absurdly peculiar

This past July, my boyfriend and I as well as a couple of our friends decided to take a road trip from Los Angeles, CA to the Utah/Arizona area. We checked out places like Zion National Park, Bryce National Park and Lake Powell. It was such a fun trip! After our trip, I decided to try something new and create a guide based off our trip through WildBum . There was a lot of research involved for this trip because there were a lot of Covid-19 closures/changes and I thought it would be a great idea to share what I learned by creating a guide. While it was very hot during the time of year that we went, the Narrows Hike was a little different because it included walking through the Virgin River and it had canyons that provided extra protection from the sun during our early morning hike. As a result, it was actually pretty cold and most people didn't expect it to be that way! So I decided to create a recommended gear guide for the Narrows Hike. 1.  Neoprene Socks      The r...

I was recently featured on Freedom Gardens Instagram. Freedom Gardens draw inspiration from the Victory Gardens created throughout history during times of crisis and intends to encourage others to grow their own food during these strange times. View this post on Instagram "I've been experimenting with gardening for a couple of years now, but I am in no way an expert! I've had some successes, but also a lot of failures. Last year, I suddenly had to move and it was a bit of a stressful situation. As result, I neglected a lot of my plants and sadly, a lot of them didn't make it. The current situation has given me plenty of time at home and has beckoned me to start planting again. I have a range of plants in my garden: from hot peppers that were purchased as plants from the store, basil and avocado from seed, to lemongrass and mint I rooted from cuttings. I have also recently started to regrow leeks and green onions from the market. I didn't grow up...

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...