On a suggestion, I decided to procrastinate and make fried macaroni and cheese balls. There'e pretty easy to make. Make some macaroni and cheese. Refrigerate it. Pack them into balls, triple bread them, and then, fry them in a wok. Serve with marinara sauce.

Some suggestions from my brother:

• Make the cheese more liquid so it oozes cheese
• Use more seasoning in the breading

As for life, I'm currently a little sick and getting lots of nose bleeds. I probably don't sleep enough and don't wear enough clothing for this cold October weather. Other than these physical ailments, I'm learning to enjoy life despite the anxiety of not having the faintest idea of where I will be next year. I find my classes pretty interesting for one. I'm either becoming more apathetic or learning to let things happen.

One of my favorite characters in literature is Sydney Carton from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities because his self-sacrificing, unselfish love for Lucie indulges my romantic and idealistic nature. There's always the danger of become too like him, though. This quote best describes his predicament:

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

I love pork. And that, artlessly bold three word sentence, is an understatement. I love cooking pork more than any other meat in the market. It is simple yet challenging because it will dry up if not done right. I personally find it satisfying when I cook pork in perfection.

So here, this is a fool proof reciepe. It is "not that quick" but an easy meal to prepare for friends and family. Its origin is from momofuku roast pork shoulder.

I use this reciepe and made my BAD alterations to make this dish. It is such a versatile flavor, I can use it as the meat component for eggs benedict to asian style pork buns.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs of pork shoulder
• 3/4 cup of kosher salt
• 1/4 cup of coarse smoked salt
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 7 tbsp of brown sugar
• 2 tsp of ground cloves
• 2 tsp of mustard
• 1 tsp of dry rosemary
• 1 tsp of dry thyme
• Grade A maple syrup for basting

Procedure

1. Mix the salt, sugar and spice. Rub the mixture on the meat well. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit over night in the fridge.
2. Preheat the oven to 275 to 300 F, depending on how crunchy you want the skin. I did 300 F.
3. Dust off excessive salt/sugar, then throw it in the roasting pan. Roast it for 6 hours. Occasionally bast the meat with it's juice and maple syrup. By the way, it will smell like glory (reason why I used grade A is because the flavor more subtle than grade B)
4. Let it rest for about 30 minutes. Cover it with aluminum foil. Just incase you didn't read step 3, it will smell like glory.
5. Eat. Glory in the highest~
6. Eat more. Glory in the higest~
7. Don't stop eating. Glory in the highest~
8. I am singing to Christ, of course, not the meat. Puh lease.

Model shots

Hi!My name is Maggie Nguyen, I go to rolling Valley Elementry school.I have 4 pets I have a dog named yuki three gerbils named fuzz ball,Ginger,& silky.I live in Virginia, I like gymnastics,drawing,& playing with my sister Hanna Nguyen.My sister can kind of be bossy *no offense.

I traveled to lots of places including my latest trip in VietNam. My trip to VietNam took 15 hours *15 hours later... Then I finally arrived!I went to Hanoi,Nha Trang,we were going to go to Halomg Bay but there was a pretty bad storm.As i was saying & Vinpearl. Hanoi very cold there,Nha Trang its atleast warm in the morning,no clue what Halomg Bay Is *If any of you guys know plzz tell me!Vinpearl is awsome they have a resort hotel that has a nearby water park,& an arcade.I went to lake Anna before to.They have very nice lake there *BTW go fishing there to! You can catch Bass,Catfish,Mahi Mahi,& Eels.And I do like fishing there to *Go fishing tip To many catfish will invaid the whole world!

I'm learning to cook from my dad.This is what I'm learning to cook *pretty simple stuff duh! Eggs,fried rice,fried chicken,noodles,Egg rolls,& dumplings.These are all the things I'm learning to cook *This makes me so hungry!!!My favorite foods are Macoroni,rice,& seaweed,Hambugers,Strawberrys, blueberrys,Ice cream *Depends on sweetness.cause I sometimes might not want to eat that much sugar!I like school as well as I am in the 4th grade.In Mrs.Cooke's class.And....I Love School *for those who don't WORK ON IT!I love everything In my social life btw people.my sister,pets,mom,& dad.

