The Making of a Natural Beauty

Apparently is takes 25 bottles and 7 scrubbies to make 3 eighteen year old college room mates naturally beautiful. LOL!  I stopped by to take my daughter out to lunch and on the way home I needed to use the bathroom before my drive.  I walked in and thought this is crazy.  My daughter said only one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of body wash was hers.  She said it is crazy to get into the shower and kick over a few bottles.  Then when there is shampoo in your eyes a few more bottles fall into the tub.  She then said you have to shuffle your feet around until the soap is washed out of your eyes, so you don't fall.  Then you can pick up the bottles.  Oh the college years and all the strange memories that get added in that shape your future.

Chalkboard Easter Eggs

So easy and so much fun.  I painted wooden goose egg sized eggs with Martha Stewart's Chalkboard paint. I bought the paint and the eggs at Joann's.  I thought about sanding them.  I thought about putting a base coat on them.  What I did was get out a 1" foam brush and just started painting them.  I made 6.  I put probably 5 or 6 coats on them.  I knew I had put enough on them when they dried they had a nice shine still.  Before that they would dry and be a flat color like the wood had absorbed the paint.

Then I primed them with chalk I had bought at Walgreens.  It was $1 for a plastic box full of 12 large sticks of chalk.  I figured when the kids were tired of drawing on their eggs they could draw on the sidewalk.  That's exactly what they did.

I wrote their names on the eggs and hid them with a stick of chalk with the other Easter eggs.  They had a lot of fun finding them.  I had also made an egg for the oldest cousin who was 16.  I didn't want her to feel left out even though I figured she was too old for such nonsense.  I over heard her say as she sat and drew on her egg "This is so cool."

I Love My Tea

Never thought I'd be a tea lover.  It's just never been... well... my cup of tea.  I keep reading over the past year how good it can be for you.  So, I've been trying to find something I like.  My daughter and I were at the mall and she wanted to duck into Teavana.  I'd just been to China and knew good tea is expensive, but really didn't think about it when I fell in love with Youthberry White tea at the Teavana store.  My daughter and I really liked it.  So, I thought let's get some.  The salesman was very good and he talked me into buying a pound of tea and a tin.  It was all on sale you know.  He rang it up and said, "That will be $92."  I didn't want to embarrass myself or my daughter by yelling out, "NINETY TWO DOLLARS!!"  I just got out my ATM card and paid.

After I left the store I expressed my concern over the expensive tea.  My daughter got out her calculator and figured out that the amount of tea I bought would come out to 62 cents a cup.  I calmed right down, because really that's quite reasonable.

I've had the tea for over a month and I have 2 cups a day.  I still LOVE it.  I even bought more.  Every time my daughter talks to me I've bought more tea.  MOM!  She says knowing it's not cheap.  I only got 2 more flavors.  I got Opus Rouge for making ice tea.  It was very strongly grape flavored almost raisiny and I don't care for raisins too much.  So, I bought another flavor called Wild Orange Wulong to combine with the Opus Rouge.  The combination is so good.  So, good I started combining it with the Youthberry too.

That's where this post come from is my love of the Wild Orange Wulong.  It had chunks of dried orange.  I make sure a piece of it is in every cup.  I realized even with breaking them up I'd never have enough for the whole bag of tea.  I decided to dry my own orange.  A new fun experiment.

Fresh and ready to dry.

My dehydrator is in the garage as not to heat up the house in the summer.  That's when I use it the most.  Now that I'm thinking about it it's winter and maybe I should bring it in the house?  I got 8 Cara Cara oranges.  They are my favorite oranges.  Love their pink color and their great flavor.  Crossing fingers they'll be great in tea.

After a few hours of drying.

Anyhow I keep expecting to go out into the garage and have it smell like wonderful orange.  Nope.  My dehydrating book said, "Do not dry citrus fruit."  Not very encouraging.  I'm thinking they are saying you wouldn't want to eat it.  I plan on making tea with it.  I want it dry and crispy.  I started it at 130 degrees F and after a few hours it said to turn down to 125 degrees F.  They are pretty juicy.  I checked it after about 4 hours and I feel confident to leave it drying all night.  Hoping garage will smell great in the morning.

