RecipeMuncher

mayhap you remember last year when i made fondant hello kitty cookies for a friend’s 25th. for same said friend this year, i made hello kitty cake pops. as seen here. let’s not try to make comparisons between the two versions, k?
materials used:pillsbury moist supreme strawberry cake mix (don’t judge me for using boxed mix)pillsbury valentine’s funfetti frosting wilton’s lemon yellow icingred

i am so pleased to present my first ever guest blogger. bear is a dear friend who started her own food blog a few months ago: Made With My Bear Hands. we spent saturday afternoon cooking together, catching up & basically being assclowns. i made shepherd’s pie and bear created this lemony tart dessert. please do check out her space, she’s awesome.
My grandma’s lemon chess pies were my FAVORITE

i’m not kidding when i say that i’ve been avoiding the kitchen. i’ve also been avoiding this blog. i have two more posts & then i’m going on a sabbatical. i am available on the interwebs, you know how to reach me.
Curried Lentil Soupadapted from Diane Rossen Worthington in Williams-Sonoma Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil1 medium yellow onion (finely chopped) or 1-2 leeks, cleaned, sliced, and

look. i know i mostly identify with my vietnamese roots and yet i am calling this year the Year of the Rabbit like the Chinese, and not the Year of the Cat like the vietnamese. i don’t know why that is, and frankly, i’m too hung over to contemplate the whys of it all. just know that this weekend was about friends and family, drinks and food, pictures that will hopefully never see the light

january wasn’t a good cooking month for me. my heart wasn’t in it. february is shaping up the same way. it’s nothing bad, it’s actually quite normal. when it gets frigid outside, i’m a lazy ass. i’d rather be snuggled under my flannel throw, reading or watching tv. further, i’m combatting a cold that just won’t quit.
today is the first day of the new lunar year. finally, the ferocious Year of

{unedited shots taken with my point/shoot. sometimes i don’t like to lug the dslr everywhere i go}
i gripe every winter about the snow. but with sunsets like these, when the light is more gold than cold, can you blame me for staying put?
hi February, there’s only 28 days of you this year, and then God willing, March will blow in warm. either way, i am happy to see you.

i had to bake a sure thing. this is what i baked: beer bread. specifically, Leffe Beer Bread. the bottle was only 11.2oz and the recipe calls for 12oz. i added water for the difference.
it was lumpy.it smelled boozy.it baked beautifully.it tasted heavenly.
recipe courtesy of amy of poor girl gourmet. what? you haven’t gotten the cookbook yet? pity you.
currently jamming to this song, that i

i am not a fan of snow. i realize i am doing that whole year of living positively thing but damn. this snow stuff? not cool.
well played God. well played.

recently read: Looking For Alaska by John Green
imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. you spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that

i’m a leg girl. always have been. i like my drumsticks, i like dark meat. why have chicken boobies when you can have thighs? yes, i do judge if you only consume the boobies. i am just saying. so i bought a container of chicken thighs, 4lbs to be exact, and i had aspirations to make some badass chicken soup but decided to crock pot it up. i’ve used this particular recipe twice for pork neck

if you recall, last week’s bread baking fiasco caused me to take a breather from bread baking. just to be clear, this was supposed to be a BREAK, not a break up. (did you hear that Rachel Green??) this "break" may have just lasted a week, but it was a serious time of Reflection, with hopes of Redemption. this weekend, i chose to make nice by baking brioche.
i jammed to dance music, you know,

as inspired by this pattern, i say inspired because the only things the same are the chain row & the color grey. i did three single crochet stitches for the corners, every two rows i single crocheted in both stitches, while the other rows were in the front loops only. if you don’t understand crochet-speak, this paragraph means nothing to you.
this took me about a week to create, while i

are you ready for another failure? prepare thyself. this is my SECOND attempt at making this stuffed challah ball, only this time filled with chocolate. i tried the 4 braid look, i used whole wheat flour, and i used chocolate ganache (massive mistake, btw).
oh my heart is kinda wounded over this. it was dry. it was grainy. i suppose it tastes alright, if you’re big on dry and grainy.
i used