When I was growing up, my mom was known for her homemade cream puffs. There was something special about them. My friends and I use to gather around in the kitchen, anxiously waiting for the choux to puff up in the oven. We counted how many we can each eat which subsequently lead into an argument who can have the last standing piece.

The choux was soft and lightly crispy on the outside, but that is nothing special. It was the cream inside that sealed the deal. I remember it being rich and lucsious; smooth and gentle to the palate. Just the right about of sweetness to satisfy my neverending sweettooth.

Few years later, I checked out my mom's personal cook book. The choux reciepe was standard from what I remembered, but cream was different. She made pudding instead of cream, which caught me off guard. I abhor pudding...It's consistency never look appealing to my palate. I have been unknowingly loving this atrocious lumpy paste my whole childhood.

When I made this reciepe, I kept my mom's secret charm to this delightful snack; pudding instead of good old crème pâtissière. By using pudding, the cream puff will taste more "full", due to the higher fat content, than by using crème pâtissière. There is no right way make cream puffs, it is merely a personal preference what you want in your choux.

Here, this is how I make my green tea and earl grey cream puffs.

---

Ingredients

Pudding

• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp of corn starch
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1 and 1/4 cup of heavy cream
• 1 cup of whole milk
• 3 tsbp of Kerry Gold butter
• 3 large egg yolk
• 2 tsp of vanilla extract
• For green tea flavor: 1 tsp of matcha (green tea)
• For earl grey flavor: 3 tbsp of earl grey leaves. (not tea bags)

Choux

• 1 cup of water
• 1 cup of bread flour
• 1 tbsp of granulated sugar
• 8 tbsp of unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 4 large eggs

Uhh sorry guys, I forgot to weight them out. I made this receipe before I started to weight each ingredients on a scale to be more precise.

Procedures

Disgusting pudding

1. Combine sugar, salt, cornstarch, and matcha (or earl grey) in a bowl and mix until they are incorporated.
2. Slowly add 1/4 cup of heavy cream and mix until you have a paste
3. Add the egg yolk and mix it throughly. You will get a consistency like this below.

   Weeeeeeee

4. Add the remaining cream and milk into the sauce pan then heat it using medium heat. Stir constantly.

   Ok, I promise I will clean the stovetop later...

5. Stir until ribbons can form when drizzled. Remove from heat as soon as possible. *The liquid will thicken while stirring. As soon as you feel it thickening, do not take your eyes off it. Few seconds of over-cooking it will ruin this custard. (Sorry I couldn't get pictures or video for this step. I had to concentrate on this)
6. Add butter and vanilla extract and stir it in until homogeneous.
7. Strain it. This will make your pudding smooth.
8. Cover it up with a plastic wrap like this
   

   Green tea

   

   Earl grey

9. Keep in fridge

Choux

1. Melt butter in water in a saucepan
2. Mix sifted flour, sugar, and salt in a seperate bowl
3. After butter is melted (do not let it boil), add the flour mixture all at once. Turn off your heat.
4. Return the saucepan to heat and stir until dough forms

   Ok, I promise I will clean the stovetop later...

5. Transfer the dough into bowl and stir until lukewarm. Steam should stop coming out and it should be warm to the touch
6. Add the beaten egg slowly, little at a time. I divided it by 4.

   Weeee~ who else beats egg with a chopstick?

   

   It will look wet and slimy but do not sweat, keep on stirring

   

   Bam, told ya

7. Put the mixture in a piping bag or zip lock and pipette on the baking tray with parchment paper or silpat (if you have one). As you can see I am horrible at pipetting... Give me some slack, I am a pharmacist, not a chef.

