Almost Uncle Dan's: Vegetable Dip

D2 left for the east coast on Thursday.  I have no idea how her packing went because I wasn't part of the process.  She assured me that she packed everything she needed.  I sure hope so, and it's too late now anyway.  I know what I forgot to be sure she took, but I'll save the whine for another post.

D2 will be home in a few days, and I'm certain she will want to eat white sticky rice (she stuffed herself with rice the few days she was home between trips).  Once she returns, I will need to go back to cooking food she likes:  beef teriyaki, chicken katsu, beef tomato, edamame rice, and anything made with oyster sauce.  Sigh.

When it's just me and The Help, we eat whatevers.  Maybe that's why we've had Jack In The Box multiple times in the past 2 weeks.  I am addicted to their monster tacos.  The Help cannot understand what the draw is, and I can't explain it either.  But I keep ordering the same thing.  Oh, and I MUST get an order of curly fries with the taco.  With D2, the only fast food establishment she recognizes is McD.  Nothing else, and that's why going to Jack In The Box when she isn't around seems equivalent to sneaking around behind her [her=the parents] back.  Maybe that's why the taco tastes even better.

Another naughty thing we've been doing is not eating "real" food for dinner.  We've eaten sweets and appetizers in the late afternoon and called it dinner.  Luckily, we stocked up on an assortment of chips just before D2 left on her first trip.  I like the kettle chips from Costco or the 40% reduced-fat Cape Cod chips (sometimes found at Costco).  Both go great with dip, and this copycat dip is what we've been having.  

Back in the 80s, I remember having a dip made with a supermarket seasoning packet.  It was called Uncle Dan's Southern Dip Mix, and you mixed the dry packet's contents with sour cream and mayonnaise for a totally awesome cold dip for chips or vegetables.  Its been years since I had that dip, and I haven't seen Uncle Dan's anywhere in the local supermarkets, but this is a dip which comes close to the flavor (at least what I remember about the flavor).

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Almost Uncle Dan's Southern Dip

     2/3 c sour cream

     2/3 c mayonnaise

     1/2 tsp dry dill

     1/2 tsp Beau Monde seasoning (Spice Islands)

     1 tbsp chopped green onions

     3 tsp minced fresh parsley

Combine all ingredients.  Chill to blend flavors.  Serve with chips or vegetable sticks.

Cabbage Seafood Salad

I'm exhausted from my weekend.  Yes, from my weekend.  I spent Saturday morning at a volleyball game, and I was quite impressed with the Kohala Cowboys.  Country teams cannot be taken for granted.  They must dedicate lots of time to practicing and honing their skills.  No more volleyball until after spring break.  Spring break, what took you so long?

Just two more days to keep it together at work.  Yay!  I can't believe I made it this far (and I know there is still a long road ahead of me to finish the year).  Prom is coming up soon and graduation will be here in two months.  Ugh.  I feel so unprepared, although I'm more than ready to relax.  I even have my liquid refreshments on deck, and in case Kraken falls short, I brought in reinforcements-wine from a recent Costco trip. 

On the cab ride back to her dorm (bags not even at ambient temperature), D1 laid it on me about the Pure Aloha Festival in Las Vegas coming up in mid April.  No, wait.  I got my story wrong.  She didn't tell me about the festival; she asked me to book her air travel (book=pay for).  Her friend's family will be selling 808 logo items at the festival so she claims she is going there to work.  If she had a car, she could drive to Vegas, but I don't dare suggest it, especially since I know what her driving is like.  I don't think she has ever been to Vegas and likely has no idea how crazy it is to drive there. 

In a few days, D2 will be off on another adventure.  This time the adventure will take her across the continent.  Glad she will be with Uncle Edz (happy 5-0 to you!).  Once again, I'm amazed at all the travel opportunity kids have now.  Times certainly have changed.

With D2 gone this past week, it was only The Help and me.  I figured this was a good time to use up the imitation crab sticks I bought in the jumbo pack from Costco.  D2 said they did not taste like kanikama and wanted nothing to do with them. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Cabbage Seafood Salad

     3 tbsp butter, melted
     1/2 small onion, sliced thin
     1/4 c celery, sliced thin (optional)
     2-3 c shredded cabbage
     2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
     1/2 tsp salt
     1/2 c cornflake crumbs
     1 c imitation crab, shredded
     1 c mayonnaise

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 1 1/2 quart ceramic dish.  Pour 1 tbsp butter into a skillet.  Saute onion, celery and cabbage.  Add Worcestershire sauce and salt.  Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.  Combine remaining 2 tbsp butter with cornflake crumbs.  Set aside.  Add imitation crab and mayonnaise to sauteed vegetables.  Spread mixture in prepared dish.  Top with cornflake crumbs.  Bake for 15 minutes.

