--- My 10 pm snack

So, I'm eating like a pig these days. Why? To gain weight, obviously! I have too many people grabbing my wrist and saying, "You're so skinny. You should eat more Suzy!" Older friends of mine have started to comment about my body too. I don't take these comments as insults because they are not as hurtful as "Why are you so anorexic?" I am not anorexic because I accept the fact that I am, indeed, skinny. I don't stand in front of the mirror, think that I am extremely overweight, and refuse to eat. Instead, I try to eat more and I check my weight constantly to see if I have made any improvements. So, if you know me personally, don't ask the stupid question: Why are you so anorexic?

Getting back on topic: My 10 pm snack. I looked through my baking/cooking books yesterday night to pass the time and I came across this wonderful picture of a trifle:



Immediately, I started craving for a yummy serving of trifles! However, when I checked my kitchen cabinets, I realized that I had no biscuits or whipping cream or almonds. But that didn't stop me from making my own trifle. I quickly grabbed the two end parts of bread, the 400g Original Philadelphia cream cheese that was on sale in Costco, some strawberries, blackberries and of course, a handful of "Honey Bunch of Oats." In less than one minute, I created my cream from cream cheese, mixed with sugar and vanilla extract. Next, I diced strawberries into small cubes and placed them in a small bowl along with blackberries. What was my next step? The Great Assembling. First, I cut a circle out from the bread and placed it on the bottom of a small glass bowl. Next, I spread the cream on top and sprinkled the cream with colorful berries. Then, another circularly-cut bread followed with another gentle spreading of the cream topped with berries. I then proceeded to placing the cereal and small bread cubes on top. And voila! My 10 pm trifle snack was ready! I digged in and as short as it took to make this simple snack, I devoured this goodness in less than one minute ;)

--- "SUZY! THE OVEN'S BURNING!?!"

So, I realized that I haven't blogged in a very long time. Therefore, to make up for the absence of my posts, I shall give you a very long and yummy update! Not so many days after Kyleen and I made the hot chocolate pots by Nigella Lawson, I went on to make cream puffs with chocolate sauce on top. I don't know if I should call that chocolate eclairs because I combined two different recipes for the "cream puffs with chocolate sauce on top." I used the puff pastry recipe from Keiko, and the chocolate sauce recipe from this really adorable old lady on youtube. Hey, I don't know her name okay? Anyway, the end results looked like this:

These delicious looking cream puffs hold a very special story within each of them. You see, I thought that I could place wax paper in the oven as substitution for aluminum foil. Wax paper looks so much prettier as a decoration than aluminum foil, you know? But, when my brother went inside the kitchen to cook himself some instant noodles, he yelled, "YO, SUZY! WHY IS THE OVEN BURNING?!?" He could have said, "Suzy? There is smoke coming out of the oven!" but obviously he was freaked out too and decided to exaggerate the situation so much more than it was. "Why is the oven burning?!?" That made me jump inside the kitchen to rescue my cream puffs. (I'm sorry bro (: My babies seemed more valuable than you at that moment). You are not supposed to open the oven for even a second when you are baking puff pastry. UNFORTUNATELY, I had to take them out for 10 minutes to get the smoke out of the oven. One third of my puff pastry was all wrinkly and the pastries shrunk. Rapidly. In the next fastest 10 minutes of my life, I quickly transferred the pastries from the cookie trays into another oven-safe pan. Then, I shoved them all into my mini oven and baked them for about 15 minutes. Luckily, they began to rise again (hmm... so much for the "you're basically f***ed if you open the oven when baking puff pastries!!) and when I took them out of the oven, they actually looked pretty good. However, the baked puffs did not have enough space for whipping cream inside of them, so I decided to make "cream puff sandwiches." My cream puff sandwiches basically had a puff as the bottom base, whipping cream as the middle part, another puff as the top, and finally, the chocolate drizzle to finish them up. The sandwiches tasted pretty awesome!! And I also learned a very valuable lesson from that day: Never put wax paper in the oven unless you want your brother to start screaming, "THE OVEN'S BURNING!!"

