my little mochi

Bananarama

It feels like ages since I last posted even though it's only been over a week, but in blogtime I guess that's pretty long. I have a big deadline at work coming up and crafting and blogging has screeched to a halt. I worked all day Saturday, but I took a break today for some much needed house cleaning and time with Buddy. 

The cruel summer weather has officially hit our corner of the world, because it was punishingly hot today, and having no AC for relief made it almost unbearable. The heat must've started to fry my brain as well because I promised Buddy we'd bake today. Apparently it just wasn't hot enough for me so let's make it REALLY uncomfortable and turn on the oven!

But all our discomfort was not wasted as we managed to bake a fudge marble cake and some banana bread. I try to bake something with Buddy at least once a week. My mom taught me to bake at an early age and once I got the hang of it, she let me have full reign of the kitchen. I'm hoping that Buddy will love baking as much as I do and maybe when he's older I'll reap the tasty benefits of giving him full reign of our kitchen.

I've been making this banana bread for years and it's one of Mr. T's favorites. It's light and fluffy, moist and not too sweet. My not-so-secret trick is to use very overripe bananas. I find bananas are really at their best for banana bread when they're practically black. Around here bananas tend to ripen overnight so I freeze the overripe ones for future bread making.

Anyway, if you can bear to turn on your oven in this weather, here's the recipe:

Fluffy Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar (I sometimes use 3/4 cup sugar for a lighter version)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 2/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed overripe bananas
1/2 cup sour cream (I use non fat plain yogurt for a slightly lower fat version)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In a large bowl, cream butter, sugar and vanilla well. Add eggs, one a a time and beat until fluffy. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Sift a small amount of flour mixture into butter/sugar mixture, add a small amount of sour cream, and a small amount of mashed bananas and gently stir only until ingredients are mixed - do not over mix. Note: To get a light fluffy bread you must add all the ingredients separately and GENTLY stir them in small increments into the butter/sugar mixture. Repeat step until all ingredients are incorporated into butter/sugar mix. Gently stir in chopped nuts.

Bake in a large greased loaf pan or 2 smaller ones at 350 degrees for 1 hour. (Note: depending on the loaf pan size you use, and the hotness of your oven, the baking time may be a lot less. I start checking the loaf for readiness at 30 minutes. Over baking will cause the bread to dry out.)

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

To market, to market, to buy a fat hog.

Home again, home again, jiggety jog!

Cupcakes for Buddy's class made with mini m&m and tootsie roll eyes, fruit roll up mouths (I'm terrible at piping frosting), mini cinnamon gold fish cracker ears (tail in first) and Japanese cracker (I don't know what these are called, it's the one that looks like tiny bread buns) noses.

Yawn! Now I need to go to bed.

Obento madness

Buddy is set to start kindergarten this fall and unlike preschool where lunch was included in the tuition, we'll now have the option of sending a home lunch. The school lunch is moderately priced, but after I added it up for a years worth of lunches it got to be fairly expensive, especially given the amount of food, or rather lack of food, the Budster has been eating lately.

So I'm thinking I could manage making lunch at least a couple of times a week, and besides I've secretly been longing to make Buddy some bento lunches like I posted about before. And then yesterday I stumbled upon this crazy bento site which is just exploding with bento ideas. There's only one little glitch though, Buddy isn't very fond of rice, which is incomprehensible to his musubi loving mother who has been known to eat five or six in one sitting.

Posting and paratha

I can't count the number of times I've tried to post this week. No matter what I write I can't hit the delete button fast enough. Sadly that's the way it's been going with crafting too. Lately, I feel like hitting delete on every project I start. My thoughts have been all over the map and I can't seem to focus my energy in any one area. Any ideas on how to jump start a creative lull?

But I do have one good thing to share. Look what we found at a local Indian market we discovered recently.

Anything made by Pillsbury seems hardly "authentic", but it was mighty tasty and I would have bought it just for the package alone.

And thank you everyone for the lovely comments about my hedgepom! I'm always thrilled when people enjoy something I've made. I really appreciate each and every comment, so mahalo nui loa!

Happy Bunny Rabbitis Day

Grilled cheese sandwiches for a little rabbit. Because in case you didn't know, it's Bunny Rabbitis Day.

That's the last food post for this week, I promise. Have a great weekend everyone!

(Added: I used a carrot shaped cookie cutter to cut the bread and cheese, outlined it with food coloring marker pens and then grilled it in a pan.)

Laksa

Tonight we had the last of my month long birthday dinners at a place that's quickly become one of my favorite restaurants. Panya Bistro is a bakery/restaurant/bar at the Ala Moana Shopping Center that offers an eclectic mix of American, Japanese, Chinese, local and South East Asian food. I googled it and was surprised to read that it's the place where all the "hip, young, beautiful" people hang out. Most of the places we eat at are where the "tired, crayon-toting, mac cheese-eating" people hang out, but they let us in anyway.

My favorite dish at Panya is the Laksa, a super ono Malaysian noodle dish. It has two different types of noodles, shrimp, fish cake, aburage (fried tofu), bean sprouts, and corn in a spicy broth. I'm not sure what's in the broth, but it tasted like a delicate blend of coconut milk, lemon grass and chili pepper oil. Yum!

Quiche

Thanks so much everyone for sharing your sleep habits, I really enjoyed reading the comments and was surprised at how much response it got. It seems 5-6 hours a night is more common than I would have thought. As for me, I usually go to bed no earlier than midnight and lately it's been a lot later. We set the alarm for 5:30 am each weekday and depending on my schedule I may get up then or a little later. But when I do sleep-in it's not a quality sleep as my son will ask "can we get up now?" every 5 minutes from the time he wakes up.

