Run and you don't stop

I'm obviously not very good in this whole updating blog thing. I'm going to be more earnest about it from now on though because I feel like I've been splurging and divulging way too much information about me on a certain social networking site (ahem... facebook) and the whole tweeting thing just isn't cutting it for me.

This was once a culinary only blog, but seeing as I have issues letting go of recipes due to the youngest child syndrome, I've decided to combine all of it in one big pile and make a mess. It's more fun that way. Plus, the reason being why the whole culinary blog thing hasn't been working out lately is because of the myriads of vacation my family and I have decided to partake on. Also, being a big SF Giants fans, our lives were consumed for the duration of late summer to yesterday. Oh, and I took on running. I now have runner's guilt to food. I still stock up on butter and heavy cream heavily. I doubt that will change. It's an inner battle I plan to continue to fight.

Supposedly, the weather is going to change to cold, but that's not happening anytime soon. I definitely freaked out today when it's 80 degrees out and trees are orange and red. It didn't stop me though from taking our summer bedding off and revamping it to winter appropriate bedding. I'm a creature of habit and have trouble letting go of the color blue, so I stuck to it again. It's not very wintery but I guess I'm hitting that country feel vibe I've been longing for. I went to wally world to purchase a cheapo but sufficient comforter and I kept my organic sheet set. I also moved that ottoman that can't find a spot in this world to the front of the bed. I hate it there. I swear, one day, I'm just going to kick it to the curb--- literally. I will roll it down my driveway due to hatred. I'm not one of the people that abuse the word literally, so if I ever do say it, I mean it. Otherwise, I will substitute it with the word figuratively.

I think I'm pretty satisfied with it. I spent $30 on the comforter and $20 on the cream colored blanket, $10 for the pillow covers. All purchased from walmart. One day I will paint these walls, once I stick to a pallette scheme, and seriously, it is looking a lot like gray to just match with the blue.

I'll post a cooking story here again at some point, I'm too devastated today. What I thought was a can of matcha green tea powder turned out to be a can of bagged matcha green tea and green tea leaves. I'll get it over it, maybe. Maybe a Coq Au Riesling recipe will come in the near future, but don't tell Julia Child's soul I forgot to buy lardons. She'd punish me. 

Macarons, Macarons, Macarons!

I did it, I conquered both nut-free and almond version of macarons. It's addicting and easy to make once i got the hang of it. Ok, let me rephrase that--- I should have started on making the almond version first because this took me one try. One lousy stinking try that could have saved me tears and personal humiliation (not to mention, a whole lot less eggs cracked and separated). The nut-free ones I made for the previous post left me questioning myself on whether I should just stick to cupcakes and cakes. I had a pretty good record of success with those things and maybe macarons just couldn't be added to the mix.

One night though, I decided to just make the almond version at night while my allergic-to-tree-nuts son was in bed. My ever supportive husband got me a bag of slivered almonds, he's awesome like that. He knows that buying me ingredients is the way to win me over. I looked at several videos and recipes online and adapted a version for myself and my temperamental oven and one try, and almost half an hour later I got these babies.

Banana macarons with raspberry white chocolate mousse. I didn't pipe them all evenly but they have feet. I said the exact same thing while jumping up and down in my kitchen "they have feet, they have feet!" My husband looked at me like I was insane... again. It also didn't help I accompanied the squealing with dancing and probably way too much booty shaking.

The next day, while my son was pretend napping and I was supposed to be cleaning, I went for it again. I had a lot of raspberry mousse left, they had to be used. So I made coffee-mocha macarons. It just made sense, plus I was twitching to make a batch like a meth head looking for the next hit.

Did I really just compare my addiction to make macarons to a meth head's addiction to meth? My, someone has issues. Definitely has issues because the next day, I bought black sesame seeds, coconut flakes in bulk and then I made these nut-free versions.


Just what I wanted, flat on the top, little macaron feet. The ones on the right are just vanilla, which I believe baked a little too long so I then adjusted the temperature for the left ones which are pandan flavored macarons. They taste different than the almond ones, but in a way that they seem nuttier, definitely a good substitute. I wish I didn't fill them up with ganache though and instead made butter cream or put jam in them. My son was pretend napping again that day so I was rushing. All in all though, I was pretty happy about these. I can't wait till I have an excuse to make them again. That excuse just might come this weekend.

