Let's make cookies!

Since my daughter started going to school full day she has been exhausted. I don't blame her. Last year she went to preschool only in the morning and afterwards we would usually meet up with some friends but this year she just wants to come home right away. I think it will take a month or two for her to get used to the new schedule.

After school we go straight home and she does not even want to go outside to play. I need an inside activity so I decided to bake some cookies with her. I was craving a jam thumbprint cookie that a friend made several times for us. I decided it was time to try and make them ourselves. My friend originally got the recipe from the Food Network website and simply sent me the link. How can you not love the Food Network?  You can get the recipe here.

My daughter did great job rolling the cookie dough, dipping it in egg wash, rolling on coconut flakes, and putting jam in the center. Finally she got to use her playdough skills! Thank you Hasbro.

Lunch boxes from last week

This fall marks the first year my daughter will eat lunch at school. For many reasons I am nervous about her new full day adventure. Is she able to ask teacher when she needs to go to bathroom? Can she find and open the bento box by herself? Does she understand that it is very dangerous for her to share food with her friends due to her food allergy? And the list of anxiety goes on and on. Because of this, every morning before she goes to school I tell her "you have to ask the teacher for help whenever you need help", "You need to eat vegetables too so that you will be big and strong", "no sharing food with friends, ok?". I know I should give my daughter more credit because she is very smart and capable, and she has grown up so much over the past year. I think I may need to recognize that while she will always be my baby, she isn't a baby anymore.

Here are the pictures of lunch boxes I made for my daughter last week. Every morning she comes into the kitchen and inspects her lunch box. It is so adorable to see her excitement over a simple lunch. I explain what I put in and always tell her to eat her veggies. She can be picky at times and she does not like vegetables. After I pick her up from school, she always shows me her lunch box and in a proud voice states, "Mommy, I ate well. See? I grew up so much today because I ate a lot!" and she stands up on her toes to be "taller". Simply adorable.

I am planning to take pictures of her lunch box everyday and post photos at the end of the week. If you have questions about food in the lunch boxes, please feel free to ask me. I am also planning to introduce some useful recipes for lunch boxes but have not had a chance to write it down with photos. Oh, and I used the meatballs, which I introduced last year in my blog, twice this week in her lunch box. So versatile. Enjoy!

Pictures of my daughter's lunch boxes

(September 6 ~ 9, 2011)

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

So you think you cannot cook? Part II

Ground Pork and Green Beans

with Black Bean Garlic Sauce

Recently, my neighbor gave me green beans grown in their garden. I had ground pork in my freezer so I decided to make this recipe which my dear friend Vi served me long ago. I did not know the exact recipe but I knew she used only green beans, ground pork, and black bean sauce. My husband could not find a black bean sauce at our local grocery store so we ended up with black bean garlic sauce. This just might do.

Ingredients:
1 lb green beans
1 lb ground pork
5 to 6 tbs black bean and garlic sauce

(Yes! Only 3 ingredients!)

How to make:

1. Blanch the green beans. (you do know how to blanch, right?)
2. Cook ground pork with black bean (garlic) sauce.
3. Add blanched green beans into the pork and sauce, and cook until mixed.

That's it! Doesn't it seem easy? That's because it is. I hope this will help you during a weeknight when you're out of time and energy and need something quick.

Before I end this post, I wanted to add a gratuitous photo of someone close to me. I love my son's chubby legs and his tiny feet. He is such a good eater, not just a messy one!

My kitchen is always messy!

Wow, it has been a long time since I wrote a blog post. I have been very busy! I knew my life would be chaotic when I got pregnant with my 2nd child but having two is busier than I ever thought possible (in a good way - nothing but joy over here :) ).

Taking pictures for this blog and actually finding the time to sit down and write a post can be challenging. However, I now have even more reasons to keep a record of part of my life, two important ones in fact, my children. I am not a keeping-a-daily-diary kind of woman so hopefully this blog will help me capture various points in my life, and my families as well.

