Oven fresh goodness

I decided to try my hand at baking today. It's been a few years since I last baked bread, but I started getting the knack for it again after reading through a few recipes and getting my hands into the dough. Today, I attempted herb wheat bread.

How's it taste? Well, let's just say it's too bad you can't smell or taste it. I forgot just how good fresh out of the oven homemade bread tastes. A slice of fresh bread with Nayonnaise and some baked marinated tofu squares is just divine. Now, I hope Gen doesn't get too addicted to homemade and expect me to bake all of our bread from now on.

Cheesy eating habit

I have a somewhat strange culinary preference involving cheese. I'm mildly embarrassed by it actually. I can cook up a mean Chinese noodle soup (湯麵) or have a very typical home-style meal of rice porridge (稀飯) with leftover stir fry. Both dishes are tasty on their own. Yet, I love putting cheese into those dishes. And not even good cheese. Cheap American cheese is my preferred cheese choice, though these days it's mostly soy cheese that I'm using.

It's not really fusion cuisine. Or if it is, it's not particularly good fusion cuisine. I don't know what to call it other than comfort food. I believe this odd habit comes from my childhood. You see, my dad couldn't cook worth squat when I was a kid. He once tried to get me to eat steamed white rice with jarred pasta sauce, and I quite emphatically refused to eat it. I'm still traumatized by that foul creation to this day. The only thing he could make that I actually liked was rice porridge or noodle soup with a slice of American cheese melted into it and some peanuts sprinkled on top. To this day, I still love eating both rice porridge and noodle soup with a slice of cheese and peanuts. The cheese melts into the broth, adding a creamy texture and pleasant flavor undertones to the dish. For me, it brings back happy childhood memories... and quite possibly blots out the other horrible food creations my dad may have tried to get me to eat.

Perhaps I should have listened to my dad about the starving kids in Ethiopia when faced with the rice and pasta sauce dinner. Maybe I could have appreciated his tales of food hardship and lectures on not wasting food. I think I may have guiltily picked up the spoon, but I just could bear to put the food in my mouth. Unfortunately for poor dad, I had already experienced real cooking and was stubborn enough to hungrily wait a few hours for mom to come home and cook real food.

Thankfully, I didn't inherit my dad's culinary sensibilities. I have my mom and the experience of growing up in a restaurant to thank for my ability to cook. In spite of his culinary ineptitude, he did leave me with one bit of cooking wisdom: cheese in brothy Chinese food is pretty tasty. Next time you whip up a bowl of noodle soup or rice porridge, try melting a slice of cheese into it. You may be surprised at just how good it is.

Happy [Chinese] New Year!

春節快樂!

Happy New Year!

All my bass no belong to me

Well, I finally did it. I sold my beautiful Fender Jazz bass guitar last night. Granted it was not that special of a bass guitar. It wasn't an American made bass, in which case I probably would have gotten a lot more money for it. As much as I loved playing it, I really hadn't picked it up much in the past 2-3 years. Given how much time working, I-Liq Chuan training, and my crazy gym routines take up, I just didn't foresee myself ever playing it seriously again.

Honestly, I was quite conflicted about selling it. I really enjoyed playing it in the past and had fond memories of just jamming with it in my amateurish musical endeavors. But the key to my decision was that it was the past I was hanging on to. Now, it's just another possession which I probably won't use it again. I turned to my de-cluttering goals for motivation. I also pondered the Buddha's insight into the impermanent nature of life. I realized I was irrationally attaching to the bass in an attempt to cling to my musical past. As soon as I let go of that attachment, my decision became much easier and I felt relieved. Now, the bass has a new owner who will probably use and appreciate the bass more, and I have one less useless possession weighing me down.

Cooking up a storm

So, Gen and I have essentially been cooking all of our meals the past few months. Before, when we had longer commutes, Subway was popular pit stop on the way home from the gym. Still, cooking is not always something we look forward to after a long day of work and a killer session at the gym. So, the solution is to cook over the weekend, and cook a lot. We must have set a record this weekend. Here's what we managed to make:

1. veggie quesadillas
2. tofu stir fry with mixed veggies and spicy bean sauce
3. stir fried Chinese broccoli
4. red bean soup (Chinese style, sweet soup)
5. veggie lentil soup
6. vegetarian chili
7. veggie patty home fries
8. Thai curry with tofu and mixed veggies
9. quinoa
10. banana pudding

It's a good thing we cooked so much. We've both just read Bill Phillip's "Body for Life." While we don't agree with everything in the book, we decided to try implementing the 6 mini meals a day and more focused, higher intensity, and shorter duration workouts. If we're going to eat that many times a day, it's nice to have a lot of various prepared food dishes around.

Luck of the draw

Woo-hoo! I finally won something!

I entered the Wisebread.com drawing for a free copy of TurboTax, and much to my pleasant surprise, I actually won a copy. Just in time to do my taxes. Sweet.

Resolutions and Goals Checkup, month 2

I've already destroyed one New Year's resolution. Jumping rope for 10 minutes was achieved a little over 3 weeks into the year. Since I've repeated the feat two more times and can easily jump rope for over 20 minutes in 3-5 minute rounds with 1 minute jog in place "rests," I'm going to call that resolution completely fulfilled. I'll make it a new goal to get to 15 minutes straight.

The other goal of dropping 1% body fat, I have no idea how well I'm doing. My P.O.S. body fat analyzer keeps saying that I have 26.1-26.4% body fat. I've dropped 2.5 lbs since the beginning of the year, and if I put that weight change into the body fat analyzer, my body fat comes out at ~25.5%. If I assume the relative changes are correct, then I would have already dropped 1% body fat. I'm pretty that's not the case since I think my abs would look more defined if I dropped that much body fat. Oh well, I may have to pay for a set of calipers.

My fitness goals are coming along. I can hold a dragon flag for 7s, which means I'm just about 35% of the way to that goal. I can nearly do a muscle up, so I think that goal will be achieved pretty soon. The front lever and planche progressions are still hellishly hard for me, and I still have balance issues with the hand stand. But there's no reason to believe that I can't achieve those goals by the end of the year. I'm also finding that keeping a log of my workouts and diet is helping me stay on track and helping me assess how to improve my training/diet.

I didn't sign up for my 403b deduction in time this month, so I had a bigger paycheck than expected. I'm on a new financial path now since I actually pay significant taxes in the working world. I've already maxed out my Roth contributions so I can maximize my tax free earnings. I also moved money out of savings (keeping the 1/3 to 1/2 year salary in the bank) and into mutual funds. I can't bear to be paying ordinary income tax on earned interest when I could be paying a much lower 15% in long-term capital gains and qualified dividends. So, I'm making it a point to invest more in the market this year.

Overall, I have to say I'm pretty happy with my progress.