Coconut Macaroons

As usual, Ryan and I were craving sweets on Saturday. Cookies came to mind first, but then I remembered the bag of coconut flakes that had been sitting in my fridge for the last couple months. Mmm coconuts...cookies...macaroons! This is my first attempt at macaroons. Luckily, the recipe I found turned out to be very quick and easy. The only change I'd make is to use a smidge less salt, although to the recipe's credit I can't remember if I measured exactly or had a mound on my measurement. Was too famished to pay attention.


Coconut Macaroons
Courtesy of AllRecipes.com

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
5 1/2 cups flaked coconut
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, coconut and salt. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla using your hands until well blended. Use an ice cream scoop to drop dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about golf ball size.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until coconut is toasted.

Time Flies

This weekend flew by in a blur. To recap:

On Friday, I went to Donovan's with the ladies and got a quick drink. Love those fillet sliders and wraps. That night, Ryan's buddy who was in town crashed with us. We ate large burritos and hung out at home.

On Saturday, I went to yoga while Ryan and his friend played in a 3 game soccer tournament. That afternoon, we went with the parents to Armstrong's where we finally got a shovel. More gardening occurred once we got home, followed by food, wine, playoffs, ufc fight, and movie.

On Sunday, I went to yoga and then the whole family went to Kevin's girlfriend's house for a bbq. Afterwards, we went with the parents to see Star Trek, which was pretty damn good considering all I knew about Star Trek is the line "Beam me up, Scottie!".

On Monday (thank god there was a Monday), we went to Ranch 99 to replenish our jasmine rice and ramen supplies. Afterwards, we went to Home Depot to pick up wood to make a frame for the vegetable bed. By this time we were starving so we went to Original Pancake House (closed but we were allowed to do takeout). The rest of the afternoon was spent gardening furiously.

Too tired to make this a particularly interesting post but I've got lots of pictures and captions here. Note: Ryan taught Fred how to climb a tree today. This could be bad.

Dear Hair

It's been a memorable two years. You were embittered after I hacked you off at the chin in Jan 2007 but you grew back with a vengeance. Unruly, uncombed, you left remnants of yourself all over the house. During yoga and running, you would cling to my face and absorb sweat like a sponge. At times, you looked quite beautiful. At other times, you made me look like a dirty hippie. I don't regret our time together but I'm afraid your reign is at its end. Tomorrow, you shall be introduced to the pixie cut. Yes I know this would be the shortest I've ever tried. Yes I know your thick wire-y texture could result in a helmet head (I implore you not to be so cruel). And yes I know I run the high risk of looking like a boy or as Monkey said, looking like I have a big moon face. But for now, I'm tire of your antics and we must part ways.

Don't take it personally,
Bunny

Ho Hum

This weather is stupid. How am I suppose to find the motivation to get out of bed in the mornings when it's so glum and dreary out? I wish the sun would just come out already and get over this whole May-Grey/June-Gloom complex. At least Fred feels my pain.



Let's see, it's been a while since I last posted. I'll try to give an update on whatever I can remember doing. On Sunday, I made lentil soup which I had been meaning to do ever since my mom randomly pawned off two packets of lentils on me the last time she was visiting. Considering the woman never cooks anything other than Asian food, I have no idea where she came across lentils. I won't bother posting the recipe as it's hard for me to get particularly excited about lentil soup but all I'll say is it was hearty and healthy.



In comparison, the baked lemon pasta I made last night was quite delicious and exciting. The dish was super simple and flavorful. Definitely the type of recipe you loosely follow and tweak to your delight. Instead of sour cream, I used heavy cream since I had it in the fridge. Mmmm healthy right? By the way I found this recipe on a food blog that I'm now hooked on. Beautiful pictures and yummy looking food. Love it.



Baked Lemon Pasta
Courtesy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks
1 pound thin spaghetti
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 cups sour cream
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste if desired
Plenty of grated Parmesan cheese
Flat leaf parsley, chopped
Extra lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook spaghetti until al dente.

In a skillet, melt butter with olive oil over LOW HEAT. When butter is melted, add minced garlic. Squeeze lemon juice into the pan. Turn off heat. Add sour cream and stir mixture together. Add lemon zest and salt. Taste, then add more salt if necessary.

