The Netherlands - My Original Stamppot

When you are in Rome, you do what the Romans do. When you are in the Netherlands, you do what the Dutch do, and that is to make stamppot. I had my first stampott during the orientation week AID in Wageningen, and my second one made by my awesome Dutch friends. 

Not a while ago I introduced this blog to my head of programme, and he said "I haven't seen any post with stampott". And yeah, actually, I couldn't figure out why I missed this critical component of living in the Netherlands! 

I did some research on stamppot recipe, and it seems like there are no fixed rules for making stampott. Basically, you need mashed potatoes and you figure out the rest of the content by yourself. Oh, and don't mash it too much; it has to be somewhat a little chunky. 

So here is the first stamppot that I've ever made! And being a little curious and rebellious in the kitchen, I made up my own recipe. Here goes stamppot with bacon, black truffle, spring onions and grated parmesan cheese!

Recipe for this? Hmm let me remember. For about this much of potatoes I used about 2 teaspoons of black truffle sauce, 1 slice of bacon, 1 stalk of spring onion (without the white parts because I can't stand the astringent flavor of the white parts), and 1 tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese. Ahh and since I ran out of butter I replaced it with margarine mixed with mayonaise. about 50-50, in total of 1 tablespoon. Mix them together and voila!

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Bison Penyet

There's this weird growing trend of "penyet" in Indonesia. It wasn't big about 5 years ago, and I think it started with ayam penyet.

Just what is penyet?

It literally means "crushed", but after reading several recipes online it just means the meat has been poked or slammed with a meat tenderizer. Like this

Or this

Alternatively, we Indonesians tend not to rely on specific tools that serve nothing but one purpose. Don't be surprised to see something like "stab the meat with a fork".

I read detik.com's tweets last week and saw an iga penyet recipe (beef spareribs). Went to the groceries and didn't find any beef ribs. And then I saw this bison steak.

I don't think I've ever had bison meat before. Since it's a game meat, I know it will be somewhat tough and lean. I decided to go ahead with it.

Appearance wise, it's not that different from beef.

I don't have fancy knife or kits to slice the meat thinly so I used my santoka knife to make about 3-5mm slices.

Simmer the meat in water, bay leaves, orange leaves, white peppercorns, lemongrass and salt. You can add coriander seeds and other spices. I don't have the other spices but I think it's a good base.

Simmer on low heat until there's no more water left on the pan. I think if you use high heat it will make the meat tough. After that, add some cooking oil into the pan and fry the meat until it's brown.

As for the chili that goes with the meat... they don't sell the exact type of chili pepper that they normally use in Indonesia (it's called "cabe keriting", or curly chili peppers). It's kind of spicy, not sweet at all, but not too spicy. It provides body to the chili paste. I tried mixing roasted red bell peppers and red hot thai peppers (small but deadly, yumm). It didn't turn up exactly like how the real chili paste should look and taste like but it's the closest that I can make given limited ingredients.

Place the meat on top of the chili paste, and it's ready to go!

How did the meat taste? A little "gamy" flavor but pretty much it's really close to beef.

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Braised Duck

Whenever I got back from work I just feel like leaping on my bed and take a nap. On top of that, working in a food company means you're pretty much surrounded by food. I used to have dinner at 5:30 ish, but now I can wait until 8 for dinner.

It's Friday and I got back from work early so I thought I'd cook something a little bit fancy for dinner tonight: braised duck.

Wegman's is an awesome place to shop compared to Super Walmart. Well, it's not that I have a choice - Wegman's is closer than Super Walmart in my new town so I don't see why I shouldn't go to Wegmans. I found duck leg (yes, not a whole duck! Finally, something that can be finished in a single serve!). It's more expensive overall to buy duck leg from than to buy a whole duck but I only need one duck leg so I gave it a shot.

Very simple steps and ingredients:

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp + 2/3 cup soy sauce

1 tbsp + 1 tbsp sugar

1 star anise

3 cloves

1/4 tbsp nutmeg

1/4 tbsp white pepper

10 garlic cloves, pressed

about 500g meat (duck/pork/chicken)

500 ml (16 fl oz) chicken stock

Directions:

1) Heat the oil, then add 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sugar, star anise, cloves, nutmeg, white pepper and garlic cloves. Fry until it's fragrant.

