Disneyworld! The ideal playground for the young at heart where, this year, a million dreams will come true. At least, that's what they tell me.
We arrived mid-afternoon on July 2 and decided to wander into Downtown Disney to shop and eat. There were thousands of people milling about, and it turned out that, regardless of restaurant, we would have to wait almost an hour to be seated.
So we waited.
We chose to eat Irish our first night in Disney.Specifically, the Raglan Road Irish Pub.
Our waitress brought out soda bread (accompanied by a sweet Guinness reduction dipping sauce) for us to chomp on while we waited for our food to come. I don't know if we were all just starving or if the bread was just delicious, but we ended up asking for a second basket of the bread. I personally loved the dipping sauce. I thought it was honeyed something-or-the-other at first, but when I asked the waitress and she said it was a reduction of Guinness, I must admit that I was impressed.
My youngest brother and I shared a chicken dish, but I tried bites of everyone else's food.
Jon had a chicken and sage banger (whatever the heck a banger is).
My mother had a portobello mushroom sandwich, which was pretty tasty.
My father had fish and chips, which is pretty normal and uninteresting, so I refrained from taking a picture. Besides, we were all hungry-- it was hard enough holding everyone back so I could take these few pictures!!
It was overall a nice experience. We were lucky enough to get a chance to see a live performance by a band while we were eating, which was definitely a plus.
And since there was a Ghirardelli dessert store... well, let's just say that my brothers need to satisfy their respective sweet tooths.
My family is taking a rare vacation together this year. We rarely go on trips together-- in fact, we never really take "real" vacations. They're all just mini day trips into the city or somewhere relatively local. The furthest we've traveled was to Toronto, and even that was when I was in high school-- oh so many years ago. But after many years of talk, my pending departure for the West Coast has prompted a more active approach to our remaining time together (read: I finally decided to push my dad to help plan a family vacation together). So, early Tuesday morning, my family loaded our Toyota Sienna and began the long trip down to... *dumdumdummmm* ORLANDO, FLORIDA!
Yup, we're going to DISNEYWORLD! But because of the long car ride there (13 total hours), we decided to split the travel to Florida into two days and stop by Savannah, GA, on our way down.
There
isn't much to say about our road trip down-- it was relatively
uneventful. But I must say that Savannah is a very beautiful town. We
got in kind of late, so we ended up finding a little restaurant called
the Savannah River House to eat dinner in.
The house salad came with our (pretty expensive, although it was
seafood, so I guess kind of understandable) dinners. It was pretty
good, but a bit heavy on the dressing side. But my littlest brother ate
his, which must say something, since he isn't a salad person.
My brother and I shared an entree. This was the Peppered Shrimp Saute, which was an excellent choice on his part. I am also extremely glad we shared the dish, because it was huge. It was flavorful, and the shrimp was tender.
Apparently Savannah River House is known for their desserts. So we couldn't leave before trying something! This is their banana bread pudding. Very banana-y. Very pudding-y. I wish it were warm, but seeing as how it was 10pm and the kitchen was closing, I couldn't complain. It was still tasty.
I made bleuberrie moofins (okay, I’m just poking fun– but blueberry muffins ARE fun, right?) a few days ago. It was my first time making them, and I decided to make them healthier by using applesauce in place of much of the sugar. I also used vegetable oil instead of butter– I don’t know if that made too much of a difference. I’ll try making the fatty version of blueberry muffins sometime to see…
As it is, here they are!
Bleuberrie Moofins
Ingredients
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup milk
- 2/3 cup applesauce
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/4 cup blueberries, washed and coated with a thin layer of flour to keep the blueberries from sinking** (you may use frozen ones if you like, just add them directly before putting the muffins in the oven, to keep from staining the batter a deep blue-purplely bruised color)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the dry ingredients and
the wet ingredients in separate bowls, leaving the blueberries for
later addition. Then slowly whisk the milk/egg/applesauce
mixture into the dry ingredients. - Gently fold in the blueberries so that they do not break and turn the batter strange colors.
- Spoon the batter into twelve oiled muffin cups.
- Bake for 20 minutes.