The horrible, yet delicious, habbit of deep-frying

I'm not too big into deep-frying for the obvious reasons. It's a heart attack ready to be served to you--- a warm and scrumptious delight of a heart attack. A few years ago, I received a deep-fryer as a gift for Christmas, it never found use because I was being smart with my cooking and several moves later up and down California, it's lost but now I slightly miss it. It's probably for the good that I don't have it, but nothing some vegetable oil and a hot pan can't fix, right? These are those times I wish i didn't know how to cook well, it's ok though, I have been running my ass off. Literally, since Sunday, the day I decided to deep fry a twinkie, mochi ice cream, snickers, marshmallows and an organic late july cream sandwich cookie, I've been clocking at least 20 minutes on the treadmill. I somehow have this facet that it will counter all the monstrous calories I'm consuming. Of course, it doesn't affect my husband one bit-- then again, when I looked at his treadmill, he was clocking in at 9.5 mph run and it all of a sudden made me feel like crap that I was only doing 5.0 mph. SO in revenge, I fed him this:

Deep fried, English style battered shrimp. I spared no expense on this baby. I battered and slathered and dipped this thing in hot splattering oil. I even got hit in the eye, no joke. As a result, this warm, buttery (and there wasn't even butter, gasp!) shrimp. I put in a little kick in there with some cayenne and paprika. I suggest with anything deep fried and battered, just put in 1/4 teaspoon each of cayenne and paprika. And parsley, because it's pretty and putting parsley in things is just like walking to me. Lately though, it's been cilantro, and I used to hate cilantro-- that's another story.

I was a bit sad I only had 15 pieces of shrimp left in freezer. What was I thinking not replenishing that? We happily divided this whole thing within our family of three (there was steak on the side, surf and turf night--- I need to do that more often). This whole working out mantra though is making me eat less because I would never dare just eat a salad for dinner. I'll probably end up putting pancetta and parmesan shavings on it.

This deep fried sea food feast is for sure healthier than this atrociousness though.

Why did I ever deep fry a twinkie and a marshmallow?

French macarons will be the death of me

I would guess that this recipe would go by easier and quicker if I can actually use almond powder/flour--- problem is, my son is deathly allergic to all nuts and tree nuts. I challenged myself thinking, eh, what's the big deal anyway, there are A MILLION flour substitutes out there. I also would have to bash my head on a wall for even daring to think that to begin with.

Yesterday, after months of dilly-dallying over the idea of French macarons, I jumped for it. I went to the local specialty store, grabbed a bag of coconut flour and coconut flakes. I tried a recipe I found online for nutless macarons and they were ABOMINABLE! I basically just had mounds of the American version--- but worse. They were dry, icky and not beautiful like they should be.

Attempt 2--- they looked like sugar cookies. At least i was on the right track, I was able to put it in a piping bag and i was able to squeeze it out.

Attempt 3-- a lot more successful. It was a bit chunky since the coconut flour tends to do that and I didn't tap the bottom of the pan out, but I got a very delicious result out of it. This was my end result:

See-- chunkier. Delicious though, oh man, I can stuff my mouth about a million of those. Today though, I wanted to solve the "chunk" issue so I ran again to the local specialty store and bought soy and coconut flour again, but a different brand.

OHHHH MYYY GODDDD! I'm pretty sure before I got my "good" result today, I ended up with several choux like macarons. I'm making freaking macarons here, not croquembouche (that is for a different day. It would be the "death of me par deux"). I'm just very grateful I have a wonderful husband that kept telling me that I can do it, I can make delicious and beautiful almond-less macarons. He's such a doll, without him, I would have pulled a Julie Powell type of tantrum and it wouldn't be cool because I complained many times about how horrible she was about the whining. I guess it's something about French cooking though, even worse, French pastry--- it tests you. This macaron recipe is the EASIEST recipe I've ever done, not many ingredients, easy to edit to a specific flavor, but it's technique. I have the technique but experimenting with the ingredients just fail me a lot, and this is the love of a mother talking here. I want my son to experience MACARONS!!

I went back, with my head up high, I can't remember how many eggs I've cracked and I got this:


My vision is so clouded I can't even tell if these are better or worse than the ones from yesterday. One thing is for sure though--- yep, I will try again. I have about 2 cups of coconut flour and 2 cups of powdered sugar left. I found a printable macaron template and I will go for it. I'll have a good cry tonight if I come out of this alive.

