Tearing It Up

So sorry to keep you all waiting. No, I was not on a starvation diet. I simply had no time for anything for the past couple of days.

I took some Japanese students around the campus, practicing Japanese, on Wednesday. The only real place of interest to take them was the Dairy, where I bought ice cream for the first time in like nine months. It was white chocolate with a little caramel. Then the students paid for me to have lunch with them. Even though I'd brought my lunch, I couldn't refuse.

I had to stay up late on Wednesday night, so I tried eating more to help sustain my energy. Eating more did not help, and it caused considerable... discomfort, later.

I spent money on food today at the food court on campus. I'll try not to let it happen again.

Wednesday's Meals

Breakfast: cereal, fat free milk
Lunch: medium ice cream, 4-pack of Chick-Fil-A strips, apple
Dinner: spinach and feta penne pasta with 2 ham slices cut into strips
Late Snacks: half a bag of Thai Lime Cashews, a couple of servings of yogurt-covered Goji berries, a few handfuls of almonds

Wednesday's Exercise

Biked to bus stop: 7 min.
Biked UMD-SS via trail: 50 min.

Thursday's Meals

Breakfast: bowl of kashi, fat-free milk
Lunch: spinach/feta pasta with ham
Dinner: Thai Chili's stir-fried duck with bamboo shoots

Thursday's Exercise

Walked to bus stop: 18 min.
Walked from Gallery Place to north of Columbia Heights: 1.5 hours
Walked home from bus stop: 20 min.

Friday's Meals

Breakfast: kashi, milk, crumbs of brownies
Lunch: medium salad with avocado, radicchio, carrots, and spinach leaves, brownie
Dinner: 8-count CFA nuggets, large waffle fries, grapefruit

Friday's Exercise

Walked to bus stop: 12 min (kinda ran)
Walked home from shuttle: 15 min

What I Learned Today

...or over the past few days since my last post.

• The Russian word for hello is Здравствуйте! Transliterated: zdravstvuyte! Its roots are in words for "you," "health," and an imperative form, meaning "Be of good health!"
  
  
• Bob Costas pronounced "Beijing" a really bizarre way throughout the Olympics.
  
  
• He pronounced the J in Beijing with the same sound as in "genre." In other words, with a sound that does not exist either in Chinese or English (except in French loan words). It's "Beijing," with a J as in jingle.
  
  
• In Japan, they make no clear distinction between "looking young" and "looking like a child." This explains so much.
  

Aak's Been on a Tear

With this post I make it 54 for the month of February between the two blogs. That makes it the most productive month since we've been doing this. This post puts my personal contribution at 10. Aak's been on a tear.

Some of it is due to him finding ready-made formats with the biking, learning, and eating. And then more eating.

Speaking of eating, I just had a terrible burger that's making me ill. I have no plans to eat at that place again. When I feel this way it makes me crave soda. Does that make any sense or is it still learned from when I was a kid and I was always given ginger ale? Someone once told me that ginger ale used to actually have ginger in it which has healing properties and the fact that we drink ginger ale when we're sick is a misconception.

The cool thing about getting older is that you can think about the people you're friends with and how long you've known them can now be measured in decades.

Back to Aak. I imagine that he's become more efficient with it - blogging. I put too much thought into a post, or I should say that I stare at a blank screen and think "I have nothing to write" a lot then give up. While I wouldn't say that I'm generally overjoyed to find out about what Japanese food my coblogger ingests on a given day, more power to him.

Off to class now. I've been bummed recently to realize that I need to set aside massive chunks for myself to learn my class material and understand it properly. When setting aside schedules I always want to squeeze in an hour here or there to get something done, but I can't do that with learning. Maybe I should just lock myself away for a month at the beginning of every semester and do nothing but my classes and emerge when I'm ready. Then I can emerge from the cocoon ready to live.

Happy Mardi Gras

Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or maybe it's the decrease in caloric intake, but I felt tired all day today. Just making a note.

Monday's Meals

Breakfast (8:30 am): okonomiyaki

Lunch (1:30 pm): brown basmati rice, Punjab Eggplant curry (TJs)

Dinner (8:00 pm?): brown basmati rice, the rest of the punjab eggplant curry microwaved with a little tofu, a few spears of baby corn, and some chicken stock

Monday's Exercise

Morning commute: frazzledly biked to the metro (7 min), then biked from CP station to class, late (10 min)

Started to bike home, then realized I had a flat. Went to the Bike Shop on campus where the guys helped me patch it for free. (walking: 10 min)

Biked UMD-SS via roads at night: 45 min at least

Tuesday's Meals

Breakfast (7:00 am): bowl of Puffiins with fat-free milk

Lunch (12:30 pm): medium-large salad of a little lettuce, a lot of mung beans, and a lot of carrots, with that ginger/soy/sesame/rice vinegar dressing, plus a PBJ and an apple.

Dinner (8:00 pm): spinach and feta pasta (a bowl and a half, perhaps too much), a large piece of king cake (definitely too much)

Cheating Late-Night Nosh (just now): a large piece of king cake (Happy Mardi Gras)

Tuesday's Exercise

Biked SS-UMD via roads: 30 min

Biked UMD-SS via trail: 45 min

Biked to library, then bike shop and grocery store, then home on a new back wheel: 25 min?

