Daily Prompt: Ingredients

Daily Prompt (Feb 9, 2014):  What’s the one item in your kitchen you can’t possibly cook without? A spice, your grandma’s measuring cup, instant ramen — what’s your magic ingredient, and why?  Photographers, artists, poets: show us KITCHEN.

You can’t expect the crazy baking monster like me to give up on even a cooking daily prompt, right? I figured if nothing else ever went with my blog, this one would.

Now, I started thinking about what is the one item in my kitchen that I can’t possibly cook without.  I rewind back to all my cooking and everything I’ve made.  Other than a trusty knife to cut everything, one item that can be used for every cooking process has to be wooden chopsticks.

Its especially useful to make noodles.  Its great because you can use it to boil vegetables in water or flip stuff in a frying pan.  Instead of using 10 million utensils and having to clean all of it afterwards, usually, chopsticks can get the job done quickly.  Plus, they can pick up finer objects like rice or peas or whatnot.  To me, they are the best cooking utensil that also can serve as your utensil for your meal afterwards if you so wish (and if you didn’t pick up raw meat with it).

I’m not a crazy cooking master or anything.  My boyfriend usually takes care of it.  Since he’s done it more, he’s better at it than I am. With his new schedule, I’ve been taking care of feeding myself a lot more frequently.  If its anything I’ve learned from cooking, spices are quite essential to help improve the taste.  One of my favorite ones that can replace most herbs in recipes when you don’t have it is Herbes de Provence.

I’ve realized through making a lot of western foods that spices are quite important.  Modifying one spice could change the overall taste of the meal.  In many cases, I’ve found that Herbes de Provence has a good taste the compliments well with a lot of foods.   I believe I frequently use it in sauces as well when I don’t have thyme or whatnot.   The discovery of spices just got miles more exciting after trying this out, at least to me 🙂

As for baking, well, I don’t have anything I need to have but I always love to keep a jar of this type of peanut butter just made from peanuts and none of that fake stuff.

Whether its for whatever cookies or something else that I bake, even if I don’t make some with peanut butter, I can grab a spoon and give myself a happy boost 🙂 Also, two of my favorite ingredients to use/make/eat is rhubarb.

I have a massive obsession over this and another one is this white fluffy things called marshmallows.  They just melt on my tongue.  Honestly, these ones are also in phases just as rhubarb is with seasons. Its just delicious and awesome 🙂

All this food is making me so hungry and craving some baking.

What ingredients or utensils are essential to you? 

Chicken and Vegetable Soup!

I’m definitely slowly getting back in the groove of things! On Saturday, as you know, I wasn’t tip top and I figured that on Sunday, I’d go get some chicken and make some nice warm and comforting chicken soup.  Plus, its the best to eat soup in cold freezing temperatures and its been like that for the most part this winter…

I don’t make soups often so excuse the not so awesome appearances.  I’m working on it…

This was inspired by a recipe in the Looneyspoons Collection called The Chicken Soup that Flu the Coop 🙂 They always these cute names…

Ingredients

Makes 6 servings

2 tsp olive oil
1 cup each chopped onions, chopped celery and chopped carrots
1 tsp minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried marjoram
6 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup chopped celery leaves
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp each salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed

1) Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add onions, celery, carrots and garlic.  Cook and stir until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes.  Stir in thyme and marjoram and cook 30 more seconds.  Add broth, tomatoes, celery leaves, bay leaves, salt and pepper.  Bring soup to a boil.  Add whole chicken thighs.  Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

2) Carefully remove chicken thighs from pot.  When cool enough to handle, cut meat from bone and chop into bite-sized pieces.  Discard bones and return meat to pot.  Remove bay leaves. Serve hot!

