Sunday, April 15th

Smoked salmon bagel

1:30PM Greg's Room
1 bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon (the one that I got at the brunch yesterday but saved for today). I had to microwave the bagel even though it had cream cheese on it (a fridge-cold bagel just isn't my thing), but I got smart and separated out the salmon so it wouldn't get "cooked". When I put it all back together, I had a toasty warm bagel with cold salmon, just the way it was meant to be. Mmm. (Sorry my picture is icky, I totally forgot until I was done eating, so I took a picture of the last few bites my boyfriend had left haha and even then it came out bad because the lighting was poor).

6:30PM Greg's Room
Bits of leftover stuff in Greg's fridge… which consisted of 1/8 of a ham & brie panini from Pacific Java, and 1/3 of a slice of vanilla bean cheesecake. Haha I'm big on eating leftovers to conserve food and money. It was quite good actually, since they're not MY leftovers, so to me it was a brand new meal experience! :P

Panini and cheesecake

9:30PM Greg's Room
Leftover beef stroganoff entree that I got from Baker dining on um… Wednesday. I know, I know, it's like ancient now, but I didn't want it to go waste! There wasn't a whole lot of food left from it, but it wasn't bad for being nearly 5 days old…

12:00AM Greg's Room
1 叉烧包 (cha shao bao, a.k.a roast pork bun) from Chinatown, and a few sips of a mug of hot chocolate that I made for Greg. Haha all day has been leftovers and more leftovers! Nibbles of random things here and there, what a weird day. Oh well, at least I didn't have to go through the trouble of ordering out.

Saturday, April 14th

1:00PM Simmons Housemasters' Brunch
1 buttermilk pancake with syrup, slice of honey spiral ham, 1 oz of smoked salmon, small handful of baby carrot sticks. 1 glass of freshly blended fruit smoothie. The housemasters at Simmons always have the best brunches. They make fresh pancakes, french toast, and eggs on portable griddles. And there's always smoked salmon and spiral ham, as well as random other yummies like coffee cake, quiche, vegetables, bagels, yogurt, cereal, crackers & cheese. The housemaster himself is always manning the smoothie station making his famous smoothie recipe, with fresh fruits, juices, and yogurt. Greg and I like to bring our own cups so that we can get more smoothie than with the tiny plastic cups they provide :) Today I also grabbed a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, to save for another meal heh.

King To pork chops

6:30PM Chinatown – Big Fish Restaurant
Family dinner for 4, shared with Greg, Tony, and Jacqueline. We got a savory egg drop soup with corn and fish maw to start. The entrees in the dinner-for-4 package included clams in black bean sauce, sauteed broccoli, beef with scallions and onions in a sizzling bowl, and King To pork chops (京都排骨), which is a favorite in my family. They food came with rice too, of course. The dishes were all really tasty, although the broccoli was cut too big for me to grab comfortably with my chopsticks. I kind of dropped a piece all over the tablecloth before I was able to get it into my bowl haha. We got some bowls of red bean soup for dessert, but I only ate some of it because it was a bit too sweet. I um, forgot to take pictures of the meal, as usual, because I always get too excited when I'm eating out or at a special event. I tried to take a picture of the left over pork chops, but failed miserably because the I was unable to hold the camera steady enough at the wobbly table with everyone leaning on it and eating on it. Sorry :P

But here is a picture of Greg and I at Big Fish to compensate for lack of food pictures hehe:

Me and Greg at Big Fish

9:30PM Baker Pizza & Ice Cream Social
Friendly's ice cream (pistachio, fudge swirl, and cookies n' cream flavors). Mmm I needed some dessert… I also grabbed 2 slices of pizza for a meal tomorrow or something. Can't pass up on free food especially on a long weekend when the dining halls are closed!

Friendly’s ice cream

Wednesday, April 11th

10:00AM Lab Meeting
1 plain bagel from Au Bon Pain, 2 tbsp of whipped cream cheese, 2 oz. smoked salmon. 4 oz of Trader Joe's orange juice. Yum, I love breakfast at lab meetings. Someone brought in a peach tart too, which looked really nice, but I was pretty full after the bagel so I passed on it.

6:45PM Baker Dining
1 chicken quesadilla with roasted peppers, onions, and three cheese blend. Baker makes fantastic chicken quesadillas. The peppers and onions make the quesadilla more moist, with yummy variety in each bite. Great comfort food.

Chicken quesadilla

11:00PM Dorm Room
1 freshly baked chocolate chip cookie and 1 brownie, from Shuo and Theresa Liu (they came to visit and give out food). Haha the baked good were very tasty, but probably not good for you :P I ate them while we were all chatting outside my room, sometimes you just have to sacrifice a little for socializing heh.

