Everyday starts with my mom waking up an hour earlier than me, and yelling at me at nine to wake me up. I then go for a run, usually for 2 miles, before coming back to have brunch. We skip lunch and have dinner instead. We have done everything to keep things interesting, and so far we are pretty successful in doing that. Most of the time I am just reading with my mom, since as soon as school starts I won't have time to read books of interest. Apart from that, I spend a great amount of time everyday to look for recipes online. My mom has bought a lot of food that she can't possibly finish by herself in a month, and I have to try to make use of most of them before she leaves for China. Making pastry is much easier than cooking real dishes (dinner entrees for example), and I have most of the things the recipes need on hand. 

   The first thing I made was oatmeal cookies. Cookies are one of the few things that I'm truly addicted to since I came to America; dining hall cookies are so tasty and fat that I feel guilty every monday when I have two large cookies before going to US history class. That's why I was determined to trim down the calories (mostly fat) in the cookies that I was going to make. I tried to do it by substituting butter with avocado, and adding as little sugar as possible. They turned out to be much more filing than regular cookies (less fat and sweet of course), and they had a weird greenish color (because of the avocado). My mom really liked it (I felt like she was doing it to please me in a sense), probably because she hadn't had our dining hall cookies. Mine tasted so horrible compared to the cookies I had at school, but since I myself made them they were still edible (to me and my mom, probably not to anyone else). 

   The second thing was granola. I made them partly because I bought way too much oats, but mostly because I LOVE granola bars, but the ones I bought from the supermarket tasted way too sweet for me. I had a sense that they were less healthy than homemade ones too. Making granola was probably the easiest thing I've done in the kitchen so far. Basically I just mixed oil, sugar, and honey and coated old-fashioned oats with the mixture, and poured them into pans. I then put them into the oven, and stirred the granola every fifteen minutes for an hour and half. It turned out to be a huge success; the granola tasted awesome. 

   I made the third thing while I was waiting for the granola to be done. Basically I squeezed the juice out of pomegranate seeds, and mixed it with plain greek yogurt (and honey). I put the mixture into the freezer for two hours and whisked it every thirty minutes. I didn't have enough time to make it true frozen yogurt, but it still tasted good. I put too much honey and it hid the natural pomegranate flavor, which was a huge bummer. Apart from that, the yogurt tasted pretty good. 

   The last thing I experimented was baked shrimps. I sliced the back of the unshelled shrimps, coated them with flour, seasoning, egg white, and milk, and brushed them with olive oil. I then baked them for about 20 minutes, and they turned out to be really delicious; much more crispy and juicy than just simply frying them. 

   I have so many more things that I want to try making, but most of them require large amount of butter. Avocado turned out to be a bad substitution (probably because I screwed up other ingredients too), and I'm wondering if I can do it with olive oil. I'm thinking of making blueberry muffin and quiche for tomorrow, and probably pizza if I feel ambitious enough. 

   So far the holiday has been really relaxing, but I need to start preparing for TOEFL after Christmas. Little time to enjoy this kind of life.... I need to waste no time baking!

   Keep tuned!