First Ever Pecan Pie Made by Tina

The wedding was December 15th, and what a wonderful day it was! I feel very lucky in love. :) I'll post photos of the origami flower arrangements soon (and the origami boutonnieres and corsages made by my sister!). In the meantime, here are two lovely pies made by Tina and Brenda. I love the decorations on the blueberry pie! Their comments below the photos...

"I need Nana Lois' recipe, I forgot to write it down when we were in Baltimore for the wedding. She said it was the best ever Pecan Pie recipe. So Nana Lois, you need to Blog us and give us this famous family heirloom recipe. We will look forward to it being on the blog site....you go girl.......And the Christmas blueberry pie. Note Rudolf's red nose. Needless to say the Blueberry pie was delicious, we have to wait for Christmas to eat the Pecan one, but I bet it will be yummy. It was nice to just supervise the cooking this year.
Much love to all,
Brenda and Tina."

what I made in 2007

On October 13 at 7:11am, Lily Elizabeth Janice arrived by c-section 2 days before her scheduled c-section. She weighed 8lb13oz with a perfect little body and cry.
Her big brother loves her and can't stop kissing her.

Origami Flower Arrangement in Progress

Lots of wedding preparations going on this month. I've been folding flowers for awhile, and finally got to the point where I could start on some centerpiece arrangements. It was hard to find red paper that works for this (especially in the right shade of red)! After a lot of trial and error, I settled on the three different papers shown above.

The top flower is made from a red-on-red toned gift wrap paper purchased at The Container Store. (They put out their holiday wrap nice and early!) Their gift wrap is generally very sturdy and can hold up to folding and handling. But even this paper wore down quickly around the folded edges, and the result was rough-looking white spots along the edges. I decided to color the outside folded edges with gold to camouflage the wear and tear. It turned out to be a nice effect, I think! I'm using a metallic gold ink pad -- I just run the edges of the paper across the pad before the final folding stage. (It does require a little drying time.) I also decided not to worry about the white side of the paper showing along the fold in the petals. I figure it compliments the red and gold.

The red flower on the left is made from a sturdy scrapbooking paper purchased at Michael's. It has a subtle texture of starburst shapes. The paper is a dull red-orange color, so I thought I wouldn't be able to use it. But my fiance suggested I try coating these particular flowers with a gloss finishing spray -- low and behold, the result is dark red flowers with a subtle shine to them! Perfect! The texture shows up better with the gloss finish, too. This paper is red on both sides, another great quality for origami.

The third, small flower is made from ivory wedding gift wrap paper from The Container Store -- it has a nice subtle decorative pattern. This paper has been the most successful for this origami project because 1) it's quite sturdy and holds up to folding, 2) it holds it shape really well when curled (such as the petal areas), and 3) the light color camouflages any wear along the edges (and there isn't much!).

That's only the start of the arrangement in the photo. Still some work to do on it! The leaves are artificial, but NOT made of paper. I purchased a package of individual fake leaves at Michael's. I'm also using some artificial berry picks and other holiday picks to fill out the arrangement.

Hopefully I'll have photos of the actual finished arrangements after the wedding!

Karl Pilkington Cake

Last weekend was James's birthday, and we had a nice little BBQ at our house. I made him a chocolate cake in the likeness of Karl Pilkington -- or at least, in the likeness of Ricky Gervais's own portrait of Karl, as seen on the book.

More info on Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais here. We're big fans of their radio show, not to mention The Office and Extras!

The brown and blue part is supposed to be Karl's scarf, but somehow his neck disappeared when I was decorating, so it's not quite apparent. Oh, well! Karl's head looks even more round after being moved to a plate:

My First Blueberry Pie

The top crust broke and the blueberries seeped, but it tasted damn good for a first try. This was the first fruit pie I've ever made. It was surprisingly easy to make homemade crust. I found an all-butter recipe in the book How To Cook Everything: The Basics by Mark Bittman. It's verrrry easy with a food processor.

I've made pat-in-the-pan crust before (for pumpkin pie), but this rolled type is so much better. It came out nice and flaky. It was actually easier than pat-in-the-pan anyway...so it's rolled crusts from now on for me!

The blueberry filling recipe was from The Joy of Cooking. I used frozen storebought blueberries, which aren't as good as fresh, I'm afraid. The pie definitely wasn't as good as Brenda's pies -- she uses homegrown blueberries! Maybe if I can get my hands on some good fresh blueberries and practice more often, my pies will taste better. (And maybe LOOK better, haha.) I'm definitely psyched to make more of these.

More Origami Flowers

More experiments with using different paper for origami flowers. The red paper is a nice textured scrapbook paper that I bought at Michael's. The edges showed some wear after folding, but overall it keeps its shape well.

