Hiking Old Rag in Shenandoah

I went hiking with my brother on the Old Rag trail in Shenandoah National Park. The trail is roughly 9 miles, including about a mile of rock scrambling. It's pretty challenging, and requires hand over hand climbing over rocks and through narrow passages. I love this trail, and the rock scramble is my favorite part. It's so fun to climb and jump around on the rocks. 

We did the whole trail in a little over 4 hours. I think we only stopped for 30 minutes for lunch, and didn't take many breaks. I kept a pretty fast pace, but I was still surprised that we completed it so fast.

It was quite a view from the top. 

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Chocolate Coconut Almond Cookies

I've been baking like a manic. Been making a lot of cookies and breads. I am a rather lazy baker, and cookies are so easy to just throw a bunch of ingredients together. Quick breads also don't require much effort. If you know the ratios of flour, sugar, fat, and liquids, you can adapt a recipe to many different flavors and add ins. 


I wanted something chocolate-y and coconut-y. I like almonds, too, so what the hell, I'll toss those in. These have whole wheat pastry and almond flours, and olive oil as the fat. They have plenty of chocolate flavor and a hint of coconut. The texture is crumbly, and the edges get a little crispy. 


Feel free to adapt this recipe to your liking. These would also be good with chocolate chips or chopped almonds mixed in. Replace the milk with some strongly brewed coffee for mocha-ish cookies.

Chocolate Coconut Almond Cookies
Makes 40 cookies


Dry:
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose)
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup turbinado sugar (or white sugar)
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup shredded coconut (I used unsweetened)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
Whole or sliced almonds (optional)

Wet:
1/2 cup light olive, canola, or other mild oil
1/2 molasses
1/2 non-dairy milk
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil, molasses, milk, and vanilla (wet ingredients) to the dry, and mix thoroughly.
Grease two half baking sheets. Using a tablespoon, scoop heaping spoonfuls of dough onto the baking sheet. With a moistened hand, gently flatten the cookie dough. If you'd like, press a whole or a slice of almond on top of each cookie.
Bake for about 13 minutes, taking them out when slightly firm on the edges but still soft in the center. You don't want to over bake these or they will be too dry.

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Sweet Potato Bread

I love sweet potato fries. I have been making oven fries quite frequently, and the last time I made them, I tossed a whole sweet potato in the oven, as well. I wanted to make something with the baked sweet potato, so I decided to make bread. Although this is a yeast bread, it is very easy to mix together because it does not require much kneading.

This is a high hydration bread, so the dough is very soft and can get sticky. The trick is to not handle the dough too much. When mixing and kneading, gently scoop the dough onto itself instead of punching and pushing the dough around. The bread is yeasty, slightly sweet, and has a closed crumb. The color is more orange-y than pictured. 

Sweet Potato Bread
Makes one loaf

1 tsp yeast

2/3 cup warm water
1 medium sweet potato, baked
2 Tbsp turbinado sugar (or white sugar)
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Add the yeast to the water, and let it sit for about 5 minutes.
Scoop out the sweet potato flesh and mash well with a spoon in a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar, salt, and oil. Add the yeast mixture and mix well.
Add the flour to the sweet potato mixture, and mix until a dough forms. Use your hands to gently knead the dough. It will be a very soft dough. Add a little flour if it gets too sticky. You want to knead/mix until the dough is uniform.
Place the dough in an oiled loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Bake for about 35-40 minutes.

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A little bird visited me this morning.

It chirped a "hellogoodmorning".

In a flurry of yellow , it flitted from tree to tree.

And just as quickly as it came, it flew off to bring a bit of sunshine to someone else on this cloudy day.

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Sunday Dumpling Making

Dumpling making is a labor of love. It takes a lot of work to make dumplings from scratch, but the results are so worth it. Every ingredient has to be chopped finely, each wrapper rolled out, and each dumpling formed by hand. There are shortcuts, such as buying dumpling skins or frozen dumpling ready to be cooked, but I much prefer to make them myself. If there's a hard way to do something, I'll be likely to try it.