As always, I made some changes to this. Instead of onions, I used shallots.  I had no celery so I used snow peas.  I don’t own any dried thyme or marjoram so after research online, it said that basil leaves and oregano leaves is a good substitute so I used that. Also, if you do use plum tomatoes, your soup will look different from mine.  I ended up using crushed tomatoes.  It was my first time with it and apparently, that looks like pure tomato sauce so I scooped 2 scoops in. I took out celery leaves and bay leaves. Also, I did not use bone in chicken thighs so I didn’t take out the chicken.  Thats why my pieces look gigantic…haha! Silly on my part but it still cooked through and tasted great 🙂

After all the modifications, aside from it looking somewhat like a mess it did taste quite good.  I’m sure if I had celery and the actual spices and tomatoes, it would taste even better.  This one is a keeper for sure.  Loved it a lot and my boyfriend approves as well.

Making this makes me miss the minestrone soup that I haven’t made in ages.  Maybe I’ll do that soon, right after I stock up on some veggies at the grocery store!

What soup do you like to make in the winter? 

Pork Chops in Zesty Barbecue Sauce

Its not exactly baking but I managed to get some cooking in.  I promise baking will go up this week! Its tradition for Valentine’s week and we’re nearing the last week of that.

Saturday night, I gave the choice of what to eat and my boyfriend chose pork chops and he described a sauce that he wanted so I flipped through my cookbooks and found this one in Looneyspoons.  Don’t you just love that book? Because I do! I haven’t had one failed recipe from it yet and thats pretty amazing! 🙂

I promised already in yesterday post that I’d post up the recipe so in case you missed that post, here’s how it turned out!

Pork Chops in Zesty Barbecue Sauce

Of course, it was more of an adaptation from Looneyspoons recipe since this is meant to be done on a grill but I simmered it instead but I used her way to make the sauce. I’ll put their recipe but include the modifications afterwards.

Sauce Ingredients for 4 pork loin chops (I upped some of the sauce portions as I made 6)

1/2 cup ketchup
2 tbsp freshly squeeze lemon juice
2 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp minced shallots
1 1/4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

How to do this is pretty straight forward.  I first combined all the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mixed it thoroughly.  Afterwards, I put some olive oil in the pan and then sizzled the pork chops a bit first on both sides before putting in the sauce and lowering the heat to let it simmer with the cover on.

Now for changes.  There are only two small ones.  One was that I removed the chili powder as I can’t take spicy so I don’t own it at home.  Second is that I replaced dried rosemary with Herbes de Provence.  I love using that to replace some types of herbs because it adds a beautiful taste.

I had no idea how this would turn out during the cooking process but we loved it.  Definitely a keeper! It makes a thicker sauce and a bit in the sweet and sour flavor.  I think the lemon really brings out the zesty factor (as expected).  Its just really awesome: simple, easy and relatively quick; my type of cooking. Love it! 🙂

Christmas Cooking: Spaghetti Squash

I think I’ll start a segment like that next year: experimenting with new ingredients…just need a catchy title. Let me think about it! Since thats what I’ve been trying to put together and decide on: what to keep and what to let go of/add on for 2014.  While my mind is occupied with this, I figured Christmas is over but right now is a great time to have Spaghetti Squash and I think its pretty awesome.

I always try to help out a bit with any house party or celebration.  This year, I decided to make Spaghetti Squash the week before and bought the squash itself and placed it on the kitchen counter so that there was no backing out of it.  Here’s what it looked like:

Spaghetti Squash

The recipe for this is right here: http://www.vanilleverte.com/creamy-curried-spaghetti-squash/

I did make a few modifications.  I didn’t prepare in advance so I didn’t have any soaked overnight cashews to blend so I skipped that process completely and just put everything else together and simmered it for just a little pit in the pan, put in the squash, so that it would seep the taste into the squash and then that was it.  I didn’t want to make the squash all mushy, because then it wouldn’t be so nice to bite.

Aside from that, I don’t know what the difference would be but I popped it into the oven without taking out the seeds and in wrong way, after revising the instructions (oops!) but still, it turned out pretty good.  I think they only thing it did was made it a little drier in some strands but you can easily remove it and still have plenty for the final dish.