Weekend Roundup (Friday 4/06 – Sun 4/08)

I went home on Friday night because I was taking the MCAT in my hometown on Saturday morning. My mom got out of work early on Friday afternoon and labored for 3 hours in the kitchen to make a ton of food for dinner. I was quite touched. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures this weekend, and I didn't count calories on anything because I really wanted to just relax. But here's some of the stuff I had:

Friday 4/06
Lunch – leftover chicken saltimbocca (I only ate the chicken and some of the corn, because the pasta was pretty bland after reheating it.

Dinner – Alaskan king crab legs, Chinese dishes: 罗颂汤 (luo song soup, which is a ketchup based soup with chinese sausage, cabbage, and mushrooms in it… it sounds funny when I describe it but it's really yummy and hearty), eggs with tomatoes, shrimp with peas and egg white scramble, green beans with oyster sauce, sweet and sour fish with snow pea pods and green bell peppers. Yum… I love home cooked food :)

Later at night – 1/2 cup of Chinese eight treasure soup (not the congee type) that my mom made in a pressure cooker that day. Also 1 banana at 4am because I couldn't fall asleep before the morning exam…  yikes!

Saturday 4/07 (MCAT test date)
Breakfast – one toasted english muffin with peanut butter and shredded pork sung on top (um, the pork sung was my mom's doing… haha I would have been okay with just peanut butter and honey or something), 1/2 cup of warm milk (this is a Chinese comfort drink thing… my family always drank hot milk when they were living in China, which apparently the thing to do).

During the MCAT – you get 10 minute breaks between each section. During the first break I drank some Propel fitness water (I couldn't find any Gatorade in the house, so this was second best) and ate half a package of Special K snack bites. Second break was more Propel plus the rest of the snack bites. For the last break I ate some roasted cashews and had a kid sized KitKat bar, with more Propel. The test took a total of about 5.5 hours, so it was good to have those little breaks to unwind between sections and refresh yourself.

Lunch – leftovers from dinner last night

Dinner – Fresh steamed blue crab (my mom bought these alive from the local Chinese market… they're about the size of your hand and don't have a whole lot of meat, but they're really tasty! Their meat is much finer than that of king crabs or dungeonesses. Plus they're all female crabs, so they have lots of crab eggs (roe) inside, which are a delicacy for Chinese people), fresh roast pork from the Chinese market (this stuff is awesome when it's fresh, especially with a little bit of char on the edges), mung bean sprouts, and Shanghai bok choy.

Dessert – Breyer's vanilla ice cream with Swiss almonds (mmmm such an indulgence! I haven't had real ice cream since last year…)

Sunday (4/08)
Lunch – leftovers from Fri and Sat night

Afternoon snack – 1 vanilla flavored Special K snack bites

Dinner – 1/2 a tomato tortilla wrap with turkey breast, roast beef, lettuce, tomatoes, caramelized onions, roasted peppers, and roasted zucchini. 1/3 bowl of seafood chowder.

Later at night – small handful of cashews.

Turkey and roast beef wrap

Seafood chowder

Wednesday, April 4th (Baby back ribs day, baby!)

10:00AM Lab Meeting
1 plain bagel (290 calories), 2 tbsp of herbed cream cheese (100 calories), 1 cup of orange pineapple banana juice (8 oz., 130 calories). There were some other yummy looking items like baklava and peeps and yogurt, but I wasn't hungry enough to eat more than a bagel. So my lab is predominantly filled with Asian postdocs, and whoever is giving a talk at the lab meeting brings in the food for everyone. Today my lab boss was like wow, only here would you get an Indian person bringing in passover and Easter foods for a lab full of Chinese and Japanese people. Haha.

3:00PM Stata Center
1 strawberry Special K bar (90 calories). Small snack so that I don't get ravenous before dinner.

7:00PM Baker Dorm Dining
Ribs ribs ribs!!!! 1/2 rack of bbq baby back ribs (6 ribs, ~700 calories, 1 cup of broccoli (50 calories). Mmmm these were divine. Baker makes them dry rub style, and then tops it off with sauce when it's being served. I'd love to know what spices are in the dry rub, because they go together so well, and the ribs come out perfectly moist without being too fatty nor too dry. I actually like these baby back ribs better than the oh so well known Chili's baby back ribs, which I once tried and found to be way too charred and therefore dry. There were so fantastic, they induced a food coma shortly afterwards, so I took a nice long nap :)

Baby back ribs

Total for today was 1360 calories. Not bad, considering how bad the ribs are for you :P Yum!