Fluffy Chinese Sponge Cake

My coworker Eileen got some of us at the office addicted to sponge cake from a particular bakery in Chinatown. After having my first sponge cake a few days ago, I couldn't stop thinking about it. The sponge cake is so light and fluffy. It taste so good especially when it's hot! It almost melts in your mouth.

Today during lunch time I decide to go get some. Eileen told me it's between Baxter and Hester Steet. She says to look for a store with long plastic blinds on the door. She also warned me to look carefully because I might miss the store. I asked her why and she said because it doesn't look like a bakery. I wasn't sure what she meant because most Chinese bakeries in Chinatown are usually very nice with glass windows and pretty cakes displaying at the counters or windows. But she was right, it doesn't look like a bakery at all. If I didn't read the sign I would've thought it was a vegetable store or a ghetto deli. The plastic blinds on the door was the only sign that I was at the right place.

I walked in this coffee shop and saw there were only 1 little table occupied by two old Asian men. The surprising thing was the person behind the counter and everyone in the kitchen were all Spanish. It was impressive because the guy at the counter spoke some Chinese. I looked around the counter and saw some pastries but didn't see any sponge cake so I asked if they had anymore. He asked me how many I want and I told him 3. He called out to the people in the kitchen and they brought it out for us. The sponge cake was nice and warm. I couldn't wait to eat it! The only thing I have to complain is about the size, compare this to other sponge cake in Chinatown this is so tiny! But this is the best sponge cake I've ever had. Each one is 65 cents.

In the afternoon I told Stella I got some sponge cake and she wanted some too. Suddenly I wanted to get more. After raving about these sponge cake we got Lin wanting to try some too. So we asked Joe to go get some for us. He couldn't say no to 3 hungry ladies so he went with Lin. They came back with a box. We were all so happy!

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Kam Hing Coffee Shop

119 Baxter St New York, NY 10013

Arby's Free Sandwich Review

Last week my brother sent me an email of a Arby's coupon that offers a free sandwich with purchase of fries and drink (other specials such as a free sweet tea and malt shake also available). I've never eaten at Arby's or seen it around before so I didn't know it was available in New York or anywhere near me. A few days ago Andy and I was driving in Queens and suddenly I saw a huge Arby's sign. I got excited and told Andy we have to come here because we can get a free sandwich.

Yesterday, after Andy, Charles and Nadia finished their daily training for the marathon (btw: I'm so very proud of you guys!) we decided to go check out Arby's. I printed out 4 coupons for all of us:

Most of us ordered the small fries and small drink to get the free sandwich. Both item came out to be $3 and change. I added a order of the loaded potato bites. I didn't know I could subsitite the fries with the potato bites which is what I would've done.

I got the American roast beef sandwich. It has bacon, cheese, letteus, tomato and roast beef. I added a $1 and got double the meat. They gave us alot of roast beef! It was sooo good! The roast beef tasted surprisingly fresh and has lots of taste! I expected it to be rough and dry like the ones in the deli which need alot of ketchup or sauce. I didn't think they can serve such fresh roast beef in a fast food chain. So yummi!!!

The gravy was good with the sandwich but you need to pay 40 cents for it. It was worth it!
Charles and Andy ate the sandwich their way by taking a bite of roast beef sandwich and then gulp down some gravy. Andy says this way you will have control of how much gravy you want. Sounds gross but I got to admit it does taste good this way. After we all finished our sandwich Charles and Andy were both still hungry. We got a coupon for a free sandwich for buying 3 sandwiches. We brought these meals individually but they still gave us a coupon, they were so nice! So they got a free sandwich and split it. Andy got the bigger piece but then he gave back some to Charles, how sweet! ahhah...

This deal was so great! We will try to squeeze another trip to Arby's before the deal expires (3/31/09). I'm so happy that we found a new place with good roast beef sandwich! I haven't had a good roast beef sandwich in a long time! The calories content for these meals wasn't bad, it's somewhat healthier then McDonalds or Taco Bell so I'm happy about that.

Go get your free Arby's sandwich too!

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Arby's

6916 Metropolitan Ave

Flushing, NY‎ - (718) 894-0485‎

Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week 2009

Dine In Brooklyn
March 23th-April 2nd

3 Course menu lunch or dinner for $23
Some restaurants offer 2 for $23 specials
**Price does not include drinks, tax or gratuity**

Participating Restaurant and Menus here:
http://www.visitbrooklyn.org/pdf/DIB09web.pdf

Call any participating restaurant to make reservation and mention
"Dine In Brooklyn"

Happy Eating~

Jollibee The Bee: Filipino Fast Food

This Saturday, Andy and I finally made time to go check out Jollibee! Jollibee is a famous fast food chain based in the Philippines. There's many chains in the West coast but the first East coast store is the newly opened one in Woodside, Queens. It's been opened in Woodside for about a month already. We've heard so much about this crazy long lines Filipino fast food joint. I've heard rumors that lines were 3 blocks long and one of the workers there confirmed it was true for us. She said it was crazy in the beginning and things were running out fast through out the day. My friend Maribeth said she waited around 1 hour and 40 mins on the line during the 2 week after the opening. Even now after more then a month there's still a lines but it wasn't that bad.