Last Sunday, my mom and I spent the whole morning making a large batch of Chicken, Pork, and Chinese Chive Dumplings. We boiled some and made some into pot stickers for lunch, and froze the rest for easy meals in the future. The Chinese chives we used came straight from our garden, freshly cut that morning. In Chinese, they are called jiu cai (geeyou tsai). The smell is incredibly fragrant and onion-y, and are delicious in dumplings, savoury pancakes, or simply stir fried.

My mom picked a huge basket full, and carefully picked through them before giving them a thorough wash. It looks like a huge pile of grass, but trust me, it's a lot tastier than grass.

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Healthy Green Tea Ice Cream

Remember that peculiar photo of ice cream ingredients from my ice cream sandwich post? Well, the green tea ice cream I made was vegan, adapted from a recipe in Veganomicon. I have a bunch of cookbooks that I haven't used much, so I am going to try some recipes from them this summer.

This recipe uses coconut milk and tofu. It's a lot healthier than ice cream made with egg yolks and heavy cream. This summer, I want to experiment with making vegan ice creams. Some recipes I've made in the past turned out too icy, watery, and too hard after freezing. This recipe was just okay; it could be better. Because of the coconut cream, it ended up with a coconut-y flavor, not surprisingly. It was also a bit icy, and the mouth feel wasn't what I wanted. I'll have to tweak this some more, or use a different method.

Here's the recipe, anyways. It gets pretty hard in the freezer, so just let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before scooping.


Vegan Green Tea Ice Cream
Adapted from Veganomicon


6 oz. silken tofu
1 cup non-dairy milk (I used soy)
1/2 cup coconut creme (see note)
1/2 cup sugar (I used turbinado)
1 Tbsp matcha powder

In a blender, blend all ingredients until completely smooth. Chill in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours. Churn in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. Eat immediately for soft-serve consistency, or place in the freezer for a few hours to harden.

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Honey Vanilla Oat Bread

Baked goods get eaten up so quickly in my house. The ginger cookies I made yesterday were gone in less than a day. Today, I threw a quick bread together, and it is almost gone, too (half of the fault is mine). Heck, I'm not complaining, though. It just means that I get to bake more! And experiment with my recipes.

Usually when I bake, I just toss things together if it's something I'm familiar with. I've made quick breads countless times, but have never written down a recipe. And since I'm eyeballing ingredients, I don't know the amounts I used. Oven time is also "whenever it's done". Some results are better than others, and it's a shame that I don't have the recipe to breads that turn out really well. Like this awesome pumpkin bread I made once...

This time, I measured ingredients out carefully and noted the oven time. Since I just pulled this recipe out of my head, I wasn't sure if it would turn out okay. Seems like I was successful this time.

This bread is hearty, nutty, and chewy. It's slightly sweet, and not overwhelmingly so. It would be perfect for breakfast or a snack with a cup of tea. Or maybe toasted with a drizzle of honey or a bit of jam.


Honey Vanilla Oat Bread

Dry:
1 cup oat flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or all purpose)
2 Tbsp flax meal
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
rolled oats (optional)

Wet:
2 ripe bananas (see note)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350 F
Combine oat flour, ww flour, baking powder and soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl (dry ingredients)
In a blender, blend bananas, honey, vanilla, and water until smooth (wet ingredients). Alternatively, mash bananas well and combine with rest of the wet ingredients.
Add the wet mixture to the dry, and mix until well combined. Spoon batter into a greased loaf pan. Sprinkle the top with some rolled oats, if you'd like. Bake for 28-30 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean. It will become a dark golden brown.
Cool completely before slicing.

Note: Using bananas in this bread gives it a slight banana-y flavor. If you don't like the taste of bananas, you can sub 2/3 cup apple sauce for the bananas.

