College Food Series: 碎肉玉米炒辣椒 (Spicy Ground Pork and Corns)

You know......I always find it hard to translate the dishes' names to English......

but anyway, here we go:

Ingredients:

1. corns: 1 can (non creamy)

2. ground pork: 1/4 lb (marinated with salt, sesame oil, a little rice wine, and some corn starch)

3. chill peppers (I like the red ones, they add good color to the dish, but if it's not spicy enough throw in some green, little ones. Oh they are good.)

Procedures:

1. after marinating the meat for around 15 minutes, throw in some oil into a heated cooking pan.

2. throw in the chill peppers and let it cook for about 2 minutes (or until the smell comes out)

3. throw in the meat and cook until it's cooked.

p.s. if you think it's not salty enough, add some salt. DO NOT USE SOY SAUCE. It's going to destroy the color.

4. throw in the corns and cook for 3 to 5 minutes

5. eat!!!!!

It is another great dish to go with rice, and it's awesome for lunch box as well. It's easy, tasty, and fast. Such a good dish huh? :)

College Food Series: 麻婆豆腐 (Ma Po Tofu)

I decide to start this series just because I love food. Haha, it's also a guide of how I successfully made it so I can check back in the future. So here we go

Ma Po Tofu

ingredient:

Tofu: 1 piece

The sauce pack: 1 pack

pepper corn oil: a little

ground pork: 1/4 lb

I use the sauce pack to save some time. After all we the college students don't have that much time on cooking, right?

You can get this in the Chinese grocery stores such as Ranch 99. It's around 2 bucks so it's acceptable.

Procedures:

1. boil a pot of water. We will use it later.

2. heat up another pot (or a pan or whatever you use to cook) and put in some oil.

3. cut the tofu into small cubes (the smaller, the easier the flavor goes in but also the easier it breaks, so it's up to you how big you want it to be).

4. cook the ground pork until it's fully cooked.

5. add the sauce into the pot and stir slowly.

6. meanwhile, put the tofu into the boiled water for about 30 seconds. This is an important step. You might not be able to tell the difference because this dish has a strong flavor, but for other dishes you can taste the "soil" taste in the tofu.

7. put the tofu into the pot and stir slowly. Cook it for about 5 mins.

8. add in some peppercorn oil to give it a good smell :)

9. if it's too watery, make some corn starch water (corn starch + water...DUH!! make sure you use cold water though) and put it in gently.

10. wait until it's saucy but not watery, turn off the fire.

11. eat!!!

It's a great dish with rice. I bet you can eat more than usual with this dish, so dig in!!

How I Met Your Mother

Okay.....so I've seen some depressing stuff on people's blog. It's true that we face things that don't go according to our ways, but that's also the interesting part of our lives, isn't it? Like people always say: when someone gives you lemon, you throw it right back at him you make lemonade :) This show has a lot of realistic stuff and unrealistic stuff. The realistic part makes us think while the other part makes us laugh. For those who are sad or depressed or whatever, go watch some of the episodes. It's really funny.

The story starts with a dad (Ted) telling his kids about his life back when he was late-20 and how he met their mom (yes! the title!). To them, everything happened in the past, but to us, the time in the show goes with our current time. The entire show is a big flashback.

There are five main characters who are good friends with each other. Of course they have to go through some fighting and arguing, but they are still good friends after all.

Characters:

Ted Mosby:

Ted is an architect who seeks for a woman for a long-term relationship and marriage. Throughout the show he gets with many but eventually breaks up with all of them. I'm not gonna talk about the characters too much in case of any spoiler. Watch the show!! :)

Marshall Eriksen:

Marshall is Ted's best friend ever since college. They lived together throughout their college life and still lived together for a while after college. He's a lawyer who's dream was to help the environment protecting organization to fight against the evil corporates. However, his dream doesn't seem to come true any time soon..... Marshall is a tall man who was raised in a "manly" family. All his brothers are taller than him (he's 6" 4') and his dad tried to make him become very manly. The family sure can eat. :)

Lily Aldrin:

Lily is Marshall's beloved woman. They got together on the first day of their college life and have been together ever since. Lily is a teacher at a kindergarten. Although she's kind and sweet most of the time, she does have those moments when she completely turns to the dark side(XD). She's also a painter whose painting is not acceptable to human beings but somehow is to dogs (and it's extremely bad to the birds).

