Keep Calm and Carry On: The Diary of Foodie and Gourmet

To accompany the broccoli soup, I sauteed some shrimp. Nothing too special, just a bit of spice and voila! My shrimpy's came out very delicious. Ingredients: - shrimp (I had 8) - salt, pepper - cayenne pepper -garlic and onion powder - olive oil Directions: 1. Season shrimp. 2. Heat olive oil in a pan and saute shrimp. 3. Cook until shrimp are opaque and done.  Voila! Spicy Shrimp!

After a long winter break, I returned to my apartment in Manhattan with a blender from my mother. It's not just a blender, but a VITAMIX. The king of blenders. It is wonderful and I am in love. Keeping with my new weight loss journey, I have been trying new and healthy recipes. With my new blender, I was finally able to make Gordon Ramsay's broccoli soup. As a broccoli lover, I love this soup, but I want not able to make it until now, because I lacked the key instrument... A BLENDER! Now, I will share with you this recipe, but I must warn you, it is for truly broccoli lovers. Seriously, if you don't love broccoli, you may find this flavor overwhelming.  Ingredients: - 3 lb broccoli - boiling water - olive oil - seasonings of your choice  Directions: 1. Prepare the broccoli. You don't have to cut it into bite-sized pieces, since it will be boiled and then pureed.  2. Boil the broccoli until soft.  3. Once the broccoli is soft, transfe...

So, this past Monday night, I attended my first dance class in almost a decade. Wow. It was quite an experience. Not at all what I thought it would be! When I was in elementary and middle school, I was an avid dancer. I studied jazz for about 10 years, ballet for 2 years, and tap for 3 years. Gosh, it seems like a lifetime ago, but yeah...once upon a time, dance was my life. I'm not quite sure why I stopped. Probably school... Although I stopped studying dance, I still love to dance. When the music comes on, I start dancing! In an effort to try to lose weight and not get bored, I decided to try a dance class that was offered at my gym. It was called "Power Dance" and the blurb said " Jazz-style dance moves are choreographed into low- and mixed-impact routines. ". Reading this I thought, "that sounds great! I can do jazz!" I excitedly went to the gym. Well, I got there five minutes early and was the only one there. At first, I thought that I had t...

If you ask 10 people what their New Years resolution is, I bet you 9 out of those 10 people will say "weight loss." I am part of that 9 out of 10. That's right, my biggest new years resolution is to lose weight this year. I'll be honest, this is probably my annual resolution, but I never seem to succeed. This year, I am determined to change this. What makes this year different from past years? I have no idea. A hunch maybe? I am 23 going on 24 and you know what, I am still overweight and I hate it. I have managed to lose weight here and there, but I haven't succeeded in losing weight and losing it for good. This year, I want to break the cycle. My mantra that I keep saying to myself over and over again to keep me motivated is: "This is the year of the snake. This is YOUR year." (That is my zodiac sign) My goal? Lose 30 lb by the end of the year. I have decided to tell you all this because I want to be held accountable. I want you guys to know this an...

After almost of year of waiting for it's release and months of trying to get to the movie theater, I finally watched SKYFALL. HUZZAH!!!! I am over the moon! I don't know if you guys have seen this movie, but I LOVED IT. This movie was incredible, one of the best Bond films, in my opinion. Let me take a moment to admit, I am a HUGE James Bond nerd. I mean it. I have seen all of the films more than a dozen times EACH (except for Skyfall, obviously) and can probably act them all out. I have more books on James Bond than I would care to admit (including the book series) and I am the undefeated champion of 007 "Scene It." I mean, need I continue? I could spend days talking about James Bond and never get bored. The six faces of James Bond So, as a Bond fanatic, I was dying of anticipation when Skyfall came out and I was so pleased that I loved the film as much as I did --- especially since the last one (Quantum of Solace) was a bit of a let down...but we won't...

After the MoMA, my mother and I visited one of her favorite stores in Manhattan: The MoMA Design Store. Although I don't like the MoMA, I do enjoy the Design store. It's really really fun~! Love these pictures. This stall is always here. The design store has such a variety of objects of sale. Kitchenware, small furniture, fashion accessories, MUJI, knick-knacks, and much much more! I can spend hours in here, totally amused. Here are some of my favorite items that I saw: Sushi Headphones Small handbag made of computer keys geometric Issey Miyake bag I feel in love with this handbag...too bad it was $600! What the what?!

