Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

It's a long tradition in high tech office in Silicon Valley to provide free food & drinks to employee. Hell, some company claim the free food is a great benefit (yes I am talking about those Google recruiters).
Ahh those naive fresh grads who join the company, fresh out of school (with big student loans), it all sounds fantastic. Oooh what a great company to work for they would say.
Silly kids, that they are just feeding you to keep you in the office to work more (most people are on salary, no overtime). You will cease to have a life outside the office, eat too much free food, don't get excerise, become caffeine addicts and become light sensitive.
After a few years (and many projects later), you know better, become very bitter and it's all "Show me the MONEY!" (Yes, ignore the stock options and bonuses too..those are subject to change). Yes you will still jump on the free food (damn it, they don't pay me enough), but it will not distract you.

Avoid the caffeine. I learned the hardway my first year of college...crammed most of the night, way too much caffeine...nothing worst then needing a bathroom break in the middle of that 3 hr chemistry exam.

I do my produce shopping at my local farmer's market. Unlike the supermarket, where everything are freakish uniform in size (and much too big for my needs), the farmer's market always have some smaller size produce.
But I have a habit of buying too much veggies (especially if they are in season and look so good at the market), so I end up turning them into soup.
I don't eat much bread in general, so I always freeze them (if I buy them at all).

Karen, I think the dumpling cooking/broth style, indicate not so much a large geographical region of China, it could be just a village/family "touch", or at what time the family left China.
My family is Cantonese.
My mom makes some very common cantonese dishes, but often adds the dried citrus peel to it...it's something people from her families village does.
My dad sometimes mentions the starvation during the cultural revolution in mainland China, and they would result to drinking the vegetable water as soup for nutrition (It was something they didn't do before, or after). They would even boil leaves from trees. To this day my dad still hates potatoes because that's all there was at that time to eat (he was lucky, as his family had a fish farm so they always had protein). While visiting SF Chinatown, my dad said it was the restaurant food as they used to make it back in the 1960's, 1970's (immigrant population much older in SF), different from the Toronto restaurant styles (more modern, reflecting new immigrant population).

I grew up liking "american soups" too, because Chinese soup isn't so much about good taste, but it's all about being healthy for you...and many of those ingredients taste (too be nice) like dirt..if not worst (ginseng....eeek!).

IMHO, there is nothing mythical or spiritual about Chinese home cooking. There isn't a lot of asking WHY we do certain things when we cook (probably because the reason behind it is long lost), it's just always been done, it works, it tastes good, just do it, don't question it. Many of us learned at a young age in our mother (or grandma's) kitchens ....just do as you are told, hurry up because people are waiting! Hell, even now when I make things on my own, I do it as I was taught because 1) it wouldn't taste as good if I did it differently 2) mom would frown upon it if she found out..even though I am not going to tell her...but you know she will just KNOW...

The adding water thing? There is a reason? I guess I just never asked, we just always do it so the water doesn't boil over or maybe it's just habit.

I admit I am surprise that some people use the water used to boil the dumplings in for the soup. We always make a separate good quality broth to serve with wontons & "soup dumplings". We might boil the broth & dumplings together for a little bit after the dumplings is cooked, but we don't serve the dumpling boiling water.

I love good rice! I noticed several entries that mentioned cooking rice in a pressure cooker. I recently inherited my Dad's old Mirro and I would love to try it for my next rice cooking. Could someone please describe how to do it in a pressure cooker? Thanks!

Ohh, I feel you! It's exam time too, here at good ol' Penn State.

I've been living on steamed broccoli and veggie burgers for like, a week now.

Also: apples, nonfat yogurt, barley and mushroom salad, pastina cooked in Mushroom Broth, I made some tofu stir fry the other night and it was excellent.

Tonight is my last final and all I want to do is go home to good NJ diners and Mom's mac and cheese. Good luck on the exam!!!!

My husband just finished his finals last week. I looked up "brain food" online & found that these foods (among others) help with alertness & overall brain function:
Yogurt
Olive oil
Spinach
Bananas
Blueberries
Nuts
So I made him eat yogurt & a banana for breakfast the mornings of his finals (he usually doesn't eat breakfast at all, so this is a big step), & tried to incorporate as many of the other ones as possible (like pesto or spinach salad or something) for dinner the night before.

@gnomatic: Happy Tuesday to you too!

@ one day- yes, one must keep one's eye on the prize! Not everything edible starts out beautiful.