On the weekend, I went to a cooking demonstration at Chef Jon Lee’s. It’s been my favorite restaurant for a while now. I’ve never been to a demo before but I’ve wanted to go to this one ever since I first tried the food there a year ago and learned that they did cooking demos. They had a couple last year but I couldn’t make either of them, plus Nathan was still so small and needy. What am I saying? He’s still needy.

Well, on my birthday a couple of months ago, we went to Chef Jon’s for dinner and found out they had cooking demos again. This time I made sure to go. Alan watched the kids and I invited my friend, Terri, to join me.

We watched Chef Jon make some of his popular dishes like sticky crunchy chicken, sweet and sour soup, spicy basil garlic fried rice, tamarind curry, babyback ribs, and scampi pasta with prawns. I bought some of his signature sauces to take home to make my own sticky crunchy chicken and babyback ribs. In fact, that’s what I made for dinner tonight, sticky crunchy chicken.

Chef Jon also talked about his background. He is inspiring, you’re never too old to follow your dreams. He didn’t start in the restaurant business, quite the opposite, he was working in the car industry. I believe he’s only been running his restaurant for a few years. He opened it after his teenage son prompted him to follow his heart.

I’m glad he did. He is so friendly and welcoming. You can really tell he loves cooking. I’ve liked all the dishes I’ve tried there, it’s the spicy kick to them, yum. There is nothing more frustrating than a restaurant, with unique delicious food, closing down (which happened to our regular Mexican place, we’re still trying to find a replacement near us). I hope they stay in business for a good long while. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area you need to try the food there.

MMmmm…all this food talk, I’m hungry again. Ok, off to bed with me before I go sneaking into the kitchen for some sticky crunchy chicken.

I had this mad desire to bake. I wanted chocolate chips cookies. Well, Isabelle wasn’t too keen on the idea so I thought I’d make peanut butter chip cookies instead. But I couldn’t do it. I love my chocolate so I decided not to omit the chocolate chips.

Maybe I wanted to bake because we’re not doing anything big for Thanksgiving. No apple pie. No turkey to worry days before about. No massive planning.

We’re doing a roast, some baked potatoes, brussel sprouts, and a macaroni salad. That’s my plan. Similar to what we did last year for Thanksgiving.

Maybe I miss it, the big planning for Thanksgiving. Maybe that’s why I wanted to bake. There must be some reason why I wanted cookies. Or maybe it’s just because it’s cookies!

Then there was this. I walked in and the kids were sitting just like this neatly arranged by Isabelle. They then had their cereal right there under the blankets all propped up.

Then this. I saw a picture of gingerbread cookies online which sent me off to the kitchen to make cookies. But Isabelle wanted to decorate them. I am not so great with the decorating and Isabelle doesn’t usually like the icing so we used some food markers instead.

I love her decorated cookies.

With our leftover dough I made one big cookie. Isabelle drew a story on it about a monster king and the guy who slays him.

And finally this moment, Alan with a sticker earring on.

Mine didn’t come out as dark. But of course I didn’t have the proper ingredients. No dutch processed cocoa powder, just cocoa powder. I don’t know what the difference is. And no buttermilk. I replaced it with milk and vinegar.

And when will I learn? I need to reread cooking recipes before I make them. I remember reading the word “simple”. “Simple” is not quick. The mousse takes at least four hours. D’oh. I didn’t get to eat it right away like I wanted. Lesson #1: read the entire recipe.

And another thing I need to learn, this is too much cake. No one ever eats these sweets except for me. Well, everyone will have a little but a little bite here and there does not finish a cake. And Alan refused to bring it to work for his coworkers for some reason. I was going to call friends over to help with it but just didn’t. At one point during the weekend when Alan asked what I wanted for dinner I thought, we have so much cake, that’s what I’m having for dinner! Lesson #2: I need to make smaller cakes!

Well, lately, I’ve been in the mood for strawberry smoothies, not a strange everyday kick, only once in a while when the mood hits. So, today, I thought I’d share how I make my strawberry smoothies.

All that is needed is these four ingredients: raw almonds, water, frozen bananas, and strawberries.

Boil the almonds for 3 minutes in water.

Remove the almond skins.

Throw the peeled almonds into a blender and blend with a cup of water. Strain the pulp if you like.

Ta da! You have just made almond milk!

Add strawberries and frozen bananas and blend until smooth.

And that’s it, strawberry banana almond smoothies!

Yoink!

I uploaded the pictures and thought I’d share this recipe for July 4th. Ummm…that didn’t happen.

So, why don’t I share it now since the photos are already online and I am procrastinating from editing other photos.

Start with some finely diced up onion. Add a squeeze of lime to this.

Roast tomatoes, garlic, and jalapeño pepper.

While those are roasting, grab some cilantro and chop it up finely.

