kabocha mileage

Let me tell you. For one person, one kabocha squash lasts many many meals. Roast it whole on a Sunday. Then scoop out flesh and eat throughout the week.

breakfast

Several breakfasts can be coaxed out of a kabocha squash stuffing...bread pudding hybrid...thing. Basically just caramelized onions, kabocha, bleu cheese, and freezer reserve sourdough. Drizzled with balsamic and sprinkled with red pepper flakes.

dinner in dimlight

I am going to complain about the sun setting at 5pm until the next daylight savings time. Some "yeah... it's crazy, man" mixed with some "the world is so fucked" with a seasonal sprinkle of "is it bed time already?"

This is me checking out for the rest of the year. Ready for the holiday-in-a-pandemic blur.

chili oil

chili oil

lots of dried arbol chilies

almost as much sichuan peppercorns

one dried shiitake

some sugar

salt to taste

msg to taste

-grind it up

one shallot, diced

lots of garlic garlic, sliced

lots of grapeseed oil

-fry it up

-pour it up over ground spices

-let it all soak it up overnight at least

cobbled

 

easy

doenjang mushroom toast

half onion, sliced

mushrooms, sliced

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

big spoonful doenjang

-sautee mushrooms with garlic
-meanwhile caramelize onions
-add mushrooms back into onions
-mix in big spoonful of doenjang
-eat on toasted sourdough slices


Sometimes you just need something simple and easy.

curl up in it

pc. Joyce

This craving had been a long time coming. Mostly because several different people kept saying "pot pie" and my brain is easily influenced. Planting a seed in the mush inside this skull is disconcertingly easy. I thought my childhood dreams and fantasies would be fulfilled when we went to Half Dome and Jennie brought a pack of frozen Marie Callender's chicken pot pies. And I thought longingly about that pie the entire 18-20 mile hike. And it was... fine. Not quite as comforting I remembered. Soupier than I remembered...

escape

Raise your hand if you need a break because humans are fatiguing.
If you decide to temporarily escape, consider a container of musubis for roadtrip snacking.

spam n cheese musubi

1 musubi recipe from Alana

furikake

shredded white cheddar

-take many liberties with musubi glaze if you please i.e. using hojicha syrup + soy 

-mix cooked sushi rice with Asian pickle vinegar (reserved from carrots pickled in rice vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic) and furikake

-assemble musubi with layer of shredded cheese in between ham and rice

The layer of cheese was fantastic. Like a thin layer of mayo in a sammich, it added subtle creaminess and the illusion that I am a genius.

seventynine

pc: Joyce

Temporary social media cleanse kind of doing its job. Midday fikas giving me back some life.

Today was Joyce's gochujang sheet pan chicken with cute little turnips from Dirty Girl and my garlic spinach noods.

Eaten until my butt got wet in the freshly cut grass.

seventyseven unrest

Yesterday, I woke up early to find that Davin and his date did not need the other round of pizza dough I had prepared and left proofing for nearly two days. So I flattened it and tossed it into the oven. Unseasoned, unflavored, untopped, undressed. Just a sad blank canvas because I couldn't find it within me to do anything else with it.
This feels like a metaphor for current life.

I ate it with carrot top pesto because it was already prepared and waiting for me in the fridge. But otherwise I would've eaten it with nothing at all.
It's almost a shame it didn't meet its full pizza potential because it was quite chewy, lightly tangy, and pleasantly puffy.

seventytwo knives

Pork floss on toasted croissant from the reserves for breakfast.

Who in the world came up with pork floss?

It is so unrecognizable as meat and so unappetizing in its English translation. The last time I had pork floss was probably well before college. The last time I downed an entire bucket of the stuff in front of the TV like popcorn was sometime in middle school. It just melts in your mouth, exactly like cotton candy. Savory, meaty, stringy cotton candy..... yum, right? Leaving hardly a trace on your tongue so you are free to keep eating until you've found the bottom of the container.

sixtyfour mac and queso

I had a burning, growing mac and cheese craving. I think the last time I actually had mac and cheese was back in December when Christy brought me Homeroom post breakup. This is obviously unacceptable. I need mac and cheese now. This video did not help, but it did inspire [me to stock up on lots of boxed mac and cheese next time I go shopping]. Yet again, several pieces conveniently fell into place... including a block of fontina that was slowly being devoured by mold and needed eating immediately ... oops.

