Rotund

I'm feeling very rotund lately. I did lots of walking/jogging today (4-5 miles) and did some light weights with the sis-in-law. This was after we had scones and pasta (and I had pho, oops). My belly makes me think of that Chinese buddha fat guy that we have statues of in our house. ):



I made more oatmeal raisin cookies today. I put less sugar in them than last time (why is "1 cup light brown sugar, packed" so VAGUE??). I normally like less sweet things, but this time I'm missing the sugar a bit ): I also burned my first batch of cookies in years and years. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever burned a batch of cookies before. I didn't hear the timer and read it wrong when I came downstairs. That's my excuse. They're living in the trash can now, hiding from my mom, who would have made me eat them. PS: These cookies aren't for MY rotund belly. Promise.

Hobbit Milk

In Hong Kong, they tend to buy cow milk in those cartons we Americans buy soy/rice/almond milk in. It typically comes from New Zealand or Australia and it's not refrigerated when you buy it. I was horribly skeptical of this milk when I was in Hong Kong last year, but my mom reassured me it tasted normal. It did. I'm still weirded out.

Asians Don't Mess Around

This lobster said hello.

Then he was cooked and eaten.

Brrrrr

So, my dad took this picture last year. Not me. But it was very spring-like and made me think of spring. It's freezing right now, but I like it. The only thing that concerns me about this cold is what it's doing to our crops. Souplantation has been suffering from lack of a fully stocked salad bar because of the frozen crops in Mexico and the US. D: I'm hoping all the tasty spring produce will be okay D:

Verdict In

So this is the best ramen in Los Angeles. This debate has been running in my mind for a couple years. For a long time, the breakdown was like this:

Santouka - Best broth
Asa - Best egg
Ajisen - Best extras (for me the cabbage, naruto, other stuff they put in it)
Daikokuya - Best noodles ("al dente"), best side (fried rice)

I learned about kotteri style broth when I went to Asa a few times. It's pretty tasty there but it still didn't top Santouka's broth for me. Then I found out that Daikokuya also offered kotteri style broth. I was sold, immediately. While their egg still is far beat out by Asa and I wish I could shove cabbage in my broth (they actually provide a cabbage salad.. possibilities), the broth and noodles beat out the other places by far. This isn't a slight edge, this is a huge bound forward! Plus, the chicken teriyaki is amazing and I don't normally like chicken teriyaki. And the Japanese style fried rice is unmatched 0: My stomach is grumbling and now I'm drooling.

I want ramen.

Oh. I shouldn't have told you about this place. It's already crowded enough. I suppose, though, I should be kind and tell you the one in Little Tokyo is the best one.

I Knead...

... to bake more bread.



This is No Knead Bread (made famous by the New York Times). I posted about bread a couple days ago. I do love making bread. It's sooo satisfying. I think I'll make bread next week. I need to read through Tartine Bread which I got for Christmas. Mmm.. bread is love and I love bread. 0:

Eggy Eggy

I got older today!

So here's some eggs.



I bake with these suckers a lot. I also thought the egg was good symbolism for the date of my birth. Sure. Right?

Forgive Me

Cuz it's pullin' from the archives week!



Spring is sneaking up on us which means my favorite produce is hitting the farmers' markets soon! I've never had fava beans (at least I don't think I have) and I plan on making a tasty fava bean soup I saw Anne Burrell make. But.. English peas and asparagus are on their way too!

Yum! :D

The Best Use for Cheap Vodka

Homemade vanilla extract!



I go through exorbitant amounts of vanilla extract and let's just say that stuff ain't cheap. Because the Internet is an amazing place, I found a great site that sells vanilla beans in bulk. I bought a fatty quarter pound last year and decided to turn a bunch of it into vanilla extract for myself and for gifts. I went with the cheapest plastic bottle of vodka I could find at Ralph's because it would be a shame to waste good liquor on this. Next time, I may try using bourbon or rum for a deeper vanilla extract flavor. Hmm... maybe I should do that soon.