2) Add meat. Turn every 10 seconds to make sure every part of the meat is coated with the sauce. Do for about 5-8 minutes.

3) Add the rest of the soy sauce and sugar and chicken stock. If it doesn't submerge the meat completely, that's fine as long as you keep flipping the meat over to make sure that all parts are cooked.

4) Cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes on low heat.

Aaaand it's done!

I love braising because you can do something else during the 45 minutes wait. 

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Bentoooo

Ingredients: Red Delicious apple, boiled quail eggs, surimi (fake crab), boiled shrimp, seedless cucumber, kewpie (Japanese mayo), steamed rice (preferably short grain sushi rice so it can stick well), mirin, rice vinegar, salt, nori (roasted seaweed)

Cutting Red Delicious apple into rabbit apples are pretty hard because the apple is tall and very curvy (it's really sexy!!).

I tried a new way of decorating the quail egg. It's pretty simple: I used a small fruit/paring knife to make zigzag patterns at the middle of the egg. Keep making the zigzag cut until you can split the egg into half. For this purpose, make sure that the egg yolk is completely cooked and not runny. Otherwise you'll end up making a big mess!

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Bacon goodness

Me and beaches just don't go quite well, so I declined the invitation to bask myself in sun for hours. Living for 19 years in constant sun exposure makes me feel want to limit myself to sun exposure.

I went shopping for working clothes, and then went for groceries shopping at Wegmans. I haven't seen any Wegmans in Illinois, so this trip was my first time there for non-work related activity. Even with Super Walmart, me and my foodie team normally spent about 2 hours in the groceries aisles after having a huge dinner.Wegmans is just waaaay bigger than Super Walmart. So yep, it was an exciting trip. I spent 3 hours walking back and forth figuring out what I'll be eating for the next two weeks. I'm not the type of person who would make a groceries list unless I really need those items (like toilet paper, for example) and then figure out the others once I'm at the store.

Made some bacon-wrapped quail egg. I had these at Yakitori Taisho in NYC once, and I love it despite knowing how sinful it can be for my heart. I tried adding red bell pepper in between each roll. Turned out to be really good - there's a little of sweetness and spiciness when you eat the bacon wrapped quail eggs.

The instructions at the back of the bacon packaging says to cook it in oven at 400F, but I figure that I don't really want the bacon to be too dry or crispy, so I lowered it to 350F for 10 minutes.

Before

Before I cook them I melted the extra fats that I trimmed from the bacon and use the melted fats to baste the skewer. I trimmed the parts where I can only see fats because I don't really want that much fats and I presume that those fats that don't cling onto a piece of meat will cause the wrappings to be distorted as the fats turn into oil when it's heated.

So I added mentsuyu (the kind of sauce you use when eating somen) and black pepper into the melted bacon fats. The reason why I used mentsuyu instead of soy sauce is because bacon is already very salty. Mentsuyu has this kind of refreshing flavor that is not overpowering, so I figure I'd try using it.

After

Tasted really good. Mmmm~ cholesterol~

Oh by the way I posted this on my Facebook and my friend kindheartedly tried to calculate the approximate amount of cholesterol in those skewers:


‎9 bacon = 9 * 15 mg ; = 120 mg
9 quail = 9 * 76 mg = 684 mg
TOTAL = 804 mg


... and I believe the recommended daily limit is around 300 mg.

So... yes, eat them in moderation ^^;

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draft.blogger.com

Some time ago I read this news on Flipbook that Blogger is launching a new interface and rumor says that Blogger will be renamed into Google Blog. I don't have anything against the name change. It's just that I've been so familiar with the term "Blogger" and now they're changing it. I guess that's how people feel when Sears Tower was changed to Willis Tower.

Work is fun so far. I'm learning new things every day, which is a really good thing.

Surprisingly, time passes so fast after I got back from work. I went back home, cook dinner, eat dinner, and then clean up the kitchen. And all of the sudden it's 9:30 PM. Whoa.

I tried making manju again. Still far from perfect, but I guess I'll just have to keep trying. 

The dough before filling in the mung bean paste into the dough

Home made mung bean paste. Mung bean boiled with some sugar, cooled down at room temperature and shaped into balls

When not used yet, keep the mung bean paste balls in a closed container. I used aluminum foil, just to make it easy for me. 

When the dough is ready, make the dough into round shape, flatten using fingers and then use it to wrap the mung bean paste balls.