Enjoy!
has many fruits that I haven’t heard of, many of which they turn into jams (which are then sold as souvenirs to unwitting tourists like myself at exhorbitant prices at airports, etc., although I luckily bought my jams at a downtown specialty food store: Auntie Crae’s). Two jams that caught my eye were partridgeberry and bakeapple, also known as lingonberry and cloudberry, respectively.
I couldn’t resist. I bought them.
And while I was there, I also got a chance to eat strawberry pancakes (at K Café), which were so delicious, I couldn’t help but try and make them myself when I got home. The strawberries weren’t as sweet as I would have preferred, so next time I might coat them in a light layer of sugar briefly before I fold them into the batter.
Strawberry Buttermilk Pancakes
Ingredients:
- 1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 cup strawberries, chopped into thin chunks
Directions:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients together, and all the liquid ingredients together in separate bowls.
2. Slowly whisk the liquid into the dry mixture.
3. Fold the strawberries into the batter, then let the mixture set for approximately five minutes.
4. While the batter is resting, heat a griddle or frying pan on medium heat until a drop of water sizzles and skitters across its surface.
5. Add approximately ¼ cup batter to the griddle surface, and cook for approximately 4 minutes on each side. Basically, flip the pancake when there are a lot of bubbles rising.
6. Add jam and/or syrup and enjoy!
**Note that if the surface of a strawberry does touch the surface of the griddle, it is likely to burn, so you might find it more aesthetically pleasing if you wipe the surface of the griddle between pancakes.
The main reason we went to the ASLO meeting was to honor Barbara Sulzberger, a woman whose life’s work has made major impact to the field of limnological research. She’s this dear, Swiss woman who retired last year at the age of sixty, and she’s extremely intelligent. Surprisingly, she did a year of law school before she decided it wasn’t her thing and switched over to science. Quite the opposite of me, more or less.
To honor her, there was a symposium dedicated to her at the conference, and my poster, and the posters of the undergraduate and the postdoc as well, were dedicated to her. On our last night, we also had a dinner to celebrate her career. This is the entry about that dinner.
We went to Bianca’s, a high end restaurant in downtown St. John’s. There we had a five course tasting menu, paired with wines chosen by Yo Chin, a fellow researcher and the guy who helped organize the event with Tina Voelker.
Let us begin.
(sorry about the quality of the pictures—I was trying to be inconspicuous in my picture taking, which meant no flash, and I later went back with Photoshop to clean up the pictures)
The first course was a grilled scallop set upon pureed cod. It was paired with a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc from the Stoneleigh Vineyard in Marlborough. Deliciously light and savory, I really enjoyed the combination of the scallop with the cod as well as the sweetness of the wine.
The second course was a noodle dish made with saffron and white truffle. Unfortunately, we were all too absorbed in tasting our food, and I have already forgotten what the actual name of the dish was. This one was paired with a 2005 Chardonnay from Bourgogne. I have to say that I liked this dish the least out of the five served, but that just means the other four were exquisite, since this noodle dish was quite tasty. The wine was one of my faves of the night though. I love white wines.
The middle course was duck confit risotto wrapped in puff pastry. It kind of reminded me of an Asian egg roll, and I was tempted to ask for chopsticks to help me eat it. But it was tasty, and I love duck confit, so I guess it worked. This dish was paired with a red wine: a 2005 Meursault. Yum.
[rabbit and celery root]
The fourth course of rabbit and celery root paste was very classy. It was paired with a 2002 Yllera. I think I have only tried rabbit once before, and it really does kind of remind me of chicken…
[dessert]
Our last course was chocolate fudge (which I donated to the other grad students in attendance) which was laid on some sort of fruit coulis and had a grainy crème dollop (I have absolutely no idea what was in it) on the side. This last course was paired with my favorite of the wines: 2005 Icewine from the Niagara Peninsula. I absolutely adore icewine. Luckily it’s so expensive, otherwise I’d probably find an excuse to get drunk on it every night!