Sorry Wonder

I have a weakness for delicious bread. I'd heard of people making their own rustic loaves and baguettes, but hadn't met anyone who made their own sandwich bread. Of course, a quick search on the Internet showed that plenty of people make their own sandwich bread. I urge everyone to try making their own. It puts any store purchased bread to shame.



I would make this bread much more often if it didn't require so much damn time to make (multiple rises and such). Normally I would say, "All I have is time!" But now, I have much less free time. This is a good thing! (:

Cake Friday

I'm cheating and pulling up archives.



This is a matcha and chocolate bundt cake. I normally hate bundt cakes but this cake is amazing. I think I might make one soon since I have some yogurt to use up. Yumtown!

Oink

The only thing I have to show for my day so far is these cookies. I have high hopes for today. But there are many hours left in the day.

I bet you want to eat one of these cookies. You should. But you can't. I used a new recipe for both the cookie itself and a simplified icing. I'm pleased with the results. Expect more sugar cookies to emerge from my kitchen 0:

PS: I want honey boba.

Honey Boba > Boba

I had ridiculously good boba today from a giant bucket. It was from Half & Half Tea in Rowland Heights. I want more right now ):

I made kale chips today. I learned that kale naturally has a lot of sodium. So, if you make kale chips, don't add too much salt o_o



I made pizza from scratch today (dough and sauce anyway, I did not make my own cheese or cure my own prosciutto). I baked one on a Silpat and it was delicious. I baked one on an oiled baking sheet. The entire thing stuck to it and I ended up scrubbing that baking sheet for 20 minutes to clean it. Eep. I couldn't find my parchment paper. /:

I checked out lots of cookbooks at YLPL.

I realized this is all food related.

I went to the gym today. There.

Ta-Da!

Mmm. (:

A few notes for next time:

-Onions take longer to cook than carrots, celery and potatoes
-Add more potatoes
-Let air dry in fridge for 1-2 days
-Definitely let the sucker come fully to room temperature
-Start oven at 475 for 15 minutes then reduce to 450 for the remainder

I'm proud of my first attempt, nevertheless.

Pink!

Domo says, "Hello." He's sitting on my bedspread. Wait. What is a bedspread? Hold on. Merriam-Webster says it's "a usually ornamented cloth cover for a bed". Hm. Okay, Domo is sitting on one of my blankets. Isn't he festive? I was going to post a picture of my new pink TOMS , but I didn't want to break the tradition of one picture a day.

Yesterday I claimed I was going to roast Thomas Keller's chicken and make snickerdoodles. Since I only accomplished 50% of the tasks, I get an F for the day. I'm one of those people that insists on grass fed beef, free-range chicken and organic this and organic that. Roll your eyes as you will, but cancer is highly prevalent in my family so I try to keep whatever weird chemicals out of my body that I can. (Ignore the fact that I had M&Ms yesterday.) I've also never roasted a chicken before. This post really is shocking, isn't it? I'm very scared of ripping the wishbone out of the chicken carcass as Mr. Keller suggest for ease in serving because I've never handled a chicken carcass. I'm scared to truss the chicken because the camera on all the YouTube videos I watch keep pulling away when he loops it around the neck bone. I don't have kitchen twine/butcher's twine. There is no Whole Foods near me where I can easily get a 2-3 pound free-range organic chicken. The butcher would also probably do the wishbone/trussing/removal of inside cavity stuff for me too. I'm a roasting chicken weenie. I admit. So I need my hand to be held the first time. I also had no car today (that is why I didn't go to the gym, clearly).

