A recipe and a picture.

Recently at home we have been experimenting with new dishes to make our meals more interesting. Yesterday we received 10 pounds of organic soba noodles from Amazon (about fifty percent cheaper than buying it in the store) and were surprised to see that they came loose, in a thick plastic bag. It was funny especially since I joked prior to opening the package that we had received one giant 10 pound soba noodle. After divvying them up into 5 - 2 pound ziplock bags we decided to make yakisoba that evening for dinner. I could pinch myself for not taking a photo of the end result, but let's just say it was really delicious! The soba are meaty and satisfying, and the vegetables we used were perfect crunchy additions to the dish.

Here is the basic recipe:

2 carrots, julienned
1 onion, diced
1/2 bell pepper, julienned
1 cup chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 generous handful of romain lettuce leaves cut crosswise in 1/2 inch wide slivers. (We substituted Cabbage for this. It was great!)
1/2 cup sauce (see recipe below)
8 oz. cooked soba noodles

For the sauce:
We actually used a homemade soy-ginger dressing that I had made the night before for a salad. It was the perfect blend of flavors: (And please note: this makes a lot of sauce. You could use it as a marinade for chicken; for salad dressing; for another few nights of yakisoba, etc. OR you could halve or quarter the recipe.)

3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
3/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce (I used Tamari)
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup water


In a 1 pint glass jar or larger, combine the garlic, ginger, olive oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and water. Cover the jar with a tight fitting lid, and shake well. Remove lid, and heat jar in the microwave for 1 minute just to dissolve the honey. Let cool, and shake well before serving. Store covered in the refrigerator.

(Source for dressing here.)


Cook Soba as per instructions, to al dente. Rinse with cold water and drain.
Meanwhile, saute the vegetables (sans lettuce) in a bit of neutral oil such as canola till softened. Add sauce, stir and cook a minute or two. Then add lettuce and wilt for a few minutes.
Finally, add the soba and stir till warmed. Serve hot or cold (the next day it's great too!). This serves two hungry people for dinner.

Since I haven't shown you any photos of the final product (again, my apologies), here is another picture of an entirely different meal. Definitely not as tasty, but serves as a very enjoyable lunch: hard-boiled eggs and ramen with tamari, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, sesame oil. So good.

A bit more of Thumper...

I thought I would take a break from 365'ing to share a few more pics of my little bun, Thumper, since he was featured on www.dailybunny.org yesterday! Enjoy :)

I haven't forgotten...yet.

So things may have been a little quiet on the front regarding my 365 pictures. Well, I have been keeping up, but the poor photos have just be left to linger on my camera's sd card. But here they are! You may notice that on my flickr stream they are out of order. That is simply because I have no patience. But if you go the the 365 set they are in order. Here are a few I like.

Happy Chinese New Year!

(Yes, I know I am partial this year since it is the year of the rabbit)

Update part 2, and a recipe.

So I finished my first multicolor granny square! It was really simple and probably took about 15-20 minutes to complete. I think it could have gone faster if I had had made slipknots in all of the balls of yarn to begin with so that when I attach a new color it is more of a quick change-up.

Let me tell you, crocheting is incredibly addictive. It's all I want to do now. How did this happen? Though I'm definitely not complaining. Other than photography and drawing, I've never religiously practiced a craft. Perhaps I can add this to the roster.
---<>---



This past week, I broke out my Julia Child Mastering the Art of French Cooking 'cookery' book and attempted my first recipe from it, Quiche Lorraine.

How was it?

Oh My God.

First, let's put it out there that I have had plenty of quiches in my life. Okay, when I say plenty, I mean maybe 15 or 20 in my 27 years. Which if you average it out is quite a lot. But none of them, and I say None Of Them, have tasted like this. And I cheated by using store-bought pastry crust! (We could be fancy and call it Pate Brisee if you like.)

I think what completely set it apart from the quiches of the past was its custard-like texture - it was like an incredibly light and velvety scrambled egg/ half and half combination with the slight crispy, smokiness of the bacon. I slightly changed the recipe by adding sliced Brussels sprouts that I parboiled before adding to the mixture.

See an adaptation of Julia Child's Quiche Lorraine here. (As it is an adaptation, it may not follow the book exactly.) I used a deep crust (deeper than the usual store-bought type) and added about 8 or 10 Brussels sprouts, cleaned, trimmed, parboiled and sliced thinly, then dropped onto the crust with the bacon.

Granny squares - an update!

So I finally completed a few granny squares over the weekend. I have to say I'm pretty happy with myself, as I learned how to do so entirely through youtube training videos. So far, I have three completed. It takes around 30-40 minutes to do one, if I use one color. I used white yarn as my testing yarn and when I do my blanket I will have four colors: white (maybe), heather, salmon and blueish-green.

The only problem I am running into now is with winding the hank into a ball: I don't know if there is a technical term for this, but when I tried winding (by hand, not with a swift) I find that the fibers of one piece of yarn split and another piece of yarn is woven through this, forcing me to rip the split yarn partially to free the second piece. Also by doing this created several large knots. I think I spent two hours untangling this, finally giving up and leaving a scraggly mess of yarn behind. Kind of disappointing, especially since I have three hanks to go! Have any of you ever dealt with this issue before? I used shepherd's wool merino type yarn.

Here's a quick drawing I did of the issue to clarify:

Anyway, here is a picture of my first granny square! So excited that I made it this far. Only 200 to go :)



PS- I have started putting up smaller pictures to accommodate smaller computer screens, as I recently viewed the website in a 14 inch laptop and it was awfully hard to navigate. Hope this is better!

PPS - daily photos now updated on flickr.

1.11.11

So for eleven straight days I have kept my promise of taking pictures daily and posting them to flickr. I hope I can keep at it! The key, I believe, is making sure that I keep my camera handy at all times. Only 354 days to go!

Do you have any tips on remembering to take pictures often? How do you stay inspired?

PS - I love today's date!

Just a quick hello

Another snowfall, but it melted almost half a day later. I like this kind of occurrence.

Spring, please?

Winter always gives me a sort of blueish feeling. Up until the holidays it's always covered up by coziness: lighting candles and playing classical music late at night wrapped in a blanket. But somehow, like a switch, after the New Year begins a new malaise always gets me. I think because there is such a stretch between now and springtime.

I find myself doing things that remind me of warmer weather: making smoothies, playing music that I find reminds me of spring (mostly The Beatles, for some reason!), sitting in a sunlit window, planning a springtime trip, maybe even 'thinking' about exercising. (I'll let you know if I get so far as actually exercising! Ha!)

What do you like to do to get out of a winter depression? Any suggestions? This would especially be helpful as more snow is headed to our area this week. Yuck.

xo

Second.

Happy New Year!

So it's been quite a hiatus for me from the blog, but I am back and ready to start blogging in full force (hopefully!). January 1st marked the 2nd year of sixty four love notes and I am happy to start a new fresh year filled with photography, design and writing.

I am taking a cue from Astrid and starting a one-a-day photo (or more) for every day of 2011. Let's hope I can keep up with it! It is always hard to remember to take daily photos and post them (I'll be posting here and on Flickr) but I think if I have my camera handy at all times I'll remember more.


Did you make any resolutions? Some of mine are to be more optimistic, to learn more and to not hold back in life.

Here's to a wonderfully productive, beautiful year.