Robin Scherbatsky:

A Canadian news reporter who moved to the US to chase her dream. However she could only work at a station called Metro News 1 that apparently has a really low viewing rate. Robin is introduced in the first episode of the first season. In the episode, Ted did something crazy to try to get her, but at the end the narrator (old Ted) revealed that Robin is only the kids' "aunty". Of course, there's more about Ted and Robin later on in the show, but we do know that they eventually stayed as friends. Robin's thought is kind of opposite of Ted's. For example, Ted wants to get married and have kids, but Robin just wants to chill and have fun in a relationship. She doesn't want commitment (or not yet?) and would not accept Ted's idea. Again, go watch the show. There's so much more. :) Oh yea, the other four always make fun of her for being Canadian or saying Canadian things. It might be a little offensive to my beloved Canadian friends but....I'm sorry it's just so funny XDDDD

Barney Stinson:

I know it's kinda sad to say this, but he's my favorite character. He's a womanizer who pretty much always wears a suit. He apparently worked at some mysterious company that no one knows what it does, and he never told anyone about his job (until certain episode when something happened to that company). He has many crazy ideas of judging a woman or how to get a woman to sleep with him. He also has a set of rules of life. He always says those ideas with the tone of "let me teach you something". In the show we learned why he always wears a suit and how he became who he is now. Barney's role is the comedian and the spice of the show. Without him the show would not be so interesting and so funny. And once more, go watch it.

For those who are college students and are suffering from all the works, I understand how you guys don't really have time, but we gotta loosen up a bit sometimes so we won't drive ourselves crazy. This show can be the buffer in real life. I'm sure it will give you some laughter, and you'll definitely enjoy it. :)

Oh yea, this show also talks about sex a lot (well...we got Barney here) so for those of you who can't take it, don't watch it. But hey, just talking about it wouldn't hurt would it? I say we should just relax and enjoy the show.

This is one of the shows I follow. I've followed many series such as The Office, Heroes (stopped), Big Bang Theory, and House (need to catch up). I'll try to give some introduction of these shows to those who have never seen them before.

Lebron James' Best Dunks

http://www.nba.com/video/channels/top_plays/2009/09/14/nba_091409_lebron_dunks.nba/

This guy is a physical freak.

But I like it :)

NATCAR

For the past two years, I've working on a project that took a ton of time. For this I've been skipping events and parties. Now we've built one car and competed in last year's competition, I decided to move on and leave it to the younglings. Many people have been wondering why I would skip all those fun stuff for something like this, so I feel that I should kinda explain what NATCAR is about.

NATCAR is an automatic car that can detect the track and run it. The track is pretty much white tape on black carpet. There's also a wire that contains 75 kHz current running through it. That's pretty much the basic setup of the track.

The car has to be able to detect the track, whether by detect the color contrast or the current, and run the track with the fastest time while trying to avoid wandering off the track (hitting the white cones, which gives penalty). Of course, the car that takes the shortest time wins.

The car itself contains several parts. Although there's not so much limit of how you make the car, it does have to have some basic parts. There are the sensors in the front, which senses the track; there's also the motor controller that controls the speed the revolution of the motor; the micro-controller that acts as the brain of this car. Yep! Things like these.

A Nice View of One of the Sensor

Honestly, the components are not very hard to build, but they are extremely hard to calibrate. Things usually work well on their own, but it would be a totally different story once we assemble them altogether. For most of the time, our effort was on debugging. This includes tons of testing and reverse engineering.

The Micro-Controller

Every week, we sacrificed our precious rest time for this project. Our meetings were usually on Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm, but very often (almost every week) we worked until night time. Yes, our Saturdays are gone. Of course we complained about this a lot (you have no idea how much I complained :) ), but, o well, we gotta do as much as possible so we could make it to the competition.

A View of Soldering

I have to say that we had a lot of fun (someone: ewwwww) from doing this. Although it sounds and looks and in every single possible way very nerdy, we still had fun :) . We got to put what we learned in classes in practice. However, whatever we learned in classes can only apply a little bit. For most of the time, it was more like trial and error with probable hypotheses. I believe we learned more from this than from any class.

Our Lovely Testing Machines

There are not only engineering stuff involved in this project. For a while we had to deal with the funds. In this period of time, we hit a bottleneck and had no solution for a good month or so, and the board saw it and thought that we couldn't finish the car on time. Thanks to some board members and our team's hard effort, we still got to finish the car on time (HA! Screw you, board!) Although the result of the competition is not satisfying (we did not finish the race), the process is still awesome.