Lack of blogging

It's been a very busy, busy month. Just when I thought all of my weekend activities are done, now my weekday activities are filled. Even stay-at-home-moms have their share of activities and being a Mom is a full time job which then leads to lack of blogging but to a myriad of cooking.

Just like everyone else, my family and I are holding back on the expenses because we want to save up, so we cut down on eating out, which means we're probably not going to our favorite Japanese restaurant. I love teriyaki, never have made it at home because I always have Filipino soy sauce at home and it never tastes the same way as the kikkoman style soy sauce. Soy sauce is like hot sauce, it tastes different from every region. A few months ago, I was in my Korean food kick, I looked in my pantry and realized that I do have ALL ingredients required for teriyaki.

The greens are the most fabulous greens EVER. I love Chinese broccoli and broccolini better than I like regular broccoli, and last weekend at the farmer's market they had the most beautiful bunch of them. I had to have it! It's like seeing a purse that I needed to have, but it's broccoli. Is that weird?

Anyway, farmers market season is on so go ahead and go out there, get some produce! They're beautiful, better than looking at stack of Marc Jacobs purses! No? Well, it's good for the health and they are beautiful.

Buttahhhhhh, buttah, buttah

I've made a lot of difficult dishes and some that have brought me down to my knees with tears in my eyes, but whenever I've succeeded, I have never jumped for joy all over the place and sang to the tune of "I like bugs" from Yo Gabba Gabba. It happened today because today was the day I made BUTTER!

Now if you have had my cooking, you will know how much I love cooking with butter--- and heavy cream, and heavy cream makes butter. We just had a party for our little boy a week ago and what was leftover (among the many things) was a huge carton of heavy cream. I already made alfredo last night but I still had about 2 cups left over so today I pulled out the kitchen aid and made butter. Cinnamon and honey butter, but then I looked in my pantry and I remember I had this canister of French grey sea salt and put a bit in too just to give it a subtle saltiness.

Of course, I shaped it like the boxed butter because it was the sensible thing to do.

It just spreads so beautifully. It was such a great snack, not healthy, I'm sure, but delicious nonetheless. Of course it's only sensible to follow homemade butter with homemade bread, so yep, that is definitely next on the list.

I went a little crazy with the cooking yesterday

Tuesday I had a slight fever. I felt paralyzed and helpless and we ate leftovers. Nothing wrong with leftovers, but if you are anything like me, you start twitching when you don't cook. I guess it's more like I went on a cooking/baking tirade this week. I just NEEDED to do it. So here's some of my creations from my delusional week.

First I corrected the issue I had with the Inca Kola cupcakes. I also had a bit of free time on my hands so I sculpted some fondant flowers.

The day after that is when I got him with symptoms of grogginess and lack of energy. A day passed and I decided to make up for my lack of activity so I made these. They didn't really take too much effort, but a hump day dinner, I guess it was a bit of a nutso job. I did run my dishwasher twice (or was it three times?).

I first made these biscottis. I can't take up for the credit, this one was Giada de Laurentiis' recipe. I did put French grey sea salt instead of just sea salt. I don't think that will still make it my recipe.

Then I looked in my fridge, and hey, there are carrots. Loads and loads of carrots. Why did I buy these much carrots? Only one way to fix it!

I actually wanted to put baking soda in this, I ran out coz I was unclogging our sink. It turned out to be a good thing coz adding that extra 1/2 tsp of baking powder made it oh so fluffy wuffy. (Baby talk, gross, forgive me, I've been getting all crazy giddy over potty training my toddler--- that's another story).

I guess we can't have dinner with appetizer and dessert, well in theory, it technically can happen, but I know my boys would go crazy if I didn't offer some type of main course. I have a serious addiction to goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes together. I just LOOOOVE it. Any sausage with fennel seeds in it, count me in. Best way to combine them all? The usual way I do it, except this time, I decided not to include cream. You know, I had to cut down on some carbs with this meal.

I think my fridge is stocked up for food until Friday dinner. We'll see. Today, I might just tackle on ice cream again. My new ice cream make is my favorite new friend. I'm totally biased to it right now. LOOOVE it, I just love it!