Little story: The first alcohol in my posession was a slim bottle of icewine. I was sixteen years old, and my family had gone up to Toronto for the North American Hakka Association Annual Conference. After several days of tours through Niagara Falls and the beautiful city of Toronto, we were at the last night’s banquet, eating Chinese food and having a jolly old time. As is standard at every other Asian banquet I have attended, there were raffle tickets and prizes to be won. I was placed in charge of listening for the numbers on my family’s raffle tickets, and so I sat, intent on winning something. The numbers were being called out in Hakka, the language of my ancestors. It also happens to be a language I cannot speak. Except for numbers. I can count like a pro. Or so I think. I’m never too sure about these things… At some point during the night, I thought I heard the numbers on my ticket being called out. I stared at my ticket and there they were! I had won my own bottle of icewine! Of course I was still at least five years underage, so I kept the bottle at home, biding my time until I would be of legal age to drink. The only problem with this was that icewine, like many sweeter wines, tends to go bad with time, so I couldn’t wait the half decade until I turned 21. So as a compromise, my parents and I shared the bottle when I was 18. Ah, it was delicious.
People in Newfoundland are so friendly and sweet, it made me reluctant to return to the United States. Somehow in spite of the constant overcast in their weather (or perhaps because of the weather), they’re more than willing to flash a smile and help out, chattering to me in their unintelligible Newfie accent, which I totally want to figure out and learn. Q: How’s she cuttin’? A:Best kind!
When Erin and I went exploring St. John’s, we also looked for the hostel she would be staying at during her last night backpacking in the area. When we finally found the hostel, we also discovered Bill, a Newfie who fulfilled every expectation we had of a Newfoundlander. He was friendly, spoke fast (although he told us he slowed down so we could understand him), and had a wicked sense of humour.
While recommending to us various sights and scenes, Bill also mentioned a favorite food of his: caplin. Smoked caplin. In his enthusiasm, he went over to the refridgerator, opened it, and took out a large jar with a small, darkly-colored fish resting inside. He offered it in my direction. Go ahead! Take it! Try it! It’s good!
I will say that as a child, I often ate small, dried fish whole as a snack. It’s an Asian snack, and many Asian children have stuffed the salty, crunchy buggers into their mouths without a second thought. But to be faced with such a large specimen, I was admittedly nervous. Yet I had already reached into the jar and grabbed a hold of the fish.
Well, here goes!
… Salty. Very very salty.
Bill watched my expression carefully. Never get dried caplin, he warned, they’re way too salty. And what about smoked caplin, I thought!
I think, next time, I’ll have to do as the Newfies do, and wash the caplin down with a nice cold beer…
Oftentimes vegetarian food can be disappointing. In Taiwan, they tend to overcompensate for flavor by adding grease, which just makes people sick and unhappy all around. But the black bean burrito I had (which was vegan, by the way) was not greasy at all, and, accompanied by a sharp salsa plus the house salad, it was greatly satisfying.
We went back the next day for lunch and stuffed our faces again.
This time, I had the cheese and cauliflower pie.
And I had the fruit (berries) and almond crisp.
This year’s ASLO conference had many events planned for students (and provided many box lunches for students as well!), including a haunted hike and a pub crawl. Erin and I missed the haunted hike, but managed to haul ourselves out for the pub crawl, which was scheduled for Thursday night, the last evening of the conference. We had been in the area for half a week and had barely met anyone new, so mingling was in order. I managed to drag our lab’s post-doc out to the first bar, but as soon as he walked in, he looked at the dark interior of the bar and turned and announced to me that he was returning to his room to sleep. Bummer.
As an aside, we explored George Street, which supposedly has the greatest density of bars per square foot in North America. There are at least 82 bars on the two and a half block street. Crazy, huh?
I don’t remember the names of the bars we went into—mind you, not because I was drunk!!—but most of us didn’t really care too much. Erin and I did meet a bunch of students attending the conference, but the funny thing was that all the people we met were from Maryland or about to move to Maryland. In fact, one of the girls actually went to my high school. So much for meeting new people from around the world...
The first bar was pretty quiet—apparently the St. John’s bar scene doesn’t really start up until after midnight, and we had started our bar crawl at approximately 10:00pm. We scientists start early! The second bar was better, but small, and we were cramped in like the fish they catch on those trawlers hanging out in the harbor.