Your roasted garlic, jalapeños, and tomatoes should be a bit blackened.

We seed the jalapeños but leave them if you like the heat. Then pulse the tomatoes, jalapeños, and garlic up in a food processor. Add the chopped cilantro and salt to taste.

This is a yummy roasted tomato salsa.

But we like guacamole.

So we get two avocados.

Smoosh that up nice and good.

Then add it to the salsa and there you have our roasted tomato guacamole.

So, anyhoo, Isabelle asked for marshmallows and I lied and said we didn’t have any marshmallows in the cupboard (because they are creepy and old). I said, “Let’s MAKE some!!!!” And so we did! We made marshmallows. Real marshmallows from scratch!

Happily we had all the ingredients in my cupboard. It really pops my little happy we’re going to bake something mood balloon when we are missing an ingredient and I need to go to the store. That usually means the sudden urge to bake disappears. But not this time. We had everything we needed!

We used this Smitten Kitchen recipe. Halfway through, when we needed a separate bowl with clean beaters, I sat there trying to figure out if I could switch over to this Alton Brown recipe. Why? Because I was fazed by needing clean beaters. I only have one bowl for my mixer and I didn’t know how clean the beaters needed to be. I debated on transferring my sugar mixture to a different bowl and washing everything. But somewhere in my foggy memory I recall that I need to have them super clean or else they won’t whip up.

So, what did I do? I ended up mixing my meringue powder by hand with a good old non-motorized whisk. It wasn’t fast but it worked. And how did the marshmallows turn out? They were yummy…the next day. Yep, the next day because we put them in the fridge and forgot about them!

When I remembered them I cut them up (not very neatly by the way, why can’t I cut straight, should have used a ruler or something, and that’s why the marshmallows are different sizes) and dipped them in chocolate to surprise Isabelle.

She said, “you’re the best mommy ever!”

When I saw all the marshmallows it made, I thought a lot of them would end up being chucked because I don’t really care for marshmallows. But these are much better than store bought marshmallows. Maybe it’s just store bought marshmallows I don’t like. These were springy and fluffy just like Smitten Kitchen said. And I could gobble them up and did.

Everyone likes them.

In fact, Isabelle was helping herself to them when I wasn’t looking! Mmmmm….I think I’ll stop typing now and help myself to a couple right now.

We drove to Cupertino to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday. I believe she turned 85. I always forget to ask and I’m sure in my Flickr stream I’ve written the wrong age before so I don’t know. But anyhoo, here are my mom and grandmother.

We always seem to celebrate at the same Chinese restaurant. It’s the usual Chinese fare. Well, when I say usual, it’s the usual weird stuff that Americans don’t generally eat. It’s not Americanized Chinese like fried rice, egg rolls, and chow mein. It’s proper Chinese, though I’m sure that restaurant does sell all of those things too. So, what is some of the weird stuff? Lobster salad.

It had a little dish of billowing dry ice. And a lobster just sitting there, part of the presentation of the dish.

Pig feet and duck tongue.

Upside down cutie.

Just seeing if you were paying attention.

Sea cucumber soup.

Actually that’s not what the soup was. It had sea cucumber in it but I don’t know what the soup was called.

Fish stomachs.

Yes. You read that right. Fish. Stomachs.

Then of course the cake. Fruity.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that Chinese cakes are fruitier.

And then there was also this.

The small buns have a sweet sort of custard substance in it. I asked my cousin what the big thing was supposed to be. I think he said it was supposed to resemble a peach. And I asked him what that word meant. And I’m sure he told me. But that was like Saturday, days ago. I cannot remember what it means. Actually I’m not that sure about the peach thing either. *Sigh*

Ok. Off to cook dinner.

Not pretty and smooth. And I think the dots are cake crumbs that got into the coating.

They made cute cupcake toppers though.

Actually I was trying to stand them up when Alan suggested I stick them in the cupcakes.

A few weeks ago, we made some gingerbread cookies. Flume shaped. What is a flume you ask? I don’t know exactly. I always thought flume was used like, a flume of water. But recently, during extremely cold weather in the mornings, my phone has been forecasting flumes with pictures of snowflakes. I’ve never heard that term applied to something that looks like a snowflake. And snow?! In my area? Really, dear phone? You must be mistaken.

But anyhoo, cookies. This is my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. I like them because they’re soft and chewy, not crunchy.

Maybe this recipe was not the best use of this awesome snowflake cookie cutter we got from Alice. Thank you Alice! The cookies spread too much and the little shapes I cut in the big snowflake, baked closed. Oh well. They were still yummy.

Oh and see the little divot in the small flume? I was busy with Nathan when that batch beeped in the oven. I told Alan to check it gently. I walked into the kitchen later to find a whole bunch of cookies with these very noticeable divots in them. Bwa ha ha! That’s not what I meant by gentle.