Its a delicious and healthy replacement for spaghetti or even just as a vegetable dish. The broth really gives its a taste and everything matches well with each other. Its keeps its simple but still very tasty.

Have you tried making Spaghetti Squash? How did you make it?

Christmas Baking: Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies

Yums! I’ve shared my extreme love for peanut butter before, right? I’m sure you have heard all about it if you’ve read some of my other baking adventures. I figured if I could make baked goods healthy and delicious, why not, right? So, right away when I saw these Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies by The Gracious Pantry on Pinterest. I decided that I’ll do it for Christmas, although its not going to make it to Christmas…since there’s only 3 left.

Here’s how mine turned out!

Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies

I found this recipe right here: http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-peanut-butter-cookies/#ixzz2mWeJFnv0&i

There were a few modifications that I did.  I couldn’t find honey in my house so I had to replace that with Agave Nectar.  Also, I didn’t add extra peanuts as there were none in my house.

Right out of the oven

Still, this turned out pretty good.  The texture was moist.  The taste was very peanut-y rather than sweet is great.  My mom still said I could decrease the sugar but its not too bad.  I do admit that if I were to change that, I’d use less agave syrup than what it says because I realized that its actually sweeter than sugar so maybe thats why.  Then I thought, do any of you know if agave nectar is sweeter than honey? What do you think? I need to look that up.

After the first bite!

I’d say this marathon is rather varietized, I’ve had some jam HERE and then some bread HERE, now some peanut butter in the form of cookies.  I have two more recipes coming up so come back tomorrow,k? Psst…those look even better. 😉

Just one more bake day to go and I think I’m all set.

Do you like peanut butter? What do you think, agave nectar or honey is sweeter? What type of cookies do you like to eat on Christmas?

Pinterest & Christmas!

In October, I did something similar for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and I figured since my weekends have been packed, I might as well try to use this to motivate myself to do what I’ve been meaning to do instead of sitting around doing nothing, which I shouldn’t because I need to turbo study and pass my unexpected Term 2 for my TESL certificate.  Either way, thats moving along alright as long as I stay on track.

Last time I did this, I managed to do about 60% of it or something so I’m aiming for more this time around since I do have a week off (if all my work is done) around the holidays.  Can you believe that Christmas is in 5 days! *gasp* Well, I’m happy because that would mean that my month long antibiotics is done! YAY! And well, its Christmas but OMG, I have a million things to bake (cook, watch, do) this weekend!

LETS BEGIN!

Almond-Raspberry Linzer cookies!

Clean Eating Peanut Butter Cookies

Gingerdoodle Cookies

Christmas Tree Meringues

Cinnamon Wreaths

Holiday sugar cookie bar

Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

Of course, I won’t be able to make ALL OF THAT! But my ultimate goal is to make a Christmas Log.  Lets hope I can at least do a fraction of this.  But, no, no I’m not ONLY eating sweets for Christmas even if thats what I want.  I also volunteered to cook Christmas and New Year’s dinner so yeah, why did I do that? I’ll work on keeping a smile on my face while I cook, I promise 🙂

Garlic Knots

Spaghetti Squash

Minestrone Soup

Whats better than food to build up the Christmas spirit? No guarantees on doing any of these last few dishes for Christmas or New Year’s dinner but the sweets are my domain and I get full control over that so who knows, maybe I’ll get that done! Do you know a good Christmas log recipe? Maybe you can direct me to one.  I have one in my Betty Crocker Christmas cookbook but I’m open for other options as well 🙂

What Christmas desserts and dishes do you usually  make or love to eat for the holidays?

Help me out and inspire me! 🙂 Lets see how many of these I can do! A crazy weekend ahead of us, right?

We’re on mega Christmas themed stuff now: music, baking, cooking, music…drop by again, k? I promise I’ll try to make it lots of awesome fun! 🙂

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE! TGIF! 🙂

 

Giving Thanks Even More and Lots of Food!

