How to make miso soup

Happy new year, and happy birthday to me!!!! 

My birthday just passed, and thank my friends, the whole week was full of birthday parties :) 

But on my actual birthday, I invited my closest friends to a Japanese restaurant, and this conversation came up: 

"Man, miso soup is so good. I wish I could make it at home." 

Hello? This girl is from Japan. Of course, I know how to make it. So here you go, my friend.

Let's get started, y'all.

You need miso (I would reccomend "awase-miso" for the first try),

dashi (fish or sea weed stock),

*this one is dried bonito

*this one is dried kombu (a kind of sea weed)

water, and "gu," which refers to things in the soup (for example, potato and spinach; crams; daikon radish and carrot; etc.)

This time, I put some nappa cabbage, a carrot, and a green onion.

Boil the "gu." You wanna put water to the point that the surface touches the top of "gu."

Add "dashi" when the water boils. The package probably tells you how much you should put, but in general, for mid size pot, just 1 tsp is enough. 

And this is the interesting part of the use of miso;) Miso does not easily melt itself, so there is a specific technique that we do here.

Sorry, this picture wasn't that great:(

What you do is, scoup a little miso from the package using a pair of "sae-bashi," long chopsticks that we use for cooking (or you can use regular chopsticks if you don't have sae-bashi, though you gotta be careful not to burn yourself), and put it in the ladle. Put some water into the ladle and melt some miso, put back the water with melted miso, put some water again into the ladle and melt some miso... (I hope this makes sense) you continue this process until miso completely melts. I would never recommend you to put the miso directly into the pot because you would add more miso before it melts and the soup would end up too salty.

How much miso you need really depends on your taste. After you finish the first round of melting miso process, try some and see if you need more miso. We never really measure how much miso to use.lol

Gu can be so many different things. I'll share my top three:

1. Potato and spinach

2. Bean sprouts, tofu, bamboo shoots, green onion, and egg drop

3. Daikon radish

Merry (belated) Christmas 2012

I got lazy again. Although it's so easy to post journals on my blog, it's also very easy to postpone it.lol

Anyway, how was everyone's Christmas this year?

I visited my close friends who recently moved from a suburb of Chicago to St. Louis. And we had American traditional Christmas, including baking cookies :)

Check them out. It was my first time decorating cookies!! I was working with a 4-year-old boy, so I hope you can figure out which ones are mine. lol

These three were probably my favorite :) although I also liked my boy and girl pair in the other picture.


Well, since I am talking about cookies, here is my re-write of a dessert recipe.

Tropical Dessert Bar

- Bottom Layer: 1 pkg sugar cookie mix, 1/2 cup butter (melted)

- Cheese Cake Layer:  1 pkg creem cheese, 2 eggs, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract (or rum), 20oz can crushed pinapple

- Coconut Layer: 1 1/2 cup lfaked coconut, 1/2 cup macadamia nuts (chopped), 1/4 cut butter (melted)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 13 - 9 inch pan with foil.

2. Stir cookie mix and butter with folk until crumbs form. Bake 12-15 minutes.

3. Beat cream cheese in midium bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Beat in eggs just until blended. Beat in condensed milk, vanilla (or rum), and 2 tbsp pinapple juice (from the can of crushed pineapple). Pour over warm crust. Sprinkle drained pineapple.

4. Stir coconut, macadamia, and butter in a small bowl until evenly moisted. Sprinkle over pineapple layer.

5. Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool down for 1 hour on wire rack. Chill for 1 hour. Cut and it will look like this :)

I hope you all had a great Christmas ;)

Happy happy Thanksgiving

Hello!

How was your Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite holidays after moving to the US. I love love love the FOOD!! The corn, mashed potatoes, turkey, pies, it's like heaven.

So I had three Thanksgiving dinners this year. The first one was on Wednesday night, pre-game with my friends!

The host recently moved to a pretty big house from an apartment. Man, their house was gorgeous! 

Sangria with apples and cranberries. It was delish! 

There's a family who hosted me for Thanksgiving ever since I met them in my second year in college. So on Thursday morning, I visited them, helped around, and had a nice big delish lunch!