Spinach and Feta Pasta

This came out well, but I think I added too much feta. I think a little feta can go a long way. Maybe too many tomato bits, too. Just enough spinach, though.

Plagiarism CYA: I looked up a number of recipes. Most of them were the same. I mainly followed this one: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sukis-Spinach-and-Feta-Pasta/Detail.aspx

Spinach and Feta Pasta

• whole wheat and flax penne pasta (Trader Joes, about 1/2 a package)
• diced tomatoes (from a Trader Joes can)
• a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach, washed
  
• red onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• olive oil
• feta, about 6 oz
• seasonings (salt, pepper, red pepper, parmesan)
  

Salt the water and boil, cooking pasta. This variety takes a little longer than normal spaghetti. Cook until almost done. Drain and leave.

Glug some olive oil into a wok. Get it hot, but turn down the heat to med-high. When the oil shimmers, add the onion and the garlic.

When the onion and garlic turn brown or at least soft, add the tomatoes and the spinach. Turn up the heat just a smidgeon. Stir-fry and wilt that spinach down to a fourth of what you thought you put in. (Which is to say, don't wilt it too much.)

Add pasta and crumble the feta. Stir around a bit. Season. Done.

What I Learned Today. Well, Within The Past Week Or So. Or the Past Month.

Yeah, hijacking someone else's format.

• Monkeys instinctively go for the genitals during combat. While talking with some people about that recent Chimp attack, someone informed me that Chimps have all out wars with organized armies and such. And when two male chimps are fighting over a female chimp they go for a guy's most prized possession. Once they're done I guess that definitively solves the issue of who mates with her. Provided she's game, of course. Oh, please, they're chimps, not law abiding citizens. Whoever wins gets her. I hope I'm wrong in that.
  

Side note: "It's often said that an adult chimpanzee weighing in at 150 pounds is three to seven times stronger than a human being."

Does that mean that the chimp is 4 to 8 times as strong? I'm tellin' you, it's everywhere. ;)

• If f is a function from A to B, and if K is a subset of Powerset(A), then f(Union K) = Union f(U) such that U is the set of elements of K.

• When someone has a hold of some spot on my gi while sparring I need to break that grip else it will thwart things I'm going for. VERY frustrating. Then while sparring Sunday without a gi this giant guy kept grabbing my wrist and twisting my arm around my neck when he was on top. Like a sucker I let it happen over and over and over and I got really mad. You know, the kind of mad where thinking about it the next day gets your blood up. Fortunately he was a really nice guy.
  

• Milonga is a way faster form of dance than tango.

• Do NOT buy a snuggie.

• The bible was actually written mostly in 1805 by Mark Jacob Allen Anderlieferson. He then aggressively marketed it and everything we know about today it is a lie.
  

• Ok, I made that up.
  

30 Little Parties

It was a pretty heavy weekend. Parties will do that to you. And I feel like losing so much sleep has had negative effects on my health as well. Too bad late-Feb-early-March is birthday season--mine included!

I'm thinking for my 30th birthday I will have 30 little celebrations instead of one big bash. It'll help if I think of other people's birthday parties as my own. Actually, I think I'll claim that Saturday night was my first birthday party this year. 29 more to go.

Sunday's Meals

Breakfast (11:45 am): 10 reheated gyoza, less than a cup of grapefruit juice

Lunch (3:45 pm): s'mores at Cosi (7 marshmallows, 3 graham crackers, less than half of a hershey bar), peppermint tea (no sugar)

Dinner (8:30 pm): big salad with mung bean sprouts and a new kind of homemade dressing (ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, hot oil)

Sunday's Exercise

Biked SS-Dupont: 45 minutes

Biked Dupont-SS: about an hour

What I Learned This Weekend

• Limca is a fizzy lime drink in India, and allegedly goes well with gin.
  
  
• Drinking a lot of red wine allegedly lengthens your lifespan.
  
  
• A company was working on creating a "red wine pill," giving you the benefits of red wine without destroying your liver. This company was bought out for 750 million dollars.
  
  
• I need more karaoke practice.
  
  
• I was lucky to get my Sevens jeans for $40; they're typically $100 discounted at Filene's.
  
  
• Reheated gyoza tastes really bad, but reheated okonomiyaki is great.
  

Kinda Cheated, But Rock Band's Awesome

Cleaned my room, did laundry, went on a date, and went to a birthday party. Long day, and here I am, at 4:45, writing a blogpost. I'll make it short.

Today's Meals

Breakfast (12:00 pm): two oreos

Brunch (2:20 pm): a bowl of leftover miso soup with enoki mushrooms and wakame and tofu

Dinner (6:30 pm): Thai Tanic Star (I overstuffed myself; instead of 80% full, I felt 120% full)

After-Dinner Scrabble (7:30 pm): green jasmine tea with half a sugar packet

Supper (9:30 pm - 3:00 am): birthday party snackfood, including

• two bruschetta (bread, mozzarella, tomato, basil leaf)
• half a tomato slice and a basil leaf
• about 10 chips with salsa
• two spinach/pepper cheese quiches on water crackers
• about 3oz of cheese with crackers
• two and a quarter Georgetown cupcakes (so freaking good; I had red velvet, vanilla, and a vanilla with raspberry icing)

Today's Exercise

Walking (1.5 hours total) to bus stops and party

Playing Rock Band at the party (it was awesome, until my voice died on Buddy Holly by Weezer)

What I Learned Today

• "Cheeking" is when a prostitute conceals a condom in her cheek, then rolls it onto their client during oral sex.
  