The ivory flowers are made from a wedding patterned gift wrap paper that I bought at The Container Store. I like how gift wrapping paper holds up to folding, and it's cheaper than fancy scrapbooking paper or origami paper. But the glossiness of the gift wrap paper makes it a little difficult to photograph. I wonder if a big bouquet of glossy ivory and white flowers will get washed out in photos?

Online Bridal Store Recommendation

I must post a rave about eBridalSuperstore.com. I ordered my wedding dress from there and it just arrived. Here's the lowdown:

In March I visited two local bridal shops in the Baltimore area to try on an Alfred Angelo dress that I had my heart set on. One shop quoted $700 for the dress and the other quoted $850. They both said that once I ordered it, it would take four to six months for the dress to arrive.

I started shopping for the same dress online and found it at a much lower price on eBay and some online bridal shops. I settled on eBridalSuperstore.com which had the lowest price and shipping rate, and the best reviews from what I could find on the web. I ordered the dress on April 3rd. I paid $419 for the dress plus $12 shipping. The website has a shipping status feature, and it estimated that the dress would arrive in July.

Exactly three weeks later, the dress arrived via UPS! I was amazed! It looks great, in perfect condition. It is the correct color and size, with the Alfred Angelo tags and optional straps. Now I just need to take it for a fitting and get alterations done if needed.

So I was very happy with the low price and quick service that I got from eBridalSuperstore.com. They are like a bridal shop in that they order the dress for you straight from the manufacturer. But since they don't have the overhead costs of a physical store, they can offer the dress at a lower price.

I must admit that I picked a popular color and style for this dress, so Alfred Angelo probably has a lot of them made already, and that's why I got it so quick. It might usually take three or four months for a dress that needs to be made per order. But anyway I just wanted to pass on the recommendation. I took a leap of faith, buying the dress online. It paid off!

Origami Flower Prototypes

I've been experimenting with the idea of using orgami flowers in my wedding decorations and bouquets. I figured out that I can use high-quality gift wrapping paper as a less expensive alternative to origami or washi paper. Here are some prototypes I made this weekend. They don't have the finishing touches yet, like the center embellishment or calyx. And this isn't the actual paper I'll use for the wedding -- it's just what I had on hand. :) It will look better with a more even-toned paper.

I'm using the book Origami Flowers by Hiromi Hayashi. The reviewers on Amazon are right -- in this book, the instructions for many flowers are missing some steps! So it's a bit of a challenge to figure out the steps that the book skips over.

Below is my attempt at Rose #3 from the book. They use a soft tissue-like paper for this rose, which looks cool, but I couldn't get that to work (the paper tore so easily). So I tried gift wrapping paper and it was easier. I like the more sculpted look, anyway. You can click the picture to get a bigger view.

Below is Rose #2 in the foreground, and the Rose #3 in the background. I figure I'll use big #3's in the bouquets with small #2's in a different color.

Below shows Rose #2 on the left and Rose #3 on the right. The #3 is made from regular white copy paper, and it's not glued together. It was my first prototype. :) I will definitely use more fancy paper for the wedding! Anyway, I think #3 has a lotus look'n'feel more than a rose look'n'feel, but I like that just fine!

I got the gift wrap paper from Sally Foster -- someone at work was selling it to fundraise for their kid's school. It's good quality paper that can take some abuse before the design starts to rub off. Still, I tried to fold and handle the paper as little as possible to prevent worn edges.

Surefire Siu Mai and Green Onion Pancakes

We made two recipes from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking tonight. First was the Siu Mai shown above -- it's the first time we tried making it! This was made with pork, so it's for Sheu and not me. ;) I formed the dumplings for him. The Siu Mai shape is harder to make than gyoza, so after about 14 of these, I switched to making the gyoza shape instead. The recipe made about 30 dumplings total (most of which went into the freezer!).

The filling contains: ground pork, black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, slightly beaten egg, green onion, soy sauce, salt, minced ginger, sugar, cornstarch, sesame oil, white pepper. There's a bit of grated carrot on top. We steamed them in our rice cooker.

While I was slaving over the Siu Mai, Sheu was slaving over Mandarin Green Onion Pancakes. They are actually kind of complicated to make! It involves kneading and rolling out the dough, rolling it up with green onions and cilantro inside, making a coil shape, then rolling it out again. Whew! Here's a picture of Sheu frying up the pancakes:

Click on the photos for a closer look!

Our New Aprons

The Autobot apron was my present to Sheu for Valentine's Day. I had it made at Cafe Press. I also bought a Cooking Cute apron for myself, from the Cooking Cute Cafe Press shop. :)

Super Easy Green Bean Recipe

I got this idea from a Flickr user named Tea Priestess. You simply steam (or boil) some green beans, then toss them with lemon juice and sesame oil. It's really yummy! We tried it with haricot verts tonight. I added course salt, but probably didn't need to...will probably try it without salt next time.

