korea. I have offered Korean noodles to many of my peers at Kent, but their reactions were same every time: “Water!” To us, however, that’s nothing. There are even more spicy ones than those. Here is a picture of what I normally eat:

One of the primary reasons that Koreans are able to eat such spicy noodles is that we eat a lot. Instant noodles are just as prevalent as non-instant food in Korea and I’ve even met a person who eats noodles for all three meals. Though not as much as this person, I am probably one of those who eat way too much of this junk food. Maybe I should start thinking about my health.

Kids Eat Your Veggies

Growing up my mother always told me how important eating your veggies was. She told me that strong boys eat salad every day just like Papi the sailor man. I couldn’t do it! The taste of salad disgusted me. I was never and still am not a fan of anything creamy or too thick. I didn’t understand how people thought salad dressing sweetens salad; to me it just added a weird twist to the salad that I wasn’t fond of. Maybe the reason why I am only 5’9 today is because I failed to eat my veggies as a child. I really tried to bare the taste but I just couldn’t get use to the taste. I even tried my grandfather’s concoction of veggies like beetroot, carrots, and many others blended into a drink. It comes out being this purple nasty looking drink that he drank with his breakfast every morning. I tried it for a week, but eventually I could no longer hold my nose and chug it; the taste was just too horrid. I am not sure what age I started liking salad. I think it was once when my mom made me a salad with an amazing homemade dressing. It was her last attempt of getting me to eat salad. I have no idea what she put in it but I loved it so much that I even put it on my rice as gravy. To me it was an all purpose dressing. Now when I am home, I even have salads for breakfast almost every morning. I watch my little cousins fight the same battle I once fought trying every little thing to get out of eating the veggies put before them at the dinner table. I’ve never tried to get them to eat up their veggies because I know that one day they will. They just need to find what works for them. It looks like when it comes to veggies, everybody just needs to find their own way. I know what I’ll be telling my children; kids eat your veggies, how you want to eat your veggies.

I went to Barcelona for thanks giving, because my sister studiers there, and was exited to get to eat her cocking. On my way to the Airport I was already imagining the food, and it’s taste, nevertheless the journey was a hard one. When I was about to check in my luggage I was denied by one of those self checking machines to get a ticket for my flight. I asked for help later on and had to find out from one of the staff that my ticked had been canceled two days earlier by my travel agent, and that there was no ticked for me. When I heard that I was first confuses about the situation but then came to realize that now I would have to buy a new ticked with no money or credit card; so I decided to talk to the person who organized this entire trip , my sister, and asked her what I could do now. So I had to wait 3 hours until a new ticked was made and was send to the airline counter for me to pick up.

When I arrived at my sister’s apartment she immediately gave me and her friend a list of things to buy for thanksgiving. I and her friend went to go shopping for food with quickly became a long search. The reason for that was because it isn’t tradition to celebrate thanks giving so we had to go around the city for hours just to find a turkey. After we were able to garter all the ingredients I was ordered to peel potatoes and nothing else and not to enter the kitchen at any cost. The next day we ate a feast with about 6 other college student who where friends of hers and had a great thanks giving with a turkey self made stuffing and recorded football games.

Food Memory: Popcorn

My little siblings and I never really get along. However, when we make popcorn, I would forget about all of our petty-sibling arguments and the three of us would laugh, joke around, and even have fun. I think it is reasonable to think that our popcorn based-happiness stemmed from having a health-freak mother who banned sugared cereals and the like. So, as an excuse to eat an unhealthy treat, we would convince mom that popcorn “it’s just corn!” and it usually worked. Something about the satisfaction of being able to chomp on light, airy, crunchy, salty, fresh popcorn made everything seem better. So, my favorite food memories always have to do with popcorn because it is the one thing that brings my siblings and me closer. One of my absolute favorite memories is the first time we had Jiffy Pop this summer; a brand of popcorn that is intended for camping because of its unique design that allows it to be held over a fire. But, the three of us kids are in no way, shape, or form outdoorsy, so our Jiffy Pop was made over the stove in the kitchen. For most people, it is nothing special. For instance, it can be found in most grocery stores or gas stations. On the other hand, I don’t only view Jiffy Pop as amusing and clever, but it serves a beacon of light in the darkness of our sibling wars. The popcorn kernels are located inside a “specialized popping pan”, which you suspend over a fire and shake. As the kernels pop, the tin-foil cover becomes filled with popcorn and spirals upwards: resulting in a giant, popcorn filled sphere. The best part for Krae, Noa and I was carefully peeling away the tin-foil, revealing a, warm, perfectly salted, delicious mound of popcorn. The expression on our faces when we first caught a glimpse of the popcorn was probably comparable to being handed a million dollars. We gobbled down the popcorn in record time, probably because we have quite a lot of help from the dog, who also loves this treat. When there is no popcorn left, the stupid-petty-sibling arguments resume. At least it’s nice to know that I can have a good time with my brother and sister.

