Winter outings

Okay, a last post about Dallas for 2013!

Oh hey look, The high for Wednesday is 81!  YAY!  But on Friday, it's going to SNOW?!

Oh dear, that's Dallas weather for you.  And I thought I had escaped the bipolar nature of weather by returning from WashU back to Texas =.=  *this Texan girl likes her warm weather*!

So what do you do when it's cold and miserable outside?

You make macaroni and cheese from the box.  Ooey gooey delicious twists of delight.

Yes, it's from the box, but it's not the BLUE box!  haha, instead of Kraft's mac n' cheese, I had two free boxes of Betty Crocker mac n' cheese, so I decided to make one!  Mmmm, haven't had boxed mac and cheese in *ages*~  Haha, not that it's better than homemade, but I really missed melted, oozing cheese in general.  Adding pepper made it taste a lot better for me ^^

And you eat toasted gingerbread swirl bread!

The Pepperidge Farm (which is not an actual farm for you non-foodies, tee hee) company released their seasonal gingerbread-flavored swirl bread!  They usually have cinnamon raisin, but I haven't had gingerbread other than the cookies before, so I decided to give this a go.  And I also learned that my rice cooker can not only stew and steam things... it can TOAST.  O_O  Just putting the slices in there without water makes an excellent crunchy but not burnt texture!  But I have no idea when to take it out (hence the slightly burt areas in the photo!), haha~

I was also too cold to walk around in the apartment-- I literally lay in bed and study, and since there's air flow if I prop myself on my elbows and stomach, I lay with my face squished to my notes for max warmth!  XD  So I ran to the kitchen, threw some frozen dumplings in the rice cooker, and then jumped back into bed to wait for them to steam.  The green ones are my first circular Korean mandu dumplings!  :D  I like them a lot :)  The filling had the clear dongfen / glass noodles mixed with meat and veggies.  Nom! 

Like my soy sauce holder?  It's actually an egg holder from IKEA.  I'm so fancy, right?  ;)

After the dumplings, I had a sudden craving for bananas (randommmmm), but they were room temperature.. so what could a Wendy do? 

ZAP 'EM IN THE MICROWAVE

Haha!  I'm so strange, but I knew that too much heat makes a banana disgustingly watery and gross, so ten seconds was just enough to make the banana look normal on the outside but oozy in the middle @_@  It was like eating hot banana pudding!  Try it!  And let me know if I'm actually just crazy, or if it actually tastes good :P

Oh, and I also made banana bread for some friends as a "Go you!" study pep-up/pep-talk treat :D  Apparently everyone else likes walnuts in the banana bread, so I added those.  But personally, I don't like crunchy offenders in my banana bread; that's extra chewing!  Super lazy, blahhh~ 

What are these papers doing on the oven?

Remember how I said I was really cold?  Well, I wanted to bake the banana bread, and I was cold, so I studied while pretty much sprawling myself on the oven.  It was so nice and warm *heart* :P  My hands are usually really cold, like.. ice cold *not kidding*, so it was nice having a hand warmer while waiting for the bread to finish baking :)

~*~

The MS1's had a little holiday get together planned, and since they said there would be cookies to decorate... I HAD TO GO.  *cookies calling my name!!*

Charlotte showing off a festive cookie!

I made a Santa Claus cookie!

Shelly and Debbie trying their hand at decorating!

There was also a gingerbread building/decorating contest

I think creativity is really cool...

I would've never thought of a hexagonal castle gingerbread house, and I love the snow patches!!

The next day, I woke up to snow fall. 

More like frozen water, so the roads were iced over and slick.  The radio stations were all telling everyone to stay off the roads, haha~  Ah, silly Texans.  No capability of driving in the snow.  (me included!)

And then I decided that I *probably* wouldn't be able to drive to school

Ya know.. just maybe, since the visibility is just like.. ZERO TIMES INFINITY

... wait, is that just zero then?  haha :P

Chibi was totally encased in ice!  At first I felt really bad (How could I have let Chibi freeze to death alone in the night?!?!!?!)  But then I just convinced myself that he's actually a wolf, and he likes the ice.. and somehow that's logical and makes me feel better.  Yay!

Icicles! 

It was kind of pretty though :)

The next day, I couldn't take looking at freezer-burned Chibi.  I took my wooden spatula (usually used for stir frying my veggies ^^b) and attacked the snow with vigor until I'm pretty sure half of the apartment complex wondered what the thunking, clunking, and random meows and roars were in the parking lot.  After an hour of hacking away, I finally cleared off the windshield, side mirrors, and windows.  Whew!  Ended up with a lot of random cuts from the snow chunks and dry wind, but at least I've now had that experience.  Definitely need to invest in an ice scraper.. I don't think spatulas were quite meant for clearing off sleet ._.

Afterwards, Aurelia and I headed to the magical plaza of Hmart for lunch!  I drove ultra slowly, and when we sped up to get onto the highway, the ice on Chibi's hood flew towards the windshield with big THWACKS that Aurelia and I were screaming our heads off, haha!  And then random ice chunks from other cars would fly off randomly too, so we were both kind of freaking out randomly and then laughing our heads off :P

We decided on Omi Grill, but not for the grill.  Just for the Omi.  Haha, just kidding!  But we both had their all you can eat BBQ buffet before (and both died), so we decided to order regular food.  The place was super empty (usually they're packed), since no one wanted to venture out into the snowy roads.  We pretty much had a whole section of the restaurant to ourselves!  The waiters/waitresses were a lot more attentive this time than my last visit... probably since there was only two groups to cater to though~

Ahh, banchan makes me so happy :')  Good spread!

Aurelia and I both ordered tofu stew!  Hehe, Aurelia's like, "Wahh, so much fooooood!"

Well, I actually ordered stewed pollack with vegetables (pollack = fish), but the waiter kind of looked at me funny and then told me that's what Koreans order after they had a crazy night and are recovering from hangovers.  I should have told them that I was a Korean that couldn't speak Korean, and that I just partied all night long, haha!  I asked him if it tasted good, and he said yes, but then he recommended me to order something else, so my usual tofu stew it was!  It didn't disappoint either-- a hot and comforting meal to melt away the cold from the snowy weather and the gloominess of tests and whatnot!  I'm glad I had a friend to share it with too!

Yay for adventures into the snow! :D

~*~

Yet another reminder about this blog!  Well, more like update.  So I finally downloaded all my images and files from the online hosting company, and I have a little more than five thousand images.  I hope you guys don't mind, but I'm going to save myself from 293842938472389 years of toiling and just hope that you will enjoy my new blog.  I'm kind of sad about the imminent demise of this Dashipanda blog though... I wanted to be able to look back at my blog (with all its pictures!) and enjoy my journeys vicariously whenever I wanted to, as well as let others have that opportunity too!  It's okay though-- I'll try hard to make the new blog more interesting and inviting!  So for now, keep "www.dashipanda.blogspot.com" as your address to my blog.  I'll be posting a few more updates on where my new blog will be!  

And thank you, readers, for sharing my adventures with me.  Although I may actually be just rambling to myself 99% of the time, I know that 1% of the time, other people are enjoying my posts.  I'm really glad when people comment or ask me questions; it makes me feel helpful somehow, and I get to share what I love to do!  Again, thanks for your support! :D  Blog writing is actually pretty therapeutic in a sense, as I get to rethink about the events and see it from different perspectives sometimes :)

Aiite, peace out for now, XOXOXO!  

^ That's right, you get THREE sets of hugs and kisses, hahaha!