Dinners at home with my family almost always turns out to be a feast or buffet. If anyone’s coming over, you’re sure to be leaving with a very full stomach. Ever since the recent trickling of companies started to send me some of their products to eat or drink with for the past few months and my garden’s growing quite a bit of cucumbers, I thought I might as well utilize them for my dinners (and of course, my parents chipped in the help, both cooking and eating).
Big ol’ cuke
Large, fat cucumbers that are larger than my hand’s grasp are bursting out from its vines, I made a simple, refreshing salad by using the mandoline. The remarkable difference between homegrown cucumbers to the ones you buy from a grocery store is the freshness and the flavor; it’s so much sweeter and juicier. Continue reading “Dinners at Home” »
Happy New Year, Everyone! I hope you all haven’t partied too hard on New Year’s Eve…
To ring in the New Year, I wanted to make (not much baking involved in this particular cake) a showstopping cake. Since my GREs are done I had time to kill and might as well do something ambitious than the typical layer cake.
Happy belated new year everyone! I hope all of you had a great time partying all night long or had a quiet time at home with friends and family. If you’re wondering what the heck I did, I went with the latter option. I’m not exactly the nightlife-lovin’ gal. I just shared a bottle of Prosecco with my family at midnight and made this cake several hours before. [Points down] Continue reading “Happy (Belated) New Year!” »
As promised from the previous post, here’s the recipe for my mom’s chocolate cake. It’s decadent, chocolate-y and nutty from the use of almond flour. Again, I had to make my own almond flour since the grocery stores I shop in don’t carry it. The other changes I’ve done was to add on the chocolate glaze that was left over from my brother’s cake and used Lindt’s Excellence 85% Cocoa Bar for the chocolate solids. What surprised me was the fact that it was easy to make.
It’s just one of those mornings when I have to get up at 4:30 AM and start cranking out breakfast. I know it’s an insane time for most of you to get up that early but if you have a demanding mother who requests you to bake this as the last home baked breakfast for your younger brother before he goes back to college, you have to do it. Trust me. Living with a mom who can start World War III for the smallest things isn’t worth the fight.
Are you worth my sleep time?
So, I started prepping my usual go-to bread, my variation of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s cinnamon raisin loaf, the night before. (What I’ve altered from her recipe was replacing the cinnamon spiral with sweetened, flaked coconut, soaked the raisins, and made the dough a bit sweeter). I shaped it, proofed it, and placed the loaves in the refrigerator overnight. Thankfully, my mom’s willing to take out the loaves from the fridge around 3 AM since she’s usually having her early morning food cravings.
I popped these babies in the oven around 5. When the loaves are about three-fourths baked through, the entire house smells like toasted coconut. Besides the fact that it made me hungry, it woke up my sleepy-headed father who wouldn’t normally wake up until 7:30.
Hmmm…maybe you’re ain’t so bad after all
Innards
At least my efforts weren’t wasted: my mom’s happy about this loaf since she likes soft bread; my dad’s happy just to eat fresh baked bread and my brother liked it because it’s tasty. I’m just happy because everyone’s happy with the food (I also baked a batch of cranberry orange muffins), have my morning cup of coffee, and GO TO SLEEP.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family! I’m going to skip a few posts about places I’ve eaten since it is time-appropriate and it’s one of those rare home baking posts. Ooooh… I can bake.
As you can tell these past recent weeks, I’m writing pretty much an average about a post a week. It’s going to be like this for a while just because I’m snowballed with school and I’m dreading the LSATs! Good lord help me on the latter. I’m scared the wits out of me for this one test for the sake of law school. Anyways, I’m writing the aforementioned on the title but skipping out on Jean Georges just because that restaurant deserves its own post. Even though you see or seen the photos on my Flickr gallery.
On Saturday, I felt brunch-y and motivated to brave the mythical lines that one would face at Prune.
Hostess checking out the line…
People…
Once I got in the place is pretty much packed. Tables were close together, just barely letting a person fit in between each table. Lively chatter from the diners surrounding me. This place is charming. It has this old French country feel with worn walls, antique mirrors, and the open French doors of sorts where I was sitting. It’s unlike any other restaurant I’ve ever been in, in a good way. Continue reading “Brunch at Prune; Shake Shack, Ninth Street Espresso, and Picnick” »
I know I haven’t written in a loong time. It’s not that I’m ignoring you intentionally, it’s just that my life is flooded with a lot of drama that I don’t want to go into depth. If you can recall recently about my mom being sick and all, she has been operated a couple of days ago and she’s doing okay so far. She’s just fatigued and a bit dizzy since she’s been in bed for a while and the surgery has taken a bit of a toll on her. As I’ve said earlier I’m behind so I’ll catch you up with the food things that happened since my last post that was notable.
Back two Friday mornings ago, my parents and I went to Mt. Sinai Hospital to meet the surgeon and consult about what will happen to my mom and schedule the surgery. After that, I have to run a few errands in regards to school so I left my parents and walked down Madison Avenue. Somehow I was curious to about Yura & Company’s food when I was about to pass by, and just dropped in to see what they have.
Some things in life are better simple. Take cake for example. I know a typical person would love cake slathered in buttercream or any smooth, sweet frosting. I would too…but I wasn’t feeling fussy these days since a batch of buttercream wouldn’t survive the heat in my kitchen since these days the weather in New York City it is hot and humid: a baker’s worst enemies. I just wanted a simple pound cake – unadulterated, simple but nevertheless delicious.
I am very well aware most of you are still visiting my site for updates…and well, you know I’m not doing it that often. I apologize for not doing much just because I’m working (as I hope most of you know) and the area where I’m working at lacks any good food that doesn’t warrant my efforts on posting. So, there’s my reasons for not updating so often. I’m sorry and I thank you for my fans out there who still check on my site constantly. Did I mention I love you for doing that? If I haven’t, I LOVE you!
Onto the food…as I’ve mentioned earlier, I don’t eat out that much which means, I’m baking/cooking more often. So, I ended up baking a batch of walnut brownies from on Ina Garten’s Outrageous Brownies. And boy, aren’t they awesome…
Big ol’ cuke