  
• A "shock-trauma handshake" is when, on the scene of an accident, in order to determine if the injured person's spine has been broken, a medical technician inserts his or her finger into the injured person's anus. This is to check the autonomic response (tightening of the anus).
  

Excesses

I had to go to Bethesda today to return a J-video to Daruma. Then I turned and went right back home. Long ride. I got cold.

I cheated on my no-snacking policy, but it was for a good cause. I made hummus for my roommate's book club, and so I had to partake of it. But I had very little, I swear. And the chocolate truffle... well, at least I only had one?

Today's Meals

Breakfast (9:00 am): one bowl of miso soup with enoki mushrooms and wakame (and tofu), one cup of peach juice.

Lunch (12:00 pm): most of a small gala apple, a double-decker PB&J

Dinner (6:00 pm): new batch of homemade gyoza, one okonomiyaki, a cup or less of plain yogurt

Unnecessary Snacks: black bean hummus on baby carrots or bagel chips, one chocolate truffle

Today's Exercise

Biked to bus stop in 6 minutes (record! I got all the yellow lights)

Biked UMD-Bethesda-SS: 2.25 hours

Black Bean Hummus

My roommate had a book club meeting at our house tonight. (Book was Year of Wonders.)

In the kitchen, I saw her chop up a heaping bowl of celery, dump out a heaping bowl of baby carrots, and pour a heaping bowl of bagel chips, all to go with one shallow-size container of plain hummus. I mentioned that there wasn't much dip for all the dippers, and she said, "Do you want to run out to the store to buy some?" (Tensions were running high, since this was just prior to everyone's arrival.)

I said, "No, but I can make some black bean hummus."

Black Bean Hummus

• one can of black beans
• some lemon juice
• one clove of garlic
• a little tahini
• a little cumin
• a little cayenne pepper
• a little kosher salt
• a little ground black pepper

I don't own a food processor, only a blender, so I did it in two parts to be sure I didn't get stuck.

Fork out half the beans into the blender, and pour in half the liquid in the can.

Crush and mince a clove of garlic (crush means flatten it by pressing down on the flat of your big knife). Add half the mince garlic to the blender.

Mix up your tahini (mine had separated, but that's okay) and drizzle at most a teaspoon, but err on the side of too little.

Grind up some pepper into the blender, and sprinkle a little cayenne pepper as well. Add more cumin than both of the peppers together. Then sprinkle just a little salt.

Stir.

Blend.

Repeat with the rest of the ingredients.


I'll let you know later how the book group liked it.

Patience

I should've cooked something tonight. I had the time, since all I did until 8:30 was procrastinate, but instead of making okonomiyaki or curry or some sh!t like that, I just didn't have the patience.

You know, I'm starting to get annoying by having to chop salad stuff every morning. I guess I'm starting to see why people prefer those pre-mixed bags. But getting a head of lettuce is soooooo much cheaper... You're tearing me apAAArt! Do I stay cheap, get lazy and spendy, or just stop eating salad all the time?

I don't think I want to give up the salad thing yet. It's the only way I get any greens.

Today's Meals

Breakfast (7:30 am): scrambled quick eggs with a real egg thrown in, with chives, on top of wheat toast.

Lunch (12:30 pm): salad (balsamic v), rest of dal curry from Trader Joes, brown basmati rice

Dinner (6:00 pm): bigger salad (bv), a bowl of orzo (leftovers reheated from freezer), and two Kashi waffles with drizzles of syrup and yogurt on top (the proportions of yogurt to syrup were off)

Today's Exercise

Biked SS-UMD via roads: 35 min

Biked UMD-SS via trails: 45 min

What I Learned Today

• That singing and guitar-playing ability do not make you a good songwriter, even if you throw in a "rap" song about 8-bit-era Nintendo thumb.
  
  
• That I'm less polite than I used to be: in the lunch area, I took one of the seats closest to the mini-stage where Nintendo-Gangsta was performing, ate my lunch, and stood up and left in the middle of one of his songs.
  
  
• That John Sununu is not Asian.
  
  
• How to make a savory breakfast.
  
  
• That I can't just go to sleep early tonight, though exhausted.
  

Fight Class

Food writing now, eh? Well, now there will be a heavy Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu element. Better than nothing.

I am a white belt (beginner) in my now favorite hobby, and I train 2-3 times/week. Every time I leave class I walk away thinking: "damn, I have to wait a couple more days? An hour and a half is all I get?" I feel an addiction brewing.

I know that walking out of such classes you can learn a lot by taking notes and chronicling what you're working on, what you're having trouble with, etc. Well, whaddya know, I have a rapt readership just waiting, so why keep such a thought process to myself?

Today was a no-gi class and we worked on being in side control and maintaining control when someone tries to roll away from you. Normally someone would try to "shrimp," or try to buck you up to create space then try to curl their body toward you like a shrimp (lots of cool lingo in this stuff, just like anything else. Word lover Aak want to hear more?). But that's not what we were doing today. Today we were working on if someone wants to roll their hips away from you and turn their bodies over and get their knees on the ground, establish a "base" (just as it sounds: have a minimum 3 points on the ground from which you can maneuver), and from there buck you off or give you a host of troubles. If they get to their knees and you keep them face down you still have the advantage but not as good of one and they've improved.