My steamer is malfunctioning so I used a cooling rack and a fry pan to substitute a steamer. It works pretty well. Make sure to place cotton towel or kitchen towel dampen in cold water so the manju doesn't stick at the bottom.

Steamed for 10 minutes. I normally place them on a sheet of paper so they don't get dirty and they don't stick everywhere. Let cool at room temperature before decorating.

I used the back of a bamboo skewer and dip it into red food coloring. Poke the cooled down manju gently to draw.

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Xiao Long Bao

I bought a Hong Kong dim sum recipe book when I was in Singapore. Seems like this old Hong Kong lady is reliable!

I modified the recipe a little because I don't have that many ingredients at home.

Ingredients A:

- 2C AP flour

- 1/3 tsp salt

- 3 eggs

Ingredients B:

- 1/3C AP flour

- 40mL boiled water

Fillings A

- 1lb minced pork meat

- 1/3 tsp salt

- 1 Tbsp sugar

- pinch of white pepper

Fillings B

- 1 tsp sesame oil

- 1 stick of green onion, chopped

- 1 Tbsp Chinese cooking rice wine (or Michiu)

Filling C (juice)

- 2L chicken stock

- 1 cube chicken stock

- 4 packs gelatin (1.8g each)

- 2Tbsp salt

Other: 

- lettuce / napa cabbage (to put below the xiao long bao so they don't stick to the steamer)

Preps:

1. Combine Filling C together and cook until gelatin powder dissolves.

2. Pour into a tray and set to cool to solidify.
3. Cut into small dices, and keep in freezer.

Steps:
1. Mix Fillings A and Aadd in Fillings B. Mix evenly.
2. Mix Ingredients A and B separately, then combine to form a smooth dough.
3. Divide the dough into 20 balls and flatten each ball using a roller.
* make sure the center of the flattened dough is thicker than the sides
4. Wrap Fillings (including frozen Filling C) using the flattened dough. For how to fold the dough, see this video:


There are other helpful videos around YouTube if you search for it. Of course, 18 pleats are difficult to do. I just did 8 pleats.

5. Place xiao long bao on lettuce or napa cabbage leaf and steam over high heat for 10 minutes.

If you fail the first time, that's okay, because I failed too ;)

Good luck!

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Finishing Up

I have to clear out all my food stocks before I graduate. Hhh.... I have so much leftover glutinous rice from my soy snack extrusion research project. 

Last Friday I attempted to make lo mai kai but I forgot that last week my fridge refused to cool my stuffs because of ice formation in the freezer, so I had no meat to work with. But I still have some Chinese sausages and dried shiitake mushrooms - they never go bad easily.

Ingredients:
- 1 cup glutinous rice
- 1 Tbsp cooking oil
- 1 pork sausage, sliced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 cloves shallots, minced
- 4 dried mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced
- 2 Tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 Tbsp rice wine
- 2 Tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt

Steps:
1) Soak glutinous rice overnight (the water must completely cover the rice).
2) Drain the water from glutinous rice and steam for 40 minutes.
3) Meanwhile, sautee pork sausage, garlic, shallot and mushroom for about 3-5 minutes.
4) Take the glutinous rice out of the steamer. Add oyster sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, white pepper, sugar and salt into the steamed glutinous rice, and mix well. Note that at this point the glutinous rice should be a little hard because it will be steamed again. And as usual, the seasoning measurements are very flexible. Please adjust according to your taste :)
5) Mix sauteed ingredients from step 3 into the glutinous rice, and pack them into small bowls (or big bowl - depending on the way you want to serve the lo mai kai). Press it down the bowl so the glutinous rice is well-packed.
6) Steam the bowls for another 20 minutes.

These can be micowaved too, so it's okay to prepare them in advance :)

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Bread Cup

I tried this bread cutter and toasted white bread in oven toaster inside a cup.

Toasted bread cups

 Some of them were burnt because I left the toaster unwatched. It took only about 2 minutes to get it brown and crispy.

Bread cups filled with tuna, egg, white corn, yellow sweet corn, carrot and asparagus in Kewpie (Japanese mayo)

Would taste better if the salad were colder but my friends said it's yummy (and one complained that the bread was burnt)

:)

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Mushroom Risotto

So this is actually my get-rid-of-ingredients plan. I have so many food stuffs in my place and I only have 1 month left to finish them all!

