83 posts tagged “food”

Really, what is the difference between an apple pie and an apple crisp? Is it really just that an apple pie has a crust and an apple crisp has a crumble?

Curious.

In ANY case– I finally got around to making apple pie late last month (okay, it was an apple crisp, but it’s almost the same thing). You can find the recipe here at PineappleBread.

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You may have noticed that I've been writing and posting more on PineappleBread as of late. I was planning to migrate completely over to wordpress, but I'm awfully fond of Vox, and so I've been simultaneously posting on both. But I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

Known also as 菠蘿包 (pronounced: bwoh lwoh bao) in Taiwan and other Asian countries, this bread actually does not contain any pineapple. Instead, it derives its name from the criss-cross design on its cookie dough exterior that causes it to look somewhat like the pineapple fruit. In Japan, these breads are known as melon pan (with pan being the Japanese word for bread). For that, I have no explanation.

I got this recipe from Angie’s Recipes, and I used her recipe for Japanese Melon Pan. However, I substituted the chocolate she used as a filling with red azuki beans instead. I love love LOVE azuki. Love. I made a few other modifications to the recipe as well in order to convert it properly to the English system of measurement instead of SI units. So I have posted the recipe at the bottom with my version.

(I won’t rant –too much– about this now, but I would just like to say that Americans are stupid and should have converted to using the metric system of measuring things YEARS ago and making everything easier and more universal rather than having to deal with annoying pounds and ounces and figuring out conversions between grams, weight, etc. Bah HUMBUG! End rant.)

Now, I tried this recipe twice. I thought the first batch was too small with only four pieces, so I doubled the recipe to make eight.

But the first time, as you shall see, was… well…

Not so good.

Out of the four of them, the best one looked like this:

Not that it didn’t taste fabulous. Inside, the bread and red bean were sweet and fluffy. My parents just scraped off the burnt portions (like any normal, self-respecting parents who often are forced to eat their daughter’s creations), and these four little buns were gone pretty quickly:

You see, I was in a rush that day and just left the buns in the oven and told my mom to take them out when they were done. Not a good idea. Apparently one second they were fine, and the next second… a burnt mess.

So I tried again!

TRIAL TWO.

This time I made sure I had time to be there the entire time.

Lined up, the pineapple bread buns were very cute! I had a difficult time getting the red beans inside the dough, but I think that’s just a matter of practice. And the outer cookie dough was a bit sticky to handle, but an extra layer of sugar on top helped create a barrier between my knife and the sticky dough.

Almost good enough to eat…

And… success!! It looked “normal” this time! The chronic problem of not quite-finished dough inside was there (I’m going to have to bake a bit longer next time and allow the dough to bake a little longer), but it came out beautifully.

Voila! Pineapple Bread!

The recipe is at PineappleBread. 

My friend Derk is an amazing photographer, and whenever I go out with him, I am almost ashamed to take pictures of the food we eat. I mean, I still do, but I usually pounce on him soon after and steal those pictures for my own benefit. For instance, the above photo of Derk’s beautiful hot pot tofu dish. Yummy! :D

Somehow, beautiful pictures make food seem to taste even better...

Please support Derk and visit his site at http://derkgs.com. (Just a little plug: If you have a need for an excellent photographer who is truly dedicated to his work, he is definitely your man! He does weddings, portraits, etc.)

You can’t really tell from this picture but my noodle dish is supposed to have broth. Supposed to.

Angela and I got the same dish, but I guess you can’t tell that hers had broth and mine did not. Hm. That is why, dear reader, I have the following picture!

What my dish was supposed to look like.

Actually, I’m thankful for the broth-less version. I don’t think I could have handled the spiciness otherwise. As it was, the lack of broth meant that the spices were able to be pushed to a side of the dish and ignored during the demolition of my meal.

Hooray for eating out with friends!

I eat out an extraordinarily large percentage of the time for someone who no longer has an income. Before you start grinding down on me and declaring me an undisciplined yuppie or idiotic student who just likes to spend money as if it were water, please try to understand that much of it is unintentional. Let me explain why.

First off, I will be moving from the Washington, DC, Metropolitan area to downtown San Francisco, CA, within the next month to begin my studies as a law student. I probably will not have a chance to return to the area until after my semester is over, and for someone who has not left the DMV (DC/MD/VA) area for any extended period of time before, it is slightly traumatizing to be away from kith and kin for so long. I want to meet with all my friends before I leave, and that means dinners out with them (unfortunately for all of us, they have to work and earn a living, therefore lunches are a little difficult sometimes, although not totally impossible).

Secondly, several of my good friends have birthdays in July, all strategically placed so that it’s possible to go out to eat once every few days or so…

In other words, my wallet has felt a little beat up the past month…

–>Birthday Celebrations

Nava Thai

Our first celebration was at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for my friend, Caroline. Nava Thai is extremely small, and during our forty minute wait for a table, my friends and I explored the Asian supermarket that is attached (literally, there is a door directly into the restaurant). The service is good, although the English level of this family-run business is a bit shoddy. But their lack of English is totally made up for by the quality of their food; I ended up with a version of a noodle dish that should have had liquid, but mind somehow didn’t have broth (I don’t remember what it is anymore, although all the dishes are good, so it doesn’t really matter what you order there).

Just a note to all of you who like Thai food but don’t like it too spicy– if you’re unable to take the heat, like I am, then please remember to tell them to keep the spice down! Otherwise you’ll be in for a hot treat~!

Penang

For the combined birthday celebrations of my friends Debby and Caroline, we hit up Malaysian food. But the weird thing is that the waitress kept talking to us in Cantonese, despite our consistent responses in English. Luckily, Debby speaks Cantonese and translated for the rest of us clueless ones.

I had a very light noodle soup… It kind of reminded me of Taiwanese styled noodles, but I guess… Malaysian food in my area is a combination of most Asiatic foods?

Anna got a chicken curry. Not bad, not bad.

Fried ice cream on the menu… who can resist? Not my friends, definitely. Unfortunately, it was drizzled with chocolate syrup, which meant I couldn’t eat it… At least I could watch them enjoy it while I ate this…

Black rice in coconut milk. Not the most appetizing-sounding dessert, but yummy nonetheless. It’s not too sweet, which is nice.

Amina Thai

I didn’t know that there were such things as Muslim Thai food, but apparently there is. And it’s good, too. (I swear, I seriously eat Thai whenever I’m out with my friends… what’s up with that?)

In this case, it was to celebrate the long delayed birthday of my friend, Sandra. Her boss recommended the place, and I can safely say that her boss has awesome taste in restaurants. It was a bit difficult to find, but after several many U-turns and frantic phone calls to Sandra, I finally found the place and settled down to eat. I rarely notice the clientele in a restaurant, but living in a place rife with Asians, it was a bit unsettling at first to notice that none of the patrons were Eastern Asian. I hate profiling a restaurant like this, but usually the authenticity of a restaurant’s food can be seen by the people eating there. If a Chinese restaurant is filled with mainly Chinese people, then it only makes sense that the food is probably catered to Chinese tastes, as opposed to places like Panda Express which makes “Americanized” Chinese food…

But if this was the exception to the rule, I don’t mind. The food was delicious.

Mussamun Curry… Yummy and not as spicy as I thought it would be, thankfully. I really liked this one. it was savory and a bit sweet, and I absolutely adore onions, so it was perfect.

The Pad Kee Mao noodle dish that we chose was also very good. Savory with just enough of a spice kick to make things interesting…

And, of course, dessert. Fried banana wrapped in phyllo and then drizzled with a generous portion of honey. Not their forte, I suppose, although it wasn’t bad. After all, it was deep fried. How could it possibly be bad? :D

–>Rehoboth Beach

In an effort to make the most of my summer, my friends and I went to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware a couple of weeks ago. We enjoyed a day of fun in the sun, and it was good times… until I got caught in a tussle with the ocean… and lost. Haha. I basically slipped in the water and ended up being swept back on the beach on my behind. My legs and arms are now scratched up as souvenirs.

For lunch, my friend and I decided to try this interesting side street restaurant:

Go Fish

I decided to have fish’n'chips, except instead of just the fish by itself, I opted for it in a wrap (which somehow made it cheaper than actual fish’n'chips… strange)

The wrap was yummy and absolutely huge. I couldn’t finish it. The chips left something to be desired though…

For dinner, we went to…

Crabby Dick’s

Crabby Dick’s is an awesome restaurant.

They have some absolutely hilarious merchandise for sale (a t-shirt that says Anita Dick? :D), and the food is terrific.

I got a simple salad that had crab and shrimp and chhese and pepperoni and egg and… okay, so it wasn’t so simple. But it was tasty!

My friend, Nguyen, had this for his dinner… I’ve never seen a soft shell crab eaten this way, but… Haha, it was too interesting not to take a picture of!

And here is Nguyen and Debby’s strawberry shortcake dessert. Cute.

As a side note, I find it immensely amusing that whenever my friends and I travel outside of Maryland and see “Chesapeake Crabs” on the menu, we inevitably refuse to order it, saying that we can get the same thing anytime we’re at home… and yet, I never eat crab at home… Strange? I think so.

–> College Park

Marathon Deli

One of my absolute favorite places to eat is Marathon Deli. A small, family-owned Greek restaurant, they have gyros that can rival anyone else’s, hands down. It was a staple in college, and recently, a couple of my friends an I decided to make a trip out to College Park in order to enjoy one last meal there before we all moved to the West coast (I’m not the only one making the hop, apparently).

And their fries are amazing as well. I don’t know what they put on it, but I am in love.

Afterwards, we tried to beat the heat by going down the street to get some Rita’s custard and ice. It hit the spot, really. 95 degrees F is just painful unless you cool yourself down with treats like this.

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And that concludes today’s post. Whew, that was tiring!!

Ah, Disney. It's already been three weeks since then, and I still haven't posted! My sincerest apologies-- but here I go!

To tell the truth, there aren't that many pictures of food from Disneyworld. As most tourists are wont to do, we ended up spending most of our time trying to enjoy as much of the parks as possible, which meant that we ate at buffets and fast food restaurants for most of the week-- nothing really worth talking about. I do wish we had spent a bit more time food-wise, but... eh, next time, perhaps? (Assuming, of course, that we will go to Disneyworld again)

But among fast food, I must note one of my favorite:

I adore funnel cake. I also know it clogs my arteries full of unhealthful fats, but when I'm at amusement parks or at the beach, I don't really care. I want my fatty, and I want it now! Haha. My brother saw a funnel cake with chocolate ice cream or syrup on it, but didn't get a chance to try it. I found a recipe for funnel cake online once... one day when I am brave enough to handle a vat of boiling oil, I am going to try it.

Another deliciously sinful delight we indulged in our first day at Disney was ice cream. My mother and I shared a dulce de leche ice cream sundae (sans chocolate sauce), and everyone else (namely, my brothers) dug into a large chocolate sundae with the works. Heh.

The above images were from our first day in Disney-- in Magic Kingdom, actually. Our three day trip began in Magic Kingdom, and then went on to Hollywood Studios our second day, and finally we ended in Epcot on our last day, taking some of the time on our last day to play in Typhoon Lagoon.

We didn't eat anything spectacularly interesting at Hollywood Studios-- I wanted to get a turkey leg, but somehow we never contrived to be in the right place at the right time.

As for Epcot (the one amusement park I never seem to be able to finish because we either (1) get there too late to enjoy it all, or (2) we leave early to finish anything more than one or two rides. In our rush, however, we did manage to make it to Germany for lunch and try the food there.

My bratwurst was juicy and much more flavorful than my brothers' frankfurters...

But they were all yummy when the saurkraut was added. I thought it would be a bit more sour than it was though. Hm.

And as "dessert," I got a large pretzel, which was mostly finished by yours truly...

Later that night, after rushing back to Epcot for dinner and fireworks, my brother treated me to dessert:

Wheeheehee! Ah, Disney was fun. As our first real family vacation in a decade, I will have to rate this trip as a complete success... and I'm already planning our next trip! Any suggestions on where to go...?

[Note: Disney pictures will be up soon-- I just have to sort through all 500+ of them first...]

Because the maternal head of household was busy carting the youngest brother to volunteer work last night, dinner was prepared by yours truly. I decided to make a pasta as the main course of our dinner menu, and after briefly searching online and through my various cookbooks for a simple, easy-to-prepare recipe, I settled one from Williams Sonoma: Farfalle with Peas and Prosciutto.

I modified the recipe and replaced the prosciutto with ham because my mother doesn’t particularly like the taste of prosciutto. It came out well and was perfect for a summer dinner—light and savory without too much fuss. Plus, my youngest brother gave it the a-okay for taste! Hurrah, I have succeeded!

The rest of the meal was quite straightforward – staples at our dinner table, really.

There was the ever present broccoli and the chinese cabbage:

And Hakka-styled stir fried tofu strips and sweet white corn:

To see the recipe for the farfalle, please visit my wordpress, PineappleBread!

Disneyworld! The ideal playground for the young at heart where, this year, a million dreams will come true. At least, that's what they tell me.

We arrived mid-afternoon on July 2 and decided to wander into Downtown Disney to shop and eat. There were thousands of people milling about, and it turned out that, regardless of restaurant, we would have to wait almost an hour to be seated.

So we waited.

We chose to eat Irish our first night in Disney.Specifically, the Raglan Road Irish Pub.

Our waitress brought out soda bread (accompanied by a sweet Guinness reduction dipping sauce) for us to chomp on while we waited for our food to come. I don't know if we were all just starving or if the bread was just delicious, but we ended up asking for a second basket of the bread. I personally loved the dipping sauce. I thought it was honeyed something-or-the-other at first, but when I asked the waitress and she said it was a reduction of Guinness, I must admit that I was impressed.

My youngest brother and I shared a chicken dish, but I tried bites of everyone else's food.

Jon had a chicken and sage banger (whatever the heck a banger is).

My mother had a portobello mushroom sandwich, which was pretty tasty.

My father had fish and chips, which is pretty normal and uninteresting, so I refrained from taking a picture. Besides, we were all hungry-- it was hard enough holding everyone back so I could take these few pictures!!

It was overall a nice experience. We were lucky enough to get a chance to see a live performance by a band while we were eating, which was definitely a plus.

And since there was a Ghirardelli dessert store... well, let's just say that my brothers need to satisfy their respective sweet tooths.

My family is taking a rare vacation together this year. We rarely go on trips together-- in fact, we never really take "real" vacations. They're all just mini day trips into the city or somewhere relatively local. The furthest we've traveled was to Toronto, and even that was when I was in high school-- oh so many years ago. But after many years of talk, my pending departure for the West Coast has prompted a more active approach to our remaining time together (read: I finally decided to push my dad to help plan a family vacation together). So, early Tuesday morning, my family loaded our Toyota Sienna and began the long trip down to... *dumdumdummmm* ORLANDO, FLORIDA!

Yup, we're going to DISNEYWORLD! But because of the long car ride there (13 total hours), we decided to split the travel to Florida into two days and stop by Savannah, GA, on our way down.

There isn't much to say about our road trip down-- it was relatively uneventful. But I must say that Savannah is a very beautiful town. We got in kind of late, so we ended up finding a little restaurant called the Savannah River House to eat dinner in.

The house salad came with our (pretty expensive, although it was seafood, so I guess kind of understandable) dinners. It was pretty good, but a bit heavy on the dressing side. But my littlest brother ate his, which must say something, since he isn't a salad person.

My brother and I shared an entree. This was the Peppered Shrimp Saute, which was an excellent choice on his part. I am also extremely glad we shared the dish, because it was huge. It was flavorful, and the shrimp was tender.

Apparently Savannah River House is known for their desserts. So we couldn't leave before trying something! This is their banana bread pudding. Very banana-y. Very pudding-y. I wish it were warm, but seeing as how it was 10pm and the kitchen was closing, I couldn't complain. It was still tasty.

I made bleuberrie moofins (okay, I’m just poking fun– but blueberry muffins ARE fun, right?) a few days ago. It was my first time making them, and I decided to make them healthier by using applesauce in place of much of the sugar. I also used vegetable oil instead of butter– I don’t know if that made too much of a difference. I’ll try making the fatty version of blueberry muffins sometime to see…

As it is, here they are!

Bleuberrie Moofins

Ingredients

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup applesauce
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/4 cup blueberries, washed and coated with a thin layer of flour to keep the blueberries from sinking** (you may use frozen ones if you like, just add them directly before putting the muffins in the oven, to keep from staining the batter a deep blue-purplely bruised color)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients in separate bowls, leaving the blueberries for later addition. Then slowly whisk the milk/egg/applesauce
   mixture into the dry ingredients.
2. Gently fold in the blueberries so that they do not break and turn the batter strange colors.
3. Spoon the batter into twelve oiled muffin cups.
4. Bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!