February 28th the next morning.  Garage never did get a wonderful orange smell to my disappointment.  What it lacked in smell outside it smelled fantastic inside the dehydrator.  I opened it up to see my little beauties dried to perfection!

I sliced up 8 oranges that weighed about 5 pounds. 

They dried up to weigh 1 pound.  They were the perfect size.  I sliced the fresh orange in 1/2 inch slices.  Then I quartered them.  They dried to 1/4 inch thick pieces just like what came in my tea from Teavana.  As I was leaving for my knitting meeting a threw a couple slices into my tea to go.  The extra orange flavor was delightful.

 Make sure to bag them up tight.  No telling what kind of vermin will try and get at them. :)

Twinkie Chan I think I love you

OK I sound a bit stalkerish, but she comes up with the cutest crochet patterns.  2 Christmas' ago DH bought me Twinkie Chan's book "20 Yummy Treats to Wear."  I started following Twinkie's blargh. This year she has 2 free patterns on the Michael's website for February.  I tend to like to make things that are cute and fun rather than just beautiful.  So, her aesthetic is right up my alley.  There I go using that word that is overused on Project Runway and makes me want to smack someone.  Not you Twinkie never want to smack you.

Here is my Chocolate Truffle Scarf.

 

I also made Twinkie's Sweetheart Sugar Cookie Brooches.  I made 3 for my daughter and her college roommates and 1 for me of course.  Sorry about the blurry photos, but sometimes I get so excited to give something away I forget to take pictures all together.  This time I hurriedly took some before I gave them away. 

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day

I decided this year to make a treat for my friends I was going to see that day.  I was going to my machine knitting meeting and then I was going to the gym and I wanted to treat my daughter and her college roommates.  I saw this project at a Stampin' Up get together the week before and just had to do it.  It was SO easy and so adorable.  I used 2 bags of Valentine M&Ms, 1 X 8 inch cellophane bags, and a Valentine stamp from Stampin' Up.  This made 28 of these Valentine Treats.

Only one person came to me privately and said, "Can I give these back to you?  We don't celebrate Valentine's Day."  I had given her 3, so she could give one each to her 2 young daughter's.  I've always thought it strange when my kids would bring home Christmas gifts they had made for their teachers saying some teachers refused to take them.  Numerous reasons... "I'm diabetic," "I don't celebrate Christmas," "I don't accept gifts from my students."  It's a frickin gingerbread cookie, not the Mona Lisa.  Really?  It's not about the cookie.  It's a person wanting to give you their glad tidings for the holiday.  You don't have to eat it, wear it, or hang it on your wall.  Just accept it with the spirit in which it was given.  What you do with it later is totally your own business.  The person talking to me is a young friend of mine and I told her just that.  She said she was embarrassed and didn't want my handy work to go to waste.  I said that's the beauty of it.  I'd never know.

I've gotten a thing or 2 over the years that I didn't want.  Like the time I was at a BBQ and the President of the soccer club didn't want the giant bottles of Costco mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard to go to waste (even though they had been out in the heat all afternoon).  Nobody would take them understandably so, but he was so concerned about them being wasted.  I said, "Yes, I'll take them."  They felt so good about them not going to waste.  Dear hubby got into the car with his eyes wide as saucers that I was going to give our whole family salmonella.  I said, "Are you kidding me!!  Those bottles of poison are not stepping one foot into our house, but the President doesn't need to know that."  Hubby winked at me, pulled on to the road home and said, "You did a good thing."

Balsamic Vinegar... contains lead?

Is this normal?  In reading my vinegar labels looking for sodium I saw this little box that I obviously didn't notice when I bought it.  My husband and I had used half the bottle.  Kind of scary!  Kind of scary that I didn't see it.  It's not like they were trying to slip it by me.  I just never would have thought in checking the nutrition of my food I needed to look for lead.

Why does my tongue feel like I've been eating paint chips?

Chinese Style Steamed Fish

While I was in Hong Kong there were many delicious things to eat.  Found out the Chinese food and Dim Sum served right here in my town is very close to what the real stuff is like.  What I wanted though was something I could make at home and enjoy.  We ate several meals at my SILs parents house and they were all so good.  The tools, ingredients, and recipes seemed a bit over my head.  Then one night what they called a Chinese steamed fish was served.  It was so fresh and delicious.  I thought it could really solve my issue of wanting to eat fish once a week, but not finding any recipes that made a store bought fish palatable (dang my dad for being such a good fisherman when I was a kid).