Those are all my reasons for getting an F today. I did make the snickerdoodles, though! They turned out pretty good. I used to be in love with snickerdoodles as a kid. Now, I'm surprised how I ate anything so sweet. I did roll them around in sugar pretty well, though, so that might be my fault. I purchased a one pound package of light pink sanding sugar at Surfas last week and wanted more opportunities to use it, so I thought I'd be clever and use it to coat the outside of my snickerdoodles. Well, cinnamon is dark and light pink is really light. In the end, you pretty much can't tell. ):

I ran out of milk. Eating snickerdoodles without milk is very sad. While I was making cookies, Law & Order: SVU was on. Mark Valley from Human Target was on it! I've never seen that show but for some reason I recognize him. The episode was reaching it's climax and my dad decided to switch it to Cantonese television, then promptly fell asleep and snored. Now I have no idea what happened to Tommy's dad. The show was actually pretty good, though, so maybe I'll start watching it on Netflix. o_O

Football-less Sunday

Something was missing today. I couldn't quite put a finger on it. Then, during a dim sum lunch, it came to me. FOOTBALL. FOOTBALL was missing. Sadness swept over me as I considered this news. Is it September yet?



Here is a picture of fung jao. Chicken feet. I don't like to eat them, but my pops loves 'em.

I'm flipping through Mario Batali's Molto Italiano. I made my own little bookmarks to mark recipes I want to try and I'm running out of bookmarks. This book is amazing. 327 recipes. That's insane. I'm stoked to try some of this stuff out, but I have vague plans for tomorrow's cooking adventures: snickerdoodles and Thomas Keller's roasted chicken.

Speaking of cookbooks and Thomas Keller, I made room for the eight new cookbooks I've obtained in the past couple weeks (!).

Tartine Bread
The French Laundry
ad hoc at home
Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vols 1 & 2
Molto Italiano
Italian Grill
Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics

I have almost two full rows of cookbooks on my shelf now (:

Thinking of all this food is making me hungry.

I ate two packs of pretzel M&Ms today. I normally don't eat candy. Especially not M&Ms. No bueno.

Did I also mention I'm going to the gym tomorrow? Oh, and I'm getting my rear left light of my car replaced because I got a fix-it ticket. 0: < My car also needs an oil change. Booooooooooooo.

PS: I'm ecstatic Katy Perry won no Grammy awards. She is terrible. I am sad the Glee cast won none. I like Glee. But this week's episode was terrible.

Crazy Chinese Mothers

It's Saturday and I forgot to bring my camera out with me. That means it's another crappy picture day. Hooray!



I started reading this tonight and find it amazing. But, that's because I was raised by a Tiger Mother and to a fairly large degree, I plan on being one. I've spoken to quite a few people about this book and read a fair amount of reviews on it. It seems that a lot of people are very incensed by how horrible and insensitive the "Chinese style" of child rearing is. But I, like the author, still thoroughly enjoyed my childhood.

I wasn't allowed to stop playing piano until I passed the Advanced level (I took lessons from age 4 to 16). I took summer school every year of my life (not the, "I'm doing poorly in school and must take summer classes to make up for it," but the, "You must excel ahead of everyone in your class so you will take summer school to learn more," classes). My parents would never buy me books, but I was allowed endless trips to the library. When I was in kindergarten, I wanted Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar from the school book order. My mom said if I wanted it, I would have to pay for it myself. I was 5. I rarely had Christmas trees and even more rarely even received physical presents on Christmas (real love is shown by monetary gifts). When my second grade teacher was passing out pamphlets on Christmas tree fire safety, I politely told him I didn't need one as we never had Christmas trees. He pulled me aside, extremely concerned, and wanted to contact my parents as if I was an abused child. I never understood what his concern was about until I was much older. I never believed in any of that nonsense about Santa, the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. I still find it hard to fathom, actually, that children ever did. On top of being raised by immigrant parents, I was the third child. I guess they couldn't be bothered to do that small kid stuff with me, but I don't really mind that much. Most of my toys were my brother's leftover toys (old Lego sets, broken race cars, disembodied Voltron). My few, beloved stuffed animals were all carnival prizes from Las Vegas. Like the children in the book, I was never allowed a grade below an A and very, very rarely received praise for my successes. The first poster I got in my life was when I was in kindergarten. It was the multiplication table.