You might be wondering what I've been up to. Why cooking of course! Before my children I used to have time to cook new dishes that I discovered on the Food Network TV channel or in cooking magazines. Those good ol' days are on hold. Now that my son, who is almost 7 months old, eats solid food I have to cook for him separetely from the rest of the family. I feel like I am standing in my kitchen all the time either cooking for everyone or cleaning up the mess I made. To add to this challenge, I now have to pack my daughter's lunch everyday. She started attending preschool for a full day beginning this September 1st. Occasionally I packed lunch for a random school picnic or trip but now that I have to pack lunch everyday I have been stressing out. I am not that good at arranging food in a tiny lunch box. I am hoping that by packing lunch everyday I will get used to it and someday it will be easy and quick.

I am relieved that my daughter has started her preschool because I know she will have a lot of fun with her friends, and I will also get to spend time alone with my son. I spent a lot of one on one time with my daughter for her first 3 years of life. We went for a lot of walks to nearby parks, and yes, our favorite place to visit Pike Place Market! I loved walking there during autumn, winter, and spring. Unlike summer, not so many people were there and it was easy to push a stroller or walk with a wobbly toddler. I know it is not possible to give the exact same experiences to my son, but I want to give him as much as I gave to my daughter.

I have thoroughly enjoyed making my daughter's lunch. Here are some pictures of her bento boxes. I miss her dearly while she is away at school and I wish daily that when she opens her lunch box she will think about me. The photos are not up to my standards, my appologies. I didn't have time to wait for daylight to shine through my windows and to arrange the food on the table and choose the right table cloths and everything else that goes into making a great shot. So these photos will have to due, and are purely for keeping a record of  an important event in my daughter's life, and mine too.

I love this lunch box!

This Mickey lunch box needs more color such as green and red.

This lunch box took a while to make. 

I need to work on the bumble bee. I told my daughter, "This is a bumble bee." She replied, "No mommy, it is not a bumble bee." Children are so honest.

P.S.

This is my son's lunch today. I made a butternut squash puree with a hint of cinnamon and pureed chicken breast for him. He loved it! 

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Pain au chocolat bread pudding

Before I came to Seattle, I was not into baking. I started baking out of boredom. I didn't know anyone in Seattle and I needed to find something to do until my husband (then fiancé) came home. One day I discovered the Food Network and before I knew it I had started cooking and baking. Thank you Giada, Michael, and Ina!

I always thought baking was not for me. I am neither detailed oriented nor patient and I was sure they were prerequisites for baking. However, I discovered that a lot of recipes in America use cups, mesuring spoons, and sticks of butter instead of measuring an exact amount on a scale. I liked that a lot. I also discovered a whole class of desserts that do not need to be decorated beautifully such as banana bread, muffins, and apple crumbles to name a few (believe it or not I had never eaten these desserts in Japan!). Usually referred to as 'rustic desserts' they are easy to make and taught me how fun baking can be!

Now back to watching TV. One day on the Food Network show Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello, the host, Michael, was making a pain au chocolat bread pudding dessert. It looked fabulous and easy to make. With those two necessary ingredients in hand I was immediately printing out the recipe from FoodNetwork.com and running to my nearby grocery store to fill up on everything else. You may be wondering, is it really delicious and easy to make? Oh yes, it was yummy and so easy my husband could bake it!

You can get the recipe here.


I don't know why but the Fall season makes me want to cook and bake more, especially rustic foods and desserts. This year Fall arrived in Seattle sooner than I expected triggering my need to bake. I decided to make the pain au chocolat bread pudding again, why not? This is a great recipe for a weekend brunch too. I love the cozy feeling at home, eating a late breakfast with my family while slow Jazz plays in the background sipping one of my husbands lattes, mmmm. I hope you can try this recipe someday too, and have a wonderful week!

MIA

Hi there,

I need to apologize for not updating my blog in such a long time. I have a good excuse though. I got pregnant and my morning sickness had been horrible. I did not feel like cooking or baking for a very long time. Now that I am 5 months along I feel much better and I can start to cook and bake again. However, my taste buds have not been normal lately, pregnancy still has its grip on me.