Now that I'm done, I wish the best luck to all who are still on the team. I will go back sometimes just to check out how everyone does. Many members who were on the team are still on the team this year, so I'm pretty sure they will have some nice breakthrough. Good luck again to all of you NATCAR-er. May the force be with you :p

The Car (okay...this one is not the one we built. i dont have a picture of our car. this belongs to the team two years ago...XD)

Xiao Long Bao (Little Steamed Buns) [小籠包]

Most of the time when people talk about it, they would think the steamed buns from Shanghai. True, Shanghai's steamed bun is super popular, but it might not be the best in my opinion, or I just haven't had the really good ones from Shanghai yet.

I'm gonna talk about the xiao long bao from this really famous store in Taiwan, Din Tai Fong (鼎泰豐). In Taiwan, Din Tai Fong is like another name for xiao long bao, their most famous dish. Many tourists from China, Korea, and Japan request to go there when they go to Taipei. This is one of their must-go places in Taiwan. Yes, it's that popular.

You might ask: it doesn't look that special from this picture, so what is the secret that draws all the customers?

Well, it might not look special because you cannot really see what's inside from this picture, or I simply suck at taking photos :p.

What makes this xiao long bao so special, so different from other places? First, it has really thin skin. The skin is so thin that you can break it easily. If you are not a good chopsticks user, it is recommended that you use other utensils to support when you get the xiao long bao. Since the skin is so thin, you can taste the flavor inside easily. When you take a bite, it is not noticeable that the skin is there. To exaggerate a bit, it feels like the skin would melt in your mouth.

Second, there is a secret sauce used to make it. Apparently no one really knows what's the ratio of the sauce used except the owners and the key officers. This sauce brings out the flavor. It extracts the best part of the meat and creates a perfect balance when eating it with ginger and vinegar. This sauce plays an important part of the dish.

Third, the visual effect. Visual? You say? Yes! When you enter the restaurant (the oldest one), you will see the entire kitchen and all the chefs and workers in it. You can see the entire process of making the xiao long bao. You will be amazed of how fast they can make it. All the chefs are REALLY skilled, and they are not afraid to show you what they've got. This really brings up your appetite.

Fourth, the waiters and waitresses. If a restaurant is well known internationally, the all the workers there must have really good manner. Workers at Din Tai Fong definitely have it. You will be surprised how nice they can be. For example, some workers have to carry like 5 or 6 serves of xiao long bao (the wooden container shown in the picture), it would make sense if they want to serve them asap. however, they will still let you pass first when the path is too narrow. To me, I would let them go first and would expect them to pass. Instead they insist that I shouldd go first. I do not see workers from other restaurant, especially carrying so much stuff, do the same. Interesting fact: all waiters and waitresses have to be able to speak Japanese because there are sooooooo many japanese tourists who go there.

last but not least, the restaurant itself. The restaurant is bright, nice looking, and, most importantly, very clean. I heard that tehy spend hours cleaning everyday to make sure that the restaurant stays "appetite". I mean, no one would want to eat at a dirty restaurant right? Knowing that this building is much older than me, other restaurants might already have dirty walls, broken tables or chairs, or cracked plates or whatever already (yes, some restaurants do use the plates if they are only cracked a little on the sides, but I don't see it at Din Tai Fong), but all the above are not seen in this restaurant.

I'm pretty sure that's not all why this restaurant is awesome. If you have a chance to go, try it yourself and maybe leave a comment here to tell everyone how you feel about this place. For those who are in LA, there is one there. I'm not sure if it tastes the same, but hey at least you guys have it. It better than nothing isn't it? :)

p.s. some pix from internet. the sign is not from the original restaurant

When you have jetlag.....

Waking up in early morning is refreshing. It makes me feel like I can do so much in one day because I feel that I have so much time. The weather today was beautiful, and the view was so awesome. My neighborhood is already pretty, but it looked even better today. It was actually so pretty that I wanna buy a really good camera to take pictures. Well, too bad I'm a poor guy, but at least I had camera.

I love this community. It's so pretty and so convenient. It's close to the subway and a beautiful park. There are also tons of restaurants and/or shops around. Although getting to those places still requires driving, it's still good. :)

Here are some more pix......

This complex is named as a lake, so all the street names in the complex are all sea creatures (yea...they all live in salt water,not in a lake......) Most of them are names of fish, but there are some exceptions.

This place will look even better in fall when all leaves turn red or yellow. Too bad I won't have a chance to be here during that time. By the time I come back, all leaves would be on te ground already.

This morning, I learned to appriciate what I have more. This sounds kinda weird I know, but hey, if you live in this community and realize how beautiful it is, you would think the same.

School is starting soon. This last year of school (hopefully) will be fantastic. I will make it fantastic. People, enjoy school while you can. Once you get out of school, there will be more stress and you would have no way to get rid of all these anger and depression :)

We'll end this post with this picture ;P