Wow. This is f-ing awesome

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1103024--kmart-layaway-accounts-paid-off-by-mysterious-donors

What a brave soul .. this is touching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg

Iowa's House of Representatives is planning an amendment to repeal marriage equity in the state.
This young man's speech is very touching. I know that at 19, I would certainly have loved to had his character - kudos to him for speaking out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q

Food Algebra - Dumplings

So we ventured into new territory and tried to cook something out of our comfort zone (pasta, steak, general gwai-lo food).

Him: What are we having for dinner?
Me: I want to try something new!
Him: Uhh .. ok .. (worried look)
Me: DUMPLINGS!

It was actually really fun! Honest. I had scoured for dumpling recipes, combing through the websites with the nicest looking dumpling pictures (biased, I know) and seeing what combination of ingredients we would use. We settled for the following (mainly because it was whatever was in the fridge)

- store bought dumpling wrappers (too risky to mess up if made from scratch)
- lean ground pork
- green onion
- shittake mushrooms
- egg wash (for the wrapper edges)
- sesame oil
- soy sauce
- chicken broth
- salt
- 5 spice powder
- black pepper

I kind of wanted to document the process, but he's not exactly one of those ppl who snap pictures of food on a minutely basis like me so I ended up snapping a few photos (read:took 3 pics in total) of the process. In the process I came up with ... FOOD ALGEBRA! Lo and behold, my brain child creation. Mash 2 things together and end up with an end result:




How did they turn out? Not bad, for a first try. But a few things to change up for next time:
- Cornstarch. Or flour. The filling ended up too dry
- Seasoning. More. Lots more. Salt really does do wonders, no matter how much I try to erase it from my diet. Could have used a bit more of everything
- Better proportion. We couldn't really taste the veggies. It should be like, 2 parts veggie and 1 part meat! That, and you don't want to taste all meat and no wrapper. Need to half the amount of filling per dumpling. A few were really beefy (well, porky)

Early on we realized that assembly line formation would be the best way to do this. He would plop the filling in and grease the edges, and I would fold. My origami skills from way back seem to have paid a helping hand, since they looked pretty presentable. It was a fun couple-y experience!


A side note: My Photoshop skills are pretty lame. But I get around. The above Food Algebra pic was put together with Photoshop 6 (yup, ancient stuff). Pics were taken with my Canon P&S and the background was created by DragonArtz (based on their Creative Commons License)

Uhhhh ..

There's something seriously wrong with this.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1095633--afghan-president-pardons-woman-serving-time-for-being-raped