It has been frustrating that not only can I not cook, I also cannot enjoy food like I used to. I crave strange and unhealthy things. I typically am turned off by McDonald's and I don't drink soda, preferring instead tea or coffee. However, while I was suffering from morning sickness, I craved a McDonald's cheeseburger, french fries, and a coke. I tried to stop myself from eating and drinking them but I gave in 3 times and ordered a happy meal late one night. My husband gave me a hard time quoting Food Inc. Yes honey, I know all about it but I could not help it. I was powerless.

Again I apologize and thank you for patience waiting for my blog update. I hope to do a better job blogging until my 2nd child comes in February, 2011. After number two is born, I might dissapear for a while again.

Today I want to introduce a Japanese food again. It is called Tonkatsu.

Tonkatsu is a breaded deep fried pork. It is very simple and you can use leftovers and make 2 other dishes.


Tonkatsu Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lb pork loin or pork tenderloin cut in 1 inch thickness (I prefer tenderloin but I could only find normal pork loin today)


• 3 eggs


• flour


• panko (Japanese bread crmubs)


• salt and pepper


• oil for deep frying

How to make:

1. Tenderize the pork by pounding, adding salt and pepper generousely all over


2. Dust with flour, coat in an egg mix, and finally coat them with Panko. Dust, dip, dip.


3. Deep fry them until they are cooked (and be careful - we're working with pork)

I eat them with tonkatsu sauce which you can get in most asian grocery stores.

The next day I used the leftovers to make a sandwich. Typically deep fried leftovers are soggy and unappetizing, but tonkatsu is a bit different. I warmed up the tonkatsu in a microwave and coated them with tonkatsu sauce, generously. Butter (and mayo if you want) the sandwich bread and add lettuce and tonkatsu and voila, my lunch! In Japan this is a popular sandwhich called "Katsu-sando".

Looking for another idea? Try this.

I made Donburi by using leftover tonkatsu. In Japan it is called "Katsu-don".

Here is the recipe of Katsu-don:

Ingredients:

4 tonkatsu (or more)

1 yellow onion

3-4 eggs

500 ml dashi (or just water)

4 tbs sugar

4 tbs sake

1-2 tbs mirin

6 tbs soy sauce

How to make:

1. In a deep pan, mix dashi, sugar, sake, mirin, soysauce


2. As soon as the mixture boils turn down the heat to medium and add thinly sliced yellow onion, cook


3. Once the onions are soft add tonkatsu and cook for 5 min or so to heat up the tonkatsu


4. Finally pour mixed eggs all over and without touching let the eggs cook but not until they are cooked completely and hard - I stop when the eggs are still soft


5. Put all over warm rice and enjoy!

I generally don't like to deep fry at home beacuse I am stuck with left over oil and a house that smells like deep fried oil. But tonkatsu can be so versatile, it is worth it. I hope you think so too. Enjoy!

Strawberries & Raspberries Picking

For the July 4th weekend my husband and I decided to take our daughter strawberry picking at a farm in Arlington.

Picking strawberries is actually hard work! My daughter and I got tired easily but my husband was so excited he was out of control. Soon we had assembly line. My husband would pick the berry, I would hand them to our daughter, and she would put them in the container.

Here's the catch of the day...

The farm had not only strawberries but raspberries too.


Picking raspberries is easier on your back but still very hard work. They are easily crushed so you need to grasp them just right. We should have brought a pair of scissors.


We picked so many strawberries and raspberries my daughter could not carry the container, but that didn't stop her from trying.

By now we had too many strawberries and raspberries. We had no problem eating fresh strawberries and finishing them before off but the raspberries were going bad quickly and I had to do something fast.

Last year I tried a raspberry custard pie recipe from Martha Stewart Living magazine, and the pie was super yummy so I decided to make it again. It is actually a tart but no one really cares much as they are biting into it. My husband ate whole thing by himself. Thank goodness I baked two pies.

This time I used a rectangle tart pan but last year I used a normal circle tart pan. Here is the picture from last year.

If you have raspberries at home and don't know what to do, I recommend this recipe. You can click the blue highlighted letters which links to the Martha Stewart website. And remember to act fast, raspberries don't last long at all.