Hom Bao Heaven

Hom Baos are delicious Chinese pastries, commonly filled with a bbq pork filling.  They're all over the carts at dim sum restaurants and all over Asia with hometown variations.  In Japanese they are called niku-man (meat bun) or an-man (read bean bun).  The bread part is pretty crucial, in that it has to be super fluffy, white, and slightly sweet.  They are steamed so they also have a different consistency than regular pastries that are baked in a conventional oven.  Up until very recently, the secret to this heavenly white dough was a mystery to me.

Until last month.

My sister, who works with a handful of Asian nurses, is exposed to a lot of various home-made Asian deliciousness on a regular basis.  One of these nurses happened to have home-made hom bao with her and my sister could not help but ask her the secret.  It turns out, there really is no secret, you can buy the mixture for the dough at any Asian market, much like you would get pancake mix at the regular grocery store.

So we made some.  Alice made a mushroom, oyster sauce, tofu, and bok choy filling and I made a black sesame and red bean filling.

I don't know what exactly she put in the mushroom filling, but I can tell you about the sesame paste that I made.

Ingredients
1 cup black sesame seeds
1/4-1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup hot water
2 teaspoons sesame oil

First you need to toast the seeds.  This is done best in a dry frying pan over medium low heat.  You have to stir constantly and keep a good eye and nose on it so that they don't burn, which happens very quickly.  As soon as the seeds start smoking the slightest bit and smelling toasty, they're finished.  While that's going, dissolve about a 1/4 cup of sugar in the hot water and set it aside.  Place the toasted seeds and the rest of the sugar (1/4 cup) into a blender or food processor and add a tsp of the sesame oil.  Start pureeing and add the hot sugar water and more sesame oil until the desired consistency is reached.

Gimme a spoon.

This is a basic sesame paste that can be modified and used in a lot of desserts.  I've also eaten it as a porridge which was delicious.  But to take it a step further, I added red bean paste to it to make it even better.  (I saved half of it and added the red bean to the rest, so I could have both.)

(These and other good hom bao filling ideas can be found here.)

 Ok so once the fillings were made, it was time for the dough.  That was easy peasy.  You just dump the entire contents of the bag into a bowl, add the correct amount of milk and oil listed on the back of the bag and knead for 10 minutes.  Then let it rise in a warm place for about a half hour.  Take out the dough, knead for a minute or so then take large spoonfuls and flatten them out with your hands or a rolling pin.  Use lots of flour for this process because this stuff is super sticky.  Fill it with goodness, pinch it closed and place on a small piece of parchment paper and place in your classic bamboo steamer.  Steam for about 25 minutes and bam!  You will find yourself in hom bao heaven.

Really good to take for lunch the next day!

Surprise! It's April!

Whether the weather has convinced you otherwise, it is supposed to be spring out there.  The cherry blossoms and magnolias are out, the crocuses and daffodils have been around for weeks, and the tulips are not far behind despite the terrible cold that is hangin' around these parts.  Last year, March 19th was the day I declared it was officially spring and put on a t-shirt and went outside.

Today I realized it was April.  That not only means Shawn and I can start celebrating our birth month by eating cake today, but it's about time I get started on my gardening for the season.  Though I am still very unsure about my gardening prospects for the summer, I decided to go ahead as if I have awesome garden space and hope that it all works out.

Giggle.

So I donned my heavy coat and gardening gloves and told myself it wasn't that cold outside (my frozen hands and feet were not convinced) and planted some seeds.  Into pots went heirloom tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, various squashes, radishes, and broccoli.  I'm also trying artichoke again, but I'm not putting any money on 'em.  I have yet to acquire seeds for beets, lettuce, and onions, and will have to wait to plant beans and peas until I have the space to do so.  (I really hope that space comes soon...)  I guess I also have to restart my sunchoke garden and also get seed potatoes one of these days.  But those have to wait also.

I hope they stay warm.

The ladies got a handful of beet leaves today which they snarfed down in no time, leaving their beaks a nice rosy color.  Ah spring... beautiful, even in the bitter cold.  And man, there's nothing like that first date with the dirt to really soothe your cabin-fevered soul.

Beet leaf buffet.

Hey, I think you have some beet blood on your beak...

Sustainable fashion: The Infinity Dress

Have you heard of these?  They're usually called infinity dresses or convertible dresses but apparently they're all the rage these days.  They're basically just a simple circle skirt with a thick waistband and SUPER long straps that you tie around your body in any way you like.  The length of the straps makes it so that you can do anything with them, resulting in countless different looks from the same exact dress.  Super cool, huh?