Cute Potato Shapes

Last night I cut sweet potatoes and regular potatoes with mini cookie cutters and boiled them for about 7 minutes. Then we fried them (Sheu helped with the sweet potatoes!)

The sweet potatoes (above) were fried with butter and brown sugar. The regular potatoes (below) were fried in olive oil with salt, pepper, and rosemary. They turned out very good -- nice a fluffy on the inside. We made a medium-sized batch -- I might have used them in a bento, but we ate them all up! :)


I also boiled the scrap pieces and made mashed potatoes.

My New Favorite Way to Eat Tofu

Last week I tried this Tofu Fish Sticks recipe from Vegan Lunch Box. It turned out great! During baking, the coating turns into a flavorful crust, and the tofu is perfectly light and spongy inside.

I used milk in place of the soy milk that the recipe calls for. I cut my tofu into plain rectangles, but according to the recipe you can cut the tofu into any shape you want (like a fish shape). Here's a photo of the ones I made. I ate them with ketchup, yum!

These seem very kid-friendly. The recipe is quite easy if you have a food processor. The hardest part might be finding the kelp granules -- I got them at a local organic foods market.

This Little Bento

I started up a bento blog! See my [almost] daily attempts at making lunch cute:

http://thislittlebento.blogspot.com

 

Sheu Can Cook

For all of our friends and family who might have found it hard to picture him actually cooking, here is an action shot of Master J. Sheu cooking up some beef and frying up some noodles for Beef Stir-Fry Over Golden Pancake, a recipe from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. Finished results below.

Cool Website: Charm City Cakes

A few nights ago, Sheu and I watched the Food Network show "Ace of Cakes" for the first time. I had no idea that the shop featured in the show, Charm City Cakes, is right here in Baltimore! (Ok, we actually live between Baltimore and DC -- but I used to live in Baltimore, and I still work in Baltimore, and Sheu works north of Baltimore, so close enough!)

Anyway, the Charm City Cakes website is fun to explore. Their cakes are truly amazing! They have an extensive photo gallery. Here's the website address -- pretty self-explanatory, heh heh.
www.charmcitycakes.com

I recommend the show "Ace of Cakes", too. It's currently running on Thursday nights on Food Network. It's fun to see how they make these crazy cakes!

Tiny Veggie Patties

I've been experimenting with the Veggie and Bean Burgers recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. The recipe can be made into burgers, or formed into balls and baked to make "meatballs". Today I used the recipe to make little patties using Wilton mini muffin pans. These particular pans are shallow, so they are perfect for making little flat circles. (I also made balls with the leftover mix.) These will be going into my next bento! I finally got a real bento box, so I'm looking forward to using it.

The main ingredients are: rice, mushrooms, garbanzo beans, brocolli, breadcrumbs, garlic, various spices, and an egg. I ommitted the red bell pepper that the recipe calls for, and added spinach (which explains why the patties are that wonky shade of green!). I've been experimenting with the spices called for in the cookbook, because I found their version to be a bit bland. Maybe I'll post the recipe after I make another batch...I haven't hit on the perfect flavor combination yet.

Sorry for the blurry photo of the patties...our camera is on loan, so I used Sheu's webcam. :)

Here's a photo of the shallow mini muffin pans from the Wilton website. I bought them at Michael's craft store. You can't tell in the photo, but they are quite small (about half as big as a regular muffin pan).

Update: These turned out to be a great freezer item! I froze them on a cookie sheet, then put them in freezer bags (the same method as gyoza). It was easy to use them in a bento -- I just popped a few from the freezer into the microwave for 30 seconds. They were perfect for lunch (with some A-1 sauce, yum!).

My First Bento

Here is my first attempt at making bento lunches for myself and my boyfriend. I don't have real bento boxes yet, so I used tupperware for him and an old Quizno's salad container for me. I've been collecting bento supplies such as rice molds, mini cookie cutters, sauce containers, etc. The bento boxes are still in the mail. :)

Contents of his bento (above): Three vegetarian gyoza, two onigiri with a little bit of pork inside (one is stacked under the other), blanched brocolli, cucumber slices, strawberries, and a clementine. Not pictured are two tiny sauce containers filled with spicy ginger dipping sauce. They are really cute, shaped like fish -- I forgot to put them in until after the photo!

Contents of my bento (below): Three vegetarian gyoza, boiled egg, blanched brocolli, cucumber slices, strawberries, and a clementine. And the spicy ginger dipping sauce, not pictured. The sauce recipe is from MY'sCC.


