Stella, May I know what you eat on such a warm day?

Of course you may! My mother would make me and my sister cold soba noodles and they were delicious! When I was perusing the aisles of the supermarket, I spotted a pack of these soba noodles and thought it would be such a nice meal. If you were in Atlanta last week it was quite cool, so soba noodles didn't seem appropriate. The weather this week is now in the eighties! It's perfect for soba noodles. 
Soba is Japanese for buckwheat. Unlike the popular udon noodles, soba noodles contain all 8 amino acids. Udon noodles are wheat based and they are missing lysine. I just cooked these according to the package directions.
 The most important step is to rinse the noodles.
 You want to rinse off the starch on the noodles. This way the sauce will be able to absorb into the noodles and the noodles won't thicken the sauce as you eat. I've read that you don't just want to rinse it but to really wash it. I use my hands to really stir the noodles around and remove the starch.
 I also like to really cool down the noodles. So I ice it.
The big bag is bonito flakes. The shrimp and mushrooms are accouterments to the noodles. This is where you can get really creative. Try some thinly sliced nori (seaweed), green onions, carrots, ginger, sesame seeds, or nanami tohgarashi (seven-flavor chili pepper).
 To make the sauce: start with making a dashi. Add big handful of bonito flakes to 1½ cups of boiling water.
 Boil for ten minutes.
 While that's boiling, I put the noodles in little piles. This makes it so much easier to eat!
 After 10 minutes, strain out the bonito flakes.
Mentsuyu is a salty, sweet soy sauce based soup base. It's the dipping sauce for the noodles. Mentsuyu is made of kaeshi and dashi. Kaeshi is a mixture of soysauce, mirin and sugar. Dashi is bonito stock. This is a lot of japanese words that I learned when researching this recipe. My mother used to buy Mentsuyu concentrate from the store, but when I looked up the recipe online, I realized this is fairly simple to make and I can control the ingredients I use.
 Add in 1 tablespoon of sugar.
 2 tablespoons of mirin.
 Mirin is a sweet rice wine.
 ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons of soy sauce.
 A light sprinkle of hondashi. Since I already made dashi with the bonito flakes, this step is really not necessary. I would just do one or the other. If you didn't want to make the dashi beforehand, then use hondashi.
 After the sugar dissolves, remove it from the heat and cool it. I've also read that you should never let the mentsuyu boil as that will make the mixture cloudy. If scum does form at the top, just skim it off. This recipe makes more than enough for two. I save the rest of it for a hot soba noodle recipe, I'll post that next week!
 We don't have traditional dipping cups, so we used our insulated coffee cups as dipping cups.
 We served it with some shrimp and mushrooms.
Dip each pile of noodles into your mentsuyu and slurp it in! It's nice and refreshing for such a warm weather.

Mentsuyu recipe (generously serves two)
1½ cup of bonito flakes
⅜ cup of soy sauce (or ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons)
⅛ cup of mirin (or two tablespoons)
1 tablespoon of sugar
Boil the bonito flakes for 10 minutes. Strain. Add soy sauce, mirin, and sugar into the stock until the sugar dissolves. Cool and it's ready to use!
DIY, Food, Recipe,
Share:

Stella, May I know if Popcorn missed out on Coachella?

Of course you may! So we didn't make it out to Coachella this year, but as you get to know me you will find out that festivals are just something I don't go to. I do like the idea of dressing up and the music.
From last Fiddle-Faddle Friday post, you saw me and Mister dress up Oswald in socks. After all the festival posts this past weekend and how many of these little flowers that popped up in our front yard, I decided to dress up Popcorn in a flower crown.
This didn't last long. He kept moving and the flower crown was slowly falling off of him.
He seemed to enjoy smelling the flowers though!
Follow me on snapchat for more Popcorn, Oswald, and Valentine! username: stellamayi
Pets, Popcorn, Silly
Share:

Stella, May I ask why Oswald is wearing socks?

 Of course you may. For today's Fiddle-Faddle Friday post, I thought I would post something a little sillier. How cute does little mister Oswald look in socks?
 So he didn't just decide to put them on himself, but when we put them on, he did seem to enjoy it for a little bit. He just laid there while me and Mister snapped some pictures. When he started to get up and walk, the neon pink ducky socks slipped right off.
 That soccer ball is one of Oswald's favorite toys. It's a squishy ball, but it has to be this particular kind of squishy. Do any of your pets have a specific toy they like? We have a few of these balls since they bounce all over the place and then get lost.
I hope you have been enjoying two weeks of posts! It is halfway through the month and I have to say I am pretty proud of myself. I didn't want to say anything about posting every weekday, but I have been really enjoying it and I am really hoping I will continue this. This was the little surprise I teased about at the end of March and I hope you come back next week for another week of posts!
Oswald, Pets, Silly
Share:

Stella, May I know how you always have soft butter?

Of course you may. This is our vintage butter bell. We store our butter in here. It is able to keep our butter nice and soft and ready for toast and muffins!
We don't store our butter bell in the refrigerator. That way our butter is always at room temperature. (We just keep one stick (half a cup) out, the rest of the butter is stored in the refrigerator.) Before our better bell, I found myself storing butter in the fridge out of habit. (is it weird to you that fridge has a D, while refrigerator doesn't?) If we left the rest of our dairy products (milk, cream, yogurt) out, we would be spoiling them or they start to go rancid. The difference is butter is mostly fat and the higher fat content makes a unsuitable place for bacteria growth. Many types of butter is also made with pasteurized milk, also making the butter less prone to bacteria growth. The FDA and USDA have stated that butter is able to stay safe out of the refrigerator for a couple of days as long as it is covered.
 The left side is the crock. Fill it about halfway with water. The right side is where you place the butter.
 Using room temperature butter to fill the bell is the easiest way to prevent air bubbles.
 Remember air and light is one of the main causes to bacteria growth. So I really smush in the butter.
 We are also using salted butter. The salt is another factor that makes the butter less susceptible to bacteria growth. Also we keep our home under 70°. The cooler temperature allows the butter to be solid and makes a better environment for the butter.
Mister took a torch to smooth out the top. It's not at all necessary, but it does make a smooth surface!
 Slowly tip your butter in. This creates a seal.
Here are some things to remember if you are also planning to store your butter outside your refrigerator: make sure it's covered and kept away from the light (for example, stored with wrapped in the cupboard), salted butter is able to last longer than unsalted ones, and cooler climate areas are better for room-temperature storage. If you are using a butter bell, remember to change the water every couple of days.

I hope that explain why I almost always use the butter bell in my ingredient pictures. We got our butter bell from Ebay, but there are new ones available in cooking stores. Comment below and share how you store your butter!
Food, Home
Share:

Stella, May I know why you are wrapped up like a cocoon?

 Why, of course you may! It may be because we live near a college, but when me and Mister take walks at the park we almost always see hammocks. They looked so comfortable and it just seemed like such a nice way to relax outdoors. So, we got one! There wasn't much, if at all any, research that went into this. We just picked this one up at Costco.
 This is a two person, silk hammock. (Mister is in this hammock with me, taking my picture.) Having never hung up a hammock before, we had quite a lot of fun trying to find the perfect trees! This hammock we got has bungee ties, so it was a little more forgiving with the exact distance we needed to have the trees spaced out at. It also has a little pocket that is perfect to hold your phone or snacks, but then it also doubles up as a storage bag.
 Cloud watching
As we left the park we caught sight of a deer!
This day was like a perfect day in the park. We hung out in our new hammock, we got to cloud watch, and we saw a deer! Comment below and tell me about one of your perfect days at the park.
Silly
Share:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)