No Parmesan cheese? Use cream cheese.
No fresh herbs? Use dried Italian herbs.
No fresh mushroom? Use dried ones.
No chicken stock? Use the water from rehydrating the dried mushroom.

Makes 3 servings

Ingredients:
- 6 pcs dried mushroom (shitake or some forest mushrooms)
- 1/2 cup water (to rehydreate the mushroom)
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 1 cup bell peppers (I used 3 colored peppers), diced
- 2 pcs garlic, sliced thinly (not minced!)
- 1 shallot, sliced thinly
- 1 cup Nishiki (Japanese short grain rice brand) rice
- 1 Tbsp dark olive oil
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 cup milk (I used 2% fat milk - probably will be creamier if whole milk is used)
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/4 tsp Italian seasoning/herbs
- salt (to taste)
- 2 Tbsp cream cheese

Steps:
1) Rehydrate mushroom in warm water for 20 minutes.
2) Melt the butter in the pan using medium-low heat.
3) Add bell peppers. Sautee for ~2 minutes.
4) Add garlic and shallot and mix together with the bell peppers. Sautee for another 2 minutes.
5) Add uncooked rice and olive oil into the pan. Stir well. Sautee for 5 minutes.
6) Add water and milk, then add black pepper, Italian seasoning and salt. Stir everything together.
7) Cover the pan with lid and cook for ~10 minutes or until the rice is cooked.
8) Add rehydrated mushrooms to the pan and mix well.
9) Serve warm. 

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Ponzu Pasta

I tried making spaghetti with soy sauce as the base flavor, and it failed miserably. I thought pasta was never to be prepared with soy sauce, but I was so totally wrong. So the problem was that I used whole grain thin spaghetti. I always thought whole grain pasta has pretty much acceptable texture with increased health benefits, but no. No, the texture was completely different than durum semolina (or the normal) pasta.

Even though I still have the whole wheat thin spaghetti, I decided to buy a normal pasta. It's the best decision ever.

Gli spaghetti con calamari alla ponzu (?)

Or we can call it spaghetti with squids cooked in ponzu sauce. 

So this pasta recipe creates a slightly tangy dish from the yuzu citrus flavor from ponzu sauce. The squid, black olives, capers and tomatoes add different textures to the dish as well, so I think they form good combination. Surprisingly, the flavors from black olives, capers and ponzu kinda complement each other as well.

Recipe:
- 1 serving boiled spaghetti (I don't know how many grams because I always use intuition)
- 1/2 Tbsp butter
- 2 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
- 1/2 C cut squids
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 2+3 Tbsp ponzu sauce
- 200 mL white wine (I used pinot grigio)
- 1T grated Parmesan cheese
- black olives (as desired)
- capers (as desired)

Steps:
1) Heat 1/4 Tbsp butter in a pan on medium heat.
2) Sautee sliced garlic for about 1 minute. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
3) Add squids, black pepper and 2 Tbsp ponzu sauce into the pan and cook until they are cooked (i.e. no longer transparent).
4) Add white wine and let it evaporate.
5) Increase the heat to high and add the rest of the butter. When the butter melts, add cooked spaghetti and mix well with the ingredients.
6) Add the rest of ponzu sauce and grated Parmesan cheese and mix well. Cook for another 30 seconds (not too long so the pasta won't get too dry) and remove from heat.
7) Serve with black olives and capers.

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Earthquake in Japan

I received a call from my mum in the morning and she said there was a huge earthquake in Japan. There were wsunami warnings in Southeast Asia, Australia, Russia, and several other places including San Francisco, US. And that's where my brother is right now. Just for today.

She asked me if my friends in Japan are okay. I know at least one is safe, but I don't know about the rest. And this stupid me doesn't remember her friends' email addresses and sending text messages cost a little too much so she decided to go to Facebook even though she's not supposed to open her Facebook page until April 18th. 

So she thinks that while she's on Facebook might as well post some stuffs and say hi to some other people she hasn't talked to for so long. She thought it was fine until her friends started asking why I'm online even though I'm not supposed to be online. 

I think, more than anything else, I need encouragement so I can pull through this period of lent. Well, I have no one to encourage me to not open the Facebook because I live in a single apartment and self control is the only way to stop me.