One of the most stressful things about planning my wedding thus far has been choosing the bridesmaids dresses.  I didn't want to be that bride who makes her bridesmaids spend tons of money on ugly-ass dresses they'd never wear again.  I also didn't want my ladies to be uncomfortable or look like they work the street corner, (I've seen enough pictures of this unfortunate result too many times to know that it happens easily,) and wanted them to like their dresses.  Too much to ask?  For a while, I thought so.

Until I found this dress.  There are several people on Etsy who make and sell these especially for bridesmaids so I contacted one of them.  Long story short, they were too expensive, especially for a dress that has such a simple construction and is made out of jersey fabric.

So we decided to try to make them ourselves.  I found an awesome green fabric made out of bamboo(!) so I got 4 yards.  I followed a tutorial one of my bridesmaids found online and voila!  Three days later, my sister was in her very own homemade infinity dress.  It looks way better on her than does on me.  (Frown.)

The tutorial I followed was this one, but I found this one later that I think would have been super helpful had I found it earlier.  The fabric is really stretchy which is awesome to wear but can be a pain to sew and cut correctly.  The second site explains all of this in great detail so I like it.

Throughout the process, I also noticed that 4 straps can be cut from the amount of fabric that is required to make the dress which means that by adding another yard and a half, 2 dresses can be made from 5 1/2 yards of fabric instead of just one from 4 yards.  Just an FYI for all you sustainably minded folks out there who might want a second dress for some odd reason.

And the cost savings?  Even after splurging on expensive bamboo fabric, this dress cost half as much as the ones that we were thinking about buying on Etsy.  It pays to be crafty!

1,2,3 Chalkboard

1.  Score a sweet white board from Goodwill for $5.

2.  Buy Rustoleum chalk board spray paint or something like it and a roll of blue painter's tape at a home improvement store.

3.  Cover the edges with the blue tape and spray the back of the white board (not the white part, the woody part) with 2 or 3 coats of said spray.

You now have a sweet new chalkboard/whiteboard hybrid!  Booyah!

What's this for?  The wedding.  But I'm not going to say what role it will play just yet...

The front...

And the new and improved back!

Moving the Homestead

Over the last several weeks, I have been having to come to terms with the fact that we will likely be moving this homestead within the next 5 months.  There are various reasons for this upcoming transition, some of them being the buyer-friendly housing market, as well as personal, financial, and long-term reasons which I won't get into here.

I have lived in this house for nearly five years.  That's a long time for a renter of my age, I must say.  The homestead didn't really get started until Shawn moved in almost 3 years ago.  But since then we have worked on this home as if it were our own and have really come to know it very well, flaws and all.  We always knew that it was a rental and it wouldn't be forever, but also wanted to make the most of it and our very lenient landlord.  We refinished the hardwood floors two years ago, and have made major improvements to the yards by taking down dead bushes, planting new plants, and in general cleaning it up to make it functional for our needs.  Needless to say, all of this hard work will stay here when we move.

Will the new place a have a chicken perch?

Which makes me kind of sad.  We've made a ton of memories here and this place has taken really good care of us.  Our old neighbors next door were good friends with Al and Doris, the old couple who lived here until they died, and they always tell us about what they were like and what they did with the house and yard.  I always felt their presence here and would occasionally wonder what they would think about the improvements we made.  We were talking with a friend who is a reiki master once about how productive our garden was and he said that the spirits of Al and Doris were thankful of our work in the home and were thanking us in this way.  Now I'm not a spiritual person or anything but I think there is some truth to it.  By maintaining the house and garden, we were essentially taking over where Al and Doris left off, and by respecting their legacy, we reaped the rewards of their years of hard homemaking.  Kinda cool.

So why don't we stay here?  To put it bluntly, this house scares me.  There are a lot of elements that have been jury-rigged and we don't know how sound the plumbing or the electrical system is.  The kitchen needs a major update and the layout is a little weird.  The house is fine as a house for young renters, but it doesn't fit our needs as a new soon-to-be-married couple who is thinking about starting a family in the next several years.  Basically, it's time to move on.

So what does that mean?  The first thing is the most tragic: I will likely have no garden this year.  We're still not sure about the timeline, whether we'll move before or after the wedding, and what the garden situation will be like in the new place.  I'll still start some seeds in hope of finding a place to plant them and have a lot in moveable pots.  But the uncertainty of when all this will happen leaves me feeling panicked about possibly not having a therapeutic garden getaway this summer.  BUT, knowing me, I'm sure I'll still find a way to plant stuff somehow.