 

With my SIL translating I told my FIL that the fish was delicious and I'd like to make it when I get home.  Could he tell me how it was made?  He gave me a look "of course I will tell you, but it's really nothing special."  He went into the kitchen and brought out a bottle of Season Soy Sauce for Fish Lee Kum Kee brand.  I recognized the brand immediately as something sold here in the states.  I thought there may be some hope I can duplicate this recipe.  I found the soy sauce, but it's called Season Soy Sauce for Seafood and in parenthesis is says "very good with fish."  The FIL told me to use spring onions, Chinese parsley, and ginger.  Just steam it.

 

After I got back to the states I thought I'd look for a recipe online and found something even better Lee Kum Kee has made a video of how to make Chinese Style Steamed Fish.  The over dubbing of English is a bit silly sounding at times, but it's very helpful.  What I found out from the video is the fish is steamed right on the plate it's served on. I had no idea.

 

I went shopping for green onions, cilantro, ginger, Seasoned Soy Sauce for Seafood and a whole fish of course.  Who would have thought finding a whole fish was going to be the hard part.  I looked at the Chinese Market near me.  Nope.  I went to Whole Foods and they had sardines not what I was looking for.  I went to a fish market near me.  Nope.  Then I thought I'd try my 2 local grocery stores.  Nope.  So, I called my brother as I remembered him saying my SIL occasionally makes steamed fish.  He said his local Chinese market had whole fish.  That they even have them alive in a tank.  Talk about fresh.  Not very convenient for me to pick one up, but it is close to where my husband works for future reference.  Sunday though we were in the area and I said, "Let's pick up a fish."  They only had carp in the live tank and I'm sorry my dad conditioned me to not like carp.  They did have a nice Striped Bass on ice and I bought it.  They cleaned and scaled it for me.

 

Once home it was time to get started.  I pulled out the Farberware Wok I got as a wedding present 25 years ago and sad to say I've never used it.  I kept it all these years as I've always wanted to use it.  After cleaning it I plugged it in to make sure it worked.  It did we're in business.  I knew I could steam fish on one of my dinner plates as they are oven safe.  Next I began peeling and slicing the ginger.  I sliced green onions for under the fish and chopped some to sprinkle on top.  I then chopped up the cilantro.  I got the fish out rinse, dried it and rubbed it with salt.  I layed it on my bed of green onions.  I placed the slices of ginger on top.  The wok was set up and boiling and I set the fish inside and tried to close the lid.  My fish was a tail too long for the wok.  I didn't want to chop the tail off.  The presentation just wouldn't be what I wanted.  So, not to be detered I folded the tail up with the lid and set the lid down.  So, the tail is a little wonkie.  At least it still had the tail.  I set a time for 10 minutes.  While it was steaming I measured out my Seasoned Soy Sauce and cooking oil.

 

Once the fish was steamed my plate was filled to the brim with I guess fish broth.  I really didn't know what to do with it, so I tipped the plate over the sink and poured it off.  I didn't remember the plate being full of anything, but soy sauce, oil, green onions and cilantro in Hong Kong.  After removing ginger I sprinkled fish with sliced green onion and chopped cilantro.  I then heated the oil poured it over the fish.  I could hear the fish crackle as I did this.  I warmed the soy sauce and poured it over and it was ready to serve.  I couldn't believe that this fish looked just like what I had in Hong Kong.  As we ate it I was so pleased that it taste equally as good.

 

This morning my son said he had a dream about my steamed fish.  He said he had a whole fish to himself and ate it leaving only a plate of bones behind.  In the dream when his father asked for some steamed fish he threw the plate of bones at him.  Dreams can be so funny.

I think that it's a great compliment if people are dreaming about something you cooked.  We will definitely be doing this again and again and again.

Chinese Style Steamed Fish

 

1 1/2 - 2 pounds fresh fish

6 slices fresh ginger

3-6 stalks green onions

3 sprigs of cilantro

3 T cooking oil

6-8 T Season Soy Sauce for Seafood

 

See video for instructions on how to make you Chinese Style Steamed Fish.