Coconut Milk Rolled Biscuits

I've been having some really disappointing cooking days.  I just haven't been in the mood to cook much of anything.  I try to force myself to cook at least 3x/week, but even that is a stretch.  We've been getting by with a lot of "breakfast for dinner" kinds of dinners.

One thing good about having breakfast for dinner is the leftovers make good breakfast food (duuuhhhhhhh).  The other week we had waffles, and we were blessed with waffles for breakfast for the better part of the week.

Our breakfast food de la semaine is biscuits.  I made a bunch of them last night to start our week on the right foot.

Recently, I've been making baked goods with coconut milk. D2 has a thing for coconut milk so I've been buying Silk coconut milk whenever I go to Costco (they sell the double pack).  She doesn't like to eat coconut, except in shortbread cookies, but she loves the flavor of coconut.  Do you know someone like that?  Coconut milk adds just a hint of coconut flavor, and it seems to pair well with jams, jellies, and honey.  If you have a precious jar of special honey, eating it on one of these biscuits would be a great way to enjoy it.

Thanks to my boss, I can get local honey delivered directly to me.  This past week, he gave me a generous jar of honey for "all the help".  He said the honey was "Volcano honey", meaning it came from his hives in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park area.  In that areas, bees source nectar primarily from the ohia lehua blossom (found only in Hawaii).  Pure ohia lehua honey is white (due to crystallization), and makes a great Big Island souvenir.  It's definitely not the cheapest honey, but it is a special treat.

This coming week (or the week after that, for that matter) will likely not be the week my cooking activities return.  Boys volleyball season began last week so I will probably scrounge dinner at athletic concessions on game nights.  Last season, I must've eaten close to a dozen bowls of smoked meat and onion!  Not grumbling at all.  I wonder what kinds of goodies will be sold this year.

If I had more gumption/energy, this would actually be an excellent week to cook all kinds of things.  Miss Picky (D2) went on an early vacation with Mr. Dependable.  They went to take advantage of spring skiing in the Sierra Nevadas.  D1, who is on spring break (legitimate), met them in Reno.  I always shake my head at how large the Ds live. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Coconut Milk Rolled Biscuits

     2 c flour

     2 tbsp sugar

     4 tsp baking powder

     3/4 tsp salt

     1/3 c butter

     2/3 c cold coconut milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Grease a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.  Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Cut butter into flour mixture until pea-size particles form.  Stir in coconut milk.  If mixture is dry, add up to 2 tbsp more coconut milk until dough holds together.  Turn dough onto floured board.  Pat into a 1"-thick slab.  Cut with a 2" biscuit cutter and place on prepared baking sheet.  Bake 13-14 minutes or until just starting to brown.  Remove from oven, cool slightly on wire rack before eating.

where did all the time go. . .

Biko, Suman, or Whatever It's Called

This was the first weekend in a long time when I did absolutely nothing.  There was no chauffeuring to do.  There was no program to attend.  There was nothing.

I started out the weekend with a Friday night get-together at a coworker's pad.  Unfortunately, most of my pals weren't able to make it.  theKeeper was in Honolulu and OllieMama had a piercing headache.  I'm not sure where everyone else was.  Bummer.  But I still had a nice time, and it was very generous of my coworker to invite us over.   Maybe everyone can come over here next time.

But that was it.  There was nothing else.

If I had been thinking ahead, I could've made suman.  It's been months since 3M has made some for me.  3M is really nice...whenever she makes it, she slides me a few ginormous pieces.  She says she often makes it for potlucks too, so the Friday get-together might have been a good time to make it. 

I am really not a fan of Filipino desserts.  I don't care for flan, and I don't like puto (steamed cakes).  But suman is different.  It has just the right amount of sweetness, and I love the flavor of coconut.

I wish I could write more for this post, but I'm mentally drained.  I spent the last two days of last week at workshops, doing my best to play nicely. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Suman

     6 c sweet (glutinous) rice, rice cooker cup size

     water

     1 can coconut milk

     1 can coconut cream (not cream of coconut)

     2 c brown sugar, packed, divided

     1 jar macapuno (coconut sport or strings)

Wash rice and soak for 3 hours.  Drain.  Place rice in rice cooker.  Add coconut milk.  Add water to make liquid to just over 6 cups line.  Add 1 cup brown sugar and stir.  Cook rice.  Let steam an additional 20 minutes after cooking time is done.  Meanwhile, grease bottom and sides of a 9 x 13" pan.  Pour coconut cream into a small saucepan.  Add remaining cup of brown sugar.  Heat on medium-low until mixture thickens.  Keep warm until rice is ready.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Stir cooked rice to distribute brown sugar, which has likely settled to bottom.  Add macapuno and 3/4s of coconut cream mixture.  Stir to distribute macapuno evenly.  Spread evenly in greased pan.  Pour reserved coconut cream mixture over top.  Bake 30 minutes.  Switch oven to broil and broil 3-5 minutes.  Do not allow topping to burn.  Cool completely and cut into pieces.

