Commented Blogs

VivianxCai's Moon Cake: http://vivianxcai.blogspot.com/2009/09/moon-cake.html?showComment=1253717787057#c8606698678417560576

I just realized how literally every Chinese food came from a legend or actual story. I remember learning about this story when I was in kindergarten in Taiwan. I believe it gives insights on the Chinese culture as a whole, and we get to learn about the culture and the significance of the food as well. Children will find it a lot more interesting when things are incorporated into a story. They are more willing to listen and will implant it into memory.

My dad loves moon cakes, and he always purchase a huge box and sadly because no one can finish it it ends up in the trash can after being infested with molds. Personally I just like to have a little piece of the moon cake once a year, because the cake is really, really sweet and I often freak out about getting diabetes. And I remember my mom saying that the moon cakes are made with lots and lots of grease and oil-- use to be pork grease, just so the cake can have more of a mushy, melt in your mouth quality. But I do believe they changed to use vegetable oils now.

-- Maggie Tsou

Sooyeon Kim's Ramen: http://sooyeonluvu.blogspot.com/2009/09/ramen.html?showComment=1254277690843#c7889947520145831990

My mom got sick of cooking so during most of the days in a week we just eat ramen for dinner. I love the fact that it is cheap, and you get purchase it just about anywhere, in any market. And if you specifically go to Asian supermarkets, they sell a dozen of different flavors ranging from chopped pork, sauteed beef-- just about any traditional Korean, Japanese, and Chinese style ramen. So if you've ever been in those countries and explore its culture, you see the cart stands with the owner cooking large doses of noodles, and people sitting on small plastic stools eating ramen.

Now ramen not is not only around the Asian culture, but ventured off to America and other countries worldwide as well. Though I do have to add that too much ramen is not good for one's health. The amount of salt in one single package is astounding. College may be tough, yes, but I don't recommend people consuming too much of it. Perhaps for us college students, switching from ramen to a simple sandwich from time to time helps.

- Maggie

The Wonders of Rice

Rice. We see it everywhere. Not only in Asian restaurants but also many European restaurants as well, though it may be a different kind of rice. You can find them brought out to you in a bowl in any Chinese restaurant, completed with different dishes such as fish and orange chicken, or you can find them in French restaurants tossed in butter and other ingredients such as beef and pepper. You can also find rice in Mexican restaurants, like Chipotle for example, wrapped in a burrito or you can just order the burrito bowl. The Japanese make "onigiri", or rice ball, that is formed into a triangular or oval shape and often wrapped in seaweed. They also make sushi out of them.

There are so many ways we can cook rice, and I realized that because mom cooked porridge the other night for breakfast. We also add other ingredients and spices into the rice to make it more flavorful and not just bland. And not only do rice show up in course meals, it can be made into desserts as well. The Japanese have rice cakes, stuffed with red beans and sprinkled with coconut flakes, and they come in different colors. They also have rice crackers, wrapped in seaweed. There is also rice pudding. The list goes on and on. However, I saw on a few television ads and books saying that rice may not be good for one's health. They say that a bowl of rice is equivalent to one cup of pure white sugar. Nevertheless, people still love to eat them, in any cooked style and form of it. Yet there are also others who are unwilling to give up their love for eating rice, so instead of consuming the tiny and thin white grains they eat Akai Rice that comes in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.

Personally I love to eat rice because I can never just eat an entire steak for dinner, or constantly eating noodles or soup noodles day after day, or hamburgers and western food. Perhaps eating rice for every meal is a tradition, passed down from parents and grandparents and you start off eating them when you were little. At home we eat rice all the time, and three plates of course meal would feel incomplete without it. And if we only eat rice without anything else, it would feel bland. For burritos rice is tossed together with beans, ground meat, and cheese. And for sushi it is wrapped with vegetables, pickled radish, and small cut slices of fish. I think many of us don't realize how much rice we eat. But perhaps when we eat sushi and order takeout and notice suddenly that there is no rice to be seen, that will be when we notice.

Ice Creams~

Whenever we think of the season ''summer'', and what kind of food we eat during summer, most of us immediately think of ice cream. Last week I went to Mitsuwa with my family after a stuffy, no ventilation, three hour studio painting class, I did not go inside the supermarket to purchase a bottle of water or any other kind of soft drink. But rather, I went straight for the Hokkaido Festival the market is hosting near the entrance door. I guess the main reason I didn't go straight off to buy a drink was because the Hokkaido Festival only comes once a year, and their vanilla ice cream is imported straight from Japan. So the supply is very limited.

After paying, I received my cup of the ice cream labeled as :Hokkaido Ice Cream, to me it looked just like any regular vanilla ice cream, but perhaps a little whiter on its color. Unlike how in America, where we would always add toppings, it was simply plain ice cream. Looking back at the festival set up area, even though there were other imported foods from Hokkaido for everyone to purchase, there was a huge, long line and everyone were just standing there and waiting to get their hands on the ice cream. I was glad I came early.

Still, I wondered why with the huge line. The ice cream either sits on a cone, or a small cup. Perhaps it is the exotic, milk-like creamy taste of it? Or because it simply looked cute in a small cup; the Japanese always make anything and everything delicate-- food wrappers designed in gold and metallic purple flowers, a simple soft drink bottle design that looked way too adorable to recycle. In America, we have Cold Stone, where the ice cream is tossed together with toppings that you want to add; from chocolate chips to M&M's. Sprinkles to crumbled Oreo cookies, and so on. We even have frozen yogurt; the other, more healthier sweet treat to ice cream, also topped with diced fruits, mochi, chocolate chips, etc. We also have Italian gelato stores in America. And all three of them, when combined together, have perhaps over a million different flavors ranging from chocolate, strawberry, coffee, chocolate mint, hazelnut, etc.

Before I leave Mitsuwa there was still this long line of people waiting to get their hands on the Hokkaido ice cream. And I overheard the manager coming up and apologizing to everyone that the ice cream sold out completely for the day. Taking a closer inspection, I noticed that there were not only the Japanese lining up, but also people from other different countries. As I came to realize, maybe some never tried Japanese ice cream before. And for the people that are Japanese-- they want to get a taste on something they could not easily get in America-- that taste of ''home''-- in Hokkaido. Maybe it reminded them of their childhood days during the summer, while other customers were simply going for that exotic, creamy taste that one cannot really describe is as a ''vanilla ice cream''.

MITSUWA MARKET PLACE

http://www.mitsuwa.com/english/index.html