I wish there are people cheering on me not to give up on this cause >.<

However, it doesn't change the fact that I broke my promise. BUT it doesn't mean it all ends here. I'll re-start the no-Facebook-until-April-18 again.

Well anyways.

I tried cooking Finnish food this time.

Lohikeitto

Graavilohi

So I assume "lohi" means salmon in Finnish.

I got both recipes from http://www.finnguide.fi/ and I think it worked pretty well so far. I'm a little scared of eating my Graavilohi because I live in the middle of a continent and getting fresh fish is quite a problem. Graavilohi is cured salmon - and unlike cheviche, it doesn't use any acids.

I ate the Graavilohi today and I think I'm still in a good shape. But we'll see >.<

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Hetalia Effect

I got the wrong idea when I first saw Hetalia on YouTube. There are so many BL and yaoi things going around Hetalia and I thought it was just another harem anime. But it isn't. In fact, it's probably one of the most interesting manga / anime I've ever encountered.

So I came to know a lot about the cultures of other countries (even though they may not be really accurate), including the foods. There was one Drama CD where Lithuania said "Russia always dump everything into the soup" I became interested in knowing what Russian food is like.

After browsing the Internet (thank you Bill Gates for making life so much easier), I found some Russian recipes and I thought Solyanka would be the first to try because the ingredients are simple and from reading the recipes I feel that the taste would not be so wrong.

Glad I tried this recipe:

I changed this and that a little because I like to keep the serving size small. I think I needed more onions next time, but I love the taste of pickled cucumbers in this soup. It's like hot and sour and fresh!

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It is made out of...

Love!

My friends normally asked me for a recipe, or where I find the recipe. My answer is, I don't know. I don't have a recipe and I don't find it online either. I simply looked at my mum when she cooked for me.

My friends said it's talent, but I say it's love. You always cook with love.

Anyways!

This steamed minced pork stuffed tofu has been my favorite childhood food. It reminds me of home, it reminds me of my mum, and it reminds me of... my mum's LOVE!

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Spicy Attack

I don't know why but somehow I wanted to eat something really spicy.

It's hard to find cabe rawit here, so I used dried chili peppers they normally use in kungpao chicken. I boiled about 40-50 of them, fry them in a little bit of oil and crushed garlic, and just a little bit of lemon grass. And then I added a piece of chicken thigh, cut into 3 parts.

Yum!

Oh, by the way, good news: I can take French 101 next semester! \(^ v ^)/

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Shokuyoku no Fuyu

Shokuyoku no aki - a season of hearty appetites in fall season. Well I can't say it's fall right now. It's entering winter. So I'll call my phenomenon "shokuyoku no fuyu" since I'm becoming a real glutton in the cold winter.

It's midnight and I was hungry. I ate all the freebie cereal bars at home, so I had no choice but to cook something. I made shrimp alfredo linguine for lunch, and I guess I made too much sauce. So I decided to make a gratin.

At first I didn't know what gratin was. Thanks to the power of Google, I found out that it's a dish with some grated crust on it.

So I boiled tri-color rotini, put them on a pyrex pan, poured out the left over white sauce, sprinkled the dish with TONS of grated parmesan, and baked it using a toaster oven.

I call this this les crevettes au gratin. You know what? I'm not sure if I got them right but I Google (again!!) translated shrimp and les crevettes came out. And of course, au gratin  must have mean "with gratin" or something similar to that since I saw it on many restaurant menus. I mean, there's au jus as well, so I figure that au must have similar meaning to ala. No?

In any case I'm sorry if I got the French phrase wrong. But I really think putting a French name for your Western-style dish just sounds cooler somehow. After all, we love something that sounds complicated, don't we? *wink wink*

Bon apetit!

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Revenge!!

I spent half my weekend (Saturday and Sunday) in my research lab. It was kinda stressful. On Sunday I went to lab at 1 and came back home at 7:30 pm. That was tough.

I was really hungry. I thought of dining outside. I didn't think I have enough energy to cook anymore. But as soon as I got home, I thought of cooking something fancy.

there we go, Indonesian nasi kuning.

Yellow rice

My dinner on Sunday

and my lunch on Monday

Pretty simple to make. 

Yellow Rice

Recipe:

- 2 cups long grain rice

- 4 teaspoon turmeric powder

- 1 teaspoon ground white pepper

- 1/4 teaspoon ground clove

- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

- 1 teaspoon chicken powder

- 1/2 can coconut milk

- 2 bay leaves

- 2 orange leaves

Steps:

1) Rince rice in water twice.