Okazuya Food: Eggplant and Spam Tempura

Once again, the short week did me in.  I just cannot seem to get my act together.  And being pulled out for one of those four days didn't help.  I need to pull up my big girl panties because I will be out two days this week. 

I spent a few hours on Saturday at a band festival.  I am so NOT a band person.  The hook to getting people there was all-you-can-eat hot dogs.  Red hot dogs.  Hilo kine.  Anyone from Hilo knows exactly what I mean.  Always a step behind, I ended up buying all ten tickets D2 had to sell.  Fortunately, I had a few hungry friends (ollieMama and her crew and The Keeper) who were willing to give up a few hours on Saturday to eat hot dogs and listen to adolescent band kids perform.  KikukatMom and KikukatDad were also in the house.  I thing the band made $ off of us.  Nobody ate more than two hot dogs.  Oh wait.  I think The Help ate three five.

The band festival was in the gym at the high school down the road.  KikukatDad almost died there when a lady with horrific body odor sat by him.  He HAD to move.  How could the lady not realize she stinks?  How could the people with her allow her to get so stink?  This wasn't an old person. . .40-something.  No excuse.  And people sitting rows above could smell her too.

After the band festival, D2 had a few friends over.  They spent the afternoon and part of the evening hanging out.  I thought they might play in the pool, but the afternoon was overcast so nobody went in the water.

Believe it or not, I had a goal for the weekend.  The goal was to eat some poke.  Several times this week, I passed a sign outside of WikiWiki Mart advertising fresh poke.  It was a reminder that I haven't had my favorite poke in a while. . ."mixed plate" poke from Suisan.  I meant to get a half-pound of it this weekend, but by the time I was able to get to Suisan, there was hardly anything left.  I ended up with a half-pound of wasabi salmon poke (this is probably the only time I eat a lick of wasabi, and it's only because I can't taste any wasabi in the salmon poke), which I planned to have for dinner.

But on the way home, I didn't feel much like cooking, so The Help suggested we go out for dinner.  I'm not sure why he suggested it, but thirty minutes later, we found ourselves headed to Noodle Club in Waimea.  Yummm.  The bao buns are a no-miss.  The KFC (Korean Fried Chicken, which is not the Korean chicken I posted the other week) was a winner too.  In fact, I'm going to be attempting a copycat version of it with some homemade kochujang. . .when I'm done with all of my other projects.

After all that feasting, I turned to something simpler for Sunday, eggplant and Spam tempura.  This is something KikukatMom cooked occasionally.  Aunty Mo, my friend Colleen's mom also made it.  I see it occasionally at Hilo Lunch Shop, but I stopped buying it after I had a few bitter eggplant ones.  I even saw it at some small okazuya in Honolulu (located on a side street near one of the Kim Chee restaurants between Makiki and McKinley High School).  I have no idea where The Help has been all these years, but he thought I invented this dish.  He was skeptical of my "creativity", but he ended up eating mound of these.

I tried cutting the Spam two different ways:  as coins (Hilo Lunch Shop and KikukatMom style) and as logs (Aunty Mo style).  I think I prefer it cut as coins, but the coins only work if the eggplant has a certain diameter (1-1/2 inches or more).  Skinny eggplants should be cut as logs.  As with all fried foods, leftovers should be reheated in a toaster oven.

 click on recipe title for printable recipe

Eggplant and Spam Tempura

     4 long eggplant
     1/2-1 can Spam
     1 c flour
     2 tsp baking powder
     1/4 tsp salt
     1 c cold water
     oil for frying

Slice long eggplant into 1 1/2" slices (same as width of a piece of Spam).  Eggplant can also be sliced into coins, 3/4-1" thick.  Cut through middle of eggplant, but do not cut all the way through.  Slice Spam into 1/4" thick slices.  Cut Spam to fit into slits made in eggplant.  Set aside.  Heat 1 - 1 1/2" of oil to 375 degrees.  Sift flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add cold water and mix gently.  Dip Spam/eggplant pieces into batter and fry until golden brown.  Drain on paper towels.

Cookie Butter Rice Krispies Treats

I am glad today is a holiday.  I need a break.  I feel like I'm just treading water.  I can finally catch up on all of my corrections.  I'm normally good about correcting papers and giving feedback, but being out a day each week since the month began is taking its toll on being timely.