It was a lot of food. They always make the best turkey, the best corn, the best homemade noodles, the best everything. I have visited different families for holidays in the past seven years of living in the States, but so far, their food is definitely the BEST (sorry, others!).


After lunch, I made handmade Christmas cards for my kids (from work and church) and left for my dinner... I visited my best friends from college. They are married, and it was their first Thanksgiving on their own. It was exciting to be a part of "creating own tradition."

Their mashed potato was combination of sweet potatoes and red potatoes. It was interestingly tasty. Out of their meal, the potato was my favorite.

And here comes the dessert! Chocolate creme pie, cream puffs, and pumpkin roll. A-mazing, but made us way too full.


After all Thanksgiving dinners, I re-joined my "family" at a movie theatre and we watched Skyfall. Definitely a good good movie. If you haven't seen it yet, I gotta tell you it's worth watching at a theatre for sure ;)


This year, I was thankful for that I had so many invitations for Thanksgiving dinners from friends that I had to turn down so many. I am so grateful for all my friends with big kind hearts. I had a great Thanksgiving! I will have to bring this tradition back home when I move, and maybe continue family get-togethers on Skype next year!!

Vegetable Quiche

I was sick for four weeks and I finally felt alive... I would say on Tuesday last week.
So I was absent from workout for four weeks. I just went back to my gym yesterday afternoon and did my routine.

... Man, every muscle of my body hurts today!

This is what four weeks can do, I guess.


I don't think I gained any during the time I wasn't working out, but I know I WILL after Thanksgiving. lol Am I upset? No, I'm too exited to feel upset.

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? I love corn casserole, broccoli salad, and mashed potato :)
A few years ago, I made a vegetable quiche to bring to my family friends' for Thanksgiving. (I mentioned that there was a family that has been hosting me for Thanksgiving since 2007 in previous post.) My first trip to the United States was a home-staying program for the summer in Seattle when I was 14. And this quiche is from my host mom from the first American family of mine.

This is so easy and delish! I can guarantee that you would never screw this recipe up ;)


Vegetable Quiche

<Ingredients>

4 eggs, 1 1/2 cup milk, i cube vegetable bouillon, 1/4 package frozen spinach, 1 small potato, 2 mashrooms, 1 handfull shredded chedder cheese, 1 pie crust

1). Dice potato and mashrooms. Defrost spinach and dry with paper towel.

2). Warm up milk just a little and melt the bouillon. 

3). In a bowl, mix eggs, and add the milk and other vegetables, mix again.

4). Pour #3 into pie crust, spread cheese on the top, and bake it for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

You can arrange it with different vegetables too. I sometimes put less spinach and add one potato (diced), onion, asparagus, and/or dried tomatoes. Regardless, it so good!!

Asian Chicken Ramen Salad

After stating my goals, a few days have already passed without doing anything about it.lol 

So here is the first "re-write" of my recipe collections. 


Asian Chicken Ramen Salad

<Ingredients>

1 chicken breast, 1/2 cabbage, 2 green onions, 1 can mandarine oranges, 1 handful peanuts, 1 pkg oriental flavor ramen noodles, 2 tbsp butter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup white vinegar, salt and pepper, 1-2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 tbsp sesame seeds

1). Boil or microwave the chicken. Cube it when it's done.

2). In a frying pan, melt butter. Break ramen noodles into tiny pieces and fry it in the pan. Add 1/4 pkg of the soup and mix well while frying.

3). Cube cabbage and chop green onions.

4). In a bog bowl, mix cabbage, chicken, green onions, ramen, peanuts, and the dressing (*Mix the dressing in a separate bowl) and the rest of the soup powder from ramen.

5). Serve with some oranges.

I met this salad on a Thanksgiving in 2007. There is a loving family 30-40 minutes out of town from my university, and starting my sophomore year in undergrad, they hosted me for Thanksgiving every year (except for last year since I was at work). I first met the family through my classmate from French class. They host a lot of family members every year, and it was my classmate's mom who made this salad. Delish!

Projects

I have so so many things on my bucket list. When you have so much to do, you may get too overwhelmed to keep track of goals and miss opportunities when they are available.