I know, lame title! You already know about the highlight of last week: Boyce Avenue Concert! If you missed that post from earlier today, you can check it out HERE!

This weekend was Thanksgiving weekend in Canada! YAY! Long weekend means so much more time to do lots of stuff! I did talk about doing some stuff on my Pinterest post on Friday night! Guess what? Apparently, whenever I post about doing something, I end up actually doing it more than when I just write it up on my notebook or post it on my fridge or something.

Friday night was nothing special but consisted mostly of watching Pretty Little Liars! I’m on Season 3 now! Its getting more than relaxing intense but intense intense! Other than Pretty Little Liars, my guilt of sitting around doing nothing kicked in some time around 10pm and I got straight to work and did a ton of chores for the next two hours.  Nothing to really post about there..unless you want to see my wonderful laundry hanging skills 😉

Saturday was pretty cool.  I actually got in a lot of sleep.  One of the 10 things I wanted to do! It doesn’t make up for the past 2 weeks of not sleeping a lot but its getting there.  My boyfriend and I got woke up earlier than usual and we managed to do a shopping run.  I picked up 2 horror movies at Walmart for $5 each: The Descent Original Uncut (my review HERE of it with US ending) and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. I also got a indie horror film called Frozen, which I did manage to watch yesterday night as well.  The review goes up next week 🙂 I’m still processing it a little.

I promised you food, right? Last night, I went all out and decided to make a crazy meal, which my boyfriend had to step in to help out nearing the end since I have this weird frustration that sets in when I cook for a while longer and things start going crazy.  Panic, I guess….he never understands why I’m a completely different person when I bake…I’m sure some of you do, right?

Here it goes!

First up, I made an Autumn Sangria in the afternoon to let it sit and soak up the fruits a bit.

Prep for Autumn Sangria

The recipe that I used is this one HERE! This is how it turned out 🙂

Autumn Sangria!

This was really strong in my Chinese alcohol intolerance level.  For one, the bourbon tastes very strong and its what soaked into the fruits mostly, so the fruits were delicious, especially the apples.  Second, if you expect citrus like the normal sangria, this one hits the spicy level a little more.  Definitely more autumn with more fruits from this season and a cinnamon sticks (preferably), I only had ground cinnamon so I added a hint of that to the mix.

Moving on, for the main meal, we made a little twist of the Avocado Basil Pasta featured HERE!

Avocado Basil Pasta

We cooked a bit of topping since I’m not really good with raw foods.  Also, we added in some leftover italian sausages and made a side of potatoes. As much as it may not look that great, it tasted pretty awesome 🙂

Sunday morning came around and I was in an extremely happy mood to make some pancakes.  I mixed the batter and my boyfriend helped make it. They were these Pumpkin Pancakes right HERE!

Pumpkin Pancakes!

I’ve never made pancakes non-Bisquick style so this was a pretty good trial.  Plus, they tasted SO GOOD! Whats Halloween or Autumn recipes without pumpkins, right?

After that, we headed off for a nature trail in the Eastern Townships for the afternoon.  I have to sort through about 200 pictures from that but the post will be going up soon.  Here’s a picture to give you an idea!

Marais de la Riviere aux Cerises

I already remember to be thankful everyday for the great things in life that I have but its also a weekend for me to reflect how to be better at being thankful and grateful for all that I have. So far, this weekend’s been pretty epic.

One more day to go! Before I leave you, here’s a nice video about What to Eat for Happiness from Popsugar Fitness! Enjoy!

Just in case you ever need this, with Halloween around the corner! Lets train in case we get hit by a zombie apocalyse (and to insert a bit more Halloween in here)!

I’ll definitely try it soon 🙂 Tell me how it went if you try it out!