Pour mixture over drained spaghetti and stir together, then pour spaghetti into an oven safe dish. Bake, covered, for 15 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for an additional 7 to 10 minutes. (Don’t bake too long or the pasta will dry out.) When you remove it from the oven, squeeze a little more lemon juice over the top.

Top generously with Parmesan cheese, then chopped parsley. Give it a final squeeze of lemon juice at the end. Serve with crusty French bread and a simple green salad.

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Lastly on the garden front, I manically decided to pull back part of the gravel pathway in an attempt to dig up a vegetable bed. I had originally postponed this project but then my mom gave me the black corinth plant which would have a perfect home at the back corner of the bed (good sun, neighboring trees that the vines could climb). Anyway, I dove right in. Once I peeled back the gravel and plastic tarp underneath, I was confronted by the hardest ground on this side of the Pacific. Not to mention, it's riddled with tree roots. I'm talking intense tree roots. Oh boy. After soaking the area with water repeatedly, the soil has loosened up just bit and we've been able to slowly chisel away at it with a little 3 pronged hand tool. Slowly. Painfully. One day, I'll have a hole big enough for my corinth plant. On that day, I will have the right arm of a body builder.


By the way I never got a chance to post about the ladies ceramic painting event a couple of weeks ago. It was super fun and a nice break from the usual activities. I painted a flower pot (surprise) and it came out pretty well. Can't wait to go over to everyone else's place and see their pieces after they were fired! After this small exploration of my creative side, I started a pastel drawing over the weekend of calla lilies from my garden. More on that later.

Worth A Thousand Words

It's a bit late for a long worded post so here are some pictures with short captions instead.

Our star jasmine plants are blooming. What cute flowers. I've been seeing these plants all over the place. Very nice smell.


I fear one day birds will eat our two plump figs before we get a chance to. I hope I don't pluck them too early. Anyway, looks like there might be a third one coming out in the top right. This increases my chances of partaking in a home grown fig.


We refilled the bird feeder. Large blue bird chowing down below.


Baby Sophie in her bouncer. So cute!!


Ryan made us double decker grillers. Healthier than a Big Mac :). Notice how classy we are pairing this meal with red wine.


I recently posted about learning Sayanasana in yoga class. To prove to myself that I could do it again, I tried it at home against the wall. Picture below was taken using flip video.

SmelL.A.

Yikes, need to play catch up with my posts. Let's see...work work work during the week. By Friday, I was quite irritated with myself for getting so obsessed with work (since that's definitely something I don't want to get obsessed with) so I took a long lunch and went to a new yoga studio in the area. The website for this studio described the style as "heated" yoga but there was no mention of Bikram. Ok, that means mildly heated right? Um, no. As soon as I walked into the sauna like practice room, I knew I was in for trouble. I could barely breathe! Within 10 minutes, every pore on my body was gushing sweat. On top of that, I forgot my towel so I couldn't even wipe any of it up. Pool of sweat = constant slippage = pissed off and unfocused session. Not enjoyable. At least they had a mirror which my usual studio does not, so I could check out my alignment. That night, Ryan and I ordered Thai from the neighborhood restaurant and watched more playoffs. Stupid Lakers beat the Rockets. I really hate Kobe. He's literally the world's biggest tool. I could go on and on about this but I will spare you.

On Saturday, we woke up and drove to LA to see my mom for Mother's Day. The drive was uneventful. As soon as we got there, my mom feed us some stir fried noodles and then we checked out her garden. Here are some of her fruit trees. I'm so jealous!

Mulberry bush (very sweet, tastes like strawberries):


Blueberries:


Kumquat:


Fig tree with about 10 nicely sized figs:


Mini Japanese peaches:


Two geranium plants that I will probably take cuttings from next time I visit:



One of many interesting plants she had around the garden:


In the afternoon, I cut my mom's hair giving her the usual cute bob. Turned out pretty good, though far from professional. Hopefully no one will notice the uneven spots :). Last minute, I decided to give her heavy bangs (living vicariously through her hair adventures). After a few nervous snips, I was convinced that things had taken a turn for the worst, but I persevered and the bangs actually came out very cute! Quite pleased with the result. In fact, my mom called me today after she went to church to tell me how much everyone loved her hair and thought she looked 10 years younger. Whoo hoo.



