Mmm! Chicken Noodle Soup!

Remember Half-Recipe Wednesday? Well, I deem today, September 15th, 2012, Soup Saturday! So get out your cookware and make your favorite soup! 

In celebration of Soup Saturday, I made Chicken Noodle Soup. Mmm! 

In the mug is Kool-Aid. Haha!

I must say the Chicken Noodle Soup came out really good, albeit accidentally, I think. So I will share my recipe with you. (Since I still suck at cooking, this recipe will be be very rudimental, much like the recipe from Half-Recipe Wednesday.)

Ingredients:

Chicken meat – I think I used two breasts, or was it two fillets, I'm not exactly sure . . .

Two Carrots,

One Scallion or so,

Pasta – my favorite is the simple macaroni,

Salt, and Black Pepper.

Okay, so first, I made the chicken broth. 

This is where things went kind of unplanned. See, I had forgotten to thaw the chicken meat. So my two chicken breasts, or fillets or whatever, were frozen together. I read online that you could still cook frozen chicken, it would just take double the time. So I kind of just tossed the chicken in a small pot with water and turned the stove on at high. As the water boiled, I tried my best to pry the two pieces of chicken apart. As I was doing this, the film of fat that forms at the top of the water when you boil chicken formed. And there was just a lot of it. I tried to scoop it off the way I've seen my mother do it. But it wasn't working. So I just dumped all the water out, along with the fatty film, and put in new water and reboiled the chicken. During this second boiling, I finally got the two pieces of chicken apart. But then I realized that I was using the wrong pot. I was using some nonstick pot instead of my soup pot. So I basically scooped out whatever new film of fat that was forming that I could and poured the chicken and water into my 3 quarts soup pot. I then proceeded to fill the pot to about two-thirds full, or maybe a little bit more, three-fourths. Next, I just left it there to boil and cook. In the end the soup was very clear and tasty, so I don't think this process was entirely bad but it probably should be avoided.

The rest of the cooking went smoothly.

While the chicken was cooking. I peeled and diced my two carrots. After that, I poured the diced carrots into the pot to cook with the chicken. I then turned the dial on the stove to medium so it wouldn't boil over and added salt to the broth. Next, while the broth continue to cook, I got another pot, and cooked and strained one serving of pasta.  I don't really like my pasta mushy so I keep it separate from the broth in a bowl. After I was satisfied with my chicken and carrots broth, I took a piece of chicken out of the broth and peeled it into smaller pieces and added to the bowl with the pasta. Next, I poured one serving of broth along with some carrots over my pasta. I then added some chopped scallion and black pepper for favoring. And ta-da, done! One serving of Chicken Noodle Soup.

I still have about two quarts of broth left. So I think it's safe to say I can make two more servings of Chicken Noodle Soup, when I feel like it. Of course I would need to cook a serving of pasta for each serving quart of broth. So for a total, with the ingredients I listed above, you can make three servings of Chicken Noodle Soup.

Bare Conductive Paint

Yesterday, I consciously ordered my first item from across the pond, London that is. £6.00, it was. I didn't realize until later that £6.00 is nearly $10. Oh well. I'm over it. 

So what is it that I ordered? And how much was shipping if it was from across the pond?

I ordered conductive paint from Bare Conductive. It's essentially paint-on wire. Cool, right? I have a project in mind where thin is a huge criteria, so I thought why not? Plus, conductive paint looks so cool and useful. If I don't use it for the project I currently have in mind, which I shall not describe, since I might not actually do it, I can always use the conductive paint on a different project. It'd be great for arts and crafts! Haha, I think it was money well spent. The best part? Free worldwide shipping! =]

Also, while we are talking about my spending, I would like to make a note about a hopefully lifelong investment I recently made. I splurged on a new bike. I basically spent my entire summer earnings on this bike. How much? Approximately equivalent to the cost of one month of a twenty-something year old's car insurance. Yeah, I know, it's a lot for a bike. But I like it really much and it rides really well. It's a really nice hybrid kind of bike with an aluminum frame, which means it's really light, snappy, and quick. I'm just really happy about it, but have held back about blogging about it because I felt semi guilty for spending that much money. But you know what? Judge me as you will. I'm happy with my pricey purchase.

Restless

It's junior year and things are both different and the same.

I'm living in an apartment this year. So that means I'll be cooking. I kind of suck at cooking, but I'm learning. I'm aiming for healthy, nutritious, fresh, and natural meals. Basically, nothing processed. I am going to try to get most of my produce from the farmers market. I like the farmers market. The farmers are so nice. The other day, I got a free bag of raspberry chocolate almonds and yesterday I got a free sunflower for being a student and a jalapeño on the house.

As for academics, I don't feel like I'm in school yet. I attend lectures but it's different. I guess I'm just so used to empty seats in my lectures, and since it's the beginning of the year, everyone is still attending classes, and the lecture rooms are packed. However, everyone seems more focused and interested in learning now. So I don't think the lecture rooms are going to get less crowded. I think at this point, there will be few people dropping out of engineering. So these classmates will the people I will have classes with for the rest of my undergraduate years. I also feel obligated at the beginning of the semester to not doodle in class. Oh, I forgot to mention that I am taking 4 engineering courses, all of which, including their accompanying discussions and labs, are in the same building. I will be living in one building this semester. How unfortunate! I actually hardly cross Comm Ave now. =[ I really do miss Bay State Road.