you’ll be proud of me, i spent an entire sunday taking pictures of anything and everything BUT food. instead, i walked around fells point with cousins: brunching, thrifting, pastry-ing, laughing and most importantly, just being. doesn’t that just sound so beautiful? it was even better living it.
and to end such a gorgeous day, i spent an evening with girlfriends watching a soul searing movie

there are certain asian foods that i believe shouldn’t be recreated at home unless you’re Mom (not A mom, but you know… your mom) or you’re a professional. foods like dim sum chicken feet, bun bo hue, or pad thai. i don’t care how many people say those dishes are easy to recreate, it’s still not the same, or better.
let me go ahead and be honest with you. i wasn’t all that happy with this

when i first saw this pattern on ravelry, it was love at first sight. i am not a fan of granny squares and having to sew the pieces is just annoying. but this blanket? it’s so pretty. initially i was going to just go 6X6 but went the full 8X8. this project took me 8 months. Nuria did the sewing for me and i gifted it to her mom when we were in barçelona. this is a Life List bulletpoint too,

imma confess something to you: i’m a terrible asian cook. what i mean by that is that i don’t mess around with most asian ingredients like galangal, whatever animal blood, the various million varieties of curry pastes, fermented random stuff etc. yeah i enjoy me some asian foods but my pantry is well stocked with western ingredients. i stand in Hmart’s condiment aisle and i have mini anxiety

i am jetlagged lazy & sick. but this Life List bullet point has been done with great fanfare, all in part to nuria & her friends & family. if a picture can speak a 1000 words, then this flickr set will pretty much ALL CAPS tell you what an incredible fat ass i am as there are a shocking amount of food shots. sorry about that.

i am not in my usual corner of the world. in fact, i am in an entirely different time zone, in Spain. tonight, i will dream in spanish, as i have been for the last week, and i will be hopeful of a bright new year, surrounded by new friends & family, good eats & a more positive outlook on Life.

to look forward, one must look back.12 things i made & did:
Fruit Tart - homemade pâte sucrée & crème

i read somewhere once that cookbooks are collected, maybe one or two recipes are made & then the books are shoved on the bookshelf to look pretty & give the homecook some credibility, but are rarely rifled thru again. me. i peruse my cookbooks, all of them, often. sometimes i need the inspiration and other times, well, i just want someone to tell me what to do for once.
 pictured:chicken,

i’ve said it before, i am no fan of coconut yet i always have it on hand in my pantry. but i make concessions to the stuff, because of the existence of these macaroons. there’s a shop in rockville, the name eludes me, that has the best coconut macaroons and now, i can create them myself, thanks to wendi. i followed the recipe straight up. the first 9 were kept in at exactly 15 minutes and my

unfortunately, this pattern is no longer available. i was lucky, i printed it out before it went offline.
a few things: somehow my flower was just 2-layers and that irked me so, i made up the 2nd flower sans pattern. don’t ask me how, i don’t remember. last, the cowl ended up shaping with a pointed V, which worked out since it’s a looped thing but that irked me too. i added this item,

exactly one year ago today my braces were removed. before that, for 18 months 1 week & 6 days i couldn’t eat something like this, at least not without breaking a bracket or hurting the chompers.
i made these during turkey weekend, as part of my giveaway package. i even bought a new thermometer on black friday for the occasion. i sorta followed this recipe by a dork & his pork. i say sorta

it was a perfect december twelfth. thank you.

for more pix.

were you one of those kids whose mom kept every single art project you ever produced in school? i wasn’t. my best friend in high school, kevin, he was. his mom decorated their home for every season and holiday, and you can bet that there’d be some random kevin or his brother andrew creation on the end tables, or on the walls. it was quite endearing, as well as gag-inducing. me? grandma didn’t