By the third bar…
Things had clearly picked up. There was a bachelor party in the middle of things, and it was great hearing people belt out unintelligble song lyrics in sync with the live bad. It was clear to everyone that they all knew the words; I just can’t understand the Newfoundland accent (a mixture of Irish and European English with the speed tripled). People were dancing everywhere and having a generally great time.
After that, we all decided to head home to crash. Not that it was late. I’m just old. And tired.
*note: ASLO = American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
To those of you who may not know, I graduated college with a degree in biochemistry. I have spent the past year working as a technician in the lab of a former professor, working on furthering his work in researching the spectral properties of lignin in natural waters (in other words, I’m looking at how much light river and ocean water absorbs due to the amount and types of plant material found in them). It’s been tedious work, especially since what I did for the majority of the year was microwave and evaporate hundreds of samples had collected during my undergraduate years from several research cruises. In the end, I guess it paid off because I got to go on an all-expenses (more or less) paid trip to St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, for a weeklong conference to present a poster on my research (if you’re interested in learning more about my research, email me directly).
Always excited to try the local cuisine when I travel, I
actually tried surprisingly little of what could be considered traditional “Newfie”
food. St. John’s
is a little port town on the eastern shore of the island, and there are a lot
of fish and seafood dishes available which, in retrospect, I probably should
have tried. But traveling with a vegetarian means looking for vegetarian meals,
and while I am not a vegetarian myself, I do love vegetable dishes, so I was more
than willing to eat vegetarian meals.
Most meals I ate only with my fellow lab member and roommate in Newfoundland, Erin, who happened to be the vegetarian. Our first real dinner in St. John’s, however, was with our boss, at a place called The Hungry Fisherman.
My dish was Shrimp and Scallops Grand Marnier. It wasn’t too bad, although my poor American wallet felt a slight hit at the $24.95 price tag (and then a 13% tax, not including gratuity), which, given the current weakness of the American dollar, was a bit painful. Thank goodness for per diems which ultimately paid for my meal.
Deciding not to eat so heavily or expensively for the rest of our trip, Erin and I set out to try smaller cafes and restaurants.
While waiting in the café (called K Café) across the street from our hotel, we were playing with ice. I think the table was tilted. Or her cup. Or the street… Whatever the reason, our childlike antics discovered that ice placed on the straw in this fashion would always start sliding toward the window.
We had gone to K Café for breakfast and noticed “ice cream crepes” on the dessert menu. How scrumptious! We decided in the morning to make it back to at least try the crepes for a dinner dessert, if not just have them purely for dinner. Feeling a bit guilty at eating solely sweets for dinner, I ordered the soup of the day. Salty and warm, it was perfect for a chilly day spent wandering through the streets of St. John’s.
Side note about St. John’s weather: it’s almost always overcast in St. John’s, and it was quite cold—45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the 98 to 100 plus degrees I had left behind at home. Strange.
It was delicious. Mostly ice cream, I barely tasted the crepe—which was okay, since I love ice cream. We topped the crepe with triple berry, which was a combo of partridgeberry (also known as lingonberry), bakeapple (also known as cloudberry), and strawberry.
You can see Erin’s glass of wine in the picture as well. That one glass caused her to pass out at 7:30pm that night… and sleep until 8:00am the next morning. Wow.
Take a look-- St. John’s is beautiful.
I was a bit disappointed. The cake might have just come out of the fridge, so it was hard and stiff. The taste was decent, but nothing spectacular. It wasn't a bad cake, but it probably wasn't worth the nearly $6.00 we paid for it.
Since my local grocery store had semolina flour on sale a while back, I've been meaning to make something. Not feeling up to the task of creating pasta quite yet, I discovered a recipe for semolina bread in my Baking with Julia book. Excited to try a new bread, especially one with so few ingredients, I hurriedly began my project this past Thursday morning.
The shape of the bread was also ambiguous. I followed the recipe and made slits in the bread, but I wasn't sure where the actual slits were supposed to be. I need to eat semolina bread!!
...or make pasta next time.
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Lucy said:
Hehe bangers are sausages. Bangers and mash is a popular Irish dish, yum. read more
on Raglan Road Irish Pub - Chicken and Sage Banger -
Haha, yes. I've fortunately trained my family (and most of my friends) to stave off their hunger and wait a... read more
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