Category / food

by princesshotflash

A Little Late

Happy New Year!

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Goodluck mochi for the house

I’ve been a little busy with holiday stuff and just catching up with some last minute things before the end of the year. The last 2 years have been a whirlwind of stuff that I never thought would happen to me. I hope 2019 brings a little bit of calm for me. These are a few things that I’m trying to make that happen.

Baking

It hasn’t stopped, no matter how hot it is. Winter brings a little help but I’m still sweating. Pies are topped the list this year. It’s because my mom’s love of pies.

Apple pie in the oven
Apple pie done
Lemon meringue pre-meringue
Pre-bake
Lemon meringue done
ready for the oven
with walnut crumb
pre-bake crust holiday gifts
small pies lilikoi and calamansi filling
big pie calamansi filling
Apples and mixed berries
apple and mixed berry pie 2
lilikoi coconut pie with whipped cream

Knitting

The majority is charitable knitting, a few holiday gifts for people, a cute cat and my hipster dad modelling my hats

Swimming

I started swimming. I joined the Y and took a swimming class to make this happen. Every Sunday at 9. To my surprise, I do enjoy it. I think it’s being in the water that I enjoy the most. I’m not the best swimmer but I tell myself at least I’m trying. I hope for one day that I could do laps as gracefully as many of the other swimmers I watch.

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love swimming in the ocean

For the coming year

Got me a Fitbit to help remind me to keep moving. Added walking and may try out the C25K app to see if I like running and give me a goal. Thinking of vacation and where I want to go. San Diego in the lineup for May if all things go well. I’d like to go to Japan but not sure when or where.

Hope this is productive and fun year for all. I sure can use one of those.

by princesshotflash

Stages of Recipe Testing

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Got a poppy on my way out of the store, buying my ingredients for recipe testing. Boy scouts and Vets collecting for charity.

I decided to recipe test Milk Bar’s Compost Cookies. I want to see how it compared to mom’s garbage cookies. Both recipes have a lot of ingredients. I used the recipe Anderson Cooper’s favorite cookies: compost cookies from www.tablefortwoblog.com.

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My attempt at Crack pie

I’ve made the Crack pie recipe from Christina Tosi before and I love the addition of milk powder and the compost cookies have it in it, too. That’s one point in favor of compost cookies. Maybe I can take all the things I like in the compost and garbage cookies and make a new cookie.

 

I put the frozen butter out for before my walk and 5.7 miles later the butter perfectly soften for my cookies. Getting all the ingredients out was quite a task. Still getting used to Mom’s kitchen and where things are at. We are still trying to reorganize it to make sense to both of us but haven’t finished. Mom measuring out all the mix-in to make that quick. There were few miscommunications with mom–she dumped the rising agents into the mix-ins but I don’t think it hurt the cookie.

Christine Tosi likes to make special ingredients for her recipe. They are special mix-ins like the graham cracker crust. But. . . you always end up making more than you need. So you either need to make more or toss it out. Is this an evil scheme for you to keep making her recipes. haha

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Stages of recipe testing: baking

  1. place chilled cookie balls on the sheets
  2. place in oven for 18 minutes?
  3. 8 minutes in the oven, cookies have melted into the correct shape. That’s good? Maybe?
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  4. Oh NO! The top sheet, back row browning faster than other cookies.
  5. Calm down, turn the sheet around.
  6. Oh, Noooooo! Burning, burning, burning.
  7. Hotplate! Hotplate! Hotplate!

Did I mention that Mom’s oven runs a little hot probably about +25º!

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I think this is a properly baked one. Little black flecks are the coffee grounds

Finished product. I didn’t like the cookie right out of the oven. I thought it was too sweet. But the next day, it was really good. Even the koge (Japanese for burnt) ones were good. Mom’s only complaint was the cookie was too big. Next time I’ll use the smaller scoop and lower the oven temperature a bit.

by princesshotflash

Up to my old tricks

Guess what I found–a bag of slight damaged fruit at one of the store in my town. I think I mentioned it before. $2.99 for a bag of 2 grapefruits, 1 mineola, 2 red plums, 1 pluot, and 4 peaches. I wasn’t even looking for it. Just went shopping for ingredients for my dinner I was cooking for my parents.

I made a batch of stone fruit jam. Of course, my tasters had to try all the fruit to see if they were ripe enough–haha. Add the mineola zest to the jam and gave my parents 2/3 of the fruit to taste and 1/3 of fruit chopped up for the jam. Kind of winged it using what I new about making plum and peach jam. Got 4 half pints to add to my mom’s jam collection in her frig. Sorry no pictures.

