absurdly peculiar

Before volunteering with Sew Helpful to make 48 masks for health care workers, I was working on my own DIY masks out of scrap material that I had lying around for personal usage. It took me a long time to come up with something I was happy with. When I volunteered, I learned a new method of doing them and I also learned that they could be improved upon after washing them. When my cousin asked me to make 14 for her I was eager to improve these designs.  I wanted to share some tips on mask making with you all. I've read a lot of forums and comments on Youtube tutorials and I wanted to highlight some of them.  Tip #1. What pattern style should I follow?    vs.   The one on the left was my very first mask and has a seam in the middle while the one on the right has folds and no seam in the middle. I seriously chose the seam down the middle design first because I thought it looked "cool". The one on the left was leftover material I used for lining for a dress wi...

I have been on a bread baking binge lately; first, it started with no-knead bread baked in my dutch oven and has expanded to making Sourdough Bread, Milk Bread, Pan de Sal and my latest, is Foccacia Bread.  We've seen a lot of people make foccacia lately and I decided to join that train. I decided to go with this Serious Eats recipe . I watched Samin Nosrat make foccacia with Brad from Bon Apetit and for some reason, they kept on messing up...and I figured, if she's watching/overseeing and they are still messing up... what chance do I have with that recipe?!? Lol. And because the bread was made on a sheet pan, it was really thin and I like thick bread. So when I saw that this Serious Eats recipe was made in a cast iron.. I knew this would be the recipe for me. (Especially, since their cast iron Pizza recipe is to die for). I followed the recipe almost exactly except for the fact that I sprinkled rosemary on top. I also decided to use Napastak's Sweet Basil Olive Oil we go...

Last weekend, we decided to make a Char Siu Bao Recipe from Binging with Babish. Here is a link to his recipe and here is his video below:               It was a long process, but it turned out great! I'm glad Musui was there to focus on the pork belly, while I focused on the dough. I would definitely make this again but maybe in larger quantities to freeze. I do have a couple things to add from the recipe: 1. Does it taste exactly like char siu bao that you are used to getting from Chinese restaurants? No. Is it still delicious? Yes. 2. Also, he doesn't mention that you should let the dough rest and do a 2nd rise after wrapping them. This is how you get them to be nice and fluffy when you eat them! 3. Also, if you are planning to freeze them... you should steam them all, even though you don't plan on eating all of them. I made this mistake and forgot that this is what my family used to do when we would make siopao (a Filipino term for bao). We'll see...

The inspiration behind this veggie taco comes from watching the Netflix show The Chef Show Season 1 Volume 3 .  Jon Favreau and Roy Choi stop by the Border Grill to speak and cook with co-owners Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger; they are known for their modern Mexican cuisine.  In our household, we are very much a predominately meat eating family, but there was something about their tacos that inspired us to try it at home! This is fairly easy to make and is a great way to get your veggies in. Ingredients   for green salsa : 6-7 roasted tomatillos (remove husk before) 1 roasted jalapeno/ or half a roasted serrano (de-seeded if you don't like spicy) 1/2 roasted white/brown onion (remove skin before roasting) 2-3 garlic cloves (you can roast this too if you want) a small bunch cilantro salt to taste Ingredients   for Tacos: (makes enough for 2 people) 2 roasted poblanos ~4-5 cups of diced sweet potatoes (the ones we buy in the store are so tiny.. so size will vary.....

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...