--- Chocolate Hot Pots with Kyleen (:

If you have already read Kyleen's blog, you should know that I am obsessed with Nigella Lawson's recipes. Kyleen mentioned that most of Nigella's food exist for the reason of "express cooking" or "fast cooking" and that Nigella's recipes are unhealthy and fattening. But, let me tell you something. They taste so good that I changed her mind by the time our chocolate hot pots came out of my mini oven. In the beginning she said that she would not eat it. Well, she did. And she said it tasted good :D

We made these yummy chocolate hot pots as our reward after three hours of torture in the library, studying for our science exam. All the hard work paid off because after Kyleen took many "professional-looking" pictures of our master "food" work and ate my chocolate hot pot, she said: "This makes me happy. Thank you" Wow, girl. When you said that I had "butterflies" in my tummy :)

If you want the recipe, go to Kyleen's blog: http://www.sixteenbeans.blogspot.com/, but meanwhile, why don't you spend a good minute drooling over these delicious pictures?

--- Last Day of School & Our Trip to Pho 88

The day has finally come. The end of our year as grade 10s. We will miss you Earl Haig, but not that much because summer awaits us! Yes, I am aware that today is not June 8th (Last day of school), but who cares! Regardless of what people say, I'm still going to post. For the entire year I have been a pretty good student. I didn't skip, I mean. Okay fine. I skipped once on Half Day, but that doesn't really count right? We only had 40 minutes of class! Besides, the first subject I had on that day was History (my worst subject). I admit that I skipped recklessly in the last week of school. I missed two science classes (one I missed because I pretended to think that it was a late start day when school started at 8:50 sharp), one computer technology class (the teacher let us out) and about six culinary arts classes (Kyleen and I had permission to "go to the library"). But everyone does that, especially on the last few days of school.

At lunch, a few of my friends and I went to eat at Pho 88. It was closed when we got there, I even tried calling the place, but obviously noone picked up. After about 20 seconds of waiting and taking pictures, we tried the Bubble Tea place. I forgot what it's called, but it sells bubble tea. Trying to ignore our hunger, we asked the employee if meals were being sold. He said no. I swear Rebekah, one of my friends, almost screamed when she heard that. She was probably the hungriest person out of all of us. Anyway, after the failure in Bubble Tea, we tried the Asian Legend. Thankfully it was open, but just as I turned to tell the others who stayed behind on the other side of the road, Pho 88 opened! And guess what, we all ran in there.



Us. I will not name us for private reasons :D



Us again. I'm not naming us!

 You can guess what happened next. We stuffed our faces in the food, well except for me because I packed my own lunch. However, the Pork Vermicelli that my friend, Justine, was eating looked so delectable that I just had to get it afterschool. It cost approximately $7.50, but it was totally worth it. It tasted AMAZING. Make sure you try it when you go to Pho 88.

--- English Exam

I have my English exam tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. WISH ME LUCKK! It's my very first exam (: After the exam, I'm going to see Tyson, a dog that I wanted to see since march break! Good luck to all of you!!

--- Looking back...

Now that there's only two days left in school before the exams, I'm suddenly feeling a little sad, but happy mostly. Today, when I was on facebook, I found myself going through my old pictures of my photo album. The pictures were taken during my life in middle school. When I saw these photos, I realized how young and innocent we looked back then. We were simply little kids who were really excited to enter the "world of high school".  Well let me just tell you, now that I'm in the life that I have always been dreaming about back in middle school, it's not that amazing as I thought it would be. Of course I made a lot of friends (who I can never replace for life) and precious memories. All I'm saying is that, compared to the ridiculous amount of fantasizing over "high school", it didn't really meet up to my expectations. Basically, life is the same as it was back in middle school. Except with more... challenging teachers, and dramas.    

Remember this, my friends? This picture was taken on the last day of school, I believe. We were all so young back then... What happend to us now? Why are most of us corrupted, what happened to our innocence?! I wish to be taken back to this day so I can tell all the students in this picture: Highschool isn't that great really. Just live everyday to your fullest!

Who am I kidding though. I'm still unable to fully believe what I just said. I guess we're all living in a circle of life. It's sad to say that not all of these people are close to me now. They've become random people in my school that I say hi to in the hallways. We were all so close in middle school. What happened to that? Why are we constantly judging, criticizing and mocking others now? I miss the closeness. I miss the time when I didn't care about what other people said about me and my friends. As long as I had fun with my buddies, I was fine! As a highschool student, I know a lot of friends who deal with issues at school. None of this occured in middle school. The worst thing me and my friends could say to each other was: Meanie.

YEAH. MEANIE was the worst word that we used in middle school. How about now? I could make a list so long that I would run out of space in this box for posting.

I miss these memories. I still treasure them and nothing can compare to the happiness that I feel when I look at these old pictures. And one day, I'll be showing these pictures to my child and telling her/him this: Be happy. Be yourself. And don't let anyone get you down. You are Suzy Jung's precious child (: