cafemela

[cafemela]

Day 4

It’s day 4 of the first week of partial childcare.  I continue to find places to drop my child off for a few hours. The struggle is real in the few hours in between. Clinginess, whininess, full on crying, hugging, nursing.  Anyway, the last two days, I’ve had K with me and therefore have only been able to do snippets of things and thinking.

Today I might install Xcode. If I have enough space of my hard drive.  I’ve eaten too big of a lunch and now feel sluggish.

I’ve done a little bit of concept sketching for my Alphabet art project. I’ve brainstormed about two more social apps that attempt to reverse the effect of our universal technological dependence.

But now I’m sluggish and need coffee.

[cafemela]

Blog Takeover

I’ve decided to hijack this blog to write about my new ‘second life.’ With both kids in school, it’s time for me to delve back into the things I love doing: which are: learning everything, concocting ways to make money, connecting with my network of friends and family, and generally keeping busy, inspired, motivated. Today is day 1. I’ve settled some family logistics and done a quick mental survey of our calendar and events for the coming week.  The kids have leftover pasta for dinner. 

For the ventures with my friend, Bibi, I did some research on ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’, read about fees and profit margins. Have no interest in selling easily available products for skinny margins.

I love shoes. I’ve researched shoe manufacturing and machinery. Not a lot of shoe-making is done here in the USA. Quickly got daunted by the scale and expertise needed. Otabu and ShoeFactory are great resources but definitely showed the massive investment this would need in terms of time and learning. Have another (easier and less scary) idea. More to come on this!

I should consider using Pinterest. 

Had a good conversation with a friend who has achieved the impossible; a career change complete with self-taught programming skills and a job doing it at Facebook!

Ok it’s approaching child-pick up time.  Will be riding my Taga 2.0!  

[cafemela]

Midnight cooking sessions. After a few meals of cafeteria and instant food, we needed to whip up some 'real' food. Our lunches and dinner for tomorrow: 2x Baked chicken and noodles, 1x tofu and noodles, 1x Malaysian curry chicken. Over and out of the kitchen at 12:40AM.

[cafemela]

A Good CNY Weekend

We have leftover bits and bobs from some epic hawker meals: hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak and laksa hot pot made from a Katong laksa premix. The chicken rice was the best I've ever made, thanks to a $13 organic free range chicken from Trader Joes.

[cafemela]

I haven't had much success making muffins in my 25ish years of baking. On a whim, I chose to use the recipe on the back of the Bob's Red Mill wheat bran package and it yielded a light, fine crumb, moist delicious muffin! I didn't have molasses so I used honey and sugar instead. Oh and for lunch, I had a slice of kielbasa quiche at the Phipps Conservatory cafe. I will attempt to make this and apple strudel soon!

[cafemela]

1,2) Christmas brunch: blood orange cocktails, ham and cheese quiche and a phyllo-wrapped baked Brie with quince and pecans. 3) Naveen's new toy: a Hario wood neck pour over coffee pot + Alton Brown's sour cream cheesecake.

[cafemela]

Seremban/Singapore beef noodles. My cousin Juliet is in town for the holidays and we wanted to make a quick dinner. Of course, that is not what this turned out to be. We simplified and aggregated these two recipes. The result: alright in texture but muted in flavor. I've purchased beef bones to try again. http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/2005/10/seremban-beef-noodle.html?m=1 http://icookfirst.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/singapore-beef-noodle-%E6%96%B0%E5%8A%A0%E5%9D%A1%E7%89%9B%E8%82%89%E9%9D%A2%EF%BC%89/

[cafemela]

This morning I made the easiest, yummiest candied pecans and packaged them up as little Christmas treats. My 2 year old had a tiny taste and was addicted. He instructed me to place the entire baking sheet of pecans within his reach- hah! Ingredients: 2 eggs whites, 2 tbsp water, 1/2 tsp vanilla essence --> whipped together. 1 pound pecan halves --> tossed in above liquid mixture 3/4 c sugar (a mix of brown and white), 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tsp cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, ground cloves and paprika as desired --> all mixed in a large ziploc bag. Wet pecan halves tossed in dry sugar mixture until coated. Coated pecan halves in a single layer on parchment paper. Oven preheated to 250 Total baking time: 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

[cafemela]

Good morning. The face of this savory waffle belies its hippie interior: WildRoots gluten free mix with almond milk.

[cafemela]

It's ALL Good

These past two weeks capture well the flurry of my days and what I love so much about it.  We flew to Georgia and back to visit in-laws. I pitched a new business idea to investors at a startup incubator program. We cooked a Singaporean hawker center-type meal and invited my parents over. I did a cooking activity with Milo's young twos class. I went for a faculty meeting. I played new versions of my students' puzzle game and gave them feedback. I attended a 'virtual networking event' to meet fellow entrepreneurial alumni. I watched Naveen play his final tennis match and win the league!  As icing on the cake, I got a few offers for work for next year and we're planning our long-awaited trip to Bali and Singapore. Now... just need to convince the little one to use the potty.

[cafemela]

21st Street Coffee and Tea Strip District This espresso is so smooth and full-bodied that it doesn’t need anything added to it. Best coffee in Pittsburgh? Maybe.

[cafemela]

Matzo Ball Soup Food and Wine Andrew Zimmerman

[cafemela]

A pub lunch at home! Fish pie was made according to Marcus Waring’s "How to Make the Perfect” cookbook recipe. Chips were leftover from yesterday’s lunch at The Pub Chip Shop (review to follow soon.) No ale with this lunch, I had a strong cup of PG tips and it was quite complementary.

My version of the pie had about a pound of dover sole filets, some wild salmon, and a can of tuna. No cream or shrimp but still quite rich to the taste, thanks to a buttery bechamel sauce.

[cafemela]

Tea Pairing

This is what we treated ourselves to at 1AM after hours of cooking and cleaning the kitchen: (Also paired with a few episodes of Parks and Recreation on Netflix.)

Tazo Cocoa Mint Mate with warm chocolate chip cookie and butter pecan ice-cream/ warm brownie and ice-cream.

And last week, we had this pairing: Trader Joe’s pomegranate white tea with almond butter and jam sandwiches.

The Cocoa Mate tea is wonderful, robust and vanilla-y; my new favorite tea.

[cafemela]

This happened. My brother Alvin is in town for a precious few meals so we went big for Saturday brunch. We invited the whole family over for fried chicken and waffles!

Here’s the Bon Appetit reference we used for skillet fried chicken with a crunchy buttermilk batter. Naveen leveled up on skillet frying and braved a few little burns but the results were perfectly golden, delicious and juicy.

Our biggest accomplishment today was managing a neat chicken assembly line and keeping order and cleanliness WHILE cooking. 

[cafemela]

Waffles @ Mi Casa

A couple of good friends whom I've known since middle school wanted to hang out with Milo and then head out for breakfast at Waffles Incaffeinated on the south side. I'll save my review of that joint for another day but I suggested that we do waffles at Mi Casa instead.

After a quick bit of searching, I adapted the recipe from here. I've made all kinds of waffles: from a standard mix, a multi-grain mix, a gluten-free mix, from scratch with yeast, from scratch without yeast, you get the idea... Anyway, this one promised that the use of cornstarch would give a nice crispy exterior so I went with that.

Belgian Waffles

1 3/4 c. AP flour

1/4 cup corn starch

2 tbsp. sugar

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1 3/4 c. milk (warmed in the microwave)

1/2 c. cooking oil (I used melted butter)

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

a pinch of nutmeg (omitted)

1/2 tsp cinnamon (omitted)

Mix, follow waffle maker instructions! I liked them enough to save the recipe. They did indeed have a nice, light texture to them and a crispy exterior.

We went overboard with our topping options: peanut butter, almond-chocolate spread, freshly whipped cream, raspberries, blueberry compote, avocado, three kinds of cheese, sour cream, green onions...

My quarter of a savory waffle with green onions and sour cream was a nice alternative to the rest of the dessert-laden waffle. Naveen made a perfect pot of hazelnut coffee and we all had plenty of everything. Mmm mmm.

[cafemela]

Chowda.

Naveen paid me the nicest compliment a girl like me would ever want to hear: that my New England clam chowder tastes better than Progresso's. High praise from a clam chowder connoisseur. The thing is, I don't have a recipe nor do I actually recall how I've made it in the past. Today, I adapted it from Dave Lieberman's recipe on foodnetwork.com.

Ingredients

a pat of butter 2 tablespoons olive oil 4 stalks of celery, sliced/diced 2 carrots, diced 2 small onions, diced 3 tablespoons of flour - sprinkled over the mirepoix  a small sack of baby fingerling potatoes, cut into thirds 2 cups of chicken stock - I use Better than Bouillon  3 (6.5 oz) cans of minced clams - juice in first, then the clams at the end. 1 cup of whole milk 1/3 cup of sour cream - I needed to use it up and I didn't have regular cream. some dried thyme, rosemary, paprika, sea salt, and pepper to taste.

How: 

oil/butter into dutch oven over medium heat

onions, carrots, celery - sauteed for a few minutes until translucent

flour sprinkled over and cooked for a few minutes

potatoes, milk, sour cream, broth and clam juice in, bring to boil

lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes

add clams

season to taste with herbs, salt, pepper.

Delicious rustic multigrain bread from Trader Joe's to go with. Milo paid me the nicest compliment one can expect from a toddler, he ate it.