i bought light yogurt today for breakfast because it was on sale 10 for $5! i don’t recommend it. it is nasty. waaay too sweet… i don’t think i can even finish it!
on the other hand? turkey hill green tea with ginseng & honey? pretty good!! though i think i still prefer their regular iced tea
kiwy the big blue dinosaur (or as betty once called him “stumpy blue”) was cutting up some fruit the other day…
i’m told i have too much time on my hands…. AND that i should become a professional fruit cutter 
tho really… i can only cut dinosaur shaped kiwis…
ah turkey day, my favorite holiday of the year!
this year, we went to my aunt judie’s house for the traditional thanksgiving day dinner. mmm mmm good. my uncle greg roasts the BEST turkey (not too dry, juuust right), my aunt judie makes some awesome stuffing (it’s like chinese sticky rice!) and a couple of my aunts/uncles (this year- uncle jack and auntie maggie, uncle julian, and auntie anna) always come. also there was eric, my GRAND-NEPHEW. that’s right, i have one grand-nephew and another one is on the way. granted this is not my sister’s grandchild… or even my cousin’s grandchild, but the way chinese count generations, the kid was 2 generations below me. he is actually my dad’s cousin’s great grandchild. yup, it’s weird being called grandaunt…
it’s always fun at a hsiung family dinner… those aunts are hilarious. so one of my aunts bought a transparent rubber duckie that lights up for eric. the duck has 2 metal dots on the bottom that if you touch at the same time, complete the circuit to light up the duckie. this provided eric annnd the “adults” hours of entertainment. so to experiment, we started having one person touch one dot, another person touch the other. then the two people touch each other, thereby completing the circuit. it was weird, but it seemed some people were not good conductors. iiii am an AWESOME conductor of electricity 
there wasn’t anyone who i couldn’t conduct with… my sister and mom had trouble conducting with each other. the quote of the night was from my aunt maggie. she started testing this with each member of the family. then she called her husband, uncle jack.
aunt maggie: jack! jack! come over here, let’s see if we have any electricity.
uncle jack: o.. ok…
(they touch the rubber duckie)
aunt maggie: damnit! we have no electricity!
…. later on in the night…
aunt maggie: come over here jack! let’s try it again, i can’t believe we don’t have electricity!
bahh, another funny thing: on the way to my aunt’s house after picking up my sister at the bus stop, we get stuck behind a mathnkids van. so it had its contact info painted on the window as an advertisement. my dad started getting annoyed at how slow the van was driving- “we should call the number and say ‘you drive so slow, just like your students are slow’!!!” hahahha, i don’t even think my dad realized what he said. BAH!
only bad part this year was the lack of turkey congee! after my aunt’s thanksgiving dinner, we usually head over to the mei’s house for some turkey congee! that’s perfect for midnight snacking after a hearty thanksgiving dinner. this year, we heard there was no congee so what was the point of going over?! (jk jk… it wasn’t just about the congee, apparently none of the chinese school families were celebrating turkey day together this year) so at around 11ish, my stomach actually started feeling a bit empty 
weirdest feeling ever.
fortunately, i got to eat brunch at ihop with angela, mariam, and jason. mmm cinnamon swirl french toast… so delicious! (mariam didn’t think so 
) then riiiight after eating with them at ihop, i went to A&J’s with my parents. ooo man, you can’t not eat at A&J’s! so i had another meal
so much food, it was awesome!!
i had bacon and eggs this morning! so good… well, at least the bacon i want some more now =(
and now for lunch, i’m gonna have home cooked beef stew! mmmmmm! the meat is so teeeender!
what to eat for dinner…?
so on friday i ordered “spicy crab” wings from a place right by my house. i ordered from this place previously (when everyone was in town for dave and tope’s wedding) and it wasn’t that spicy. it basically was crab seasoning. the wings were brown colored.
