Just Another Day?

This morning started off with another warm up run in the, not so nice, 14*F crisp air. But, admittedly, still refreshing. What I've got on my plate today?

*Print pictures

*Mail a package

*Korean New Years dinner

That's the basic gist of my day at least, to my knowledge.

I'm pretty excited about the dinner. I'm going to learn how to make Korean food! I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

So it turns out, I didn't make it in time to learn and help out with the Korean food :( It was delicious though! We had this traditional sticky rice cake soup with a cucumber side. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. You can use your imagination and let it wander in how amazingly good it is :)

Not dessert, but just as good

So yesterday, my sister and I were going through some tough times. What better than making some yumm for dinner, yeah? So I made some dough and we invited people over for pizza. We made 'em stuff crust of course. There was a hawaiian and an everything pizza. The everything pizza included only the best ingredients: turkey, shrooms, avocado, tomatoes, onions, roasted garlic, and chezz. Mmm mmm goodness.... Then we made a dessert pizza, kinda like a simple apple tart really. So so good. Way to turn an inner frown to giddy joy :)

Today, I was going to go to yoga at the gym, but I ended up not ready till 7 and that's when the class starts. So instead I went on a super short 1.32 run. Later I'm going to meet up with my sister and we are going to donate with the Red Cross. Hopefully I'll have a high enough iron count! I'm debating between going the leafy greens route or the beef route for lunch to see if I can get any last minute iron burst in my blood before going in.

I got my rock climbing gym membership two weeks ago and I've been going 3~4 times a week. Tonight will be the start of another good week of rock climbing! I still need to get myself a harness, but I'm also debating if I should get a yoga mat. I guess I'll just be passively looking into both for now.

A New Year Already?!

So, New Years past a while back. I haven't posted a new entry yet. Hm.. Maybe I should feel guilty. Well, maybe I can be forgiven by posting now, just in time for Chinese New Year. Chinese New Years Eve is tomorrow and my sister and I are having a dinner party at our place. I'm making two types of cake, but three in total. I'm making two new years cakes (there are two types of new year cakes. One is steamed and sometimes then pan fried. The other is more westernized where it is baked. They are both mochi like cake, however the one that is baked is more cake like and spongy). I'm making the baked kind. You might be wondering why bake two of them? Well, from past experience, one batch is not enough. Yes, it's that good. The other cake is a super rich (sinfully delicious) chocolate and caramel cake. The reason for making this cake that is obviously not Chinese is because there is a birthday tomorrow as well AND I might make this cake for my sister's wedding reception. Yes. She has asked me, oh so unprofessional me, to make her wedding cake. I'm in the process of picking a few cake recipes and baking them to see how she likes them. So yes. Three things of cake tomorrow! That's my contribution to bringing in the Chinese new years. Haha.. CAKE!

COOKIES O.O

We had a Masquerade themed cookie party at our place last month. Yes, that means, baking cookies like crazy!! YUM So I baked three kinds of cookies :) I had these candy corns that needed to be used so I tried something new. I made these chocolate cookies with candy corn and my peanut butter cookie with candy corn as well. Not as bad as I thought they might turn out. The candy corn gave these cookies an extra chewy texture, which in my opinion, made it taste great! The third cookie I baked were pumpkin cookies. I was disappointed with those, just cause I ended up falling a bit short on the pumpkin puree and it showed. The pumpkin flavor wasn't all that strong. So all you were getting outta it was mainly the cakey texture that pumpkin cookies have. Oh well, I guess it's just reminding me that, yet again, I can't win in everything. Here are some pictures of the cookies!

Not finding time

So it's been a while, but I honestly haven't been finding myself with much time. Yes, in other words, I haven't been baking :( It's tragic, I almost feel some sort of void in me. But besides this depressing piece of information, I have been cooking (I guess I need to eat, even daily, is what I heard). So here are somethings that I have been making myself for dinner.

I'm playing catch-up already?!

Wow, so I just started this blog and I'm already behind. That's embarrassing. So yes. This is a blog for me to share what I make in the kitchen but I haven't posted anything about food yet -weird. So I have been making stuff, I just haven't posted about them yet. Hm.. lets see. I first made caramel apples for the International Eat an Apple Day party that was at my house two weeks ago. I was debating between different ways of making it, manly the caramel. In the end, I decided to make my own caramel for once.

It had a nice milky taste to the sticky caramel that made it taste as good as it did. I don't know if I could go back to melting caramel candy anymore. Maybe if I get lazy or crunched on time...

The next thing I made worth talking about was some almond butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

The purpose of making these were to send them to my little brother that is currently in Calgary. He just got their so I thought I would send him a package. So the almond cookies don't have flour in them (gluten free!) just oats. I used raw sugar, which didn't really dissolve, so the cookies turned out kinda crunchy with little bits of sugar grains here and there. It made it kind of honey comb like. Then with the chocolate chip cookies, I ran out of normal flour so I had to use whole wheat, for the whole thing. It was a sad thing. I also changed the way I made this recipe, different from how I usually make it. So... it turned out flat. The whole wheat, as you can imagine, made the texture of the cookie grainy and with a hint of a nutty flavor. It reminded me of the time my freshman year roommate made chocolate chip cookies with bean flour (she is gluten free). Result: bean flavored, grainy cookies.

Lastly, I was craving rice crispy treats a few days ago. So I was out to make some nostalgic treats. But then it hit me, I forgot that we ran out of mallows! New mission: make some marshmallows! I've been wanting to try making them anyway, so it was a great time to start. It wasn't nearly as tricky as I thought it would be and not only that, I didn't have to completely finish making them! Luckily for me, I didn't want then in their solid form. After making the marshmallow cream I stirred away, making 2 1/2 trays of rice crispy treats!! That crazy large recipe of marshmallows made so much!!

So I made normal rice crispy treats, cocoa rice crispy treats, peanut butter rice crispy treats (mmhmmm... mom made these ones growing up), and cocoa peanut butter rice crispy treats. Good thing I have people to help consume these...

The start of something new

I guess I am finding myself giving in to creating a blog. Today is Labor Day so I figured I could start today. (Oh yes, Happy Labor Day!) So today was started off to a beautiful start, waking up at 6 to go rock climbing this wonderful morning. I met up with some friends at the trail head to hike up to the routes. There were quite a few of us so I only got in three climbs. The last climb made up for it though. It was probably my favorite climb I've ever done. The climb was a 5.9 that went up 115 ft from the starting ledge. As you can imagine, the view was beautiful. After our half-day climb we went to a disappointing restaurant (I'm not going to say the name) for lunch... a very late lunch. All in all, it was a great labor day!