Now, as the guy on top you want to put all your weight onto their hips so that they will have to roll themselves plus your weight - VERY hard to do. I want, as always, to keep my back straight so that he can't just headlock me and flip me over his body. I also want with my southernmost arm (closest to their feet) to put my elbow on the outside of their hips so they can't scoot away from me, and if they do successfully get any rolling done with their hips I can block the process. In the first drill for the day we let the bottom guy roll away, but keep our arm on their hip and our weight on theirs so we travel with them and end up on their backs - an even more dominant position. Then the instructor tweaked the drill then we drilled one how to finish from the back. I'd love to go into that but I have to go study.

Today's drill was good for me. Some ones I get better than others. I was drilling with a blue belt who was far, far better than me and he'd do some advanced thing with his arms somewhere along the way that would just slide me right off him, and I'm like "wtf?" Stuff like that is very helpful in making adjustments, though, because I then learn a new move and how to counter if someone does that to me.

I also learned a new rule of thumb that one of the teachers told us. Sometimes you're on top with him facing down but you're not locked in and scrambling for position. In such cases if you're in a position where you could easily punch the other guy in the face, you're in a good spot. If not, you're not. Even though there's no punching in BJJ, them's some wise words.

You Will Perish In Flames!!!

I was just thinking to myself about all time movie characters that have cracked me the f*** up, and if I were to have such a conversation with people not many would come up with Louis Tully played by Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters I and II.

After some searching for a good youtube video to put up for this post, I found out that someone out there apparently thought that the character deserved a frankenvideo with vanilla ice. Don't understand this one in the least, but it has a bunch of the scenes I was thinking of:

Extended

Today I attended a talk by a famous Japanese author/actor/poet. All of the Japanese department was there, with many teachers near retirement age sitting in the front row. As the speaker began to talk about Genji, Don Juan, and erections, I really wondered what my teachers were thinking.

After the talk, I had to do homework on campus with a classmate. Since I knew I would be delayed getting home, I packed a tide-me-over fruit meal. I'm still not sure if I should have just packed a whole dinner... nutrionist-with-all-the-answers, where are you?

Today's Meals

Breakfast (7:00 am): scrambled "Quick Eggs" with garlic, diced red pepper, and chives on toast

Lunch (1:30 pm): salad with tomatoes & artichoke hearts (etc), rest of yesterday's navratan kurma curry from Wegman's, brown basmati rice

Tide-Me-Over (5:30 pm): grapefruit, small gala apple

Dinner (9:00 pm): one serving of dal curry (Trader Joes), brown basmati rice, five storebought gyoza

Today's Exercise

Walking: to Metro, to Study Abroad office, to library, to class, to administrative buildings, to Study Abroad office, to lunch, to class, to study, to bus stop, and from Whole Foods to home (4 miles in all?)

Sweating: over the state of my financial affairs, over sudden deadlines for studying abroad, over three quizzes (14 lbs)

Change I Can Hope For

I definitely feel thinner. When I stand up straight, I feel like a line instead of a blob. Still, I look forward to one day incorporating some strength training into this regime. I know you do, too.

Today's Meals

Breakfast (7:00 am): grapefruit, banana

Lunch (12:30 pm): orzo, 7 gyoza, not-too-big salad

Dinner (7:00 pm): rest of orzo (except what I froze), navratan kurma curry from Wegman's (1.5 servings, 150g), an appropriate amount of brown basmati rice, and a cup of grape juice for dessert.

Today's Exercise

Biked to bus stop: 8 min

Biked UMD-SS via trail: 1 hour

What I Learned Today

My uncle used to have a tradition with his family, where he would ask my cousins to tell him one new thing they learned that day before they started eating. I'll try to keep that up to space out my nutrition diary entries and hopefully keep some readers interested.

• American Presidents used to wait to be inaugurated until March 4. This was tradition from 1798-1933.
  
  
• New Bedford, MA, was at one time one of the richest towns in the world, thanks to the demand for whale products in the 19th century.
  

Struggling

I'm so behind in a couple of my classes, and it's not easy to catch up. The Classical Japanese class is kicking my ass. I'm avoiding doing translation for it right now, but I can't do that for long. Got to get to class in a couple of hours.

Monday's Meals

Breakfast: "perfect" scrambled eggs (3) with chives & sundried tomatoes, two pieces of toast

Lunch: rest of curry with a small helping of mushroom orzo

Dinner: 12 gyoza (did I mention they were the best ever?) and a big salad

Monday's Exercise

Biked SS-UMD and UMD-SS (about 1.5 hours)

Best Gyoza Ever

I made the best batch of gyoza ever last night. Maybe it was the freshness of the pork, or maybe it was the (too much, I thought after I poured it,) sesame oil, but they were awesome.

Gyoza

• potsticker wrappers (circular, sold frozen or refrigerated, but not the same as wonton wrappers)
• chopped-up cabbage, boiled
• green onion
• a bit of ginger, minced
• a clove of garlic, minced
• ground pork
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• rice vinegar

Chop up your cabbage into little bits and boil it.

While it's boiling, chop up the green onions (mainly the green part is important, not the white part), the ginger, and the garlic.

Once the cabbage has boiled for a minute or two, remove from heat, drain, and rinse with cold water to cool down. Then drain again (I used our new salad spinner).

Add cabbage to bowl with ginger, green onion, and garlic, and then add the meat. There should ultimately be a nice balance of meat and cabbage, with just a little more meat than green stuff.

Add the soy sauce (a glug), sesame oil (less than soy sauce), and rice vinegar (about the same as the oil). Then mix with your hands.

Take as many wrappers as you think you're going to make from the package, and reseal the rest and put them in the fridge.

Set up your filling area with a bowl of water, a plate for the gyoza, a plate with the wrappers, a spoon, and your filling bowl.

Spoon a bit of filling into the center of the wrapper. A heaping teaspoon is all I can usually fit.

Wet your finger with the water and run it along the inner circumference of the wrapper.

Press the wrapper into a bulging semicircle. You should aim to crimp the edge together to form a better seal, like this person has done:

When all the filling is done, it's time to heat up your skillet. The goal is to brown the bottoms and then steam the inside.

Heat the skillet (I used cast iron) on about medium-high. Put sesame oil and maybe a little canola or other vegetable oil in there (not olive oil--it'll smoke).

When hot, add the gyoza in a couple of rows, touching each other. If they fry together, so much the better.

In a few minutes, the bottoms should be nice and brown. When this happens, you can flip them over or not, up to you.

When they are brown on one side, it's time to steam. I hope you have a lid that can cover either the whole skillet or just the gyoza inside it. I used a smaller-than-the-skillet lid that I just rested on the skillet's bottom, around the gyoza.

Pour just enough water onto the hot pan to get things nice and spattery and steamy. Clamp the lid down to make a nice seal. Turn the heat down to low.

After a few minutes, take off the lid and feel a gyoza. The filling inside should be firm and hot.

Remove from the pan. Serve with a dipping sauce of 65% rice vinegar, 30% soy sauce, and 5% hot oil.

Interesting Things I Learned Last Week

I'll try and post some interesting nuggets gleaned from my renewed education each week. This is the first post of such nuggets.

• Ironic: The American whaling industry is partly responsible for encouraging America to engage in trade with Japan--having drained the Atlantic of whales, Americans wanted access to Pacific oceans and the oil within them. Now, American whale protectors lambast Japan for its whaling practices and even ram their boats into whaling vessels.
  
  
• In German, they call Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and other such mnemonic devices Eselsbrücke or a "donkey-bridge." Such a more colorful expression than "mnemonic device."
  
  
• Japanese Noh theatre is 600 years old. It is called by some "the art of walking." I understand this completely: the way the actors walk is slow, methodical, and really beautiful. I wish this picture of mine did it justice:
  

• As for Kabuki, the guy with red makeup is the hero, the guy with indigo makeup the villain. Color-coded.
  
  
• I found out it's easy to rent Japanese VHS tapes from Daruma Market in Bethesda, but you need to pay $10 to get a member's card. I feel like I'm betraying Hinata, though...

I guess I'll need to keep a list of interesting things I learn, so as not to overwhelm my poor readers with Japanese trivia.

Bored With It

I'm getting a bit bored with detailing all of my meals, so I guess the Readers are, too. (I know my so-called co-blogger is.) I apologize, but I'm not going to stop yet. Knowing I'm going to record and transmit what I eat and do makes me more careful about eating choices and more likely to push myself to exercise.

I guess the only way to keep doing this is if the Hatandcoat blog has more content than just my mastications and physications. Ideally, this would be partially the responsibility of my so-called co-blogger. We all know he's not up to the task. So I'll try to offset these kinds of posts with better content inbetween.

(I should be studying, it's true. Actually, I'm studying while typing this: I'm practicing my listening. I've got a Japanese historical drama on in the background.)

Today's Meals

Breakfast (10:30 am): banana, a bowl of Kashi GOLEAN and fat-free milk

Lunch (2 pm): a biggish bowl of leftover orzo, a biggish bowl of salad w/balsamic vinaigrette

Dinner (7pm): a bowl of half-curry, half-orzo leftovers, one cup of yogurt

Today's Exercise

4:05-4:45 pm: a walk around the 'hood.

UPDATE: HOLY CRAP

I completely forgot to tell you about how I cheated today. I had around 30 Jelly Bellies between Breakfast and Lunch. They were from my roommate, who handed out valentines to me and the others here in the house. I thought about throwing them out or giving them away, but didn't. Instead, I devoured them in about five minutes.

Like Jacques the cleaning shellfish in Finding Nemo, I am ashamed.

Oozing with Orzo

I slept really well last night. Finally. I woke up and did my taxes. I went to Wegman's (my first trip there). I went to H-mart. I got home, filed my FAFSA, watched the rest of Slings & Arrows, and cooked Creamy Mushroom Orzo. (It's a Rachel Ray recipe from a book I found in my place. It made way more than it claimed to make, and it took a lot longer than 30 minutes. Shame on you, Rachel Ray, shame on you and your EVOO.)

I didn't study at all today, to my shame. Still, got a lot done.

Today's Meals

Breakfast: steel-cut oats with too much maple syrup, two hard-boiled eggs with menmi, about half a cup of grapefruit juice.