   This is hard...

8. optional: Glaze the top of the choux with another beaten egg.
9. Bake for 25 minutes at 400 F
10. Open the oven door slightly to cool down for about 10 minutes and then close it. Leave it on there for 1 hour. (This is also optional however this will make the crust crispy

Garnish

I used melted sugar. It is simple. Melt granulated sugar on a frying pan and drizzle by using a fork on the pastry. The consistency of the sugar will be threadlike and it will continously drop in a straight line when scooped up. If it drips, the sugar is too hot. It takes about 5 minutes to cool down. When the sugar gets hard, simply heat it up and make it the right consistency.

I also tried making pai-chu(japanese pie crust) and put this on the choux. I was not fond of it thus I won't explain how I made it. I made it on the spur of the moment...

Modelshots

Conclusion

You should make the choux the day you serve. Do not get diabetes type II. End of story.

Warning: I advise you NOT to read this blog post if you are hungry. I consider this post NSFH or not safe for hunger.

This is how Phil and I make steak at our house. We have two different ways: cast iron, and sous-vide. Therefore, you can choose between the two reciepes we have provided to impress your guests, your significant others, or someone in interest...Let me stop. I cannot gurantee that you will woo the person in interest. We tried. And we both failed. So best of luck...

Anyways, cut the talk and get to it, right? I like that. I am interested into you already.

---

theBADchef's Sous-vide Steak

Ingredients:

Steak Seasoning

• 1 Rib eye or NY strip
• 4 Spriggs of Rosemary
• 3 spriggs of thyme
• 3 spriggs of taragon
• 1 tsp of grinded peppercorn
• 1 tsp of kosher or smoked salt This is the smoked salt I use
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ~ 2 tsbp of olive oil
• 2 tsbp of butter

Poached Starwberry in red wine

• 50 g of sugar
• 105 g of strawberries cut in half
• 150 g of red wine (DO NOT USE RED COOKING WINE)
• 1/8 tsp of nutmet
• 1/4 tsp of cloves
• 1/4 tsp of all spice

Procedure:

1. Mince the herbs just like this picture
2. Grate garlic then add it to the herb mixture. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil to make a oily paste. I have probably put more than 2 tbsp. Add enough oil to make a paste-like consistency. You can add more salt for your desired taste.
3. Coat the meat with ground peppercorn and smoked salt on both sides
4. And then it will spontaneously combust... (I blow torched it. If you don't own a blow torch, you can heat up a cast iron until it is smoking hot and cook each side of the meat quickly)
   It will look like this afterwards
5. Coat the meat in the herbal paste
6. Put it in a zip lock bag along with melted butter
7. Take out the air from the bag: Keep the bag open, then slowly submerge the bag into the water. You will notice the bag will tightly wrap around the steak. However, do not submerge the whole bag. You do not want water in this, therefore submerge the bag all the way up to the bottom line of the ziplock, then close it. It will look like this below. (I am horrible at writing instructions)
8. Sous Vide at 52.5 C for 45 minutes
9. Make the poached strawberry. Put all the ingredient in a small saucepan and boil it in medium heat for about 10 minutes (I did not measure time) or until you get a saucy consistency. Sorry for the dirty stove top. Finished picture
10. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees
11. Carefully take out the steak from the zip lock bag. It is very tender and it will fall apart if done abruptly. Recoat the steak with the herbal mixture
12. I have a baking steel in my oven so I use that to cook my steak. I turn on the broiler to high and here check it out

Yeah, that's how I make my steak.

Sorry about the knife skills. My steak was way too tender and I struggled to make a clean cut without letting it fall apart. Maybe my knife needs to be sharped.

Check out the middle. It is uniformly pink.

FINAL PRODUCT

---

Phil's Steak

My steak is decidedly simpler than Masato's. No sous-vide machine is required—all you need is a cast-iron skillet. My goal is to give it that classic, smokey flavor without a grill. According to Amish, it's a manly steak. My method can be summed up as sear and blast.

