Blasting Weekend

Food, Life, Random Talk

Blasting Weekend

Jos

I had quite a very busy weekend starting from Saturday afternoon till right now! Believe me, I didn’t even turn on my computer at all yesterday. Anyway, this will be a super long post with lots of pictures and not too many words, I promise.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Chocolate Swirl Buns
After I finished my post, my bread machine beeping, indicating that my bread dough was done rising! It was risen beautifully high!!! I took it out, divided into 2.

dough-rolled — rolled the other half. I used 2 cutting boards cause they're not big enough by themselves..lol

mocha essence diluted with a bit of water for brushing and chocolate sprinkle for the filling

dough-sprinkle — brushed the mocha essence and sprinkle the chocolate on top

doughroll-cut — roll the dough lenghtwise, and cut using the dental floss for cleaner slice. you could use serrated knife dipped in water as well, but I prefer dental floss

breadrolls1-raw — First batch- done with the egg wash brushed on the buns! Obviously they're way too big..haha..I'm such a sucker in craftmanship

breafrolls1 — Baked for about 350F for 15-20 minutes then 375F for another 10 minutes. Look not bad, right?

breadrolls2-raw — Repeat the previous steps earlier and I got this second batch! Much better!!

breadrolls2 — I guess these are for my friend...they're better looking and more evenly shaped than the first one!

rolls-gift — No need fancy packaging, right? It's the thought and effort that counts! 😀

I got inspired to make my chocolate bread buns from King Arthur Flour Cinnamon Buns. Since I am not a big fan of cinnamon and icing, I just borrowed their technique to make my bread look a little more interesting. It’s actually much easier to do than filling the buns with chocolate, as I did previously.

The Potluck Gathering
My husband and I arrived at my friend’s place quite on time. We helped a little bit to make the wontons. It was so much fun!

Some of our other friends arrive a bit late because of a bad accident on the freeway they were on. By the time they arrived, we were pretty much starving already. Tons of good food, who could resist to dig in??

singapnoodle — our host made this delicous Singapore Style Stir Fried Rice Noodles. Yumm!

wonton-panfried — Pan fried wonton or should I say potstickers?

salad — I think this is the only veggie dish we had

bakedchkn — Baked chicken that I made...turned out pretty good actually. Cut them into smaller pieces so it'll be easier for people to eat

meatloaf — Homemade meat loaf..it was pretty tasty! I'm planning to make a vegetarian version of this sometime 🙂

korbbq — Korean Beef BBQ...yummy! I tried not to have too much of these..prolly only 2 small pieces?

curry — Curry chicken with lots of bamboo shoots....was ok..but bamboo shoots aren't quite my favorite.

pekingduck — Peking duck - didn't have any...too greasy

pekingduck-bread — Wraps for the peking ducks

Mung bean congee (rice porridge). Supposedly we have this after having so much greasy stuff..but I didn't have any. In fact I ate most of veggies and some of the boiled wontons (not pics on these)

myplate1 — My first plate. I had another 2 plates, which mostly just more veggies and wontons

My other friend made this refreshing virgin mojito - in the mix were strawberries, orange, lemons, mint leaves and a bit of Mountain Dew

Nothing beats fresh strawberries! I think I had most of these.

coconutjelly — Some kind of dessert of grass jellies in coconut milk? I am not a big fan of coconut milk so I passed on this one.

We just hung out and chatted here and there but didn’t stay that late. Some of my friends with kids obviously couldn’t stay too late because the kids got tired like around 9:30 pm. After helping with clean ups, packed some of the left overs we left and the next gathering will be next month for the June birthday girl. We got home pretty late, around 10:30 pm. After shower and everything pretty much it was about 11 something.

SUNDAY
Homemade Almond Milk
Just because we didn’t go for the beach run, didn’t mean it would be my workout day off. I did my P90X workouts plus ChaLean Extreme I’ve Got Abs and finished around 9:30 am.

After having a yummy bowl of oats for breakfast and 2 cups of hot tea, I started off with house cleaning! Usually I do that after lunchtime, but this time I felt I had to start it off right now or else I’d just procrastinate again. And we had tons of food in the fridge, some were from yesterday’s potluck, some were the baked chicken that I made for the potluck, so the only thing we had to cook was vegetables. No pics for lunch since mostly were just left over stuff..nothing interesting.

So finally, it was time to make my almond milk! I’ve soaked the almonds for about 24 hour already. I replaced the water twice yesterday because the water got a little cloudy and I didn’t want the almonds to get bad. Interesting how the almonds looked so plumped up after soaked for a day.

Rinse the water off and put everything in the blender. Add about 7-8 cups of water for 1 cup of almonds. My blender capacity was only 5 cups so I had to divide them in half (sorta).

Use a fine strainer to prevent lumps in the almond milk.

Get the most out of it by pressing the ground almond with spoon.

finished — Done! I added 2 tsp of vanilla extract for nicer fragrant. I didn't add any sugar or sweetener as I like it this way. You can add it if you want

almondmilk — Store in fridge and try to finish them within a week. Before drinking it, shake the bottle as it gets settle

What to do with the almond waste? I dehydrate it by heating it in my convection oven for about 4-5 hours in 150F (my oven’s lowest temperature) with the oven door slightly ajar.

There I got my own almond flour! I was too lazy to strain some of the almond skins. I might add this into my whole wheat bread the next time I’m making it.

My husband was teasing me if we are that poor that we had to conserve this almond waste…LOL.
This step by step of making of homemade almond milk is from Novel Eats Simply Vegan.

After all these, we headed to my in-law’s place for a dinner. I haven’t gone there for about 2-3 weeks and I think it’s better I go this time. Otherwise I’ll give a bad vibe as a bad daughter-in-law.

My mother in-law made these amazing zhongzi (glutinous rice wrapped in leaves). I love these stuff but tried to go easy on those as it’s very calorie dense and full of fatty stuff (chinese sausage, pork fat, nuts, etc?)