First Blog- Sinapi's

Upon entrance, your nose is filled by the pleasing smell of fresh garlic knots mixed with a variation of cooking pizzas. You immediately think to yourself, “Finally, some real home cooked Italian food.” As you frolic past the seemingly endless choices of drinks in anticipation for the order you soon won’t forget, you must stop and embrace not only the wonderful smell, but charming atmosphere of the restaurant. It is apparent through the kind waitress who offers you freshly baked garlic knots before you even place your order that there is must more than a restaurant here; there is a strong Italian family doing what they both love and excel at. Sinapi’s restaurant located in Pawling, New York serves as my favorite restaurant destination for good reason.

First, the outstanding staff makes the Sinapi’s experience more special than your typical restaurant experience. The staff is diligent, yet kind and easy to hold an enjoyable conversation with. After you peruse the menu consisting of various pastas, pizzas, salads, meats and seafood it is time to make perhaps the hardest culinary decision until your next outing to Sinapi’s: What do I order? The several pizzas layered with different toppings catch your eye, naturally. My personal favorite pizza, which I routinely order is layered with freshly made pasta. This combination of sauce and texture lead your taste buds and hungry stomach to a pleasing, yet not stuffed status. After warming up on a slice of pizza, I next made my choice to order the penne olive vodka pasta dish. Although it tore me apart deciding which route to take, I knew that no matter what I ordered I would be pleased. Sure enough, the pasta came out with just enough steam to allow immediate consumption. After eating everything except the bowl the pasta was served in, I was left completely satisfied. Each time I am fortunate enough to eat at Sinapi’s I always thoroughly enjoy myself, so I would strongly urge those of you who have no tried this fine Italian cuisine to enjoy the Sinapi’s experience!

Bittersweet

This past thanksgiving was very emotional for my family and me, having to deal with the first holiday since the unexpected passing of my grandmother, who was simply the backbone to our family. She has cooked up our delicious thanksgiving meals since before I was even born 19 years ago, and left the job up to my mother to provide the meal for us, which she did an amazing job filling the big shoes. We started off the day as we do every Thanksgiving going to our town’s annual football game (for the past four years I have played in); to see people we haven’t seen in months, and to obviously cheer on our team. From there we went back to the house where we greeted our entire family with over 25 people at my house starving for a meal. My mother cooked up the classic turkey, with mashed potatoes, corn, ham, relish, green beans, peas, and biscuits. The absolute best part of the meal was the turkey my mother cooked, perfectly stuffed and was perfectly cooked to perfection. My mother did a spectacular job of making the food, which I knew was an emotional time for her after she couldn’t help but realize the reality of why she is actually cooking, but not all of the day was set to weep. We also used the day to celebrate her life, and all the good times which we reminisced for the rest of the day while we watched our favorite team, the New England Patriots smash the Detroit Lions, then watching the Dallas Cowboys go down later in the day! Overall, my Thanksgiving was defiantly a bittersweet day, coming home from a lot of hard work at Kent over 3 months, finally making it home to very unfortunate news. There will never be a Thanksgiving where my family and I do not remember good old Nana Dee and all the classic Thanksgiving traditions we upheld as a family which she installed.

Kobe beef

Kobe beef is considered as the most expensive ($500 a pound) and the most elite beef in the world. It is famous of its high degree of marbling (also described as snowflake like fat in between the beef), its tender texture, and its flavor. It is described that Kobe beef has the consistency of foie gras and the tenderness of a filet mignon. Kobe beef originated from Japan’s Hyogo region. This region is very much isolated from other parts of Japan, thus, when the cattle were introduced to Hyogo, they developed their own unique genetic characteristics. The Hyogo cattle were fed with apples and beer (beer stimulate them to eat more), massaged by Japanese rice wine, listen to music, and drink a bottle of beer every day. All these measures are to relax the cattle’s muscles. Moreover, Kobe beef is divided into different levels (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5) according to their degree of marbling. There are multiple ways to cook Kobe beef. Stir fry and sukiyaki are some common ways to cook this expensive beef. Kobe beef cooked right should be crispy on the outside and pretty raw inside. Like other beef, Kobe beef has to rest to contain the juice inside the beef before serving it.
Because Hong Kong is quite close to Japan and Kobe beef is very popular in Hong Kong, I am very fortunate to have a chance to taste Kobe beef. I was amazed by how the beef literally melts in my mouth and the tenderness of the beef. I think it is incomparable to sirloin, rib eye, and filet mignon, not because Kobe beef is really that much better, but because it is a whole different way of eating beef/steak.