For my work as a psychotherapist, I started having a theme each week awhile ago, and the theme I picked for last week was the proverb, "Make hay while the sun shines." It means, when you have something to do, do it before the opportunity expires.

So I focused on near future to think about what opportunities I have in my hands out of so many things I want to accomplish in my life. Now that I am not in school, though I do have a full-time job, I definitely have more time in the evening and weekends. What would be the best way to utilize the time I have? Then a few things popped up in my mind.

I love books, but I hate to read. (What a confusing being I am!) When I read, most books that I read are work or study related. But there are several books that I have been wanting to read. So I went to a used book store in town, and just walked around randomly. And I saw this huge book... "the work of Jane Austen." It has Pride and Prejudice, Senses and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion. All together, 713 pages in tiny tiny font. I took it in my hand, thought "no way I can do this" and walked away, looked at several smaller books, but something told me to go back to where I was, and ended up buying it.

So here is my goal 1: I will read all four works by Jane Austen before I move in March. 

There is this photo of 15 different ways to wear scarves that I have posted on my Pinterest.

It was quite some time ago when I posted it, but then, I recently thought to myself, "how much of what I post on my Pinterest have I actually used?" I have found things that I thought would be useful and posted onto "Smart Living" board I have, but if you don't utilize the information, what's the use of the information?lol

So here is my goal 2: I will try all 15 ways to tie scarves before Christmas.

I have started working on it last Monday, and have tried #1 through #4 so far. By the way, #4 was not very stable, and it untied itself many times throughout the day. So far, I really liked #3. It's unique and easy.


Japan has this custom of seeking complete cleanness of the house before New Year. Many people excessively clean in November and December seeking a clean start in the beginning of the year. It's only been 3-4 months since I moved to my current apartment, but there are spots that I generally don't pay too much attention to, so this is probably a good project to work on.

Goal 3: Clean every spot of my apartment before this year ends.

I started with kitchen. Last weekend, I cleaned my oven and sink. Maybe after going home today (I'm at a Starbucks now), I will reorganize my pantry and mop the floor.


The last one is about this blog. Many of the recipes are from my old blog (when you click on them, it leads you to my old blog). As I no longer use the website, the maintenance has been neglected. I don't even know how long they keep my page without me logging in and doing things on it, to be honest. I have been feeling the need of updating my recipe page, but I know it's going to be quite some work, and have been hesitating to start up. But hey, "make hay while the sun shines," if I don't now, and if they decide to delete my old blog, I won't even have a choice. I just checked last night, and it was still active. So starting tomorrow, I want to re-post all recipes so each recipe will have a link on in my current blog.

Goal 4: I will update all recipes on my blog and cancel out my account for my old blog.


Cheers.

Nice cooking Saturday

Happy weekend :)

It was super nice out around here today, though I hear the temperature is gonna drip again by Monday and we'll possibly have our first snow for the winter. Today, it was as warm as late summer - I was in a short sleeve shirt, short skirt, and sandals.

Warm air brought me up, and I was very motivated.lol
So, I had a nice dinner,

and a nice dessert for the night!

Dinner (actually, it was leftover from lunch) was arrabiata sauce with vegetables on spaghetti. I had made quiche yesterday, and also added a side salad. I will share the recipe for the spaghetti sauce some other time, but tonight, I'd love to share this Caramel Apple Pie that I just made up and turned out really good!!



Caramel Apple Pie

Ingredients:
7 apples (pealed and sliced), 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tsp lemon juice, 2 pie crusts (homemade or 2 rolled ones), 4 tbsp apple caramel dip

1. Peal and slice apples. In a small pan, heat butter at med-low heat, put the apples and sugar, and cook for 5 minutes mixing occasionally.

2. Add 2 table spoons of caramel dip, and quickly mix well.

3. Place a pie sheet on a pie plate. Depending on the plate you are using, you might want to spray baking oil or put a little butter and spread it so it won't stick before placing the pie sheet.

4. Fork the bottom of the pie sheet.

5. Put the apples. Evenly spread it. And on the top, spread another 2 table spoons of caramel dip.

6. Using the other pie sheet, DECORATE :D :D :D Here's what I did this time.

7. Bake at 375 degrees (190 degrees Celsius) for 50 minutes or until it browns... just like this!