Cooking: Jamaican Jerk Beef Pastries

Well that sucks, I thought had more pictures of the cooking process for these pastries but I don't. At least you get an idea of what went into them. I actually made the meat mixture the night before so it had time to cool before I put them into puff pastry. I got this recipe from Gourmet magazine. Their recipe was actually for deep fried dumplings with won ton wrappers but I didn't want to fry anything (it's a pain in the ass) and I wanted them to be somewhat fresh when I brought them to a couple parties the next day.

Jamaican Jerk Beef Pastries
1 lb. of beef (I think I used 80/20)
4 tbsp of plain breadcrumbs
1 cup of chopped scallion
1/2 cup of chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp of dried thyme
chili garlic paste (the actual recipe calls for Jamaican hot sauce but I couldn't find any)
4 sheets of puff pastry
egg white (to make the pastries golden brown on top)

Saute the scallion, onion, curry powder & thyme in some veg oil and season with salt and pepper until the onion is softened.

Stir in the beef and breadcrumbs until everything is combined thoroughly. Add the hot sauce and mix until combined.

Then you just let the mixture cool until you're ready to wrap them in puff pastry.

I would tell you the reaction of the people who devoured them but let's just say the tray I brought to the party was gone within the first 5 minutes. This happened with my BBQ pork puff pastries too. I bet it's the combo of meat in pastry that makes them so good. Or the love I put into cooking them heh.

"Scribble This" Challenge

Hooray for Lisa Spangler's first challenge! I gotta give props to the girl since she fixed the issue so I could actually see the image and participate. At first I was a little confused with the challenge at hand, so I asked one of my camera savvy friends to help me out (thanks Selena!). I also saw Savitri's pictures which helped a bunch.

As for the card itself, eh... I think I took the white a little too far. I tried using all white because that's what I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I'm thinking about scrapping the card and redoing it but we'll leave this up until that happens.

I used transparency as a mat (sp?) for the "flowers" and the sheet itself has some white Staz-On stamped polka dots. I should've added some interest with some actual stitching or poked holes but too late now.

The pictures below were taken from my tiny craft space with my lamp and office light on. Other than that the room isn't all that bright.. ooh do you like my creepy picture?



AWB - Auto White Balance (ew)



Daylight (I skipped Cloudy cuz it looked identical)



Tungsten (Almost there...)



Florescent (Nooo!!)



Florescent (Double noooo!)



Custom (I thought I liked Tungsten better, but this turned out pretty nice.. it definitely shows off the white)

Mom's Cooking: Joong

Yumm... this is hands down one of my favorite home cooked dishes. My mom brought some of these bad boys for me this morning. For the n00bs out there.. it's sticky rice, chinese sausage, fatty five spiced pork wrapped with some sort of leaf. Thanks mom!

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 53

Oh Em Gee... this challenge was really hard.. probably the hardest one to date. Who knew primary colors could be so difficult to work with? I even started out with one card and ditched it. Then when I started the second card, I hated it so I went back to the first one. I'm quite happy with how they both turned out but we'll let Kristina be the judge of that.

Note to Kristina: Clear doesn't count as a color does it? ;)

I think I lost a couple patches of hair because of them heh.

Cousin Get Together

Today my cousin and I planned a cousin get together to catch up with family which we hadn't seen in a while. It was a bit stressful only because we had a meeting locale at Lake Almaden but somehow ended up at Lake Cunningham (Raging Waters). I'm not going to say how that happened, but let's just say that it took some effort to relocate everyone. Argh, just talking about it stresses me out heh.

We set up anyway...

We started BBQing up everything. I made this marinated chicken which turned out really good. The sugar and garlic made it awesome. Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Unbelievable-Chicken/Detail.aspx. It honestly is a really good recipe. I let the chicken marinade overnight and more which made the chicken really tender from the acid in the marinade.

I also brought some burgers and some pasta salad which was meh. Althought I have to say I didn't quite follow the recipe. I won't post it out of respect for the person I got it from.

Justyn grilled up all the food and we just had a buncha fun. It was really cool connecting with some relatives that I didn't know I had and also ones I hadn't seen in a while. Good times!

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 52

I think it's funny how sometimes you make a card that turns out completely different than the sketch. I'm not going to bother showing the sketch because it's horrible but trust me, it's so different than how this card turned out. I had originally thought of making a masculine birthday card since I need one but by the time I was done with the card, it turned out to be a wedding anniversary card hah. My anniversary isn't until November! Weird huh?

Since I have the week off from work and because I needed supplies for this week's challenge, I went to Scrapbook Island to get the colors I needed. I spotted this really pretty lace ribbon in the color sand. Perfect! So I guess that's how my card ended up turning into something else. The lace wasn't very masculine at all hehe. I really love these colors for this week and I may even make another card. We'll see!

I actually decided to make one more card. You can't really make out the sand color but it's in the butterfly. Incidentally, one of the patterened papers from Making Memories Girl Friday collection has all the colors for this particular challenge. I wish I had discovered that before I started! Well.. I suppose I could actually do another card. Excuse the lighting.. I did this one at night.

Cooking: Faux Chicken Pesto Pasta

You heard right... faux chicken.. meaning, meatless. This week Justyn and I are going to try eating all vegetarian. It's going to be a huge challenge for me especially because I need meat in my meals. It just doesn't feel like a meal without meat ya know?

For dinner tonight, we had decided on pesto pasta but I was already feeling the gnawing need for some kind of meat. We got some faux chicken which is most likely soy based. You know what? It's actually not that bad. You definitely know that it's not chicken but it's a nice substitute.

I used Wandering Chopstick's pesto recipe and added some basil to make a blended pesto. Recipe: http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/09/pesto-with-arugula-and-walnuts.html

Justyn started out by making some cheesy bread with provolone, gorgonzola & parmesan.

I put some basil leaves, baby arugula, parmesan, garlic, toasted walnuts, salt & pepper into the food processor and blended it with olive oil until I was happy with the consistency.

Meanwhile some linguine pasta was boiling away.

I pan fried some of that faux chicken.

Look at the pretty pesto (I typed in presto there hah... it's such an easy recipe it is pretty much magic)

Then I mixed the pasta in with the pesto and chicken while Justyn's bread was broiling in the oven.

Here it is all together. Not bad for a vegetarian dinner and I'm definitely not missing the meat. However, this is probably not recommended for a low fat dinner heh.