Lunch: an assortment of snacks and samples at Wegman's and H-Mart, including:

• a sliver of chocolate bread
• a piece of white bread dipped in swiss-cheezy fondue
• two dolmas
• a couple handfuls of olives
  
• an unidentified sliver of fish with ketchup and seaweed
• a potsticker
• a bit of fermented veggies
• a fishcake with hot ketchup
• a piece of chocolate manju

Dinner: a bowl of orzo with portobello, crimini, and porcini mushrooms, chicken stock, heavy cream, olive oil, garlic, onion, white wine, thyme, and rosemary. For dessert, a banana.

Today's Exercise

Standing up while cooking?

Walking around supermarkets?

Sleepy

Long ride today. Weird schedule. Woke up really early to do homework for class, then was late so I took the bus, then after class I went to Bethesda via the Sligo Creek and Georgetown Branch trails, then I biked home. I'm just about ready for sleep.

Today's Meals

Breakfast (7 am): bowl of puffins with skim milk, small handful of almonds, hard-boiled egg with menmi and a little white rice

Lunch (10:45 am): banana, PB&J sandwich, and less than a cup of white rice with ume (plum) & seasoning

Afternoon Snack (4 pm): free samples at Trader Joes: a few berries and a piece of mango, a bite of angelfood cake, half a "Chocolate Decadence" chocolate

Dinner (6:30 pm): biggish bowl of curry-rice, malt glass of grape juice

Today's Exercise

Biked to bus stop: 8 min

Biked UMD-Bethesda: 1.5 hours

Walked around Bethesda: 40 min

Biked Bethesda-SS: 45 min

What I ate yesterday

For one thing I need to make it a habit of grocery shopping. Waaaaaay cheaper. I go to a couple sandwich shops around here stupidly.

Hmm, I can't remember what I ate yesterday. I think I had cereal left in the morning. Yeah, I think I finished that. Maybe not. I was out and picked up tuna fish and bread at cvs for lunch, then realized that I had been depending on my roommate's can opener. She's moving out and has gotten to that portion of her stuff. So, I made a PB&J (I'm still alive). Then later I think I threw together a makeshift meal of some sort. I can't remember. I also had some cereal last night. Oh, and I had some chocolate covered almonds.

I like cooking if I have the time. You know what, no I don't. I do not have the lifestyle of cooking regularly. I find it way too tedious to do it nightly. Maybe it's a habit that I have to adopt. If I take the time to research a recipe and make an event out of cooking and make something for someone and yada, yada, then that's a friggin' blast, but to do it daily - blech. I wish this were the jetsons where I could press some buttons and food would materialize. Or star trek.

Tea. Earl Gray. Hot.

Homework To Do.

Today was a long day, and, unfortunately, I don't have much time to sleep tonight. So I'm making this short.

Today's Meals

Breakfast: one banana, one grapefruit. (7:00 am)

Lunch: appropriate portions of curry-rice, small salad with artichoke hearts, pepperoncini, carrots, radicchio, lettuce, one hard-boiled egg, and homemade red wine vinaigrette. (12:30 pm)

Dinner: 1/2 a sakura roll, eel avocado roll, and edamame at Old Dominion Brew House. (8ish pm)

Today's Exercise

Biked to bus stop: 8 minutes.

Biked UMD-SS: 1 hour (due to wind).

Various walking: maybe 1.5-2 hours.

Proportionate Portions?

I'm noticing a trend: I am packing bigger lunches than I was last week and the week before.

My lunches have been Japanese curry-rice for the past couple of days. Since I made it myself, there were no serving size suggestions for me to follow. Tuesday, I packed maybe 2 cups (maybe more) of the curry, plus a regular helping of rice. Today, I brought less curry but a lot more rice.

Am I overanticipating how hungry I'll be? Or am I merely reacting to my caloric use being upped due to biking every day?

It'd be nice to have a nutritionist around at all times to ask these kinds of questions.

I hope the next iPhone has a built-in scale that integrates with a nutritionist app. It would be nice to know how many calories it thinks 8 ounces of V8 is... oh... you can read that on the label... still, wouldn't it be cool?

Today's Meals

Breakfast: hardboiled egg + some avocado + white rice + menmi + natto, all mixed in a bowl. The egg and the avocado helped with the stickiness, but didn't really add flavor.

Lunch: curry-rice with too much rice (and maybe a little too much curry), salad similar to yesterday's with homemade red wine vinaigrette.

Dinner: a small amount of curry-rice, a small piece of veggie lasagna, and 8oz of V8 (low sodium but with salt and sriracha)

Today's Exercise

Biked SS-UMD via roads (35 min)

Biked UMD-SS via trail (1 hour)

80%

No, "80%" does not refer to the percentage of Aak posts... although that might be accurate.*

I've neglected to mention another part of my overall strategy in this program of eating and exercise: the 80% rule.

Somebody told me that it's an old Chinese saying that you should only eat until you're 80% full. I happen to know that the Chinese have gone through some low-rice times in their day, so I take this adage to be the wisdom of the poor. I also thought it made sense because, long ago, someone told me that you don't really feel food in your stomach until 20 minutes after you swallow it.

Now I think there's another reason that the 80% rule works: it prepares you for hunger.