Ingredients

• Required
  • Steak of choice. I prefer a New York strip or a ribeye.
  • Coarse salt, smoked is preferable
  • Black pepper
  • Garlic granules
  • Onion granules
  • Paprika, smoked if possible
  • Ground dried mustard
  • Olive oil
  • Cooking fat, I use lard
• Optional for red wine reduction
  • 2/3 cup red wine
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • Fresh parsley or cilantro

Steps

1. Ideally, you would have planned ahead, and let your steak sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. If not, that's fine.
2. To make sure that your skillet is hot and dry, put it in the oven. Then, set the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Now, we season the steak. First, pat the steak dry with some paper towels. Then, we rub in the spices. I usually just eyeball it. I start with salt and sweep over it with a shaker on both sides for each spice. After that, I pour a little bit of olive oil and rub in the spices and oil. It will look something like this.
4. Wait for your oven to hit 500, and wait a couple of minutes. It's time for the sear. Put your burner to high, and set your skillet on the burner. Put in about a tablespoon of cooking fat, and wait until it starts smoking. Throw that steak on the skillet.
5. I sear a total of 8 minutes flipping every 2 minutes, so each side gets 4 minutes, but it depends on how strong your burner is.
   

   You can sear the sides, too, if you want.

6. After searing, it's time to blast, so put the skillet and the steak in the oven. Every 2-3 minutes, take it out, flip it, and check its doneness. You can either use a thermometer or the poke test. Just poke the steak with your finger. Be quick, and I promise that you won't burn yourself. The steak is done when it feels like your cheek.
7. When it's done, set the steak aside, and let it rest under tin foil for about 5 minutes. Here it is fresh out of the oven.
8. If you're not making the red wine reduction, you're done. Otherwise, set a burner to medium-high, and put the same skillet without the steak on the burner. Pour the red wine in the skillet along with some of the butter.
9. Continually add more butter and stir, scraping the bottom of the skillet, with a spoon until about 2/3 of the red wine has evaporated.
10. Add some of the fresh parsley or cilantro, and pour as much as desired over the steak. Voilà.

Recently, I saw an interesting problem about graphs. For any integer $p \geq 2$, we call a graph a $p$-graph if it has the property that every group of $p$ vertices has exactly $1$ common neighbor, that is, each one of these $p$ vertices has an edge to some other common vertex $x$. We consider finite undirected graphs with no loops.

The $2$-graphs are actually called Friendship graphs, and they must be triangles with $1$ point in common.

So, let us first look at $3$-graphs. Consider a $3$-graph $G$. Suppose we have vertices $a$, $b$, and $c$. By assumption, they have a common neighbor $x$, so it looks something like this.

Now $a$, $b$, and $x$ must have a common neighbor. Suppose that it's not $c$. Then, we have something like this.

Now, the subgraph containing $a$, $d$, and $x$ is complete. If they have a common neighbor, then $a$, $d$, and $x$ plus that common neighbor is complete, so we have a complete graph with $4$ vertices. Call their common neighbor $v$. If $v \neq b$, we have this situation. But now, $a$, $b$, and $v$ have two common neighbors, $x$ and $d$, so in fact, $v = b$, so the complete graph is formed from $a$, $b$, $d$, and $x$.

By symmetry, we'll have that $a$ and $c$ are part of a complete graph, too, which gives us this.

But now, $b$, $c$, and $d$ have $2$ common neighbors, $a$ and $x$, which is a contradiction. Thus, $d = c$ in the first place, so we actually have this.

Since this graph is isomorphic to the $a$, $b$, $d$, $v$, and $x$ subgraph earlier, we have that $a$, $c$, and $x$ have common neighbor $b$, so the only possible $3$-graph is the complete graph with $4$ vertices.