Stay happy and healthy! Thats what I’m grateful for: just being alive, being blessed with what I have, and especially meeting all of you in the blogosphere! Thank you for all the love: likes, comments, follows and just simply visiting! Its been a great year so far on Tranquil Dreams and there isn’t enough thank yous to express how grateful I am and how much I appreciate all of you! 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend! Drop by again! I have a lot prepped for next week 🙂

Mini Crumb Cakes!

Good news is that that I finally managed to find time to bake! YAY!  I was planning on keeping it Halloween or fall-themed at the very least.  It was running a bit late so this small and quick recipe for Mini Crumb Cakes seemed like the logical choice.  Plus, it doesn’t make too many, meaning I can get around to a more appropriate and fancy recipe this weekend 🙂

Lets take a look at those Mini Crumb Cakes, shall we?

Mini Crumb Cakes

I got this recipe from my relatively newer cookbook Betty Crocker The Big Book of Cupcakes.  Its super simple and takes about 10 minutes to put together and another 30 minutes in the oven. A quick fresh out of the oven snack if you ever feel like having something sweet.

Makes 6 mini cakes

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup butter (or margarine), softened

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp powdered sugar

Fresh out of the oven!

How to Make it:

1) Heat oven to 350F. Place paper baking cup in each of 6 regular size muffin cups.  In a large bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar and butter with spoon until crumbly. Reserve 1/3 cup mixture for topping.

2) Stir egg, milk, baking powder and cinnamon into remaining crumbly mixture until well mixed.  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.  Sprinkle reserved crumbly mixture over batter

3) Bake 20 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  Cool 5 minutes.  Remove cakes from pan; place on cooling rack.  Before serving, sprinkle warm cakes with powdered sugar.  Serve warm or cooled.

 

These turned out to be really awesome.  It smelled amazing and it was super easy to make.  Also, the texture was very good especially with the streusel-like topping.  Its like a coffee cake streusel cupcake.  There wasn’t need for many modifications.  I did replace the milk with almond milk.  Also, I couldn’t find my powdered sugar so I didn’t sprinkle any extra sugar on the top.  It was already sweet enough for me, so I don’t really think its necessary.

Inside the Mini Crumb Cake

I had a tasting even though it was really late at night.  The texture was moist and mixed with the texture of the initial bite of the streusel topping, it had gave it a little crunch as well.  Very awesome recipe! You should try it out.  It does only make 6 mini cakes so you might want to double the recipe accordingly if you plan on making it for more company.

Happy Tuesday everyone! 🙂

 

 

Toronto Food Frenzy! :)

I’m sure most of you know that I’m a foodie and well, I love eating Chinese food but eating Chinese food in Montreal is really complicated and difficult, not to mention full of MSG and unhealthy.  So, when I get to the awesome city of Toronto, I go all out and try to eat as much as I can! This time with my best friend, we really went completely random and just chose restaurants that we went by or heard of before.

First stop was upon arrival at Pacific Mall on Friday where we got our lunch at one of the fast food kiosks there.  Even these are quite impressive.  I tend to always go to  the same one.

With our meal we get Chicken Ginseng Soup (or Soy milk or soft drinks).  I had my favorite there, Yang Zhou Fried Rice.

Chicken Ginseng Soup

Yang Zhou Fried Rice

I have this unexplainable love for Yang Zhou Fried Rice.  When in doubt, I always pick it.  My best friend chose the Lohan style Vegetable Chow Mein. Sorry for the blur….

Lo Han style Vegetable Chow Mein

At night, after a really awesome horror movie, Rigor Mortis at TIFF (review HERE), we ate dinner back at First Markham Place and we chose Congee Wong. The crazy cold weather in Toronto had made us almost feeling sick so we thought some congee would be good.  Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the congee but we did have two dishes to accompany it.

Chinese Poached Chicken at Congee Wong

Enoki Mushroom with Pea Tips

They were really delicious.  I’m a huge fan of Pea Tips veggies.  These were made so good! The congee was also really good thats why I didn’t even take a picture and it was already gone.