By the way, I'm not asking for pity. As I stated above, I've actually led a very happy and fulfilling life. My parents have really shown me the world. While I may not have gotten many presents at holidays or new toys as a kid, I've been to China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, France, Italy, England, Switzerland, Germany, all over the US and I'm sure a few other places I've forgotten. I was allowed to take lessons in everything I fancied (art, piano, flute, violin, swimming, tennis, ice skating, bowling, taekwondo). I got to be a Girl Scout (after much whining) and even conned my mom into buying 18 boxes of cookies so I could get a patch (the mother in charge ended up being inept and I never even got my patch, le sigh).

There were definitely times in my life where I cried and cried and wished I could have "normal" parents that would be appreciative of me and tell me, verbally, that they loved me. But, really, I've come to realize that my parents just grew up differently and raised me differently than all the "white kids" around me. My parents loved me just as much and still love and support me just as much. And I'd like to think I'm pretty well-balanced.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post as my attention span has started to peter off, but I guess I'll end it with, you should read this book. I'm biased and I really like it because I very much relate to the author and how she raises her children. I don't think it's a "despicable and cruel" way to raise your children in the least. It's just a different way than the standard "Western style" of parenting. I'm going to go back to reading now because my sentences have stopped making sense.

More People Need Dictionaries

Poignant Friday moments:

Spending time with the mister.
Scoring a box set of Mario Batali cookbooks for $20.
Getting some nice paper at Kelly Paper.
My sandwich.



I had a Boar's Head maple turkey sandwich. Tony, the sandwich artist, cannot spell. I wonder what else he can't do.

Te Amo

After much trial and error, I present to you...



The stamping was ridiculously complicated. If the icing on the cookie wasn't completely flat, the stamp wouldn't transfer properly. It took awhile to determine just how much "ink" (gel food coloring) to apply to the stamp and how much pressure to apply when stamping the cookie. Sometimes the icing would squish and sometimes the letters wouldn't transfer at all. The initial plan was to stamp a bunch of different messages, but it took so much trial and error for the original phrase that I decided just to stick with, "TE AMO." My mom asked me what "T F A M D" meant. Glad to see the stamp job is so readable. :P

I ate one cookie and it so sweet I almost died... but that's because I ate one with lots of icing on it. I put a lot of icing on it to try and ensure there was a flat canvas for stamping.

This whole process was complicated and obviously didn't come out as nicely as I had hoped, but I'm still pretty proud of myself :D I gained some icing piping skills and hopefully the stamping will look better each time.

Yes, those are butter spots on the paper. /;

So Many Hearts

As I had previously mentioned, I love Valentine's Day because of the decorations. Every year, my brain is inundated with ideas for holiday baking, but as I used to have two jobs (Activision and World of Warcraft), I never really got a chance to make those daydreams a reality. Since I have much more free time lately, I've decided to really spend more time doing all those creative, crafty things I love to do but never had time for before (sewing, stamping, drawing, baking, etc). Last February's issue of Martha Stewart Living featured conversation heart cookies. I'm not normally big on eating conversation hearts, a majority of the time they're stale, chalky and tasteless; however, fresh batches CAN be good and no matter what, they always look cute. At least the classic ones do. I don't know what's up with the new sugared ones and the hip text message-y ones. I'm all for the classics. Oh, but I bought a bag of Spanish ones this year because they are awesome.

I digress.

I decided a couple weeks ago to replicate Martha's conversation heart cookies, though I doubt she has ever made them herself. (If I'm wrong and you're reading this, Martha, my bad). I made the dough yesterday and chilled it overnight. This morning, I busted out the dough and started rolling away.