Now, the the rest of cases will follow by induction. For our induction hypothesis, assume that for $p = 3,\ldots, n - 1$, the only possible $p$-graph is the complete graph with $p + 1$ vertices. We have just proved the base case $p=3$.

Now, consider a $n$-graph for some $n > 3$. Call this graph $G$. Consider $n$ vertices, and let us call them $v_1, v_2, \ldots, v_n$. They have common neighbor $x$. Consider the subgraph consisting of only friends of $x$. Note that this graph excludes $x$. We'll call it $G_x$. Now, $G_x$ is a $n-1$-graph. To see this, note that any set of $n-1$ vertices of $G_x$ plus $x$ itself will have exactly $1$ common neighbor. Call it $y$. Since $y$ is neighbor of $x$, we must have that $y \in G_x$. Thus, $G_x$ is a $n-1$-graph, and by our induction hypothesis, $G_x$ is a complete graph with $n$ vertices. Since every vertex in $G_x$ is connected to $x$, then $G_x \cup \{x\}$ is a complete graph with $n+1$ verties.

Now, we show that $G = G_x \cup \{x\}$. Suppose otherwise for a contradiction, so there is a $y \in G$ such that $y \not\in G_x \cup \{x\}$. $y$ and $x$ have a common neighbor, so $y$ is connected with some $v_i$. But $v_i \in G_x \cup \{x\}$, which is a complete $n+1$ graph, so $v_i$ is the common neighbor of $x$ and $v_1,\ldots,v_{i-1},v_{i+1},\ldots, v_n$. We can consider $G_{v_i}$, the subgraph consisting of only friends of $v_i$. For the same reason that $G_x$ is a complete graph with $n$ vertices, $G_{v_i}$ is also a complete graph with $n$-vertices. But we have that $x,y,v_1,\ldots,v_{i-1},v_{i+1},\ldots,v_n \in G_{v_i}$, which is $n+1$ vertices, so we have a contradiction. Thus, we have that $G = G_x \cup \{x\}$. So, $G$ is a complete graph with $n+1$ vertices. This proves our induction step.

All in all, we have that for $p \geq 3$, the only possible $p$ graph is the complete graph with $p+1$ vertices.

The RCF retreat was on my birthday. I was asked by few 'why aren't you celebrating your birthday like a normal person?' and I answered 'it is just another day passing by.'Some looked at me perplexed, many were repulsed by my peculiar reponse. Yet, I stood there, keeping my own thoughts to myself.

I wasn't concerned at all about how they viewed me at that time. Or maybe I was...

When PDan and PJohn asked me to help out at retreat, I was filled with joy. I am absolutely delighted when I have the chance to serve. Never have I thought I will be serving at a college ministry. For all these days, I was hindered with this dragging thought of incompetence that I was not 'spiritually' ready to serve this growing community. I felt as if my immaturity may hurt it in someway. However, I need to be reminded that I am competent through Him.

Nevertheless, that day was my birthday. The world told me to go out and bask in my own glory. But I questioned (not out loud), why would I bask in something imperfect? I rather glorify God who is perfect and sovereign. And that, to me, is by serving the body of Christ.

It was a blessing to serve the college ministry this year.

I am excited to see all of the college students grow in Christ.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the event.

ok this is the last one

My name is Masato Sugeno aka theBADchef. I am currently suffering from quarter life crisis; therefore, I decided to make a blog post about my mundane life. I am a pharmacist, which means I am not trained in giving you advice about your pet hamster, solving all prior authorizations, and why your doctor did not give you refills on your xanax. And no, your medication does not come with a side order of large fries.

My interests include cooking, photography, and serving Christ.

I will be posting pictures and my kitchen works. Stay tuned...

Here is a sample of Philly. If you want raw pictures, let me know.

Building on Tags and Pages, I've added one more navigation tool. Now, if you hover over Blog in the header, you'll get a drop down menu of some popular tags. Since I don't really have any readers, by popular, I mean what I think is important.