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Spring Refreshments

Just got back from a morning run and now I'm sipping a delicious, massive green smoothie. So refreshing :) I only ran for 30 minutes today. It's pretty humid after a night of thunderstorms, and my blood sugar was crashing since I only drank black coffee before heading out.

When I got back, I needed to eat something, and fast.

Oh hello there, delicious

So I blended up this massive smoothie with a cucumber, an orange, a frozen banana, and a huge handful of spinach. My Vita-mix blended it into a really smooth, deliciously green drink that revived me ;) Did I mention how much I love my Vita-mix? LOVE

I want to eat you :P

One of my goals this summer is to eat healthier. After a semester of eating crap, all I want to eat are FRUITS and VEGETABLES. Or as I like to call them, froo-eats and vuh-getuh-buls. Froo-getables? xD

I drank all this, times two...
Hey, there's no such thing as too much of a good thing, right?

Although it's not too hot yet, I like to sip on yummy, refreshingly cold things, like iced tea, iced coffee, and this spa water I made with thinly sliced lemons and cucumbers. Plain water is good, but flavour is even better :) I think it's a waste of money to buy those expensive flavoured waters (like Hint) and powders that are full of nasty chemicals. I generally don't buy bottled water, anyways. Why spend that money when you can make it yourself?

This is so easy, that I'm not going to write a "recipe" for it. Just toss your sliced lemons and cucumbers in a pitcher with some filtered water and let it sit for a few minutes. It should keep in the fridge for 1-2 days. I sometimes add a little more water to it after pouring myself a glass to replenish it. The flavour won't be diluted too much.

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Green Tea Ice Cream Sandwiches

I am treating my cooking deficiency. For therapy today, I made green tea ice cream and ginger cookies, and then made them into ice cream sandwiches.

I first made the base for the green tea ice cream so it could cool in the fridge while I baked the cookies. I'll be posting the recipe in the next few days.

Ice cream ingredients, hmmm.....

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I still have a ton of pictures to share from my Hawai'i trip. Of scenery, friends, sea turtles, candids. Today, however, I'll just focus on the food. I'll get to the other stuff later, I promise. Kind of. Eventually.

I just like to talk about food, okay?

The first night we were in Kona, we wanted to find a little hole in the wall for some authentic Polynesian food. After hanging around at a small beach, we were getting hungry. It took us a while to find a place to eat. At first, we tried to find a restaurant called Rappanui. It turned out to be a tiny place in a strip mall, and couldn't accommodate a large party. So we had to look for an alternative. We ended up asking a local for a recommendation. This is a risky strategy, because his recommendation took us to a rather interesting place. I would have never considered going there, had he not have recommended it.

We were led to a tiny tiny kava bar, Kanaka Kava, tucked behind some larger restaurants on the busy street. We squeezed into a long, narrow table booth and the charismatic hostess offered us a bowl of kava. Being ignorant and excited for some Hawaiian enculturation, we ordered a big bowl of kava for the group.

Has anyone had kava before? Let's just say the flavor was very earthy. Like dirt. Bitter, bitter dirt. Mouth-numbingly bitter. Kava is a drink used by natives and hippies for relaxation, socializing, rituals, etc. Kind of like drinking booze. It has sedative and anesthetic properties, but apparently kava relaxes you, but doesn't impair mental clarity.

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A Sweet Ending to Sophomore Year

The boxes are stored, the suitcases are packed, and finals are over and done with. Sophomore year, and half my undergraduate college career is over. This feels like it should be something significant, but I don't really know how to react. Is it really something to get worked over about? I don't want to think of my life as a timeline with pre-determined points where I have to "be somewhere" in life. I just want to live in the moment. That doesn't mean that I don't have a care for the future. I just want to be satisfied with the now, and not live with any regrets or unrealistic expectations.

On this last night at school, I am content. With my life, friends, family. Okay, maybe not school, I could still work on that. In two years, I will be graduating and starting a new chapter of my life. I don't know what that will be, but I am confident that I will figure it out, and life will go on.