In spite of the long weekend, I could not get away from work.  Saturday was the first-ever powderpuff football game.  It was a senior class fundraiser, and the main event of the day pitted the Lady Sharks (senior girls) against a team of brave underclassmen, er, underclassWOmen.  The seniors dominated the game, but the younger girls never gave up and managed to put points on the board.  Most impressive was the ability of a few girls to throw a football. 

Of course, the half-time show, a male cheerleading contest, wow-ed the crowd.  Students are so adept at choreography, and I know the male cheerleaders took the competition as seriously as the powderpuff players.

For pics of the day, visit the poi-dog page and view the slideshow.  

My contribution to the day:  I donated food for the concession, purchased a few tickets, and patronized the concession.  My cuz made the chicken long rice, which was absolutely delicious.  D2's pal, KN enthusiastically agreed.  I need to ask my cuz how she did it and, maybe, even get her to be a guest writer here.  She is an awesome cook.  Other goodies for sale were goody-goody, malasadas, kalua pig & cabbage, spam musubi, and party mix.  I'm not sure where they got the smoked meat from, but that was really good too.  Speaking of smoked meat, I hope they will be selling that at the concession for volleyball season.  I love smoked meat.

After the full day of powderpuff football, I was ready to relax.  D2 had a friend over and eventually went over to another friend's house for a sleepover.  I think it was then that I remembered all the papers I needed to correct and the 5+ loads of laundry I had to do.  I'm not sure how I accumulated 5 loads, but I did.  Crap!

I spent the better part of Valentines Day AND Presidents Day correcting papers and doing laundry.  I even managed to make a pan of these goodies, which were a nice change from eating party mix crumbs (I'm party mix'd out. . .made for the powderpuff concession and for D2 to take to the sleepover).

If you are a fan of marshmallow treats, then you must try these.  If you are a fan of cookie butter, then you cannot afford to pass these up.  I happen to be a fan of both, and I swear I can eat a whole pan of these without breaking a sweat.  That's really not as impressive as it sounds since these treats are made in a square pan.  I think of it as a way to limit the madness, although if I'm going to share it with anyone else, I would double the recipe and pack it into a 9 x 13" pan.  For the record, I prefer these to Trix treats, hands-down.

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Cookie Butter Rice Cereal Treats

     1/4 c butter

     3/4 c cookie butter (Trader Joes Speculoos or Biscoff)

     10 oz (5 1/2-6 cups) miniature marshmallows

     7 c crisp rice cereal

Grease a 9" square pan.  Heat butter and cookie butter in a large dutch oven until melted.  Add marshmallows and stir until melted.  Stir in rice krispies.  Press into prepared pan.  Cool completely then cut into squares.

Crisp Won Ton

Kung Hee Fat Choy!

Happy new year!

I was fortunate enough to go to Honolulu last month, so I managed to get my lucky gao.  I always feel good when I can get gao in January.  Of course, I could always make my own, but its so much easier when made by someone else...at least I think so.  In an effort to spread good fortune and cheer, I brought home a few extra gao for sharing.  If Homegirl had let me know ahead of time, I would even have brought back the half-dozen she wanted.

Over the years, around this time of year, I've shared some of my favorite Chinese recipes:

• gao
• almond cookies
• ginger-green onion crab
• rice noodles with crispy tofu and vegetables

This year I'm sharing my recipe for my favorite appetizer, crisp won ton.  I used to have trouble getting the seasoning just right.  It was often hit-or-miss; sometimes it was too salty and sometimes it was bland.  I must be onto something because several times a year, Mr. Dependable calls me for the recipe.  Perhaps it is also HIS favorite appetizer.

I don't usually do this, but The Help was playing with a new toy, so he took some sequence pictures of won ton wrapping.  There are tons of different variations in wrapping, but this is how I wrap it for special occasions.  If we are eating it at home (not for a party), I will fold it into a simple rectangle shape.  This makes it easy to reheat leftovers (toaster oven, 300 degrees, for about 10 minutes).

center 1 tsp filling on wrapper

moisten edges with water

press edges to seal (rectangle shape)

place a drop of water on lower left corner of rectangle; bring upper left over lower left corner; press to seal

place folded won tons in a single layer

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Crisp Won Ton

     1 lb ground pork

     1 can water chestnuts, chopped

     2-4 tbsp chopped green onions

     2 eggs

     2 tbsp shoyu

     1 tsp salt

     2 tsp sugar

     1 tsp sesame oil

     2 pkgs Twin Dragon brand won ton wrappers or 3 pkgs Chun Wah Kam won ton wrappers

     vegetable oil for frying

Combine all ingredients, except won ton wrappers and vegetable oil.  Fill wrappers with 1 tsp of pork mixture.  Deep fry until golden brown.  Oil should be 350-375 degrees.