RecipeMuncher

Something valuable learned in the past few days, a lesson I have repeated to myself time and again but never seem to heed until it’s too late – BACK UP YOUR FILES (or be better at self trouble shooting one’s blogging code). Wordpress’s infamously short upgrade step did not work, and working backwards didn’t help me connect back to my mySQL database. =( I finally finished re-posting old entries from the past year archived at “My Fork and I”.

I guess it gave me an excuse to touch up on all the old images..anything for the love of food, right? Ling Li is officially out of hibernation and ready to unveil her new blog with a renewed drive for documenting her food experiences. Pictures are many, words are fewer. But Ling Li’s appetite is limitless. =D

Alas, my school/work/social life schedule has finally caught up to me, and I have abandoned this blog temporarily. =( Rest assured, my love for food can never die out, and I have been eating and cooking well these past two weeks.  I hope to get a real food post up by this weekend, but for now, here is some more eye candy, featuring food from Buenos Aires. Can you say meat? And lots of it?

I thought I had landed in heaven when I arrived in Buenos Aires. Warm weather, exchange rate of 3 pesos to 1 U.S. dollar (sure beat the Euro I had to survive on Fall Semester 07), and STEAK. I’m pretty sure I ate different forms of steak at least four times that week. Our undergraduate business school sends every Junior on a one week trip to one of three locations every spring break to study a company based in that foreign country. They usually feature a city each from Asia, Europe, and South America. Buenos Aires had been top of my choices for a long time. I reasoned to myself that I could go to Asia more easily because of my ethnic background, and I had already globe-trotted Europe during my semester abroad in Florence. The week was a whirlwind of eating, partying, not getting enough sleep, and the occasional academic lectures and school-hosted events we were required to attend. One of the best spent weeks of my Junior college career.

Couldn’t resist the meats…

I did try to incorporate other food items into my diet…

The more I look at these pictures the more I realize just how unhealthy and sinful the week was…haha.

Sometimes it’s fun to just go through your fridge and throw together all the bits of veggies and meat that aren’t enough to make a stand-alone meal but combine splendidly to make quite a filling breakfast (or lunch, or dinner). I have a strange love affair with eggs: scrambled, hard-boiled, over easy, fried, and recently poached. What a versatile food product, and chock full of protein! If only the yolk wasn’t chock full of cholesterol too..

For my most recent creation, I literally threw in everything I could from the fridge that wouldn’t taste TOO weird with egg. I didn’t use exact measurements, but eyeballed the amount of broccoli and tomato, bacon and Laughing Cow swiss cheese that would combine well with 3 eggs without overfilling and breaking the egg when the omelette was flipped. I ripped the strips of bacon (that came fully cooked in the package) into smaller strips. The cheese didn’t melt as well as I had hoped, so there were huge chunks of cheese scattered around. I recommend lightly cooking the tomato and broccoli before putting it with the egg. The flip was successful for once too! Though I had to use two spatulas and maneuver it slowly so the egg wouldn’t break mid-flip. The recipe served two semi-hungry eaters; adjust amount of ingredients appropriately.

With a slightly fatter wallet this summer from my internship (and a boyfriend who returned from a semester abroad ;D), I finally had the chance to experience New York City’s Restaurant Week. For those unfamiliar with RW…

“Twice a year, in January and June/July, there is a unique opportunity to experience some of New York City’s finest restaurants for a fraction of the usual price. Throughout the city, restaurants participate in “Restaurant Week” where they offer a three-course lunch for $24.07 (& some even offer dinner for $35). Restaurant Week is a great opportunity to try out a restaurant that may usually be out of your budget, or test some new restaurants with a little less financial risk.” – about.com

I went out with a group of college friends to Barbounia, a Mediterranean restaurant, for dinner. Chosen because two of our friends  were vegetarian and we wanted a cuisine slightly out of the ordinary, we were surprised to see no vegetarian options on the RW menu (one of them ended up ordering mushroom linguini from the regular menu). As for myself, I started out with the Tuna Carpaccio served with pickled red onion, sumac, and pommegranate moulass. The tuna was quite fresh with a slight tang from the garnishes. Hmhmhm yuumm raw fish. Despite strong warnings from two table mates, I chose the Long Island Duck Breast as my entree. It came with a carmalized endive on top (which I stupidly thought was the duck meat at first when I started cutting…) along with fennel puree. It wasn’t the best piece of duck that ever entered my mouth, but I can safely say that the meat was not as overcooked and tough as the warnings had caused me to fear.  As for dessert…Kannafeh!Shredded phyllo dough and fresh goat cheese topped with rose water syrup and pistachio. I had an inkling that this would taste good after a slightly similar dish ordered at The Bourgeois Pig. The ice cream on top was a great contrast to the crunchy phyllo dough and the soft, slightly warmed goat cheese.

As for the boyfriend, who joined our delicious food venture, he ordered a different dish than me every time as per tradition so we can sample the most variety whenever we dine out. Appetizer consisted of the Kube Nyhaa, a hand chopped hangar steak tartar with a variety of ingredients mixed in. There used to be a time when I worried about eating raw cow… (until I realized just how deliciously tender meat can be when it is not cooked well-done)  I prefered my choice of the tuna carpaccio though. His main dish was theLamb Loin Shawarma. I remember trying a piece of meat and finding it quite tender and flavorful. And a good meal rounded off with a Yogurt Panna Cottadessert.

For those who may be slightly impressed by my memory of all the food names and ingredients, especially after having eaten this meal over a month ago, here’s my dirty secret: Take a photo of the RW menu. Haha.

Meal turned out better than expected, and we were all pretty full by the end. I think my favorite parts of the 3-course meal were the tuna and the sauce from the Long Island Duck Breast. We ended the night with shots of this traditional Greek alcohol that left our stomachs burning.

Barbounia
250 Park Ave S
New York, NY
http://www.barbounia.com/

Drumrolls pleaase..here we present the “My Fork and I” legacy posts, the ones I am manually re-posting since I can’t reconnect to the old database. You would think that I’m afraid to finally pick up that keyboard and start typing up a new entry. With this Wordpress upgrade, I have decided to go the gallery-less route for now.

My back hurts from hunching over in my chair at work =(

“My Fork and I” Legacy Post –

Yet another food blog, you might ask??

Welcome to “My Fork and I”.

This blog is still searching for its purpose. Purpose. It’s that little flame that lights a fire under your ass. (Avenue Q reference!)  I had considered creating one for the past year ever since my friend Jessie did, but I ended up creating a blog for my Florence adventures instead. (Haha which unfortunately became defunct two months in). I never gave up my increasing interest in taking photos of the food I had though, something my friends can attest to. I always carried my handy dandy Canon Powershot A610 with me, most appropriately dubbed “The Brick”.

As a result, I accumulated more food pictures than I knew what to do with them… Just merely opening up a gallery and uploading all of them didn’t seem to give them fair justice, though I also realized how difficult it would be to blog about food eaten almost a year ago.

As I write this, this blog’s purpose slowly forms in my mind. I hope this new food blog will somehow come to be a cumulation of interesting food I try from here on forward, recipes I attempt as a newbie cook, and “food porn” specials covering in lesser detail the multitude of photos I have in my collection.

Oh food. How I love thee. Especially in New York City.

Something valuable learned in the past 5 hours, a lesson I have repeated to myself time and again but never seem to heed until it’s too late – BACK UP YOUR FILES. Wordpress’s infamously short upgrade step did not work, and working backwards didn’t help me connect back to my mySQL database. =( Old entries from the past year archived at “My Fork and I” will be re-posted one by one before I can move forward with new entries.

Time to back up my laptop files now..

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