We waited around

~30 mins outside: sooo freaken cold! *shivers*

~20 mins inside: servers went around taking orders on a piece of paper
~10 mins: we waited for them to put our order in and then packed our food to go
Total: ~1 hour!!

At this point we were extremely hungry and cranky since it was already 4pm and we haven't eaten anything the whole day. We decided to order one of each of their specialty item on their menu since we waited so freaken long! We wanted to try everything to make our wait worth it because we're not sure if we would want to come back again.
So what did we order?? 6 piece fried chicken, spaghetti, palabok, aloha burger with fries, mash potato side, 2 peach mango pie and soda. Yes we order that much food....

6 piece fried chicken eaten with gravy ($13.39) the 18 piece is $30 bucks!
Pretty expensive for chicken that taste somewhat like KFC but with fresher chicken.

Palabok ($5.79): thin rice noodles fried with soy sauce and some citrus and possibly with patis (fish sauce), and some variation of sliced meat, shrimp, chopped vegetable and eggs.
This was very good. I love it when I mixed everything together with the noodles. Spaghetti ($4.49): The spaghetti has bits of sausage and the marinara sauce is sweet. I love Filipino spaghetti and the banana ketchup because its extra sweet.

Mash potato side ($1.99): nothing special...
The Aloha burger ($7.69 with fries): has pineapple, cheese, bacon, mayo, and lettuces. It was good because I like pineapple in salty dishes like Hawaiian pizza or pineapple chicken. The pineapple gave the burger a very nice tangy and sweet taste.
Fries were crispy but not salted. Peach Mango Pie ($2.29): it was crispy and warm. The inside taste kind of like warm duck sauce with a bit of mango taste. It sounds funky but it wasn't bad. While eating it I couldn't stop thinking about how much it taste like duck sauce and Andy agreed with me too! interesting.....

The whole meal we spent around $45 and yes ate it all!! okay fine...we had a few chicken left over that we took home....
Would I come here again? YES!

Would I wait on the long line? Maybe...depends how much I crave the spaghetti and palabok
I hope they expand the menu and serve more of what they have on their website.
I can't wait to try the other items on the menu!

Everyone was posing and taking pics with Jollibee including me!

and of course Andy too...

Interesting convo with Justine, the girl who took our order:

Andy: I like your Jollibee hat.
Justine: Oh thanks....
Andy: Can we buy one?
Justine: Umm...no (laughing)
Andy: Can I work here to get one?
Justine: yea, sure if you get the job...
Andy: I might just do that...
Me: (laughing) (In my mind: he's so weird <3)
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Jollibee
62-29 Roosevelt Ave
Woodside, NY 11377

Chinese and Irish Fusion: Corned Beef and Cabbage

Right now I'm enjoying my left over St. Patrick's day dinner for lunch! My dad made a traditional Irish dish but in a non-traditional way. He made his own version by adding taro and turnip. It became a Chinese and Irish fusion corn beef and cabbage stew. He cooked it in a pressure cooker but cooked it for too long so the meat was too soft and it fell apart.


He used purple cabbage, potato, carrots, taro and turnip. It was interesting...I never had purple cabbage before and thought it tasted bitter then the regular cabbages. The taro actually made the stew thicker, I not sure if I liked that...

and to make it more Chinese, we ate it with rice....

Yesterday I asked my dad a few stupid questions:

Me: What's corned beef?
Dad: it's beef
Me: ohhh.... but why is it red like that?
Dad: they put stuff on it to make it red...
Me: how do you know when it's fully cooked? if it's red, people might think it's raw...
Dad: it doesn't take long for it to be fully cooked, you'll just know....
Me: easy for you to say because you are a chef...
Dad: well of course, that's because I'm good
Me: *rolled eyes*

I found out that corned beef is red because they use saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to prepare it. They add saltpeter to the pickling brine to cured the beef. The nitrate forms a stable red colored complex with hemoglobin, without the saltpeter the meat would be brown.

-Recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage

-History about the dish

I'm a Foodgeek!

This afternoon I was sitting next to Andy on his desk. I was using his laptop while he was using his desktop. We were both surfing online. He was checking out his usual computer websites and reading news from google and digg.com. He leaned over to see what I was looking at and saw a bunch of food related websites. Then he made a comment:

Andy: you know what you are?
Me: What?
Andy: You're a foodgeek!
Me: What do you mean?
Andy: you know how you always make fun of me because I like to read geeky computer things, but instead of you reading geeky things like computer or whatever, all you read is about food and eating so you're a foodgeek.
Me: a foodgeek?!! interesting term....i like it!

I'm announcing myself as a foodgeek aka a foodie and a hungry girl! yea, I know I'm corny =P

I googled the term foodgeek and found a site called The Food Geek, an interesting site about science, history and of course food. Check it out! I will add this site to one of my daily to read webpages...