Mabel's ashes are in the garden bed as well.

The other big issue is the chickens.  It is likely we'll have to build another coop (that makes #3,) and I'm a little stressed about that.  But hey, we've built two good ones already, so who says we can't build a third?

In the end, it will all work out.  We're looking forward to upgrading to a home that we can call our home for real.  It will be nice to make improvements to it knowing we'll be able to enjoy them for a long time and I will welcome the feeling of permanency.   My sadness of leaving this place will pass and will quickly be replaced by the joy of a new beginning and a new life with all the creatures and elements that make me the happy person that I am.

Cider Results

Hey friends, this is a post a long time coming.  I apologize for the major delay in letting you all know how our cider turned out.

After the first step of brewing that I showed you all in our first post, we did a quick transfer of the whole lot into a bucket so that we could clean out the yeast that had settled on the bottom.  Once cleaned out, we transferred it back into the glass carboy and let it brew again for another week.  We could have bottled it at this point, but we hoped that this quick cleaning out of the yeast and the settled solids would lead to a clearer final product.

After 3 total weeks of brewing and bubbling in the carboy, it was bottling time.  We saved a lot of old bottles and growlers but still needed a dozen 22 oz bottles.  At the same time we also bought some priming sugar and caps.  (Dan had the capper.)  The priming sugar is a small packet of corn sugar that is perfectly measured for 5 gallons of cider.  This adds just the right amount of sugar for the yeast to feast on in the bottles to create the perfect amount of fizzy carbonation.  Putting in too much sugar would create too much pressure in the bottles which may cause them to explode.  (No one needs exploding glass bottles.)

As you can see in the video, all of this process involves a lot of sterilization of the utensils and a siphoning tube to transfer the cider from carboys to buckets to bottles.

We tasted the first bottle about 10 days after we bottled it and was surprised at how much of a kick it had.  It was definitely on the drier side.  We had been so used to sweeter ciders that are mass produced today that we didn't realize what real cider tasted like.  It smelled really good and definitely held true to it's estimated 8.5-9% alcohol because we felt the buzz pretty quick.  Shawn did some research and we found that back in the day of Thomas Jefferson, when clean water was harder to find than cider, people would drink cider instead of water.

Since then, we've been drinking it really slowly, taking a bottle or two to parties and enjoying a bottle between us every now and then.  What we've noticed is that as it ages, the kick is replaced by a softer apple flavor.  We thought it was good at first, but it just keeps getting better.  We're thinking about saving a bottle or two for 6 months to a year to see how it ages.

All in all, this was a project that was not only really fun but really rewarding.  It feels so good to know that we're getting drunk off of our own hard work.

In case you were wondering, the total cost breaks down to:
$60-Rental of cider press
$20-A dozen 22 oz bottles and caps (Which we can reuse for next time.)
$20-Yeast and sugars

Total: $100 (We think.  We can't remember for sure.  This is also thanks to our friend Dan who had all the equipment.)

For Christmas, I bought Shawn a bottle of dry cider at a fancy beer store in Wallingford which was $14.  We tasted it, and though it was really good, we decided ours was better.  (We're not biased or anything. :))  If we calculate the amount of cider we made based on the price of the store-bought kind, we came to over $325 dollars worth of cider.  Yeah baby!

Final thought: We want to do it again.

Oh, and here is the YouTube link to the video.  http://youtu.be/Qpz8AcZi8YU

Toppin' the Cake

The other day, Shawn forwarded me a posting from the classifieds at his company of a wedding cake topper that someone was selling.  It was a porcelain thing with a man and a woman dancing, surrounded by a heart.  It was pretty tacky, but not horrible.  I definitely knew I didn't want it, but it got me thinking about what I actually wanted sitting atop our wedding cake.

So I made these.  They're chickens.  Duh.  What were you expecting?

Their butts.

They're cute, huh?  I combined two patterns that I found on Ravelry because I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.  Here's one.  I don't know if it will work, but give it a clickity-click.  I looked through my old sweater yarn extras bag and found all the colors I needed.  (I knew I kept those random balls around for a reason.)

They're crocheted and stuffed.  I made the bodies first, stuffed them, then made all of the embellishments.  I'll probably add a bow tie to the brown one and a veil or a bow or something girly to the white one to make them more bridal-y.  I'll also make something they can sit on so that they don't go directly on the cake and get their feet all icing-y.  But I won't do that now and you'll have to wait until after the wedding to see the finishing touches. 

Come on, I'm not going to give everything away.