Afterwards, we went to my cousin Jeff's house to see his new baby Jaden and then off to grocery shop. The rest of the evening was a flurry of cooking and eating. With my sous chef Ryan, I made spinach enchiladas, rice, and beans, paired with some sour cream and salsa verde. For dessert I made an apple cobbler which we ate with gobs of vanilla ice cream. I completely forgot to take pictures since we were so busy eating, talking, and drinking red wine.

Included in the conversation was a rehash of my mom and Uncle Jamie's childhoods. Very interesting stuff. My mom was telling us how her family grew up on a farm in Taiwan and how they were so poor they ate sweet potatoes instead of rice. Apparently only rich people ate rice! In junior high, she used to be so embarrassed about her lunch that she'd hide it from the other kids so no one would know how poor they were. So sad. Anyway, it really put a lot of things into perspective. Most people I know, myself included, are so lucky to have what we have and yet we're always bitching about wanting this or that or stressing about stuff that just doesn't matter in the bigger picture of things. It was a nice reminder to focus on what really matters: the people you love and the relationships you have with them.

Today we drove to West Hollywood to visit Ryan's grandma at the caring home. Grandma has not been doing very well so we knew it was important to see her. Luckily, Ivy and Mike also stopped by and I think she did enjoy our company even if she couldn't show it much. Afterwards, Ryan and I stopped by the farmer's market for some paninis and then we picked up a coconut cream pie for Ryan's parents (and a chocolate donut for ourselves hehe).

This post is getting long so I'll wrap it up here. After lunch, we drove home to SD and relaxed in afternoon. I got a chance to garden a bit although I didn't have time to plant the black corinth (champagne grape) plant that my mom gave me. For dinner, the family went out to PF Changs to celebrate mothers day. As usual, completely over ate and am now laying on the couch. Good night.

Swamped

I'm officially declaring myself swamped. I haven't had a chance to do much the past few days except work, go to yoga, eat, and work. Boo hoo hoo. I need my beauty sleep dammit.

On a positive note, Google Analytics is reporting that I've had 716 unique visitors over the lifetime of my blog! Considering I started the blog in Jan 2008, that's almost 1.5 new visitors a day. Hooray! As for actual visits (non-unique), I've had 3,141. Man, pressure is on to post interesting things...

Herbacious

Check out this nice bounty of herbs I harvested - clockwise from top left: basil, parsley, rosemary, and cilantro. Hopefully I have enough basil to make a small bit of pesto. Yum.

Things have been busy as usual. Besides the usual work, I've started contracting on the side for my friend Bobby. He created a software product for political fundraising which is all web based. It's taken some time to ramp up since I've never coded in ASP.NET before, but I think I'm getting the hang of it and should be done with my first project soon.

On Friday, we went downtown with Ryan's family to see Vienna Tang play at Anthology. Ryan's dad is a huge fan and actually suggested to the venue that they book Vienna. The place was really nice and we had a great time eating, drinking, and enjoying the music. One of the opening acts was a guy playing pop music on a cello. Very different and thus highly enjoyable.

Saturday was the usual yoga and soccer combo for me and the hubs (respectively, not both). In the afternoon, we went to see the new Wolverine movie which was pretty entertaining. Sadly, we didn't get a chance to eat lunch before the movie so we pigged out on popcorn and dibs (ice cream nibblets of deliciousness). The story line didn't follow the comic exactly but I'm ok with the liberties they took. Plus Hugh Jackman is one fine specimen of a man and I'm willing to watch him do just about anything. Interpret that as you will. Later in the day, we discovered Fred sleeping in my gym bag. Ryan couldn't resist swooping her up. It was too cute.



Today was another yoga day and a double soccer day for Ryan. We tried a cool move today called Sayanasana. You start in forearm stand and then slowly lift your hands to your chin so you're balancing on the elbow. At first, I could barely get my hands to the chin but could not lift my forearms off the ground for the life of me. My muscles were super confused. After a few more tries, I finally got it (although I have no idea how I got it), albeit I had to do it against the wall since I can only balance in forearm stand unassisted for about 5 seconds. Fun though! I love my Sunday class because the teacher lets us try all sorts of crazy things. One day I'll need to practice at home and have Ryan take pics of me so I can see if I'm actually doing all these poses right.

In the afternoon, I spent some time in the garden and discovered that the Chinese lotus plant is indeed alive! Looks like a new leaf will emerge soon. Nothing going on with the other lotus plant though but I'm sure it'll kick into gear soon. Time to eat some grub and do some coding.