Implementation-wise, I store the list of tags that I want to display in Redis as a JSON array. I can edit that list by going to Application Settings without doing a redeploy.

For the front-end, there's no JavaScript. The HTML looks something like

<ul id="header-menu">
    <li class="header-link blog"><a href="/" class="header-link">Blog</a>
         <ul class="header-dropdown-menu">
            <li class="header-dropdown-link header-link blog"><a href="http://www.phillypham.com?tag=math" class="header-dropdown-link header-link">Math</a></li>
            <li class="header-dropdown-link header-link blog"><a href="http://www.phillypham.com?tag=cooking" class="header-dropdown-link header-link">Cooking</a></li>
            <li class="header-dropdown-link header-link blog"><a href="http://www.phillypham.com?tag=algorithm" class="header-dropdown-link header-link">Algorithms</a></li>
            <li class="header-dropdown-link header-link blog"><a href="http://www.phillypham.com?tag=stat" class="header-dropdown-link header-link">Statistics</a></li>
            <li class="header-dropdown-link header-link blog"><a href="http://www.phillypham.com?tag=meta" class="header-dropdown-link header-link">Meta</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

As for the CSS, the key part is

ul.header-dropdown-menu {
  position: absolute;
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 0px;
  overflow: hidden;
  max-height: 0px;
  transition: max-height 0.5s ease;  
  background: rgba(254, 254, 254, 0.9);
}

li.header-link:hover > ul { 
  max-height: 252px;
}

We have that the position is set to absolute, so it displays on top of everything without affecting the layout of the rest of the page. We set overflow to hidden and max-height to 0px, so that it's not displayed. Then, we use a child selector, so when we hover over the parent element, li.header-link, we select the child ul and adjust its max-height. The transition property just pretties things up.

Here's the full CSS.

ul#header-menu {
  align: bottom;
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 0px;
}

li.header-link {
  display: inline-block;
  line-height: 28px;
  padding-top: 0px;
  padding-bottom: 0px;
  margin: 0px;
  min-width: 140px;
}

a.header-link {
  color: #003b52;
  display: block;
  margin: 2px;
  font-variant: small-caps;
  text-decoration: none;
  font-size: 125%;
}

a.header-link:hover {
  color: #d02027;
  outline: 2px solid #d02027;
}

ul.header-dropdown-menu {
  position: absolute;
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 0px;
  overflow: hidden;
  max-height: 0px;
  transition: max-height 0.5s ease;  
  background: rgba(254, 254, 254, 0.9);
}

li.header-link:hover > ul { 
  max-height: 252px;
}

li.header-dropdown-link {
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
}

a.header-dropdown-link { 
  outline: 1px solid rgb(34, 34, 34);
}

See how it smoothly expands and contracts. Very cool, right? I think so. Even the animation is done in CSS. Since the number of items in the drop down is dynamic, I would like to set the height to auto. Unfortunately, CSS transitions don't work in that case, so I instead set the max-height to a number large enough. This has the disadvantage that the time of the transition is based on the max-height, so it will transition faster than desired.

I've made two updates recently to my blog. First, io.js and Node.js finally merged, and so I've upgraded to Node v4.1.1.

Also, in order to make my blog more user-friendly, I've added tags and pages. Now 5 posts are shown per page, and you can click on tags to see posts that belong to the tag. For example, you see all my posts about

• Cooking: http://www.phillypham.com/?tag=cooking
• Math: http://www.phillypham.com/?tag=math
• Algorithms: http://www.phillypham.com/?tag=algorithm

by clicking on the corresponding link. The tags shown below each post are now clickable links, and if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can find pagination buttons. I'm really starting to like writing tests in Mocha, too. It was pretty easy to make changes and ensure that nothing broke.

For those that are wondering how my life is going, recently, I'm wondering, too. I feel that I don't have much direction or purpose as of late.