De Baking Psychopath

Greetings from the coronapocalypse of 2020.  Right now, I am at home for an indefinite amount of time.  Our county and city have declared a stay-at-home order for all non-essential work and services.  The university has mandated for research labs to reduce to "essential" staffing only, which I am not as a postdoc researcher.  However, I may get pulled to help with clinical service at some point; since pathologists aren't front line care providers, it would likely be if the regular pathologists get sick and need to self-isolate and need backup support.  While we wait for the storm of infections to hit us, I figured now would be a good time to reboot the blog and post some recent baking exploits, if only to distract myself from the vortex that is the news.  So, welcome to the new and fancy redesigned blog! First, an update on life.  Since my last post, I have finished residency.  I went on to complete a clinical fellowship in Liver/GI path...

Hey everyone, I apologize for the long silence, but rest assured that I'm still alive, eating, and even occasionally baking! I'll try to do a roundup of recipes recently tried and a couple photos soon! Hope everyone's doing well, I think of you all and this space often. Stay tuned!

Hi everyone, Just wanted to post a quick note that I will unlikely be posting here or on the other blog for a bit of time, as I am trying to finish my thesis and defend in the next month or so. I have been baking on occasion (Gus must be fed, after all) but I have been returning to old tried and true recipes, so nothing new to report here. I expect to have some more free time in March-April, although after that I return to medical school so I cannot predict whether I will be able to post with any regularity. However, I have a long term commitment to this blog and to you guys, so whenever I have the chance can make new and exciting baked goods, I'll be sure to share them with you! Alrighty, see you on the other side!

Hi.  I know it's been a little quiet over here. It's not because I am not thinking of this blog, or baking on occasion.  It's just because the last 6 weeks have been an emotional roller coaster that I was not prepared to deal with after my last committee meeting. You see, I am trying to finish up my thesis project by this summer, or at latest this fall, and return back to medical school, and the magnitude of that task has me hyperventilating and my stomach in knots, with very few moments of clarity and peace in between. But most of the time, the near-panic attacks preside. And while I still take time out to relax, it has been more and more of a struggle to keep up my usual baking-blogging routines. So while I stockpile pictures and try to get my act together one of these days to share some of the awesome recipes I am still lucky enough to have time to enjoy making/eating, here are a few peeks into my plate/lunchbox of late. Above, a sandwich made with ...

Oh yes. Welcome to the new label series "putting the 'psycho' in psychopath"!! Let me explain. About a week ago, the Animal Rescue League, the shelter where we adopted both our kitties, sent out an e-mail rallying everyone to support the ARL by signing up as a fundraising runner/walker for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May 2011. As a participating charity, they need a certain number of people to run on their behalf and raise a certain amount of money each year in order to qualify for participation for the following year. I thought, "That's cool! Hey, the marathon is still pretty far away, I think I could probably do a half-marathon...." That led to a chain of events that eventually resulted in the following: 1) I am now signed up for the half-marathon (yes, it is 13.1 miles, and yes, I'm scared) 2) I have convinced at least two other people to do the same 3) I have my own fundraising site on behalf of the Animal Rescue League 4) I have spent a lot of ti...

Yes. An iPhone 3GS. I never knew this day would come. I have a very anti-fad personality, to a fault. The hysterical fervor of tweens and college kids for "social networking" and products that bear the symbol of the forbidden fruit makes me decidedly repulsed. My one-year-ago self would probably give me a judgmental look and tsk away. But thanks to a confluence of factors, I have found myself here in late 2010 with an iPhone to my name, and quite honestly, pretty smugly happy with the thing. This is due to 1) some acclimation to the technology from the significant other owning the same device for several months, 2) finding this gorgeous velvety-smooth burgundy hard case , 3) Pandora mobile ANYWHERE I GO, 4) the Skype application that lets me call home (international call) anywhere through either 3G or WI-FI signal, 5) and the recruitment of this little cutie (instead of half-eaten fruit) to greet me whenever I turn over my phone: At least I can say at this point in my life...

Last weekend, a friend and I went frolicking at a local orchard and country market for the bounty of the local harvest. Early apples, late white peaches, fresh pie! She also scored a bushel of tomatoes for $26....that was a freaking large amount of tomatoes. She thereafter stewed them down and canned them for her and her husband's use through the next several months. But before that, she and I tried our hands at making berry jam! We got the recipe from The Berry Bible . So we forgot to do the cold-spoon-gel-test before canning and our jam didn't actually gel into nice firm jam (we probably needed more pectin)...oops! But we got some really yummy fruit sauce out of it! It's been great on plain yogurt and ice cream!

And for the finale to this tasty travelogue, I give you the conglomerate of the sweets I tasted and happened to take pictures of during this trip. Starting with ice cream! I previously posted about the Turkish ice cream we had in the streets of Lugang after seeing the Mazu Temple, but here is a common sight at any department store food court in Taiwan: Asian-Italian gelato. Italian in style, Asian in flavors. The flavor combo I chose was passion fruit (left, with the seeds!) and milk (right), which I ate in combination to create an Asian creamsicle. It was quite yummy. And of course, Mister Donut . This chain was originally American, then bought by Dunkin Donuts and basically shut down in the US. A Japanese company then got the franchising rights later and the chain has been making it's way through Asia slowly. It has opened in Taiwan as a joint venture between the Japanese company and Uni-President, the scary-successful conglomerate in Taiwan that also owns 7-Eleven and Starbuck...

Taiwan is all about the tea. Sure, there's a lot of coffeeshops, and those are popular and all that, and there are a lot of nice fruit drinks like papaya milk , but really, we're Chinese--we drink tea. Now bubble tea, the combination of sweetened tea with fat tapioca balls, is uniquely Taiwanese. We had a decent amount of it during our time there. My favorite version of milk tea is not with tapioca, however, but with egg pudding instead. One of the ways we enjoyed tea was at a fancy tea shop called Rose House . I got hooked onto English style tea from frequenting one branch of this cafe chain in high school with my friends for special occasions such as birthdays. The interior of the cafe was always decked out in flowery decor and frilly cushions. Of course pretty tea sets and cups are a must. We were not so lucky to cross paths with a separate store to dine in to enjoy the frilly splendor, so we instead parked at a Rose House booth in a high-end cafe/food court in a departm...

The photos you see below are a conglomerate of four of the bigger meals we had with family at more traditional style restaurants throughout our trip. These are not necessarily representative of a "normal" go-out-to-eat restaurant a family might visit on a Friday night (unless you're my dad...). But a person might frequent these sorts of places often enough for more special occasions such as birthdays, holidays, or with special guests. This meal is also described in this post ...lots of things with faces, lots of seafood in general. My family and Jess and I had lunch with a couple of my dad's friends from the insurance world at a family-run seafood restaurant in Lugang, Chunghwa county. The first picture far above shows various customers picking the tastiest victims seafood for their meal. Fried oyster fritters Steamed shrimp Steamed bamboo, drizzled with Japanese-style sweet mayonnaise and rainbow sprinkles 滷肉飯 ( luroufan) : Soy sauce-stewed chopped or ground pork...