When I gorge myself, I find I get sharp pangs of hunger just a few hours later. This might be psychological. But it might be that my stomach stretched during the meal and then feels really empty afterward. If I stuff myself at dinner, I'm more likely to have a large late-night snack.

Whereas if I only eat to 80% capacity, I still feel a little (20%, for the math-unsavvy) hungry. Since I stay a little hungry afterwards, I can deal with being hungrier later.

Does that make any sense? Is there science behind this idea? I wonder.

Today's Meals

Breakfast: hard-boiled egg with menmi*, bowl of Puffins with skim milk

Lunch: more than I probably needed of Japanese curry (chicken, celery, carrots, potatoes, jalepeno peppers, green pepper, and curry sauce) over white rice

Dinner: big salad w/half an avocado and red wine vinegrette like yesterday, small bowl of white rice with a little plum/sesame flavoring on top.

Today's Exercise

Biked SS-UMD via roads (35min)

Biked on campus to bookstore (10min)

Biked UMD-SS via trail (45min)

*UPDATE: 58% of Hatandcoat posts are by Aak. 87% of Districted posts are by me, too. Hatandcoat has posted 33% of all posts, when you combine the two.

**Menmi is a soy-sauce-derived noodle base. It is more flavorful than soy sauce. It is delicious! I like it on udon, soba, natto, rice, just about anything you'd normally put soy sauce on.

Aak the Eater?

I'm glad Hatandcoat saw fit to update us about his whereabouts. More frequent updates would be appreciated, or else the hating will continue.

I don't hate, though. I only seethe.

I ate no meat today, although I'm cooking a Japanese curry meal for tomorrow that has one chicken breast in it.

This was a very productive, good-food day. I woke up early, started making oats, and while I waited for oatmeal I cut up lettuce, radicchio, carrots, sun-dried tomatoes, a couple pepperoncini, and a quarter of a green bell pepper for a salad for lunch. I topped the salad with half an avocado (salted) and a hard-boiled egg (made last night).

I made the dressing next: olive oil, red wine vinegar, Spanish rosemary, a little Spanish thyme, salt, and pepper. Interesting results, but the key was to use not very much on my salad. It ended up going very nicely together. I used the dregs of my dressing to jazz up my morning hard-boiled egg. Interesting results, again.

Today's Meals

Breakfast: steel-cut oats w/milk and honey, and a hard-boiled egg with the above dressing.

Lunch: salad and dressing as described above, white rice and half a Punjab Eggplant curry packet from Trader Joe's.

Dinner: rice and the rest of the Punjab Eggplant, a whole grapefruit, and 4-5 tbs of plain yogurt.

UNNECESSARY SNACK: one piece of black Aussie licorice, offered me by my roommate.

Today's Exercise

Biked both SS-UMD and UMD-SS by way of the roads (a route that is steep and strenuous at some points, moreso than the trail)

My Coblogger Hates Me

If this blog were my child it would be on drugs and homeless at this point. Yes, I neglect it. I have a problem set to do for tomorrow's class, and the last one took me like 4 hours. My grad class is scaring me because it's so over my head, so I need to study, study, study. I also have tango tonight. Thus, I will have to do entries such as this one if I'm to keep the thread alive. Well, Aak the eater does that. For this I am grateful.

Someday I want to design my own house and include a secret room. At least a secret room.

The Program

Success!

From hardly ever biking in November and December, and from overeating on the holidays, I got a bit... chunky. As I don't weigh myself, my best way to express this is in pants sizes. I went from my normal tight-34 waistline to a medium 36. I even had to put on my loose-fit 36 pair for a few weeks to breathe.

I implemented a plan to decrease my waist: no snacking.

For over a year, I'd been snacking between meals pretty frequently. This was okay for me since I was exercising at the gym as well as biking a lot. But the idea of snacking between meals is designed to make your big meals a little smaller. I never did that part of it. Plus, my "snacks" ballooned into little meals, or "prandicles." I never had much impulse control.

So I decided this January to cut out all the snacks. Exceptions only to be made when there would be a stretch of 6 hours or more between meals. My three meals are reasonably-sized; I try to stick to single-servings. I've also been biking at least two days a week for the past three weeks, and, when I am not biking, I'm walking quite a bit of the day (to the shuttle, to classes, and back.

As of this week, I've been able to fit back into the 34-size jeans without problem.

I'm excited about this, but I also realize that it took me over a month to get back down. I'm planning on implementing more exercise every week. And, since this blog seems so vacant these days, I guess I'll document my progress here.

Today's Meals:

Breakfast: a bowl of Puffins with plain yogurt.
Lunch: one slice of french toast, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad
Snack: a cube of parmesan and a handful of raw almonds
Dinner: leftover chicken/spinach/paneer curry w/rice, 8 gyoza (steamed then fried)

Today's Exercise:

Walked for 20 minutes or so down to Sligo Creek and back.

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

(Where the F is Mr. Hatandcoat? His last post here was 1/27. That's almost two weeks ago. I'm close to saying this is a defunct blog. I might just take it over as my own food blog.)

I saw a grapefruit and avocado salad recipe somewhere in my million-strong Google Reader feeds. Then I saw grapefruit (really nice-looking and -smelling grapefruit) on sale for 50 cents each at Giant. I decided to give this salad a go.