The egg was supposed to go in Sheu's bento, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it. That's why it's a bit smashed -- I was clumsy transferring it to my container! I like the shape of the Quizno's salad bowl. Unfortunately it is flimsy and only lasted two days (two lunches) before cracking in various places.

I didn't have time to cut the cucumber & egg in shapes, but I'm hoping to practice that in the future. I just need to get up earlier. :)

The Wrong Miso

Last night, Sheu and I decided to make a miso-based soup. We sort of made it up, going by a mish-mash of three different recipes we found online and whatever ingredients we had on hand. Boy, did our soup have potential! Check out our ingredients list:

Brocolli, julienned carrots, silken tofu, baby bella mushrooms, Taiwanese bokchoy, some kind of seaweed, scallions, rice noodles, and miso broth. We put sliced boiled eggs in our bowls of soup, and Sheu also added fish cakes to his.

Unfortunately the soup didn't taste as good as it looks. We used 1/3 cup miso paste (in 6 cups water) to make the broth, and after tasting it, we decided to put in MORE miso paste, because it just wasn't flavorful enough. It still didn't seem quite right...why didn't it taste like the miso I've had in Sheu's parents' house and restaurants?

Today in the Asian grocery, we looked more closely at the containers of miso in the refrigerated section. Oops, it turns out there are many kinds of miso! Last week was the first time I'd ever bought miso, and I just grabbed a container without paying attention to the type. It turns out that we bought shiro miso (white miso). This is a lighter, sweeter miso. What we probably should have bought is aka miso (red miso). After reading up on it tonight, I found that aka miso is the darker, saltier type. It probably would have been better for our soup. :(

We did the noble thing and decided to finish the shiro miso before buying a new container of aka miso. Sheu said we can just add twice as much shiro miso to our soups (to give it a stronger flavor and use it up quicker, hee hee).

Another thing about the soup is that we overcooked the rice noodles a bit. Today we bought udon noodles, which should be better for soups, I think...? We'll find out the next time!

Uh...Muffins?

Late last night, I got the urge to whip up a batch of easy muffins from my new Betty Crocker cookbook. I used the Cinnamon Apple Muffins recipe (which is actually listed as a variant of their blueberry muffin recipe). They are definitely fast and easy to make, but something went terribly wrong, as you can see in the photo!

I kept checking the recipe, afraid that I might have left something out. The batter was very, very dry -- about the same consistancy as Playdough. Eh? I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions and ingredients carefully, but these "muffins" turned out more like biscuits. The apple pieces cooked up very well, and the inside of each muffin was fairly moist. The outside is crunchy, though. Oh, well! Apple biscuits taste fine.

Vegetarian Gyoza and Kung Pao Chicken

This is my first attempt at making gyoza. It was easier than I expected! Yes, it was a little time consuming to create the dumplings, but well worth it. The cool thing is, these can be frozen and cooked later. I followed the great step-by-step instructions on the Cooking Cute website. You might notice some inconsistent sizes in the photo above. They became more uniform as I went along. :)

For the filling I used what we had on hand: cabbage, tofu, asparagus, zucchini, and garlic, with some asian flavorings (soy sauce, rice wine, five spice powder). I cooked half of the dumplings and froze the other half. Here they are after freezing for about two hours -- ready to go in freezer bags!


We ate the gyoza dumplings with Spicy Ginger Dipping Sauce from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. Sheu made Kung Pao Chicken for himself (see below), also from MY'sCC (we really have been using that cookbook a lot!). A dish of rice from our rice cooker, and our meal was complete!

Mushrooms and Bok Choy With Fried Garlic

Sheu made this for dinner last night. :) I helped with the garlic frying part.

This is another recipe from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. We've been using that cookbook almost exclusively lately! There are lots of good recipes to try. This recipe actually calls for baby bok choy, but Sheu used Shanghai bok choy because that's what we had on hand. The flavor of this dish was great, but the Shanghai bok choy has some tough fibers in it that made it hard to chew. Sheu said he wants to try the dish again, but with baby bok choy.

I did some reading on Martin Yan -- I didn't realize he's a very well known chef with a long-running cooking show! D'oh! We bought the cookbook in a used bookstore about a year ago, and although we've been using it, I hadn't paid much attention to the dude on the cover, until now. Sheesh!

I found this video of Martin Yan chopping vegetables. Fun to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9lKA5_bPI

The Sketch Blog of Richard Case

I was delighted to find out that Richard Case has a sketch blog! Rich is a terrific illustrator (and a super nice guy to boot). I've enjoyed looking at the sketches and art he's shared on his blog. I hope he'll post often!

I especially like these sketches of kids ice skating.
http://rhomblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/ice-skating-in-august.html

You can click on the sketches to see large versions. Very nice!