2) Fill the water line in the rice cooker to slightly below the line for 2 cups of rice.

3) Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well.

4) Turn on the rice cooker and wait until it cooks.

5) Serve hot.

Ayam goreng ketumbar (corriander fried chicken)
Recipe:

- 2 pieces chicken thigh, chopped into 2

- 1 tablespoon turmeric powder

- 1 teaspoon black pepper

- 2 tablespoons ground corriander seeds

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon ground clove

- 1 teaspoon lime juice

Steps:

1) Marinate chicken with the rest of the ingredients for 1 day in the fridge.

2) Heat 2 cups of oil (enough to submerge the chicken) with medium-high heat (5 out of 9)

3) Carefully put marinated chicken into hot oil. Be careful of oil splashing out.

4) Cook for ~15 minutes

5) Drain and serve when hot.

WARNINGS: I never follow the recipe, so the above ingredient measurements are just estimates!!!

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Bread Bowl

It's getting colder and colder, so I guess it's almost time for soupy meals again.

Shrimp and scallop creamy tomato bisque on bread bowl

I got the bread from Panera. Or rather, I got it from one of my food science class because we were talking about bread and cheese production and my very nice professor brought us 4 different types of bread and 3 different types of cheese. We had quite a lot of leftover so I brought this one home.

But I left it too long inside a paper bag, so the bread has gone really dry!! Yes, the air outside is getting really dry too.

I found a can of Campbell soup in my kitchen cabinet, and decided to make shrimp and scallop bisque.

Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- 3 shrimps, chopped
- 3 scallops, chopped
-1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice

- 1/2 can tomato bisque (Campbell's)

- a round bread with thick 'skin'

Steps:

1) Heat olive oil on saucepan. Add minced garlic and sautee until golden brown.

2) Add shrimp, scallop, black pepper and lemon juice and cook until shrimp and scallop is not transparent.

3) Add tomato bisque. Stir and heat for 10 minutes.

4) In the meantime, cut the top part of the bread so that it's wide enough to be a bowl. Scoop out the insides of the bowl using a spoon but be careful not to dig too deep and break the bottom part of the bread.

5) Pour soup into the bread bowl. Serve hot.

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Sleeping Bento

The leaves have started to turn red, but the temperature was around 29-30C today, so it doesn't feel like Fall has come. I was talking to my friend today, and I just realized that it has been 2 months since the start of this semester!

I only have 3-4 bento photos so far. That's sad :( I had more last year...

So the theme for today is "I still want to sleep..."

I think everyone has at least experienced this before: the alarm clock rings, you try to reach it and find the snooze button, wishing for another 5 minutes of sleep... which could potentially end up with you waking up late (at least that has been my case LOL).

Recipe is self-explanatory. The beef curry was actually my dinner left over :3

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Checkered Cookies

Hello again! I'm back to surface. As you probably have known (if you know me or you follow this blog), I don't like sweet stuffs. But I can't resist cuteness attacks, so I've decided to bake checkered cookies. I was actually inspired by my friend's photo. She made black and white cookies for Valentine's day.

Before baking

After baking

It wasn't that hard to do. Basically, it was the same as shortbread cookie recipe, but with altered flavor. I got the original recipe from here:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pistachio-Chocolate-Checkers/Detail.aspx

But I modified it slightly because I simply don't like cookies that are too sweet. So instead of 1 1/2 cups of sugar, I used only about 3/4 cups of sugar. I added 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract for the white one, and then about 2 teaspoons of matcha powder for the green one.

BUT!

I ran out of all-purpose flour, so I had to resort to self-rising flour. So the cookie is a little fluffy. But I guess that's okay; it's just that the cookie kinda became fat (LOL).

Anyways.

It's getting colder and colder. Everyone seems to hate the cold down here, but I prefer this than the hot, scorching sun.

I've started the "One Thank-You per Day" on Facebook, and I'm glad to hear that some of my friends thought this idea is very inspiring.

I don't go to bible studies, and I'm not as religious as probably most of the Christians down here. But what I want to do is to spread the love to the community - to spread the message that there is always something to be thankful about as you live every day. Life does not suck; at least for me, and that's what I want to believe.

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