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad (beta)

• 1/2 grapefruit, no white bitter stuff
• 1/2 avocado, diced in kinda big chunks
• three leaves of red lettuce
• one knife's shredding of radicchio
  
• handful of walnuts
  
• olive oil
• honey
• red wine vinegar
• lemon juice
• kosher salt
• pepper

I put the leafy stuff in the bottom of my bowl, then put the grapefruit and avocado on top with a few walnut crumbles just for the heck of it.

The rest of the ingredients were for the dressing. It was about 40% olive oil, 30% honey, 15% lemon juice and 15% red wine vinegar, with a small sprinkling of kosher salt and pepper. When I tasted the mixture, it was like BAM vinegar BOOM honey BAP salt ZING pepper. After a few minutes, the flavors settled into sweet citrus with a tang.

Know Problems and Bugs (with the beta version):

1. The dressing was not quite what I wanted here. Too sweet.
   
2. The avocado was practically nonexistent. I couldn't taste it at all with all the flavors competing around it.

Planned Fixes

1. Try a saltier dressing to contrast with the grapefruit's juicy citrus and to bring out the avocado. I'm thinking something with a soy sauce base.
   
2. Try putting less of the dressing on it. My leaves were swimming by the end of it.
   

Shhhhhh

Today in linguistics class, I learned about a difference in the Japanese pronunciation of "sh" and our American pronunciation of "sh".

It's difficult to describe in words, and I can't find good examples online. The Japanese "sh" is tighter, efficient. The American makes "sh" with a less-tense mouth and a lot more air against the teeth. The Japanese version makes your tongue's tip point down as the air becomes strained between the palate and the high-point bump of the folded-down tongue. The American version, the tip of our tongue is higher and kind of rounded, funneling air against and through the teeth.

(I'm using layman's terms above. You don't really want to know the technical terms for these kinds of articulations.)

It's not an important difference, meaning that the meaning with be clear to either Japanese or American if you use the wrong "sh."

When the teacher mentioned this, though, the whole class was kind of astounded. They, like I, had always heard the slight difference, but they'd been unable to pinpoint what made the sh-sounds different. So, for the next five minutes, the teacher continued to speak, but everyone in the class was going "Shhhh, shhhh."

Things Change

I made a small mistake in my previous post about karate. "Karate" in Japanese is written "空手", which means "empty hand." But this is misleading, because originally the word "karate" was written with an old character for China: 唐手. Thus, the name itself once showed clearly that karate had its roots in China, despite being a very Japanese art form.

Things change. History is whitewashed. The roots of an art form are obscured by language. And a grisly story is forgotten (by the victors). I read the following tale in Japan: A Modern History, and was struck at the brutal forgetfulness of it.

In the last decade of the 1500s, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had conquered Japan and united all the regions militarily. Then, with this huge army on his hands, he decided to send them offshore, to Korea. Initially, he'd just aimed to conquer China (!), and he'd thought that Korea would be cool with letting his troops attack from their peninsula. The Koreans said no, that would not be cool. So Hideyoshi made war on the Koreans.

It didn't go well. The Korean military was terrible on dry land, but in the wetlands and on the sea, the Koreans were formidable. Korean boats cut Hideyoshi's armies off from their supplies. Then China swooped in and beat the Japanese back away from Seoul. The Japanese surged once more, but they never even got to Seoul the second time. Hideyoshi died before there was a third surge.

But the Japanese were pretty much disastrous to Koreans. They burned Seoul, they killed (on Hideyoshi's orders) civilians, women, and children, and they cut off each killed Korean's nose. They pickled the noses, tens of thousands of them, in jars and brought them back to Japan. Hideyoshi dumped all these noses into a pile near his own future tomb. The pile became a large hill.

The hill is now called "Mound of Ears." It's a popular place for picnics and cherry-blossom viewing.

Karate Is Japanese

(I wasn't sure whether I should relegate this post to my Japanese blog or not, but I figured the fighting trivia belonged here. So many blogs, so little time...)

A new Karate Kid movie has been in the works for quite some time. Will Smith is helming it, Will Smith's son will be the Kid, and Jackie Chan will be Miyagi-esque. This has a lot of people upset for many reasons. First, their childhood memories will be chewed up into a pulp. Second, Miyagi was Japanese. Third, karate itself is Japanese. Fourth, the original movie helped bring Japanese culture to American attention yadda yadda yadda.

Smith defended his choice of making the Miyagi character Chinese by saying that "fortunately, karate is originally a Chinese art form" in this old news article.

Karate is Japanese. The word itself means "empty hand" in Japanese. This is true, but I had thought it had been a brand new invention created by the Japanese. Not so, apparently. The Japanese took the style from the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa.

Okinawa hangs out in the ocean between China and Japan and was for centuries a way for both countries to trade with each other without having to officially open trade. The Okinawans learned martial arts from the Chinese; they even went to study it in China for a while. The term for the kind of martial art it was at the time is "kenpo."

The Japanese codified it and created the martial art called "karate." I'm sure the details are all very interesting, so you can read about it more at the wiki.

Later, China kind of forgot about the techniques. They had to relearn it from Japan. So to say that it won't matter whether you place your movie about karate in China or Japan is still bullspit, Will Smith. Don't call it Karate Kid is all I'm saying. Call it "The Kenpo Kid" or something. Leave Ralph Macchio out of it.

(On second thought, put Ralph Macchio in it! That would be awesome!)