Although I’ve been buying (second-hand!) accessories for our stand mixer, we don’t have a dough hook yet and haven’t been able to make pizza dough. As a substitute, Imperfect Produce recently had “imperfect” pre-made pizza crusts. Maybe they were short-coded? They were some sort of fancy, too, multi-grain with sprouted wheat, I think (although they were essentially big tortillas… Not very fluffy at all).
Imperfect Produce has recently expanded into non-produce items, so we’ve been able to get pasta, cheese, butter, and even goat milk from them. They have a “perfect” line, but I avoid that.
Broccoli and other random veggies. Both pizzas had Italian cheese mix and some Gruyère.Pepperoni and mushroom. The pepperoni was a free leftover from a recent wedding! We also got about 3 quarts of paella, a pint of mini macarons, and some appetizers.
One of my favorite, exceptionally tender cookies! Fatty nuts (pecans) make them even better, but other nuts also work. The recipe is from The Joy of Cooking (my mom said it might be from Betty Crocker).
Mexican wedding cakes/Russian teacakes
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup finely chopped nuts
Thoroughly mix butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add flour, salt, and nuts. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 10-12 minutes at 400°F until set but not brown. While warm, roll in powdered sugar. Roll in sugar again once cooled.
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I gave up a while ago on my gray linen shirt, after extensive patching failed to halt its rate of degradation. I still really like it, though, and I’d like to recreate it in the future, so I’m trying to trace its pieces to make a pattern!
Tracing the yoke! The pattern paper is from my grandmother’s sewing collection (or, y’know, maybe it’s a really low quality tablecloth that I failed to identify correctly).
Cutting the garment apart wasn’t as easy or as clean as I would have hoped, so a copy-cat shirt might end up a little wonky… We’ll have to see. I also tore the sleeves into strips before deciding to make a pattern, so… I’ll have to wing those when the time comes.
Here are some old projects I found. I think I made them in middle school – I was really into beading and jewelry then.
Collection of pendants made out of polymer clay!This is a waterfall jungle scene, complete with vines and reptiles. You’re supposed to hang dangly things from the bottom holes.Some abstract thing I actually turned into a necklace. It looks kinda like corn…My mom’s grade-school watercolor kit (we did not get rid of it), and her scientific drawing dip pen! Vintage~
Both of my siblings are strangely attached to crayons. Although they allowed many of our crayons to be given away, the compromise was that we had to keep the 96-color set. As sibling C said, “Who knows when the world will end and we realize we need crayons”.
Sibling C and I went to a cool estate sale in Austin a few weeks ago! It was particularly well-organized, and much of the normal junk that clutters estate sales (old food, low-quality mismatched silverware, low-quality pans, etc) had either been hidden or sold.
I was excited to find a small collection of old shaving accoutrements. I have a straight razor (that I need to get sharpened), but I’ve also been interested in trying out safety razors, with the particular goal of being able to recommend them to friends in good faith.
I bought 2 of the razors from the sale for $3.75 each, which seemed like a good price 👍
On the left is a Gillette “Tech” made in the ’40s. It is stainless steel and essentially the same design as modern razors. On the right is a Gillette “Old Type” made in 1914 (105 years old!!). It is silver-plated brass.
Halve eggs lengthwise, removing yolks and mashing with a fork. Stir in mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, and salt. Fill eggs halves with mixture, garnishing with paprika or parsley.
Friend J, N, and I went to the Japan Society to learn the secrets of making dashi.
N asked the presenter where to buy high quality bonito for making dashi. Turns out that the secret supplier is Amazon.
They gave us sample of three types of dashi: kelp, bonito, and mushroom. Only the bonito one tasted like anything to me. Some salt would have been nice.
The Japan Society seemed pretty nice. They offer Japanese classes there too!
Went to HiroNori Craft Ramen in Santa Clara. It had 4.5 stars on Yelp so I was obligated to go.
Yelp reservation only. Worked out pretty well, and it was a better experience than waiting in line for 2 hours at Ramen Nagi. Although I do like waiting in lines…
The menu.
Tonkotsu ramen. It was pretty good! Would recommend. For first timers they give you the “garlic black oil” (you can see it in the picture below), a $1 value, for free. The garlic oil was quite good and I’ll probably order it next time, so I guess their advertising scheme worked.
Chicken karaage. Also quite good! It came with some sauce that was also very good. The aforementioned black garlic oil is in the upper left.
Overall I’d say it was solidly solid. I think I like the ramen and the customization options at Ramen Nagi a bit better, but HiroNori compares quite favorably (with no waiting in line). And the chicken karaage was really good, which Ramen Nagi doesn’t offer. I’ll be back.
I got a free baguette from somewhere a few months ago. It’s been sitting in my freezer since then, desiccating, apparently. I got it out to make banh mi yesterday and discovered that it was rock hard. I would’ve given up on the whole idea except that I’d already bought all the other ingredients.
To attempt to rehydrate the bread, I… steamed it. It mostly worked. Soggy on the outside and still pretty hard on the inside = delicious, right? Fortunately, panfrying got rid of the sogginess.
Bread down, onto the hacked-together filling! The main components of banh mi are some protein (I used fried tofu and scrambled egg), cilantro, mayo, fish sauce, and marinated veggies. I had trouble with the fish sauce (don’t have it) and the marinated vegetables (don’t have vinegar), so I made some wild substitutions like usual.
Julienned carrots and radish are supposed to be marinated in a combination of rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. I didn’t want to buy a whole container of vinegar (and it’s not available in bulk) just as I’m about to move out, so my plan was to use lemon or lime juice in place of vinegar. Lime would be especially fitting – it’s commonly used as a topping. But… the grocery store didn’t have either 🙁 The closest alternative I could find was grapefruit. I still don’t know if that was a good choice.
I added bonito flakes to the marinade to substitute for fish sauce.
The final banh mi-like sandwich. (This nice plate was a bulk-trash-pickup-day find 🙂
The sandwich was actually pretty good, considering. The vegetables only have the faintest hint of grapefruit-bitterness flavor… 😀
A while ago, I need to use up a pound or so of sour cream (left over from some event) and some over-cooked sweet potato. I steamed it into sweet potato mush 🙁 I had the bright idea of making pancakes (really good, super tender and fluffy) and biscuits (not so great, but edible).
At least they have a good color. Any suggestions on how to use up a ton of biscuits?
The original biscuit recipe, which is much better than my modification, is from Joy of Cooking:
Cream biscuits
20 2-inch biscuits
2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (might need more salt)
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
Mix dry ingredients. Add the cream all at once. Mix until the dry ingredients are moistened.
Gather the dough into a ball and knead it gently 5-10 times, adhering any loose pieces in the process, until the work area is clean.
Roll or pat the dough out to 1/2-inch thick. Cut into desired size (2-inch squares is standard). Reroll and cut any scraps.
Bake in center rack at 450°F for 10-12 minutes until biscuits are golden on top. Set biscuits close together on baking sheet for joined biscuits with soft sides.
(To cook on a griddle, roll dough out to 1/4-3/8-inch thick. Cook in griddle until brown on one side, 3-4 minutes, then turn and cook until brown on the other side.)