Okay, less sentiments and more food! Tonight, I spent my last night here with friends. Dinner, four desserts, and two coffees later, I said goodbye to my friends for the semester.

[[ Sorry about the poor photo quality.These photos are crappy because I had to use my iPhone. Low lighting plus iPhone= no amount of photoshopping that can save these grainy, blurry pictures.

Clockwise from upper left: Key Lime Tart, Ginger Bar, Raspberry and Currant Bar, Chocolate Raspberry Cake. Most were tooth-achingly sweet, but we devoured them nonetheless. This year ended in a blissful sugar coma, and no regrets :)

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I miss my Vita-mix :(

Tonight, I decided to make a green tea smoothie. I bought some vanilla frozen yogurt, got some ice, and threw it in a blender with some matcha powder.

I was hoping for a creamy, smooth smoothie, but I got icy slush instead. Granted, I did add too much ice, but the damn blender just wouldn't get it smooth enough! Also, I didn't want to make too much noise and disturb my suite mates who are probably hard at work studying for finals (ignore the fact that I'm not). I gave up, and scooped my green tea slush in a bowl, and ate it with a spoon. It was still sweet, green tea-y, and yummy, so not a total failure.

At times like these, I really miss my Vita-mix blender. IMHO, the Vita-mix is the best blender out there. Actually, that is not my humble opinion. That is a fact. The Vita-mix is THE best blender. Full disclosure: I was not paid to say that (though I would gladly say it again for some moolah ;) ) I had mine for a year, and it is one of my most used appliances. It is so versatile, not just for smoothies, too. You can make hot soup in it. Yes, you can actually cook in it, that's how powerful it is. None of this slushy nonsense.

I'll be going home soon, and you can bet that I'll be blending up smoothies, ice cream, soups, sauces, nut butters (still need to try this). I'm so excited to go home because I can cook, in an actual kitchen. YES, five more days.

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Hawaii: The Foodie's Destination

Hawai'i: it's the perfect destination. White sand beaches, tropical climate, beautiful sunsets, etc.etc. A few of the many reasons why Hawai'i is one of the top vacation spots. I have to add one more reason to visit: the food! In fact, it was the topic I chose to do my presentation on for "Hawai'i class". 

Hawaiian cuisine is peculiar. It has evolved from Polynesian cuisine, who were the early settlers on the island. Influences from all over the world brought a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, livestock, and flavors to the island. Many foods associated with Hawaii, like pineapples, coconuts, and taro, were actually introduced to the island. Hawai'i is a mixing pot of cultures, and the cuisine reflects that. Consequently, interesting dishes appear in the cuisine, such as Spam masubi, the ubiquitous plate lunch, and Loco Moco (hamburger patty over rice, topped with gravy and fried egg).

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A Farmer's Market in Hawai'i

On the second day in Hawai'i, we rode a bus that took us from Hilo to Kona. As we were waiting at the bus terminal, we found a small farmer's market across the street! Of course, we had to go check it out.

There were a few stands, mostly selling fruits and vegetables. Some had flowers, and one sold homemade sweets.

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Procrastination

One more week until I go home. I feel like I am just waiting for the end. I only have two exams during exam week, and they are a week apart. My first exam, German, is tomorrow, and I should be studying. But I want to procrastinate a bit more (the night is still young!), so I will share some pictures from my trip to Hawaii. These are long overdue; my trip was in January! Oops, sorry about that.

In January, I took a trip to Hawaii for a "class". A bunch of us in the group decided to go a few days early to party chillax in Hawaii, so that's what we did. We stayed on the Big Island, mostly on the Kona side.

I first flew from DC to St. Louis. From St. Louis, we flew to San Francisco, then to Honolulu, then finally to Hilo on the Big Island. It was a heck of a lot of flying.

It was cloudy as we were flying into Hilo

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