After letting them cool all day, I made a double batch of Royal icing and tinted it in eight different colors. Yes. Eight. I'm glad my mom has a ton of Tupperware and a Costco sized box of plastic wrap. I spent a good amount of time watching tutorial videos on University of Cookie to prepare for this cookie decorating session. My first successful sugar cookie decorating was this past Christmas with my Christmas tree cookies, but I think I stepped it up a bit more this time. I spent four hours slaving over the Valentine's cookies tonight, my hopes to go to the gym were dashed (I actually did really want to go ): ). A close inspection will obviously show piping bag flaws, but I'm proud of my work nonetheless. I figure I can only improve as I practice more, right? Tomorrow morning, I'll be stamping words on them using an interchangeable alphabet stamp (I've set it aside for food use only!) and red food coloring. I hope it comes out okay! The few reviews I was able to find of the recipe all contained complaints about the stamping part /: but I bought food safe pens just in case as my back up plan. I can't wait to show them to the mister. I hope he approves (:

Ha!

I ran 4.16 miles today at the gym. Take that, resolution!

I had another meeting with the guidance counselor today and had sushi at Taiko in Irvine after that. Sushi for me is California rolls with half the avocado removed and the cucumber poked out with a chopstick. Very un-Asian of me, what can I say. I snuck over to Lollicup after and got a milk tea sans boba (: see how well behaved I am?

The rest of the day was spent in the kitchen maneuvering around the clutter on the counter. I finally got around to making Ina Garten's parmesan and thyme crackers which are really more like savory shortbreads. Thyme is my favorite herb, cheese rules and I love crackers. Why I didn't make these years ago, I dunno. I didn't read very closely that the parmesan is supposed to be ground in a food processor fitted with a steel blade and instead just coarsely grated it. This made for a "chunkier" texture in the shortbread than how it's supposed to be. Nevertheless, the crackers are tasty but with all that cheese and butter even I can barely stomach more than two. And I love cheese and butter. (And thyme).

I would post pictures of them but I hate taking pictures with flash and I didn't finish baking them until long after the sun had set. Also, the coarse grate of the cheese made them look weird.

You should look at these scones instead.



I needed to use up the heavy cream in my fridge and find a use for the extra dried cranberries from Christmas baking and a bag of mini chocolate chips lolling about on the kitchen counter. Scones are always a good standby for polishing off my stray dairy products so I made a batch of cream scone dough. Half had dried cranberries added and half had mini chocolate chips added. I was too lazy to use my food processor so I tried cutting in the butter with my bare hands (I'm soooo buff) for the first time. I haven't eaten one yet, so I'm not quite sure how that affected the tenderness of the scones. Considering my mom inhaled 2 in 15 minutes, I'll assume they were fine.

Oh. Before you judge me for being lazy and being the kind of person that doesn't like doing dishes, let me remind you of how messy my parents' kitchen is. When I walked in there, the pile of dishes was overflowing out of the sink and I just wanted to get the scones in the oven as soon as possible. There. I defended my honor.

Heavy

My body feels heavy as a result of eating too much lately and not exercising enough. I also have a lot on my mind and a lot sitting on my shoulders. Atlas would be proud of me. I've definitely got a lot weighing me down and I think I need to just try and calm down. I need to re-boot those resolutions to eat healthier and be more conscious of what I eat. I also need to start working out again. Good chemicals need to be running through my brain instead of just idling about with negative energy. Boooo.



With great power comes great responsibility...? That's related to this post, right?

The Pack!

Take that Rapelisberger!

I am pleased with the results of the Super Bowl.



I ate a lot of Velveeta "cheese" today and my mouth tastes gross and I feel queasy/cheesy. I'm never coming near that stuff again. I'm disturbed by how popular that stuff is in America.

I do still want to eat EZ Cheese, though. I haven't had it since I was a Girl Scout in fourth grade. I remember liking it then. I remember my mom adamantly refusing to buy me a can at Vons. I think I might get some this week. I'll tell you how that goes.

PS: That is a picture of a Green Bay barrette I made in honor of the game. I like to think it's what made them win.

Idea Thief

I wander through Paper Source and other stationery stores fairly often looking for ideas for my letterpress class. One thing that's always caught my eye at Paper Source is their business card sized cards that have simple words/sayings printed on them. This gave me inspiration to make my own today.



