New Foods

I'm a sucker for buying new products that I see whether it be a fruit I've never seen or a new flavor of gum. This week at Trader Joe's and then Whole foods I found 3 new things that I had to buy.

First at trader Joe's I saw pea shoots! I love pea shoots at restaurants but I've never seen them before at the stores, and trust me I've been looking.

I've enjoyed using these by throwing them into stirfry and eating them with my potstickers. Its nowhere near as delicious as the ones in restaurants though, but I suspect those are a slightly different variety.


Next at whole foods I found Keffir Limes. I've never even heard of these, but how could I not buy one to try. I haven't tried it yet though b/c when I went to look up the recipe it turns out what most people eat are the leaves, but they weren't selling those. The internet went on to teach me that the zest of the lime is good in Thai cooking so maybe I'll try that. The part that I thought I'd be eating, the citrus center, is evidently not good for eating but is good for washing your hair because its so strong. Maybe I'll give that a try.


Lastly at whole foods I found an apple variety I've never seen before. I cant remember what its called but the blurb on the sign said its from Japan, perfected in Italy, and made exclusively for whole foods.....wait what??? how can a fruit be made exclusively for a store! This seems pretty wrong to me. I did buy one to try out of curiosity, and it wasn't bad but it tasted as fake as it sounds. I don't think that was just in my head, it had this weird almost perfumy sweetness to it.

Flax Crackers Take 1

My dad has been making Flax crackers and working on perfecting the recipe. His are delicious. I though i'd give it a try....it turns out they are harder to make than it looks! For starters I let mine sit for 2 hours in the fridge in the water, but it turns out you need to let it sit at room temperature. Second for flavoring I only added (low sodium) soy sauce which made them turn out far too salty. Third I cant seem to figure out when to take them out of the oven so that they are perfectly crispy without being burnt. I tried a second batch with soy vay instead of soy sauce, and i'm not sure why but its terrible. Maybe third time's the charm...we'll see!

Butternut Squash Soup

This weekend I decided to try out my new immersion blender, and what better to try it on than Butternut Squash Soup now that the temperatures are dropping and all the fall and winter foods are starting to appear in the grocery stores. we used this recipe, which in my opinion is miss titled. Its called Butternut squash shallot soup, but you could barely tell there were shallots in there, and really taste the ginger. Peter suggested putting a few crumbles of goat cheese on top next time which maybe we will try. It was very delicious.

Fried Rice

Well, we are back from our honeymoon and ready to eat in for a while. This first meal is hawaii-inspired. The best dish I had while we were there was actually at breakfast. Our hotel had an amazing breakfast buffet, and since most of the hotel guests were Japanese, they catered to their guests. One morning for breakfast (along with my amazing fresh pineapples and mangoes) I had a delicious pineapple fried rice that we decided to try and make on our own last night. I found this recipe. It couldnt have been easier to make. We of course omitted the egg, and added corn (peter loves to add corn to everything). The only step we didnt really follow was using old rice or letting it sit for an hour. We let it sit for like 10 minutes, and I didnt think it hurt the meal any. Maybe next time I'll prepare a few days in advance and whip up some rice. Sorry for the bad photo, I really need to start taking these pictures with my nice camera instead of my iphone.



As a side note does anyone have a rice cooker? I'm considering getting one, and peter thinks its a dumb idea. Thoughts?

Crafts in the shower?

Well sorta, more like science projects. One of the awesome things about my mom is that she encouraged my science side and allowed me to take part in many science projects as a kid. Anything I was curious about we investigated. One of which was using an egg for shampoo. I gave it a try except i didnt take into consideration the temperature of the water and made a scrambled egg in my hair. Well now that I'm older and more mature I thought i'd give alternate shampoos and conditioners a try. I get so much build up on my hair from normal shampoos and conditioners that I figured this couldnt be any worse. So i looked up a few different methods and settled on beer rinse to make my hair shiny. My hair is moderately shiny today, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary however is how dry my scalp is today. I read more and I guess its the alcohol in the beer. An alternate method boils down the beer first which I guess I should try next time. This would have been nice to know before :( Lessons learned.

Amigurumi

Again, in preparation for the hurricane we got old school activities that don't require electricity. I bought a kit from barnes and nobles on how to make Amigurumi (crocheted animals), and re-taught myself how to crochet. I tried to use the instructions in the 1st chapter of the book but some didnt make any sense at all or left out steps, so i went to youtube for that portion. Once I figured out all the stitches I started with the kissing fish pattern.

It turns out that I was reading the instructions wrong and was more than half way through before i realized. For example the instructions would say *1sc, 2sc in next stitch* (12). I read this to mean 1 single chain then 2 single chains in the next stitch and repeat this entire cycle 12 times. Instead what it actually meant was that in the end you should have 12 stitches (not the 36 I was doing). I started to notice the fish wasn't very 3d (minus the lips i did perfectly), I thought maybe at a later step it would pull the stitches in and it would become spherical.

I finally re-read the how to section and realized I had been reading the instructions wrong. Luckily its easy to undo this and I started over from scratch.
I didnt quite get some of the steps on the fins but i think i improvised well.

Hurricane Chili

This weekend in preparation for Hurricane Irene to blow through town (probably an over statement since there was barely even wind) we stocked up with water, batteries, flashlights, and non perishable food. Peter had the great idea to make a big pot of chili and just eat that all weekend. My favorite vegetarian chili is hard times cafe at the ball park. Infact last time we went i got stopped by FOUR seperate guys who wanted to know where I had gotten the delicious looking chili (at first I thought they were just trying to make an excuse to talk to me, but by the 3rd i realized it was the chili not me). We started with a base recipe and added corn and peanuts.

The chili looked great even before the beans and tomatoes were added


The part you could really taste the most were the spices

The recipe calls for Chili Powder ( we added a bit more than it called for), Cumin, Coriander, and a tiny dash of Cinnamon...even though the smallest amt of spice in there was the cinnamon it was the most easily distinguishable with both the final taste and final smell of the chili.

I made nachos with my portion :)