After a good night sleep at the hotel, we went out for brunch/dim sum at Ding Tai Fung Restaurant, a chain restaurant famous in Taiwan (I believe).  Its a bit more pricey than most restaurants but they made awesome cuisine.  I hadn’t eaten there in almost 10 years.

Warm Soy Milk

Steamed Soup-Filled Dumpling

Glutinous Rice Dumplings

Pan-Fried Chive Dumplings (I think)

Fried Rice with Shrimp and Eggs

You can’t get any more feeling like living in Asia than drinking some authentic soy milk, not the stuff out of cartons in the supermarkets.  Plus, this place makes some of the best Steamed Soup-Filled Dumplings I’ve ever tasted (the other place is Asian Legend that I’ve mentioned before a while back).  Our trial was the glutinous rice dumplings.  They were good but just not too tasty, coming from me, thats actually saying a lot because I’m used to eating everything low sodium, low oil, etc.  The fried rice was really to help us feel more filled to go for our shopping day 🙂

That evening, after our shopping, we decided to finish up the leftovers from the previous meals and also grabbed hot dog (for me) and hamburger (for my best friend) at Five Guys to complement everything. We also dropped by a Chinese herbal tea/dessert place called Pun Cao Tong Herbal to grab some deserts.  No pictures of those though…we had a bit of an accident and after the clean up, we just sat back to finish the movie (review going up later) we were watching and eat.  However, here was our very hotel room picnic style dinner setup:

Leftovers with Five Guys at the hotel room

For dessert, my best friend chose Stewed Egg White with Black Sesame Paste.  I chose my favorite Black Sesame Paste (that was also the culprit of the mess).  We also both had bought some Herbal Jelly to take home.

Typing this up just made me miss Toronto food so much. Although I do have something pretty huge planned in the baking department thats somewhat of a fusion.

This trip really helped me get back all the blogging motivation because right now, I’ve started about 10 drafts for the coming week and two ideas churning in my mind that I’m working on 🙂 Definitely back on track and it feels great!

Happy Wednesday! 🙂

Rhubarb Compote!

TGIF! We’re finally at the next weekend?

Last weekend I ran out of time so there was no time to bake AT ALL! However, my mom made it clear on Wednesday night that we had to get rid of ALL the rhubarb.  I went straight to search up something.  She seemed like she really wanted to make jam out of it.  I just worry about how sour it would turn out.

After some research and debate, I ended up with choosing to make Rhubarb Compote!

My first time doing compote and here’s how it turned out:

Rhubarb Compote cooled off and stored in a jar 🙂

Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/336492/rhubarb-compote?search_key=rhubarb

I followed most of that recipe.  I did add a few little strawberries to the mixture.  For one, I was hoping that it would make it a little sweeter.  Second, I had some in the fridge and wanted to use them up 🙂

This is an extremely quick recipe.  The preparation work, especially cutting the rhubarb is the most time consuming.  Other than that, you pop in a large saucer and you stir while it simmers on reduced heat.  Extremely fast and easy! What more could I ask for, right?

My mom was the first to taste it and she put it on her toast as jam.  She said that it tasted good just a little sour.

Later on after dinner, I wanted to try it with a banana, cut into pieces 🙂

Banana topped with Rhubarb Compote

Then my mom came up with adding in some mango to it! I love mango so it was a keeper!

Add in some Mango! Yummy!

Healthy and delicious! It tasted fantastic! The mangoes were very sweet, banana was perfect (not too ripe and not too raw) then mix in the tart and a little sourish taste of the rhubarb compote and we’re in business! 🙂

I would eat with ice cream but I ran out.  It is also a good combination if that’s more your style!

My rhubarb is almost all used up! I believe the last batch will be done this weekend..then I continue with requests 🙂

Feel free to drop me some requests if you’d like and I’ll line them up to try one by one!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!