My family is always on my case about how tired I look and how little sleep I get, but I just can't seem to break the habit. I did experiment once with getting more sleep and committed to going to bed by 10 pm every night for a month. I don't remember if I felt more rested, but I do remember feeling pretty miserable about the time I lost.

A habit that I wish I could develop is cooking or at least prepping our meals the night before. Weekdays are always crazy, rushing around, fighting traffic to pick up Buddy in time from school and then fighting traffic all the way home. And the last thing I feel like doing once we're finally home is cook. So I'm always on the lookout for recipes that have the words "quick", "fast", or "simple" in the title.

Here's a spinach quiche (another rainy day photo) I made the other week that wasn't as quick as the title promised, but tasty nonetheless. I've only made quiche once before and with terrible results, but I liked this one and will definitely make it again. I served it with a baby spinach salad with dried cranberries, candied sliced almonds and a rasberry walnut vinaigrette.

Quick Spinach Quiche

1 tablespoon butter
1 onion chopped
1 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained well.
1 9-inch refrigerated ready piecrust (1/2 box)
1 teaspoon all purpose flour
1/2 cup (about 2 ounces) grated Montery Jack cheese
1/2 cup (about 2 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese
4 eggs
1/2 cup lowfat cottage cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon dried dillweed

Melt butter in heavy medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute until translucent, about 8 minutes. Add spinach and stir until spinach is dry, about 3 minutes. Cool slightly.

Preheat oven to 375 deg F. Dust one side of crust with flour. Transfer to 9-inch diameter quiche dish or pie pan, floured side down. Press into pan, sealing any cracks. Trim edges. Sprinkle both cheeses over bottom of crust. Top with spinach mixture. Beat eggs, cottage cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg and dillweed in large bowl to blend. Pour over spinach mixture. Bake until filling is set, about 50 minutes. Cool slightly. Cut into wedges and serve.

Note: I used a deep dish glass pie pan and when I poured the egg mixture over the spinach it barely covered the spinach mixture so I ended up doubling the egg mixture.

And now I'm off to bed!

Won ton and cheese with crab (and dog)

It's actually supposed to be "Won ton with crab and cheese" but the cheese insisted on being up high (and bringing the dog). The crab of course wasn't too happy about the second billing, but was finally calmed down enough to pose for the pic.

So what do these things have in common? Combine them together (leave out the dog) and it makes for a super yummy appetizer. This is a recipe I've been meaning to post for a while now but kept forgetting to. Don't tell the crab and cheese that the recipe actually uses cream cheese and imitation crab.

Won ton with crab and cream cheese

1 - 8 ounce cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 beaten egg
2 cloves garlic minced
1/4 cup red onion minced
1/2 lb. imitation crab meat
1 package won ton pi wrappers
1 beaten egg (to seal won ton pi)   

In a bowl mix all ingredients except the won ton pi and beaten egg for sealing. Place a 1 teaspoon heaping mound of filling in middle of won ton pi and moisten top edges with beaten egg. Fold over into a triangle shape, pressing lighting on the top edges to seal.

Moisten one side corner with egg, overlap with other corner and press together.

Deep fry wontons until golden brown, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels and serve with Thai sweet chili pepper sauce. Makes about 24 won tons.

Sign-ups for the New Years postcard swap have been steadily trickling in and we're already at 70 participants. This is turning out to be a lot bigger than the last swap so I'm contemplating ending the sign ups early and limiting the number of swappers to 100. But for now I'll keep it open and see how it goes.

Let it snow!

Who says you can't have snowmen at Christmastime when you live in a tropical climate?

 

I got the idea for these cookies from a Japanese food book I bought earlier this year called "Character Ippai no Okashi" (ISBN 4-8347-1739-9) by Yukiko Brenek.

She used sliced dried mango and cherry for the nose, eyes and buttons and slivered almonds for the arms. I used dried papaya and cranberries for mine. I didn't want to do the conversions for the recipe so I used this almond horn one instead and it worked just fine, although the cookies did expand quite a bit. I think any cookie recipe that doesn't bake up brown should work great, like a sugar or shortbread cookie.

Almond Horns
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup ground almonds
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 325F. In large bowl combine powdered sugar and butter. Beat at medium speed until creamy. Add egg yolks and vanilla extract; continue beating until well blended. Reduce speed to low. Add flour, almonds, cream of tartar and baking soda. Continue beating until well mixed. Refridgerate dough until hard enough to form into firm balls.

Shape the dough into little balls and add a small amount of water between the two balls to join them. Apply dried papaya for nose, thin slices/pieces of dried cranberries for eyes, mouth and buttons and slivered almonds for the arms. A toothpick helps to pick up the various dried fruit bit and apply it to cookie. (Note: This is a very soft cookie recipe and the dough tends to spread easily when baked. Since we live in Hawaii I shaped my cookies and then put them in the fridge for a while before baking them to help prevent them from spreading out too much in the oven.)

Bake for about 8-10 minutes. Cool completely before sifting powdered sugar over cookies.

Here's Buddy's version of us as a snow family. Note the legs on his snowmen. This addition was necessary for them to be able to walk off the plates and into our mouths. Yum!

They did the mash

We had a monster making weekend at our house. Last week, I bought a special edition halloween rice krispie cereal at the supermarket not knowing what I would do with it. But since it had creepy marshmallow eyeballs, lips, noses and fingers in it, I knew it would be good makings for a halloween something.

So on Saturday Buddy and I decided to make some monster rice krispie treats, or as Buddy calls them, monster "rice pee cretes". He had a lot of fun sorting the various parts, and once the treats were made it was a breeze decorating them. We also had so many marshmallow body parts left over that I think I'll make cupcakes this week and let Buddy decorate those too.

These are all the monsters that I managed to photograph as a couple tried to run away so we were forced to eat them.