Gung Hay Fa Choy!
Happy Chinese New Year! (and v-day!)
Chinese New Year growing up was always exciting because it meant big family dinners, familiar faces and lucky money in pretty red little envelopes. Now that I’ve moved away from my family, I cook a lot more chinese food at home. Usually this results in big shopping days at Uwajimaya at least a couple times a year to stock up on essentials:
Ok, ramen is pretty bad for you, but I love it. Usually if I am craving Ramen I head to Samurai Noodle in I.D., but I like to keep a supply of ramen at home for emergency. (Also, I think it would be pretty fun to design ramen noodle packaging.)
Owl Beer! I was more than excited when I saw that Uwajimaya is now carrying Hitachino Nest. I first had the white ale at Spice Market in NYC and have been on the hunt ever since.
Various essentials. (Ok, some of these are Japanese ingredients too. Not included here: fresh veggies and other various junk food items. You’ll have to wait for the next shopping day!)
Lucky for me, not living close to family also results in giant care packages of goodies from Hong Kong: sauces, noodles, abalone, and cakes.
Living away from my family is always hard, and I do feel more disconnected from my culture the longer I live apart from them. But simple things like cooking Chinese food and sharing family dinners with friends is always a good reminder that I can still keep the same family traditions even today…
Annual Hot Pot Day at Seven Stars Pepper with the Baerwaldes was a couple of weeks ago. We shared the traditional feast of pot stickers, onion pancakes, meat and seafood hotpot, and hand shaven noodles with pork. Here are some pictures of the meal and it’s aftermath:
Special thanks to AM and GFI for the photos.
M.M.M.
There’s been lots of new additions at the itterog household recently and MM couldn’t be happier! Instead of a kitten friend, some new furry friends have been making guest appearances in our little yard…
(This is MM exhausted after a day of bird and squirrel watching.)
The best part is, not only is the suet feeder attracting cute little squirrels and chickadees, but RATS too. MM will be so excited!
Hi, Uncle Tim!
I’ll make an apple pie for you soon, promise.
T-pie
Happy T-day everyone! This year I am spending Thanksgiving at RLF (although I am sad to miss Thanksgiving with my fellow orphans—you know who you are). This year I made an apple pie, but decided to ditch my usual recipe and try a recipe from Martha Stewart. The recipe is pretty straight-forward (although I had underestimated the time commitment with the refrigeration involved), but instead of a traditional covered or lattice crust top, this recipe has a decorative top made of fluted circle cutouts.
A few tips:
- I probably over filled the pie, in hopes that it would shrink down, but as you can see in the photos below… it didn’t! The recipe calls for 4 lbs of apples—about 7 medium
sized apples, but you could probably do with 6. - Don’t forget to put the dabs of butter in before layering the top on!
- Keep an eye out for the crust browning too quickly— after the initial 25 minutes I had to tent the pie with foil to keep it from burning.
Here is the before:
and the after:
