Tag Archives: January

Gather. Eat. Drink. Repeat

Friends, we certainly missed you at our table over the weekend!

We gathered, ate, drank and repeated all evening. Nothing better in our book!

These friends are friends that have cooked a special birthday meal for us and have given us such wonderful gifts, we’re very blessed to have met them all, so we certainly wanted to return the favor with a special treat for them!

The menu was French themed and featured the following:

^L’Apéritif (Drinks): Assorted beer, cocktails, homemade mulled wine

^L’Entrée (Appetizer): Pan seared foie gras served on homemade whole-wheat toast

^Le Plat Principal (The Main Dish):
Sous vide duck breast, served with fresh steamed broccoli, and pommes frites (french-fries)

^La Salade et le Fromage (Salad and Cheese):
Seasonal dinner salad and assorted cheese plate (served on my favorite Pennsylvania board)

^Le Dessert (Dessert): Vanilla-bean crème brûlée with local strawberries

Le Café (Coffee) : Coffee & tea

Bon weekending!

Backpackbees

Spiciness with age

I wasn’t raised on very spicy foods…actually, I’d really label my childhood as pretty “vanilla” when it came to any sort of spiciness. But hey! That’s okay, because my very favorite ice-cream flavor just so happens to be vanilla! Ha-ha! I’m wild, I know!

Most know this little factoid, however some readers do not, my husband and I were both born and raised right in the same area of Central Pennsylvania. So a lot of our childhood experiences with, places, family traditions, and local foods, are very similar and easy to reminisce about together. (The Sub Shop, Knoebels Grove, ham loaves, growing up with grandparents that we’re practically parents, experiencing 4 seasons!)

So that brings me back to us chatting about if he too experienced a similar spice-less existence? Outside of childhood candy like warheads and cinnamon balls, he too was rather “vanilla”. Ha-ha! Womp-womp.

Fast forward to our adventures in Korea and you’d think we were two totally different people! Our taste have done some sort of crazy flip-flop and we crave and cannot get enough spice! We’re always testing our limits ordering more spice, telling the Korean restaurants, “The spicier the better”. Yes, quite the duo we are, what a spectacle when we’re eating spicy squid together.

The spicy thing is just one thing that’s boggling my mind lately when I really sit back and think about it. It sounds so elementary and simple, like, ohhh wow! You are adults your taste have changed.. WOW…

No! They really, really have! Our tastebuds have aged, as we have.

Here’s another fun giggle for you.. We thought we were really “cooking” when we first got married and purchased our first home. We’d take a weekend trip North to SAMs Club and pick up frozen individual breaded eggplants. We’d bake them in the oven and top them off with spaghetti sauce and shredded mozzarella. Boom! We were so proud! (In our defense, they were/are pretty tasty.)

Again, fast-forward and change countries, now we frequent our local vegetable stand weekly, try to stay away from most processed foods, and haven’t purchased an actual loaf of bread in 6 months? We bake our own loaf about bi-weekly. Pantry staples are now giant jars of jalapeños, Coleman’s English mustard, and a plethora of spices to take our foods up another heat notch and flavor (outside of being the chronic black-pepper food coater that I am.)

Perhaps all of the reasons and then some are why we make such a big deal about being together in our kitchen cooking and creating? Whatever the reasons, we’re certainly blessed with this time, the resources, and really hope to continue to encourage our friends, family and readers to get into their kitchen and menu plan, create some foodie-magic too!

I now present to you, a little hodgepodge of our past week spicy meals. Enjoy!

^Homemade spicy chorizo sausage soup with kale pesto and homemade whole-wheat bread.

^Homemade spicy salsa Mexican rice, homemade guacamole and chicken fajitas.

^From scratch gyro meat (ground beef and lamb spiced accordingly), grilled asparagus with an oyster sauce glaze, tomato basil salad and homemade pitas.

^Homemade whole wheat banana muffins from my gal-pal Jenny’s blog. VISIT HER NOW! You will fall head over heels with her style and bluntness!

Backpackbees

Weekending and Côte Jardin

Over the weekend we had some appointments are errands to run in Seoul, so we made an entire day of it and met up with some of our very good friends.

We took them to a small cozy French café and bistro, Côte Jardin, located off and away from the main street in Itaewon.

This was the second time we have dined at the bistro and what brought us back was the romantic yet casual vibe, the very attentive staff (each visit the management has struck up a conversation with us and you can just feel their passion for their customers and business) and of course the delicious French cuisine!

On this trip, Ms. B ordered the burger for the second time, not a typical move on her part. The rest of the table was so convinced with her past experience, wouldn’t you know that they too followed suit. (Eek! Pressure was on!)

Yes, we DO realize that not many people would associate the French cuisine with a “burger”, but to us, this bistro certainly trophied the burger points on the scorecard for the French! They made their country proud!

So the burger… It was a bit different from the first time we had visited, however the basis of the burger, a mixture of lamb and beef combination, still shone through with its distinctive taste.

The first burger featured mushrooms, beet root, and bechamel cheese very creatively. (Photo on Instagram)

This time the burger was a bit more traditional with a nice cut of bacon, fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, topped with ground mustard sauce, and cheese. Délicieux!

This was the second time that we ordered the French onion soup as well. Mmmmmm… One can never go wrong on a very cold day with slowly cooked, caramelised onions that are both mellow and sweet in the perfect broth, topped off with a crusty bread and thick melted cheese.

Côte Jardin is the quintessential combination of offering a fantastic menu, paired with excellent wines, a caring staff, affordable prices and a personal, inviting, charming environment.

Address: 131-23 Itaewon Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Phone: 02-793-507
Website: Here

Backpackbees

What’s cooking?

We find ourselves together back here again at the end of the week. Can I get a Fri-YAY!?

While I know we observed MLK day and we had a shorten week compared to most, it just seemed to sort of drag on and on…what do you think? Perhaps it was the REALLY cold temperatures we’ve been experiencing as of late? Whatever the case, let’s get throw in another Fri-YAY! 😉

So what’s been cooking in your kitchen? Do share, we’d love to hear! In the meantime we will share just what’s been going on in ours…

Mr. B made a recipe from his grandparents cookbook dating back to 1949! Beef porcupines. Don’t worry there were no porcupines harmed in the making of the recipe haha! These little guys get their name from the way the rice pops out of the beef when they are done cooking.
Oh Lordy were they absolutely delicious! I know Mr. B made his grandpa proud that night!

^Google them!

Pizza night! Combination pizzas made with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Crust, 16-Ounce. Have you ever used any of the Bob’s Red Mill mixes? We’ve dabbled in quite a few and always end up pretty pleased.

We topped the pizza with mozzarella, tons of roasted veggies eggplant, yellow peppers, red peppers, red onions, mushrooms, homemade meatballs, cheese filled jalapeños and cracked an egg in the center because we’re crazy like that! Oh and a side of roasted jalapeños filled with melted cheese.

We even ventured into the land of homemade vegetable hummus too! (Hey it’s all about getting those veggies in, right?) Yeah…Green pea hummus to be exact. Pretty outstanding and will make many future appearances in this house. You can thank us for sharing later.

image

We whipped up vegetarian BBQ. It’s sort of old school family BBQ recipe we have from Ms. B’s grandmother, but with a modern twist of using veggie crumbles.

And of course we mentioned Iowa Girl Eats blog meal on our last post, grilled chicken with a barley-corn salad. Think of the taste of a BIG bread-less BLT (YUM!).

Alright folks, we will meet you back in our kitchen again soon!

Backpackbees

Winter berries and the past

There are certain times throughout the year that I get very nostalgic about my childhood. So much so, I find myself shortly afterwards in our kitchen baking or making it simply to have a taste of the past. Make no mistakes, I enjoy adulthood and eagerly look forward to the future, but you know those days or moments when they hit you…

Today for me it’s homemade strawberry shortcake. Oh yes, a delicious family recipe that I covet, passed down generation to generation, butter, Crisco and all. No sharsies with this one folks. I know what you are thinking… Mmmm isn’t it sort of out of season to be longing for shortcake? Yes and no. I guess the great and not so great fact about the US is that at any time of the year you can get your hands on imported fruits and vegetables. I try not to be that gal, strive to purchase as much locally, plus we’re currently located in South Korea where local strawberries are divided into two growing seasons, summer and winter.

If you recall on a past blog post in the summer-ish we visited a nearby greenhouse and picked our own. With our winter berries we weren’t as adventures, we simply visit our local vegetable stand and purchase one or two containers a week. (They are that good!)

I enjoy learning more and more about anything that surrounds the topic of food. I found it very interesting when chatting up some Korean friends and locals that, the winter berries grown here are Maeyang strawberries, a cross and byproduct of two other strains of strawberries. I am told that these winter beauties yield a higher sugar content, because they are said to breath less at night, so unlike its sister summer berry, it loses far less nutrition, thus losing less of their precious sugar. I can absolutely attest to that! No need to sprinkle a dash of sugar on these little sweeties. Oh and the smell of the berries, imagine the best perfume in all the world!

During my childhood summers we’d always enjoy a nice size slice of shortcake topped with fresh local strawberries, sometimes cool-whip topping, but almost always soaked in a bowl of milk. This cake would accompany a bowl of parsley potatoes. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Recently Skyping with my grandparents we had a good laugh because Mr. B couldn’t wrap this mind around the fact that there wasn’t any protein, and the fact that was the entire meal. Hahaha! I suppose it might sound odd to those out there reading this post too, but I confess those dinners as simple as they were, were the very best. My great-grandmother coined the statement that you had to have the salty with the sweet. The saltiness of the parsley potatoes and the sweetness of the strawberries. This was a grandmother that knew her foodie stuff, she’d rather enjoy her dessert served before any meal. I certainly belong to the correct bloodline.

While we didn’t serve parsley potatoes tonight with our strawberry shortcake (party-pooper Mr. B), we did enjoy an outstanding marinated grilled chicken with corn barley salad from Iowa girl eats. The link is here and we didn’t change a thing. We used our fresh corn on the cob that we shucked and froze when it was available. We know you’ll enjoy this hearty easy dish during the weeknight too!

So now it’s your turn to share your childhood meal nostalgia with us. Do you re-visit the past with any sorts of odd meals? We’d love to hear!

Backpackbees

What’s cooking?

Oh man am I ever glad you asked!

This year, like many past years, we didn’t make any official resolutions. But, I guess you can say this is sort of something we’ve decided to try to stick to in the new year. I guess you can say that goes along with a form of resolution, right?

Weekly dinner menu planning. Boom. It sounds so simple, right?…It is! So… Uh… Why haven’t we done this in the past? …… clueless.

Anywho. We did our first full week of dinner menu planning and it looked a little something like this.

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We’re trying to incorporate a ton of veggies into our meals too. Oh! Plus I got my hot little hands on this really cute weekly menu planner stationary/ a store list. I cannot wait to share with you all! Stay tuned on Instagram. (Thanks Jenny!) We had a really good time sitting down together and planning meals from our cookbooks and must bake/make bucket-lists. I know it’s a time I’m going to look forward to in our future.

Our goals are to incorporate more veggies, take the stress out of any weekday scramble of what’s for dinner tonight, plus try to make fewer trips to the vegetable stand and grocery store. We will promise to keep you posted with delicious photos along the way. Follow us on Instagram if you aren’t already.

Speaking of delicious photos… This is one meal from our past week of dinner planning, minus the dinner salad. Meh. Sometimes you see one, you’ve seen them all.

^ Armenian eggplant caviar. I get the sweetest memories of our dear friend Mary when I take a bite of this stuff! Hi Mary!!

^ Homemade Pumpkin-Sage Ravioli with Browned Butter and Pecans from kitchenAide
(Don’t worry we’re sharing the recipe below. You are welcome!)

^ Homemade tapioca pudding with fresh local Korean strawberries

^ Lamb steaks seasoned with curry spice grilled in a cast iron pan, creamy garlic parmesan quinoa, Korean pumpkin purée

^ Homemade ricotta chocolate mousse from The Forest Feast Cookbook (Highly recommended purchase!)

^ Sous vide pork chop with homemade Asian BBQ marinade, roasted garlic ancho chile potatoes, cauliflower and puréed sweet peas

^Seared ahi tuna (marinated with soy and Worcestershire sauce and sesame oil) with quinoa, broccoli and puréed beets

We hope you enjoy every bite!

Pumpkin-Sage Ravioli with Browned Butter and Pecans
Taken directly from our KitchenAide manual
Yield: 6 servings (12 to 15 ravioli with 1 tbs [15 mL] butter and 1 tbs [15 mL] pecans per serving).

Ingredients:

1 recipe Basic Egg Pasta
1 can(15oz[445mL]) pumpkin
1/4 cup (60 mL) packed brown sugar
1 tsp (5 mL) ground sage
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
1/4 tsp (1 mL) black pepper
1/4 tsp (1 mL) ground nutmeg
6 tbs (90 mL) chopped pecans
6 tbs(90mL)butter

Directions:

Prepare pasta dough; let rest.

In medium bowl, combine pumpkin, sugar, sage, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; refrigerate until ready to fill ravioli. Follow directions in “To Prepare Pasta Sheets,“ “To Use Ravioli Maker Attachment“ and “Cooking and Storing Ravioli.“*

On baking sheet, place pecans in single layer. Toast in oven at 350°F (180°C) for 5 to 7 minutes, or until golden brown and aromatic. Meanwhile, in heavy 1 qt
(950 mL) saucepan over medium-high heat, heat butter until golden brown. Serve hot butter over cooked ravioli and top with pecans.

Backpackbees

Click, Ship & treat yourself!

#Therewillneverbeenoughtime

I’ll spend forever showing you how much you mean to me.

Vegan Rosemary chocolate chip cookies at 6am.
He adores them, and I adore him.

Backpackbees

Click, Ship & treat yourself!

     

 

Cheers To The New Year!

Whew! It’s officially 2016! I know each year I say this…but… where does the time go?!? We just keep blinking and years are flying by. Is this another adulthood realization/moment that stinks? ….I think so!

We, much like you, have got so very many blessings in 2016 to look forward to! Perhaps our best baked goods yet…

So, What exciting things did you do to ring in the New Year? Did you get all dolled up? I was loving the sparkly dresses posted on Social media! How about making it until midnight to snag that good-luck kiss? Wink-wink. Tell us!

Well…we loved living in our own little world this New Years Eve. We went out in style New Years Eve. Yep. Total party animals here! HAHA…We celebrated by cooking up a storm in our cozy kitchen at home. An outstanding homemade four course dinner. We toasted (way before midnight) with sparkling cider and Belgium beer.

So what was this dinner we devoured and taunted our friends and family on Facebook with? Oh boy! Glad you asked, because you are now going to get a play by-play!

The first course up was hot bacon dressing using homemade mustard, bacon, shallots and vinegar. For those of you not familiar with hot bacon dressing, it is a very nostalgic memory of Sunday dinners in our families Pennsylvania kitchen. We modified and tweaked a bit to feature Korean pork AKA Samgyeopsal. It was excellent if we may say so. If you’re curious, this cut of meat is thick, fatty slices of pork belly meat. Oh and it just melts in your mouth when grilled to perfection too! Order this next time cut of meat when you find yourself in a Korean restaurant.

The second course was sous vide tarragon butter lobster tails (yep, here we go cooking our condom foods again). The lobster tails were seasoned with fresh parsley, chervil and of course melted butter. Much like its friend escargot, it’s an amazing little vehicle for melted butter! Mmmmm!

The third course, seared ahi tuna crusted with sesame seeds and black pepper. The marinade was sesame oil, soy sauce and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Just when I thought the meal couldn’t get any better the tuna made its cameo and completely blew our minds.

Drum roll please…..vanilla bean crème brûlée with fresh strawberries. No further description needed.

Now that we’ve left you with a grumbling belly, cheers everyone! Wishing you all a happy healthy New Year!

Backpackbees

January blues and Crème brûlée

It’s not boo-hoo blues, it’s that the month of January always seems to linger… It’s the month where the major holiday hype has now officially come to an end and that once glittery sparkle of the wintry wonderland is just plain over, your left missing family and friends again, plus you’ve finished all your holiday cookies…uh -oh! (Perhaps that’s just me?) I came across this article and thought it really applied too, especially with its statement on only having the will to get out of bed for nothing less than a strong cup of joe.

Recently we were experiencing fairly decent temperatures, actually getting away with 3 layers and not 5, but then we got hit with a freak snowstorm that gave us a few more inches. Lucky us, right? Adding another layer back on as we speak. How’s the weather in your neighborhood?

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the month of January really needs some cheering up! It needs some pizzazz to lead us into the giant heart-shaped month of February…Yeah! Such an occasion calls for something cheery like…..like…..crème brûlée!

I’ve never attempted to make crème brûlée before, but after watching various YouTube videos, reading, etc. I felt fairly confident that I could pull it off. Seriously, it was the best decision ever, because it turned out perfect! The best part is I get to share with you all now!

Very Easy Creme Brûlée

Ingredients:

2 cups Whipping Cream
3 large eggs
½ cup sugar (also extra for caramelizing on top)
¾ tsp vanilla extract
4 Ovenproof ramekins
1 kitchen torch

Instructions:

Pre-heat your oven to 300°F

Heat whipping cream in a sauce pan, almost bringing up to a simmer. Please make sure to stir frequently.

In a bowl, whisk together 3 eggs and ½ cup sugar until well blended.

Very slowly stir in hot cream and vanilla extract, so you are not left with scrambled eggs to deal with.

Next, strain mixture through a mesh sieve into something with a pouring lip. Then divide the mixture into 4 ramekins and place in a large cake pan.

Fill the cake pan with very hot water halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Carefully pop everything into oven.

Bake at 300˚F for 35 minutes. Once they are done, you will be able to tell if the brûlée is set but still has a slight giggle to it, remove ramekins from cake pan and water.

Cool the ramekins at room tempted, then place in refrigerator to chill.

Let’s Talk Caramelization: (my favorite part)

Once brûlée is chilled, take out of refrigerator, sprinkle 1/2 to 1 tsp sugar on each custard ramekins. Then with your hand swirl to ramekins around in the air to evenly distribute and spread sugar.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for…..torch the top! Make sure to move the torch in a circular pattern until the whole surface is caramelized just as you likely . YouTube a video if this is your first time to assist with your torch confidence.

Happy eating and don’t forget to share how your creme brûlée turned out!

Backpackbees

Click, Ship & treat yourself!

Rosemary in my what?

Rosemary in my COOKIES! YESSS! If you’ve been watching our Instagram account you’ve seen that I’ve picked up some new light cookbook reads. Now…I can no longer hold it in, my current cookbook obsession is, Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week by Isa Chandra Moskowitz! Isa seriously has me hook line and sinker with these cookies. I turned into an instant cookie monster not even wanting to share with Mr. B. My family knows I am the first to snub most chocolate off, but the addition of rosemary to a cookie really caught my attention. Oh and guess what? IT’S VEGAN!

These cookies were perfect and in every way, just as Isa described they would be, buttery, golden, and wake your taste buds up with the exotic happy marriage of semi-sweet chocolate chips and fresh rosemary. Trust me folks, be forewarned, you are going to instantly become obsessed with these cookies too!

Don’t fret if you think it’s going to be all complicated because it’s vegan and possibly an unknown territory. It’s actually really easy and we had almost everything we needed on hand already in our kitchen. I only had to modify one partial element of the recipe and that was the coconut oil. Isa’s recipe calls for refined coconut oil, I only had unrefined but didn’t let that stop me and certainly didn’t change the taste as far as I am concerned.

Rosemary Chocolate Chip Cookies
Link directly to source: Post Punk Kitchen

1/2 cup refined coconut oil, softened (I used unrefined)
2 tablespoons lightly packed, chopped fresh rosemary (Chop it FINE)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup almond milk (or your favorite non-dairy milk)
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds (golden preferred)(I used Bob’s Red Mill whole ground flaxseed meal)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate semisweet chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease two large baking sheets.

In a large mixing bowl, use a fork to beat together the coconut oil and rosemary, until relatively smooth. Add the sugar, and beat for about a minute.

Add the non-dairy milk and flax seeds, and beat once again, for 30 seconds or so. Mix in the vanilla.

Add about half the flour, as well as the salt and baking soda, and mix well. Add the remainder of the flour, along with the chocolate chips, and mix well until it looks like, well, cookie dough.

Scoop about 2 tablespoons of dough onto cookie sheets in rounded spoonfuls. Flatten gently with your hands. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until bottoms are golden brown.

Let cool on sheets for 3 minutes or so, then transfer to cooling racks to cool the rest of the way.

Thanks for getting me through the tough times Isa!

Not only is rosemary for remembrance, as you may have read in my prior post, our friends departed Korea earlier this AM and mother Korea decided to surprise them one last time before they were on their way… SNOW! It was surprisingly a decent amount of snow that settled in below on our streets, sidewalks and trees. I love looking our windows onto the glittery white rooftops munching on a cookie.

Backpackbees

Click, Ship & treat yourself!