The Girl Who Ate Everything

I ate more meat today than I have in weeks. Not just meat, actually...everything altogether. Oops.

spicy chicken and shrimp

After some silly arguing, which was primarily my fault since I was hesitant to eat out because I EAT A LOT, REMEMBER, but if I didn't eat out then I'd be left home alone while my brother and mum went to a nearby buffet place, we decided to go to Ivangie's, a Chinese and Japanese restaurant in Ridgewood. I've been there twice before and I gather that they're better than most Chinese restaurants. At least they say they don't use MSG or douse their food in oil, which means most do, perhaps. Doh. That's not going to stop me from eating in Chinatown.

The menu is quite large and I had no idea what to get. I actually wanted to go out for Thai or Indian food but my brother wasn't into that (the wimp), so I picked something spicy on the menu. My dish had thinly sliced chicken, shrimp, and snow peas in an egg-drop-ish spicy sauce. The portions are somewhat huge but I almost finished it, in addition to a bowl of brown rice.

udon with lots of seafood

My mum didn't finish her udon with craploads of seafood (I think I ate half of her salmon, oops) but she also had a spring roll appetizer. Unfortunately, the spring rolls didn't hold up well at all; I guess they weren't wrapped tightly enough. I made spring rolls once and it was easy as pie, while my mum, who LOVES spring rolls, refuses to try and make them for some reason. She said she's made them before but they fell apart.

My mum is extremely adverse to cooking anything. I'm happy to say that she cooked rice noodles the other day after I had cooked rice noodles for myself and found out they were one of the easiest things in the world to make (you boil water, turn it off, and soak the noodles for a few minutes; who can't do that?). She has a valid reason for not liking to cook: she used to do it all the time when my brother and I were little, usually after a probably boring and tiring day of work. Without going into too much detail, her life hasn't been super-fun. My brother and I didn't add too much to her pain, but it seriously depresses me that she has lost most interest in cooking because it turned into such a chore when we were little kids.

...Then again, I didn't really like her cooking when I was little. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't anything to brag about. Her mum cooked loads of traditional Chinese stuff, and my mum didn't pick up any of it. Once the cooking skills stop being passed down, that's pretty much it; it's not like I can pick it up from anyone else. There are no long-time family recipes, no special desserts or dishes, or traditional foods in my family. Of course, we're Chinese and eat loads of Chinese food, but another part of me feels culturally empty in the food department. Both of my mum's parents have passed away and don't even ask about my dad; no good food comes from there (although you can't tell them that).

Er...in conclusion! I was planning to just talk about what I ate today but my thoughts drifted a bit. Back to what I ate.

After eating at Ivangie's, we went to Whole Foods where I picked up two gluten-free pecan cookies (they come two per pack). Good idea? Not really--it's not like I'm allergic to gluten, I'm just trying to avoid wheat. When I got home I noticed that each cookie had 400-something calories. Holy. Crap. There's a lot of butter in these babies. The massive caloric value can also be attributed to each cookie being the size of a satellite dish. I was hoping the cookie would taste so bad that I wouldn't want to eat the second one, but it was actually pretty good. More crumbly and airy than a normal cookie but it was flavorful and had a slight chewiness.

Whole Foods also makes gluten free bread. I have no desire to try this; what the hell is gluten free bread? That's not really bread. Or if you've had good gluten free bread, let me know. I can lay off the bread until I start eating wheat again. (I'm not eating wheat at the moment to see if it triggers my asthma. My asthma seems to be environment-driven, not diet driven as much, but it can't hurt to lay off the cake and cookies.)