absurdly peculiar

When I posted a picture of my first sourdough, my friend commented that it was a very "popular" thing to do. I had no idea until I began to see many IG sourdough posts and news articles about making sourdough bread trending. At this time, yeast was sold out in a lot of places. Luckily, a restaurant I follow on IG ( Playground DTSA ) was selling yeast AND sourdough starter. I figured starter for $3? Why not! It was also at this time I noticed that I was running out of bread flour and it was also a "rare" item to find. I was also in luck because LB Beer Lab was selling bread flour! The first time I made sourdough, it was a complete flop for me. It looked OK but the taste was not good and the crust was too hard/was difficult to chew.  Sourdough Starter bought from Playground DTSA My fed starter 1st Sourdough Bread Then I started watching more Sourdough Bread YouTube videos. I found that Joshua Weissman's videos were pretty helpful. I followed his videos, started in...

The first time I tried a green onion pancake was from a street vendor in Taipei 5 years ago and it was love at first taste! I've been craving it for a while and saw a recipe on Mei Lin's IG video. I decided to make it and it was pretty good so I wanted to write it down and share it . Ingredients: 175 g AP Flour 88 g boiling water 70 g AP Flour 10 g filtered water a bunch of chopped scallions sesame oil/fat (used pork belly dripping/fat) salt Directions: 1. Add boiling water into flour - stirring while adding in the water. Mix until incorporated into flour and knead dough in bowl. 2. Add into dough and knead a lot more. Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 30 minutes. Resting dough. 3. Divide dough into 4 pieces. Make each piece round and roll out thin. Divided dough - shaped round. Me rolling out that dough! Rolled out dough. 4. Add fat on dough. (I used a combo of sesame oil and pork belly fat). Spreading the fat on the d...

I have a lot of projects going on since working from home and it includes the following: painting, sourdough bread making, pizza from scratch making, cooking, gardening, exercising, and mask making. Before my furlough, I had started on all these projects and was looking for something more to do. I happened to see an article on LAIST  about The Sew Helpful Brigade looking for 200 volunteers to help sew PPE for health care workers. So far, they have sewn 3,000 PPEs and want to sew another 30,000! I will be sewing 48 masks during my furlough. The great thing about them is they provide the fabric, elastic and wires; all you need is a sewing machine, scissors, thread and some time on your hands! It can either be shipped (anywhere in U.S) or picked up (if you are in the LA/OC area). They sent me an email with a link to a Joann's Fabric tutorial (see below). Apparently, the design has been approved by medical professionals for use, but must also include a 3" nose wire. Here ar...

Musui and I in Yosemite - October 2019. Just wanted to say:  Long time no see! A couple of updates since my last posting include: 1. We moved to a new place. 2. Due to Covid-19, we started working from home on March 3. I was placed on furlough recently - once a week out of the month. As a result, I have a lot more time on my hands and so many projects - food recipes and DIY projects to update this blog with. Can't wait to share that all with you!

I've been dealing with a lot of "adult" things this past month - oil changes, air filter replacements, car battery replacements, taxes, amending taxes, and lastly, my phone dying on me. There were many days this month where my face looked like the picture below. BUT it is nothing I can't handle, but i'm glad that they are finally being crossed off my list of things to get done!!! Me (left) and my cousin. Wonder why I look so grumpy.. maybe I didn't get a nap? Late last month, I started to notice that my Pixel phone that I purchased through Google circa 2016 in order to use Project Fi was having issues; when I wanted to switch from Bluetooth to my phone I could no longer communicate with the person on the other end - which was never an issue before. Then, I would make phone calls from my phone and the person on the other end couldn't hear me but I could hear them. So I called Google support; the first time they told me it was a WiFi issue and I h...

After coming back from a trip to NYC, I was greeting by a bell pepper growing on my front porch! Even though it was very exciting to come home to a bell pepper growing after a successful self pollination.... it has been a couple weeks and it hasn't grown any bigger.  My daikon radish has been growing pretty successfully for a while. I decided to pull them out this past weekend to pickle them. I felt pretty proud of myself for growing this one. All of these plants I have been planting from seed and so it is pretty satisfying seeing them grow.   Look at my beautiful babies!! My boyfriend and I decided to pickle a combo of carrots, daikon and jalapenos in a mix of rice vinegar, sugar, and water. We decided to taste the daikon before we pickle it... and to my disappointment they very bitter. There is a trick to removing the bitterness from a daikon that I just learned about; it involves washing the daikon in salt water 2-3 times and then wa...

I planted a bell pepper plant over 3 years ago and I was able to get it to grow some leaves but nothing beyond that... that is, until this year! This year, I noticed it grew some flowers and like the idiot I am... I pinched them off right away (I read somewhere at some point when a plant is growing flowers you should pinch them off so the plant won't taste bitter. I didn't realize til later.. that you need the flowers so that your plant can pollinate and produce fruits... and whatever I read was for herbs). After a few months, I gave up hope that flowers would come back for my plant, but sure enough they did! I used a self pollination technique that I read about online. Here is a video of me trying to self pollinate for the first time. I was definitely nerding out! I'll need to update you if all of this actually works and I get some bell peppers! (I know it's not in season technically... but we live in Southern California.. so anything goes!)