In the meantime, my stuff arrived and I was able to sort and put away 2/3s of it in my storage unit and 1/3 will stay with me till my place is done.

My kitchen/baking equipment came just in time to finished off last of the bag–the ruby grapefruits and turned them into 2 batches of grapefruit cake. I used a recipe from sally’s baking addiction. It had a great smell of citrus and sweetness from the brown sugar. I didn’t add the glaze because all of us don’t need that extra sugar. It was perfectly sweet, just enough.

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the darker on was from the 1st batch. I was trying to set up my echo.

The one item that I was looking forward to arriving was my pressure cooker. Now that I have 2 other people to cook for using the pressure cooker is so silly. For pressure cooker meal: Corned Beef and veggie. Used this recipe as a base and timing. I didn’t use chicken broth or fresh thyme, I didn’t have it in the house. Use water instead and went without the thyme. The meat and veggies were tender and tasted great. It was served with hapa rice and tsukemono (japanese pickles–top: namasu–pickled cucumbers with daikon, carrots, and seaweed; middle: takuwan–pickled daikon; bottom: Spicy daikon. All homemade by a family friend. They are all so delicious and crunchy. My ranking are top, bottom, middle.

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Write more later with adventures.

by princesshotflash

Cooking for the folks

I’m trying to be creative with meals that I cook for folks. Something that fit all of their food requirements-dad diabetic, mom on blood thinner. I think I got dad’s requirements but mom’s are harder. For not it’s it’s bit of trial and error. They are going to see the dr in October and we will find out how well I’m doing.

So the first meal was chili with black beans, sweet potatoes and corn. This week was a vegan spicy lentil soup. I didn’t make it because it was vegan I made it because it is so delicious.

I made this soup once before for my friends that came and help me packing and purging. It was so delicious. This time I didn’t have that great curry powder I used but I did buy garam masala so I use that instead. It was a success. They like the spices. Dad even ate a lot of it. I sauteed kale with garlic on the side so mom didn’t have to have it.

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added carrots and sweet potatoes

Update on the cats: they are getting used to their new environment. They have found their way up on the ledge in the kitchen. Ollie sleeps up there daily.

And here’s an extra picture of the boys, just because.

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by princesshotflash

The gift of mangoes and bananas

The best thing about living in Hawaii is that people are so generous. And the delivery of mangoes and bananas to my house demonstrated that. Instead of getting just a couple of each, I got the box of mangoes and hand of bananas. Boy, I needed to get my act in gear and use them up before they got too ripe to use.

Mangoes

I said I wanted to make mango jam and I got to make it. I made this recipe before with overripe mangoes from the restaurant and it turned out so delicious. And it was pretty easy.

Mom peeled the mangoes, cutting away any bruised or bad areas. I peeled the lemon rind then took off as much of the pith as I could. Then toss all of it in a wide pot with the sugar and put it on a medium high heat. It will come to a boil, turn it down to medium to simmer. Then let the magic happen. The meat of the mango falls off and once it all falls off it will be ready. I say we had it on for about hour and half.

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peeled mangoes and lemons with lemon rind and sugar

This is the final product. Naturally thick and chunky, sweet mangos with bright taste from the lemons.

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Mon’s special portion

We got 1 pint, 4 half pints and 2 4oz bottles.

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waiting to cool off

I didn’t use up all the mangoes with jam, so I made batch of mango bread using my banana bread recipe and whatever was left I went into the freezer for a pie I’m thinking of trying.

Bananas

A hand of Williams bananas ripening in a brown bag in the patio, were ready at the same time as the mangos arrive. Meant a lot of jamming and baking on very hot and humid end of summer season. A baker needs to do when the ingredients are ready to go.

I made my princess hotflash healthier banana bread. I couldn’t find ground coconut so I used sweeten shredded coconut instead. I also use this recipe for the mango bread.

I had a brain fart and didn’t look at my mom’s measuring cup and added too much sugar in the banana bread. (thought the 3/4 measuring cup was a 1/2 cup–don’t have a 3/4c in my measuring cups). Oops.

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It turned out darker that it should with the extra sugar

But it didn’t taste too sugary. Whew! I was really sad that I may had needed to toss it out.

And the leftover bananas went in the freezer also for smoothies or monkey butter or strawberry banana pie. Not sure which one I want to make.

Well, more baking and jamming to come. Got a bag of distress fruit at Don Quixote. with plums, peaches, grapefruit and mineola orange. A small batch of stone fruit jam with orange and grapefruit curd all for $2.50.