Lent

The Lenten season is upon us again.  Last year I gave up drinking all alcohol.  It was fairly difficult in the beginning, but the longer I abstained, the easier it became.  The more people that I hung out w/that knew about it, the easier it became as they accepted it more and more. 

This year, I'm attempting to not really sacrifice, but to do more.  Meaning, I intent to work out more often instead of giving up alcohol or sweets or something along those lines.  In a way, I guess I'm sacrificing some lazyness for my health benefit.  I've always wanted to run a race although I now have come to realize that a marathon or even a half marathon is probably not in the cards.  However, hopefully this can be the catalyst towards a 5k in the spring.

I still may try to give up meat on fridays since I can still never remember each year.

New blog

I've decided to embark on a new venture.  I've just started another blog.  This one's asian inspired and will hopefully be a little less random.  I intend for it to be more structured, well thought, but yet still lighthearted.  Hope you enjoy!

http://firstgenerasian.blogspot.com

Magical wonton skins

I've never used wonton skins before.  Lately, I've been trying to expand my asian cooking repertoire and happened to see wonton skins at the grocery store and decided to buy a package.  Turns out you can do a lot with them.  Using them was easier than expected, it just happened to be more labor intensive is all.  The skill required was surpringly not difficult.

I ended up making wontons/dumplings as well as crab rangoon.  Making the mixture for the insides relatively easy and didn't require too many ingredients.  The main ingredient/base for wontons is ground meat and the base for crab rangoons is cream cheese. 

Wontons have a few basic cooking methods.  Boiling, steaming, and pan frying.  I personally like to boil or steam for just a few minutes and then pan fry them to crisp them up a little bit.  If you boil them too long, they get a little too soggy and can fall apart.  Crab rangoon is all about frying.  If you don't have a deep fryer, which I do not, you can just heat oil in a pan.  I used a small sauce pan which allowed me to use less oil, but only allowed me to cook a few.  I ended up having to do a few batches, but it turned out just fine.  They cooked in just a minutes or two and turned our very nice.  Now on to more experimental fillings for both my dumplings and my crab rangoons. 

Kindle

I've finally broken down and gotten it, well my mother-in-law bought it for me for xmas.  I've resisted for so long that its a little bittersweet.  On one hand, its small, lightweight, accessible to wi-fi and near instand downloads, can carry multiple books, has a good battery, and is ultra convenient.  On the other hand, its black and white/grey, non-personal, and it doesn't look good on my bookshelf. 

I'm ashamed to say that there may be no turning back from this.  Since xmas, I've already read 2 books and am working my way through a third.  The size, weight, and convenience is the best part about it.  Its so slim that it just fits into a jacket pocket.  Also, with the wi-fi, you can just download a book from the Kindle itself.  You don't need to hook it up to a computer.  Just a few button pushes and voila, a brand new book to read.  Also, I'm pretty sure the books are cheaper than if you were to buy them at the bookstore. 

Have no fear though, I'll still re-read the books on my bookshelf because I like it and possibly for nostalgia.

Homemade Salami

If you read my blog, which very few do, you'd know by now that I like to experiment in the kitchen.  One thing that I absolutely love to eat is cured meat.  From beef jerky to prosciutto to ham, etc, I like it all!  Beef jerky was at the top of my list of cured or smoke meats to make, but all the 'homemade' recipes I found required a few items, i.e. a box fan, that I didn't own, nor was I willing to purchase.  Eventually my quest led me to finding 2 different recipes that I thought I could replicate.  One was for salami and the other was for summer sausage.  I ended up deciding on the salami for a few reason, those being less ingredients, less meat, and less time needed for it to 'cure.' 

This homemade salami recipe I decided upon seemed relatively easy and it was, more or less.  All the ingredients, minus one, were relatively straightforward and easy to purchase.  The ingredients were ground beef, black pepper, onion powder, garlic salt, liquid smoke and 'Morton's TenderQuick' which is essentially curing salt.  The 'curing' salt was the hard part.  Neither Jewel, Whole Foods, and Treasure Island carried it.  I finally found it at 'The Spice House' in Old Town, highly recommend that place by the way.  They had a version called 'Prague Powder #6' which she assured me was basically the same thing so I went with it. 

Basically all you do is mix all of the above mentioned ingredients together, roll into a log, wrap in foil and let sit for a day.  Then you bake it for 90 minutes and let cool.  I gotta say, it turned out decently.  Yes, even my wife said so.  Its certainly not the prettiest thing in the world w/out the casing, but for a first attempt, I'm fairly pleased with it.  Its probably a little salty, but definitely worth attempting again, perhaps w/different herbs and spices.

Here's the link to the more detailed recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-salami/detail.aspx

 

Beaujolais Nouveau

I've always wondered what the big deal was w/Beaujolais Nouveau.  I knew it only came it once a year, knew it was big enough for a parade, but besides that didn't know too much more about it.  Did a little research and found out that the wines are the first release of the year.  Kelly and I tried one a couple weeks back and it wasn't bad at all.  It was, although not a wine connoiseur, what I would have expected of and tasted like a 'young' wine.  It was a bit tart, not a very full body.  Nonetheless, not a bad wine at all.  I'd drink it again next year.

Anniversary

I was going through some of my old posts and realized that my one year anniversary for blogging was Nov. 4th.  Who knew?!  Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised that I've made it this long.  As I mentioned over a year ago when I first started, I wasn't sure if this was just going to be a short little daliance into blogging, but I've really come to enjoy the writing.  It may not be the most thought provoking, must-read, introspective work, but to each their own. 

I'm quite pleased with myself that I've made it this far and am looking forward to writing down more ramblings as they come.  Now I just need to write more frequently.