The Girl Who Ate Everything

First off, to exploit my Asian-recipe familiar readers, I need to come up with a few quintessential Chinese recipes that I can make in my "Essentials of Cuisine" class since I'm unfamiliar with cooking Chinese dishes ("unfamiliar" as in, I never do it). My class is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, but we're not going to cook the whole time so the recipe should take 90 or less minutes, which I feel may leave out a lot of food I like. Dumplings would be easy to make if I get the pre-made skins (but that's lame!), and...that's all I can think of.

So. Basically. HELP! Thank you. :)

UPDATED AGAIN (11/7): Thanks for the suggestions so far! I probably should've mentioned that nope, I don't have to pay for ingredients (mwahaha) but I'm already thinking about making some steamed egg cake that a friend made for me earlier this year. I know that's fast, cheap, and easy, although I've never made it before. Besides that, I do have that DUMPLING OBSESSION that I should perhaps indulge in. After looking up recipes, it doesn't seem to take a long time to make the skins (when I made dumplings with my mum, we used pre-made skins 99% of the time). I have a partner so I won't be left alone to destroy the food. Hooray!

As opposed to Saturday's abominable instance of "I'm just gonna stay in my room all day and cut off any fresh supply of oxygen", today I actually went out and, like, did human activities involving making the muscles in my legs contract and waiting in a subway station that smelled faintly of urine and conversing with other humans beings in an environment that was not an IM box.

To celebrate the event of masses of people wooshing by and looking happy even though they secretly wanted to collapse into a vat of pillows (erm, the New York City Marathon), Adam held a "let's eat while all these people remind us how athletically challenged we are" breakfast. I was a little hesitant about going at first because my level of sociability in most cases (even those involving food) is around "amoeba". That's low. However, knowing that Allen was going to be there changed my mind. The way my social tendencies work is that I can be alarmingly, dare I say, BOISTEROUS, around certain people. (Okay, not that boisterous, but I easily forget how loud my voice can get.) In situations where I don't know many people, I'll be the person who sits in the corner and pokes the wall, or something equally pointless.

woosh

Annnnd look at them go! Yeah. Crazy people, running miles and stuff. My most vivid memories of running are from middle school. It wasn't the actual running as much as the day after, the morning of sore muscles running the entire length of my body (and other organs I didn't know I had) and trying to find a way to trigger the least pain in these muscles while navigating a four story school. This involved a lot of running down stairs (and into walls) since that was easier than walking slowly.

But enough of my physical education glory days. For your information, the fastest mile I ever ran was around 9 minutes. It'll never get better than that, partially because I'll never try to beat it, other partially because I'd never beat it even if I tried. Another tid bit of Robyn's track record: in 9th grade I once puked after running a lap (or two, I forget) as fast as I could. I had actually been rather fond of sprinting, up until that point. Eh.

many carby possibilities

Oh, the food. Wow. Trays of Adam's baked French toast (similar to bread pudding) lured me with their warm crusty golden sheen and the possibility of glazing every carb-laden crevice with maple syrup. Bewilderingly, no one had touched the trays or dared to destory their integrity by sampling a piece.

yeah, I ate it

Screw that. I cut, I glazed, I consumed. Naturally, it was good stuff. My favorite part were the surprising chunks of cream cheese embedded throughout the French toast. (Thankfully, this wasn't called "French Toast Surprise!" because, really, a lot of things with the word "surprise" in them don't have a very good surprise. If the food deems surprise-able, I will be surprised. Figuring the surprise isn't jello. Or shards of glass.) I ate two good sized chunks over the course of the morning, which is one too many. Oh well. (pats belly)

UPDATE (11/8): RECI-MUH-PE!!!

1 loaf (about 1 pound) dense bread (challah works well and is sweet); 8 ounces cream cheese; 8 eggs; 1.5 Cups half and half; 1/4 Cup maple syrup, 1 stick melted butter; 1 to 2 tsp vanilla extract; cinnamon to taste

• cut up cream cheese into small pieces and dot all over bread
• cube 2nd half of bread and layer over cream cheese
• beat eggs with half/half, maple syrup, melted butter, and vanilla
• pour over bread in pan
• push bread down into egg mixture
• cover and place in refrigerator overnight
• in morning, preheat oven to 350. sprinkle with cinnamon before baking. bake for 50-60 min

cakey things

I also ate two of these. Allen is surprised by how much I can eat, but come on...cake? Things like this all go in a separate stomach (the one that makes me look like I'm preggers), a stomach that is sometimes annoyingly insatiable. These cake things (the official name at this point) were SO GOOD! Why? Because! They. Were. They were moist, sticky yellow cakes with bottom" crusts" of chocolate chips, which certainly helped. It was like another surprise! GOOD LORD, WHAT'S NEXT! UNICORNS? (I don't know why "unicorns" would naturally be the next thing in line.)

Okay, that's it as far as "finding unsuspected ingredients in my food" goes. There were also deliciously moist, dense, not-too-sweet mini carrot cakes. I ate one. Yes. ONE. I can do that sometimes. I also ate some of Allen's congee, a food I've always been adverse to until I realized that with the addition of maple syrup (you know, a traditional old-age Chinese practice), you end up with a satisfyingly sweet soup! Coupled with the fried sweet Chinese bread, I ended up with a...sweet soup and oily deep fried sweet carb laden substance to dip into the soup.

I know I appear to be on the road to type II diabetes. While talking to my mum about my penchant for sweets, she said I'm full of yeast and my yeastie buddies crave sugar all the goddamn time.

"What can I do about that?
"Cut out sugar for a while."
"A while? How long is a while?"
"Eight weeks should do it."
"EIGHT WEEKS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

End of story. I suppose. Yes, I should cut down the sugar consumption. In times like this, I want to break out the "AT LEAST I'M NOT A DRUGGIE/COFFEE ADDICT/WINO/BOOZE HOUND/SERIAL KILLER/'SOME OTHER VICE' ADDICT" but that doesn't really work.

Soo. Many thanks to Adam for a morning of wheaty face-stuffing and Allen for not ripping the plates of wheat out of my hands.