These are 4bar sized cards (hand cut by my teacher since I forgot to bring my own). They're essentially twice the size of a business card. It's much more precise and easier to print on a larger card twice and just cut them as opposed to printing on a small business card, so we prefer to do things this way. I used 36 point Bank Script and selected a bright, Valentines-y red to print in. I'm considering doing these in the colors of the rainbow and tying them together to give out as presents (while keeping a bunch of my own to use, of course). Oh. The first few I printed had the "u" in the wrong font. I had to clean the print off, pry out the "u" with my fingernails and find the proper replacement. But.. the crisis wasn't as bad as it could have been because the spacing turned out to be identical and I didn't need to fiddle to find new lead/copper/brass to fix it. One day when I'm less scatterbrained, I'll do a better explanation of letterpress.

I'm aware that this post is written in terrible English. Lo siento.

I Can Sew!

I'm lazy for blogging since I feel like making more barrettes, so I'll just show you some barrettes I made (:

Gung Hay Fat Choy

I'm very tired, so I'll keep this short.

Happy New Year! It's the year of the Rabbit. I ate rabbit at Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica a few weeks ago. It's delicious. I recommend you give it a shot if you ever have the chance. I also watched part of Bambi today and smiled when I saw Thumper. He's tasty.



Another terrible and fuzzy photo. I did say I was tired.

Spring Cleaning

I went on a cleaning rampage today and threw a bunch of stuff out, but somehow my room is still messy and my house still looks like an episode from Hoarders. Granted, the latter isn't really my fault. I'm trying to keep my things contained to my room and my bathroom so the blame can fall on my shoulders as little as possible. I'm still trying to polish off unpacking but it's incredibly hard to condense all the things I've accumulated in 7 years of living on my own back into my childhood bedroom. My room is only 12x12 with a double bed, two desks (one for normal desk purposes and the other for my TV, my stereo and my gaming consoles), a bookshelf, a dresser and a tiny bedside table. My desk chair is one of those exercise balls and I have a small ottoman for storing my remotes, controllers and stray cords. My biggest problem is all my kitchen stuff. As my mom already has a fully stocked (and then some) kitchen of her own, there isn't any place for my stuff and if you know me, you know I have a lot of it. I'm tired of it kicking around aimlessly in boxes in the garage and I've managed to stow a lot of it away. Currently, I'm mostly flummoxed on what to do with all my stray stuffed animals (my bed is full already) and all my cups and mugs. Messes stress me out. Despite having so much stuff, I don't like disorder and I feel like my house is just piles and piles of crap. Again, not my fault!! I'm trying to do my part and clean out the hallway and garage of all my moving boxes so I can start chipping away at all the other random crap just laying about. I've been meaning to do more cooking and baking, but as I've mentioned previously, the kitchen is such a disgusting mess that it discourages me every time. Thinking about it is stressing me out so I should probably just go back to watching Glee for now.

Here's a bird. My house is such a mess he could make a nest and no one would notice.

February!

As a child, February was my favorite month. My birthday is in February. It's a weird number of days. President's Day is in it (day off!). Valentine's Day is there. Okay, before you start a tirade on Valentine's Day and girls and blah blah blah, the reason I liked it so much as a kid was because of the cards, the colors and the cookies.

One of my favorite cookies is a sugar cookie with frosting on top. At school, we always had Valentine's parties where we would get to decorate our own cookies. As mentioned before, I didn't get sweets much so this was a stellar day for me. Also, we'd get 30+ Valentine's cards. I love stationery!

As an adult, I've learned to make more sophisticated sugar cookies with Royal Icing and design my own stationery. I've also started liking the color pink more and more. As the Valentine's merchandise began popping up in stores in the past few weeks, I've picked some stuff up in preparation for cookie and card making!



I'm a sucker for Martha Stewart and Paul Frank, so Valentine's stuff from those two brands makes me as excitable as a fat kid at a pie eating contest. Here's some of the stuff that's laying on my bedroom floor right now (: I have all sorts of vague ideas for baking and crafting. It helps me get my mind off things and gives me warm fuzzy feelings about my man. What could be better? (: