jules and juniper

To celebrate the long weekend in true patriotic style, Sean and I holed up in my (empty) house, made lots of yummy food (much of it fried) and watched movies on the projector from a nest that I made by pushing together two couches in the living room and filling it with pillows and blankets. It was quite possibly the most amazing two days I have ever had in a house, ever, seriously.

 

Yummy things fried in tofu skins. Technically not paleo, but paleo friendly in comparison to their wheat-based counterparts.

Top chef <3

Needed more counter space for condiments so we set up another table…!

Fresh plantain chips, lychees, yumminess…

 

July 5th is my mummy’s birthday, so I headed home for a visit. Happy Birthday Mom!

 

I couldn’t believe this was a single cherry tomato plant… so I made her stand next to it to for a photo. :)

Tomatoes being made.

Elephant ears. We eat the stalks. I took some home for soup. :)

Pads in her pond.

Baby cuke.

Asian pears being made.

Persimmons, won’t be ready till fall.

OOOooooh, so this is how an okra grows…..

Vietnamese coriander Sean gave my mom at our last visit. Slow and steady….

 

AAAaaahhh, I miss the nest already. And the projector can come back for a visit anytime it wants. I miss it so.

At least that’s what my office mate wrote in my birthday card… Yes, I turned 28 on Tuesday and I will continue to celebrate this momentous occasion with a week of birthday magical events.

Tuesday night, close friends came to my house for a “house” dinner turned birthday gathering. Pictures will come later, but for now just keep in mind that it looked something like this…

…except that the cake was a paleo carrot cake that Lindsay made especially for me (yummy), and Chris Chen was the only one dressed so formally (Matt Hemerlein came pretty close).

Yesterday was dinner at Kramer’s Afterwords, one of my favorite restaurants in DC. I reconnected with a great friend and enjoyed a paleo friendly meal, no dessert (go me!). Thanks Rayhan, you are the bestest.

Tonight, I am going to see Avatar (finally!) in IMAX, no less. Ronald is calling this my “birf week” movie. And so it is, and we shall have a wonderful time geeking out to scifi plots and mind-boggling special effects. I should note that he has already seen this movie twice.

Saturday is the big birthday pajama party! Details here: BANANAS IN PAJAMAS!!! Elizabeth did the art for the flyer. My friends are spinning. There will be cake. People will wear pajamas. Fun will be had by all.

And for the final stretch of this birthday jubilee, family Brunch in Richmond the morning/day after my party. After which, I fully intend to look like/do this…

January 2, 2010. Two days into the new year and we’re in the paper!

The post did a little interview with me on the paleo diet, which I follow. You can read it here. My mom called at 9 am the day it came out (I was at my grandmother’s in NC) to say that it was a pretty picture and she liked the heart on my face. She called again at 10 pm that night and left a voicemail letting me know that she thought it was a very nice article and that she’s proud of me. I guess it took her all day to realize that she hadn’t actually read the darn thing, she was that excited. :)

Elizabeth and I were heading back to DC that day. Here we are at Galaxy Diner in Richmond having a bit of dinner and getting to see the article (and pictures of the two of us) in print. If was a special moment between friends and a really good start to 2010. Special thanks to Anna for mentioning me to her boss and to Christina Ianzito and Sarah Voisin for writing such a  lovely article and taking equally lovely photos (respectively). And extra special thanks to Elizabeth for driving all over Wilmington looking for a Washington Post because my grandmother had a hard time reading it off the computer! None were to be found but I’ll be sure to mail her a copy this week…

Week five (or is it four?) of Alternative Materials – Sculpey! Yup, Jimin “taught” us how to use modeling clay to make jewelry. Actually, she mostly explained how to cure it and then told us to figure out how to shape it on our own. I stopped by PLAZA before class and $40 later I had a pile of fimo and a set of powder pigments *splurge* because fimo just didn’t seem to have enough… sparkle? I wasn’t expecting to looooove fimo. I thought Ok Jimin, I’ll humor you for one class, but really I want to get back to making *duh* resin cherries. All of this will make more sense when I post pictures of my class work someday. Turns out I LOVED fimo and I’m pretty darn good at it. At one point Jimin said How many pieces are you planning to make?! I think I was on my tenth…

On what I thought to be the most unrelated of notes, I have also taken to watching cake TV. You know, all those reality shows about bakeries that focus on making special or challenging cakes. There’s that Charm City Cakes one which is aight, apparently Elizabeth has seen them in the flesh. I don’t ever want to see people from TV in real life. Scratch that – I don’t want to see reality TV stars in real life. There’s some sort of double reality thing going on there that weirds me out. I digress…. SO, my favorite of late happens to be CAKE BOSS. I like that the show is about a regular bakery. Yes, they make the occasional fancy cake (usually one per episode) but they also sell all the classic flowery too much color in the icing kind of stuff that makes your teeth ache watching the show in HD. I love the guido (in that adorable sort of way) personalities of the family. It’s like the Sopranos, but with recipes. Anywho, I was wondering where all of this fascination with cakes (esp of the wedding variety) was coming from and then *BAM* yesterday in class it hit me. There’s not much difference between decorating cakes with fondant and molding chocolate and making jewelry out of fimo. In fact, I think fimo and fondant have the same consistency and I know for a fact that many of the molding tools sold by baking supply shops and jewelry/bead/craft stores are the same.

Yup, that means that all the time I spent in front of the tube drooling over pastry was actually preparing me for Alternative Materials and a career in *weird* jewelry.  So, it makes sense that I took to it so well and really enjoyed playing around with things. Buddy, the cake boss, taught me that in cake decorating, there aren’t any manuals on how to make exactly what you or the customer wants. You just have to get in there and improvise. Thanks Buddy, that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Here’s a particularly interesting cake from Cake Wrecks. I wouldn’t want this at my wedding, but it does inspire me to make jewels.

Last Sunday (yes, I’m behind on blogging and still recapping from a week ago) I had friends over for a sweet afternoon treat before heading to the Kennedy Center for the Chinese New Year concert. Being of Asian decent, the Chinese New Year, or ‘Tet’ as the Vietnamese call it, is of particular importance to me. It’s a time for renewal and for starting the year off on the right foot. I didn’t get the opportunity to spend this holiday with family so I was glad to have great food, friends and music to make the holiday still feel just as special.

Sunday was one of those glorious winter days that we rarely see come February in the DC area. Mild weather and an overabundance of sunshine. We were all smiles for the concert, partly due to the lovely day and partly due to dessert wine and sweet treats!

When I’ve little time to prepare for guests I like to make an easy dessert of ‘oven s’mores’ and ice cream. The only trick is making sure the marshmallows don’t burn, the rest of the dessert is self-serve and the berries dress it up a little for the holiday!

One batch fresh out of the oven. I made two! :)

 Ray thought I looked funny as I concentrated on the s’mores…

 My hands-down favorite dessert wine, Ellysium. What a treat!

 

I am the queen of (self-titled) last-minute entertaining. I pride myself on being able to take whatever I have on hand and creating a spectacular meal, or at least that’s what I try to do and in the case of this past Saturday my recipe was a smashing success.

I woke up wanting to bake something and found that my kitchen mostly contained apples so I started thinking apple crisp. Now bear in mind that I’ve never actually made this before, nor did I have a recipe on hand. All I had, in fact was a distant memory from church camp. It must have been 15 years ago that my summer camp counselor, Jason, attempted to make apple crisp over a camp fire. I remembered the basic ingredients: oats, flour, brown sugar, butter and…cinnamon? Only when Jason made it, he used cumin by mistake – thus rendering his version an inedible disaster! So, with a sort of memory of a failed ‘cumin crisp’ and a bag full of apples in hand, I dove into creating a new recipe and here it is!

CINNAMON! Apple Crisp

5 cups chopped apples (any variety, I used Fuji and Macintosh)

1 stick butter

1 cup oats

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

CINNNAMON (not cumin) to taste

pinch of salt

2 ounces gruyere cheese cut into small pieces (optional)

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop and peel the apples and place in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the cinnamon, flour, brown sugar, salt and oats until evenly blended. Chop the butter and gruyere into small pieces. Add 3/4 of the butter, gruyere and the oat mixture, reserving 1/4 cup, to the large mixing bowl of apples and mix together with your hands. Pour the mixture into a casserole dish, pack lightly and top with the remaining oat mixture and butter pieces. Bake in the oven for approximately 45 minutes or until the crisp bubbles slightly and the top is golden brown. Serve alone or a la mode for a special Saturday morning treat!

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I know I’m a pretty good cook, great even – but this crisp was so AMAZING that I surprised myself, especially since I basically made this one up on the fly. Second helpings were definitely in order and the remaining crisp didn’t make it past my late night snacking the same day…

 

If you don’t believe me when I tell you how good this was, then maybe you’d believe Rayhan who after taking his first bite with some vanilla ice cream exclaimed, “Oh F— Me!!!” and had to sort of back away from the bowl for a second. Um yeah, it was THAT good….