so i was a bit surprised when i opened my box of wings and saw that my wings were a bright dark red. hrm… this isn’t the same spicy crab wings i had the first time! so i think they gave me someone else’s wings, bah!! the wings being insanely spicy…. my eyes were watering, my nose was runny, my lips were on fire! i contemplated going back to the wings place but my mouth was on fire too much! i couldn’t even go a few seconds without drinking something. i had to rub ice all over my lips to cool them down. AND i was hungry! so i stupidly continued to eat the wings.
bahh, i’m so stupid when i’m hungry! for people who eat really spicy, i highly recommend the wings place by my apartment though! i’m just not sure what wings i ended up eating…
pretty sour! pretty good!! it doesn’t lose it’s sour flavor very quickly (even with my ultra-powerful bacteria fighting saliva!)
it actually made my eye twitch this morning as i chewed it, but that might’ve been partially b/c i had a piece of candy (sugary) before it.
Some researchers at Purdue University were researching popcorn and why some kernels seem resistent to popping. So apparently there’s a science to popcorn.
The moisture level in the center of the kernel should be 15% in order for it to pop. And… drumroll please…. the latest research in popcorn now shows that the composition of its hull is what determines the success in popping. Leaky hulls prevent the moisture pressure from building up and they don’t have “optimal hull structure” to allow them to explode.
Wow, I never knew there were such thing as “food chemistry” and “Center for Carbohydrate Research”… makes sense I suppose. Someone’s got to figure all these things out. Check out the Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research… pretty cool! I want to research cereal and popcorn!
mmm, i give my approval
i hope they become a permanent flavor!
i had the 2nd annual salsa party last week watching the oscars. 8 small containers of salsa stolen from baja fresh along with 2 big containers i purchased (i chickened out and felt bad stealing all the salsa so i figured i’d give baja fresh some business)
sadly, i didn’t finish using all the salsa… used all 8 small containers, but threw out the 2 big containers having barely used any. the 2nd annual salsa party was not as successful as the first one (few sequels ever match the success of the original)… perhaps it was b/c it was a sad party of one (chubacca was in pittsburgh having her own salsa party… but while studying too! that’s just messed up. i don’t think anyone else held their own)… or perhaps it was b/c it was held during the oscars as opposed to the grammys. i think the grammys are a whole lot more entertaining with their musical performances- what with sting and his accordion-like instrument or the weird combinations of performers (i.e. sting and sean paul)? such great entertainment! tho i guess besides the musical performances, it’s just about the same as the oscars (if not even less interesting b/c i’m more interested in who wins oscars than who wins grammys EXCEPT when britney spears wins for toxic )
meh, i suppose both award shows have their pluses and minus. and both of them draaaag on for entirely too long (oo, but this year’s oscars were amusing for their “speed up the show” stunts like grouping everyone on stage or giving awards in the back of the auditorium… hilarious!)
the original salsa party:
(there’s also an empty container to the right… so i wonder if we hadn’t finished off some containers before taking this pic!)
all other salsa parties pale in comparison
sadly the oscars preempted desperate housewives that week (and this week their eyes were watching god preempted it!)… show a new episode already!!!
so yesterday after eating at California Pizza Kitchen for the first time (deeeeeelicious)… nancy and i decide we had to do something beside eating since that’s all we do when we hang out.
… so after “shopping” at fairfax corner, we went to wegmans!! (hey, it’s still shopping and not entirely food related) i love wegmans! it’s so big and so much food! i always spend way too much time in there just wandering around! so i was really thirsty (and not that hungry) after lunch and shopping so i ended up buying nearly all beverage products (and some corn on the cob ). but i couldn’t exactly chug a whooole container of orange juice so i decided to try to GOYA bottles of soda to quench my thirst. bah! GOYA is the company that sells beans and rice right??
so i bought the “cola champagne” and the “guava soda” flavors. i tried cola champagne first and it tasted nasty like medicine!! the guava soda was actually pretty good! good to wash down the cola champagne nastiness. i think i will try more GOYA soda though. Mandarin orange, coconut, and sangria seem interesting. pretty good, try it out! just avoid the cola champagne…