No elbows? No problem. I also had a carton of egg yolks that was on its last leg.

serious eats pasta

1/2c Capay mills flour

1/2c AP flour

3T yolks from a carton

3T whites from a carton

1/2t salt

-make into fun shapes for practice

sixtythree colors

I used to consume Garfield comics bilingually. Random, but I guess my extended family members just liked to gift me a lot of Garfield books where one side was in (sometimes grammatically incorrect) English and the other was in Chinese. We also had DVDs that I'd binge on the couch while being eaten alive by mosquitoes in the Beijing summer. To this day when I see a drawing of Garfield, I hear his voice as a monotone Chinese man.
Anyways, all that is to say that I hate Mondays, too.
How do I even discern the days? My capitalistically American-raised mind must just know.

We're still working on that pate toast. This time I spiced things up by spreading apricot jam on one of the pieces too.

It wouldn't be characteristic of me to have posted this birthday cake "on time." I didn't even make this birthday cake "on time." Happy very belated birthday to Kels (it was in March...).
I promise this Hawaii themed cake was my original intention eons ago. Until I learned that she was going to be out of office the entire week of her birthday. And then quarantine happened. But then heartbreak occurred as it does, and what better way to patch up a broken heart than with sweet and sticky cake?

pineapple citrus cake
mango filling
meringue buttercream in the style of crashing waves and a itty bitty pineapple

fiftyfour spa waters

Another tagine pate toast + bevvy pairing. This one is yerba mate with a slice of fresh lemon and a slice of candied lemon, a spot of honey, and a spoonful of ginger juice.

And another kind of toast + bevvy pairing. I jumped on the dalgona train. Don't worry, it was actually for a work project I made up. Anyways, I didn't actually know what to do with it post stability monitoring... until I found this long lost last piece of coffee frangipane milk bread from Joyce. And I slathered the coffee fluff all over it, and it was perfect.


Picked some mint from Joyce's ~garden~ to make spa water at home. This will get me through the impending heat wave.

fortynine ways to eat salmon

Here, have more pictures of croissants.

Inside layers need more improvement//separation but now I roughly know how to stuff. When I grow up, I want to be like Supermoon.

fortyseven bananas

pc: Joyce.

Plans were almost entirely derailed for an unexpectedly long walk, but in an entirely uncharacteristic turn of events, I managed to overcome the lethargy and check everything off my food to-do list.
Sadly, I did not manage to clear enough space in the fridge for the whole salmon I would like to deconstruct. Three things out, four things back in. Sigh.

fortysix cold brew jitters

Another work day, another cream filled donut.

Another Friday, another fika with more hummus and flatbread.

Another month has gone by with only more grand food plans and no end in sight.

Dinner was tagine sourdough with pate and sauteed chrysanthemum greens.

freezer-clean-out-giblet-collection pate

-thaw collection of giblets you've inevitably and obviously collected over a couple years of roasting whole chickens and separate out livers

-saute aromatics (onion&garlic)

-add herbs (thyme)

-deglaze with alcohol (vermouth)

-dump into blender cup

-fry livers and also dump into blender cup

-add vinegar (red wine)

-add more wine if you please and I'm sure you please (roscato)

-blend and season to taste

-spread on toast and top with roasted quinoa so that it looks like two pieces of salmon at first glance

-crave salmon

Eaten while pretending I could have Normal People chemistry in real life.

thirtynine clues

Oh my, what an excuse to dig into what's left of my jewelry box and eat spoonfuls of caviar.

Not intentionally related events, but entirely appropriate.

thirtyfive bun bebes

Shhh, they're napping.

I have some yeast that's semi dead (left). And I have some other yeast that's definitely mostly dead (right). So the ones on the right are still sleeping - we'll give them another chance to rise up by tomorrow.

Pregamed the dentist today with this piece of bruleed toast. Slice of hojicha sourdough, spread of honey butter, powdered sugar torched to caramelize. It was lovely.

thirty flirty and thriving

When in doubt, put an egg on it.

More kimchi tofu stew + even more rice + one sunny side up egg so it's breakfast now.

Lunch appetizer ended up being Joyce's challah French toast and two oolong shortbread cookies, not pictured because it was eaten on the one block walk home... which was actually a feat because the walk from hers to mine is entirely uphill and I had to trade off inhaling challah schmeared in coconut cream for breathing oxygen to stay alive.

meditating on twentynine dumps

[not pictured] two more dumplings to make it 29. What a missed opportunity.