This past weekend, I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with my mom. I'll be honest, I wasn't too excited about going, but being a dutiful daughter, I tagged along. Why was I not looking forward to visiting the MoMA? To be honest, and I am sorry if I offend or upset anyone, but frankly I really don't like modern art. I find it pretentious and confusing and must of the time I'm left scratching my head thinking "Huh? How is this art?" Perhaps I need to visit the MoMA with someone knowledgeable about modern art or perhaps I am just not sophisticated enough for it? I don't all. What I do know is...I have never really enjoyed a trip to the MoMA, except for the Tim Burton exhibit a few years back...that was really fascinating. So, what brought us to the MoMA? There is currently an exhibition on modern Japanese avant-garde art from the 1950s ~ 1970s going on. My mom, being Japanese, really wanted to see the exhibit. An explanation of the exhibition ...

On Wednesday, I spent the day in the OR with Dr. K. She had a very busy day, with four breast biopsies and one mastectomy. I love being in the OR with Dr. K because I find her surgeries so fascinating --- I never tire of them! This blog post will focus on wire localized excisional biopsies, whilst my next post will talk about mastectomies. Breast cancer is an important topic and it comes up in the media A LOT. Christina Applegate, Kylie Minogue, Sheryl Crow, and many more celebrities were diagnosed with breast cancer, and their cancer status really shined a spotlight on breast cancer. Perhaps it's because I am a woman, a feminist, and an aspiring breast surgeon, but I thought I'd share with you what it's like to be in the operating room and talk about what breast surgery entails. I remember, when I first started working with Dr. K, I was totally clueless, but I have learned so much and well, you know what they say...knowledge is power! When a woman gets a mammogram, rad...

In my previous post, I walked you through what excisional biopsies are like. These are used to determine a more accurate diagnosis for what is going on in the breast. Is it ductal carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS) or something more? Now, let's move onto the next level. If, god forbid, you are diagnosed with breast cancer, you have a few options based on the severity. If your breast cancer is not metastatic and contained to one region of the breast, you are a good candidate for a lumpectomy. This basically means that the trouble area or "lump" can be excised surgically. You get to keep your breast, but you just lose a bit of it. Sometimes this is called a "quandrantectomy" if let's say you have a whole quadrant of the breast that is cancerous. If you are unlucky and the cancer is spread in multiple areas or throughout the breast, then you are a will likely require a mastectomy. I am going to make an assumption here and say that women are scared of mastectomies, I ...

I will admit, I don't love asparagus, but there is this one particular recipe of my mom's that I go crazy for. It's called "katsuo-aspara" and basically it is asparagus that has been sauteed and then finished with bonito flakes or katsuobushi. It may be a bit ethnic, but it is delicious! Ingredients - asparagus, cut in half (I was in a rush so I got pre-cleaned) - soy sauce - vegetable oil - bonito flakes *the proportions of the ingredients it totally up to your taste buds Directions: 1. Prepare the clean the asparagus. I like to cut them in half, roughly.  2. Heat vegetable oil in a pan. 3. Saute the asparagus until soft. beautiful green color  5. Once asparagus is cooked, add soy sauce.  6. Next add the katsuobushi. I like a lot, so I add a lot. 8. Mix well and serve. Voila!

Last weekend was a really fun weekend because all of my girlfriends from colleges came to NYC and we had a marvelous weekend together. Well, I should be more specific. One of my best friends, "E", is leaving us to study in London for a semester. I am so happy for her, but I will admit, I am also green with envy! As a lovely send off, E organized a farewell party where she invited her college friends, high school friends, and other friends. There were A LOT of us, but we had a really lovely time in Brooklyn. You may be confused by the title of this blog post. Allow me to explain. My freshman year at Bryn Mawr College, I lived in a dorm called "Brecon." It is a lovely old house, but it is a bit far from campus and slightly secluded. In the dorm, I lived on the third floor. At Bryn Mawr, we have something called a "customs group", and essentially what that means is that, all of the freshman living on a specific floor get to meet the other freshman within th...

Well, about one month later and I still have a ton of mincemeat left over. Since it is preserved in plenty of alcohol, it was still fine, but it needed to be used up! As much as I enjoy my mincemeat palmiers and mince pies, I thought I would do something a it different... As a little boy, my dad's favorite dessert was his grandmother's "honey cake." Essentially it was fruit cake, but with a honey flavor. A few years ago, my dad asked me to bake him gingerbread cake since he loves it. I obliged. He took one bite and was over the moon, saying it was the best gingerbread he had ever tasted. It also made him think of his grandmother's honey cake. He asked me to make the cake again, but to somehow make it more honey tasting and to use fruit. Let me also take a moment to say, he has no recipe, so recreating this dessert was completely up to my own ingenuity. I used my gingerbread cake recipe as a base, to which I then began to manipulate it. I figured, if I need 1/3...