I'm restless though. It's like I want things to happen, and nothing is happening. I sit idly. I know, I need to go do things. But what? I think part of it is that I need to learn how to go places alone. My friends are focused on school or work or just not interested in exploring the city anymore. I guess it has to do with the fact that a good portion of the city has been explored and the remaining portion to them isn't worth exploring and repeating destinations aren't worth making time for. But you know, I live so close to the MFA now, that it'll be a shame if I didn't go more often. I like doing things. I'm also not much of a TV person, so when I have free time, I spend it on the interweb. But lately, I've had more than enough free time, and spending too much time on the interweb isn't good for me anyway. Of course, both my jobs haven't started yet, so I won't be restless for long. And of course, I always have project ideas in my head that I should work on.

I did go see Paranorman today with two of my friends. It was good, comedic, creative, and great animation. Check it out if you have the time and money to spare. After that, I lounged around. I think I may go on a bike ride after dinner, along the esplanade perhaps. And then hit up the bingo event BU is hosting.

Update: Only got a short ride in, about 2 miles, because it started to rain . . . I did get a nice picture from under BU bridge.

Chinese Checkers

So last month, it was Badminton. This month it is Chinese Checkers. I love Chinese Checkers. I play by the Super Chinese Checkers. This is because I was taught Chinese Checkers by mother who is from Mainland China. My family, well mostly my mom and one of my sister, play into the late night. It gets so competitive.

Playing Chinese Checkers again brings back so many memories. I used to play when I was younger against my late grandfather. I rarely won against him, but it was fun to try to win. And when I did win, it felt wonderful. I miss my grandfather. It brings back memories of my youth. I remember when my neighbors got hooked on Chinese Checkers. That's what we do, we go to phases where we get hooked on things: Pokemon cards, swimming, hide-n-go-seek-freeze-tag-team in the dark, biking, Puzzle League. It was a great childhood. I also remember when I went to China in 2007, and the loser of each game would have to buy bubble tea for the winners. Haha, when I lost, I spent my mom's money and got myself one as well, so it was almost always a win-win situation for me. But still, my aunt and I would get pretty competitive.

And now, to add to the memories, this current phase of Chinese Checkers. This phase, I would characterize as the "I am evenly matched with my mother/occasionally better than her" phase. Things like Chinese Checkers and Badminton remind me of my wonderful childhood. Plus they're super fun. And gets me away from thinking about my daunting future, if for a bit, and the digital world.

The Daunting Future

I'm constantly thinking of my future. I can't help it. And I don't quite mind it. But it is a little tasking at times. It wears me out because the future is daunting.

Why?

It's daunting because even though I have two years of college under my belt, I still feel completely useless. There's just so much to learn! I think that's the difference between the sciences and the arts. The arts requires lots of practice and self discovery, while the sciences requires lots of knowledge and logic over intuition. And then there's engineering, which I think is a combination of the two. You don't necessarily need to understand as much as the physicist why certain things work but you still need to understand, unless you want your project to blow up, or worst, do nothing. But then you also need to be creative, and design and make things. Like the arts, you need to practice engineering. You can't just rely on what you learned in classes, or from textbooks, or on the web. You need to practice engineering. So to be a great engineer, you must live the lifestyle of both the scientist and the artist. That sounds like a lot of work.

Now, toss in the fact that I want to be an Imagineer, specifically an engineering Imagineer. Not only do I need to understand and apply the latest technology, I need to be more creative than the normal engineer. I need to understand how stories are structured, how colors and lights and metals combine into a story, how to bring a little magic into the world. You know, so that I can build an attraction like the Enchanted Tiki Room, where guests, especially the younger ones, still walk out the attraction and wonder why it's not raining, when inside the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Imagineers made it look so convincing that it was raining outside. That sounds so rewarding!

I do know that every attraction at Disney is built by a team, and one person doesn't necessarily need to know everything in depth, but they do need to know one thing very in depth. So what's that one thing for me? In my trip down to Florida this summer, I discovered I wanted to do animatronics. I've always thought I wanted to make roller coasters. And yeah, that by every means sounds like a wonderful job. But I realized that's not what I want to do in the end. I'll take it if it comes my way though, without hesitation.

This is where everything becomes even more daunting, borderline gloomy. How does one even build an animatronic? I'm working right now on building a teabot, and I see it being finished in the future. But that's that, a robot. How does one build an animatronic to behave fluidly like an animal or person? Again, so much to learn.

And I don't want to restrict my learning. I still do want to know how roller coasters work. I also would really like to know how photonics works, partly because I am just so jaded by color lights. And fluids. I'd love to be able to build something like World of Color. (hmmm, that's got me thinking . . .) And let's not forget pyrotechnics.

So I think of all these things. Of my current  knowledge and skill level. Of all the things I need to learn, which is a lot. All the work that must be done, again a lot. Work that looks frustrating and tedious, and perhaps pointless. And decisions I need to make: like do I want to study abroad, take a semester off to intern, take interesting classes, etc. Oh, and let's not forget I want to live . . .