July: Bread

 

Best loaf of bread I've had in a long time from Stone Circle Bakehouse. Great texture. Sturdy and chewy without being too dense.

July: Baking

July 4th weekend and a coffee marble cake. A bit of a bust as the two batters mainly melded into one and the coffee flavour was just not strong enough. Not a repeat.

June: Snacks

Lots of travel in April and May, and then more in July and August, hence the rather skimpy posts.

An unusual snack from Japan: a flattened wafer thin cross-section of apple from an area of Japan known for it's apples. Refreshing and definitely apple-y.

April: Cooking

A lot of noodle meals this month as I try to clear the fridge before leaving town for seven weeks. A package of green vegetable noodles brought a touch of spring to the cold days. Bottom left was particularly spring-like with salmon. Top right was a kitchen sink bun with romaine, peanuts, cherry tomatoes, ham and fish balls. To the side: mussels with yellow peppers and chicken, fish cakes, cashews and cherry tomatoes.

Random miscellany: queso fresco with eggs and sweet potato chips, new to me yogurt brand Koru (liked the passionfruit flavour but not as creamy as my new favourite, Liberte), avocado with hard boiled egg on toast. 

April: Chocolate

Picked this up in Portland so it's been aged. I chose it basically because of the packaging which I love for it's lend of sophistication and rusticity. Tastewise a decent salted chocolate bar - nothing bad, but nothing outstanding either. Certainly ticks all the hand made, local, small batch check boxes. Not sure where the Southern part comes in. Oddly there's no cacao percentage listed but tastes in between milk and dark.

April: Eating Out

Bacon wrapped meatloaf sandwich from the Food for Thought food truck. Not too much bacon or ketchup which was a good thing. Pork from the MSU organic farm was very tasty. No photos as I left my camera at home.

Spicy chicken waffle from Wandering Waffle was surprisingly bland despite the sriracha. Fresh and hot on a cold, blustery day. Probably not a repeat. 

March: Chocolate

Smooth, glossy, sweet with crackly bits of honeycomb studding this bar from the Californian chocolatier chuao. Good honey flavour.

Coincidentally this was also a birthday present to myself, as was my other experience of chuao.

March: Baking

A really long name for what turned out to be an OK but nothing special muffin. I think it really needs more banana as the banana flavour was really not very strong. On the upside it did make the nicest round domed muffins I've ever been able to bake. Anyway it serves its purpose as breakfast for the next few days.

Recipe: Banana Coffee Muffins with Cacao Nibs and Oatmeal

March: Cooking

Looking at this month's photos the common theme I see is the use of ingredients from new suppliers I've found fairly recently with the noodles coming from a Korean grocery store I've seen for years but never visited before and the shrimp and chorizo coming from a new butcher/provision store that opened fairly recently.

My version of japchae with sweet potato noodles, green onions and Gulf shrimp. I've done a few versions of this recently since acquiring a large packet of the noodles. Really love the chewiness of the noodles. I've also found a regular source for Gulf shrimp so they're a weekly occurrence in one form or another. After some trial and error I've also mastered the art of slicing the shrimp sideways so they curl prettily when cooked.




Chorizo and mushroom stuffed green peppers topped with parmesan. I wish the chorizo was hotter but this was a tasty dish nevertheless. My first time cooking with parmesan purchased in a small end hunk.

Chocolate cake topped with yogurt, dried cherries and almonds. The cake is flavoured (not noticeably, unfortunately) with elderflower syrup. I bought a bottle after trying a lovely floral elderflower sparkling drink in New York, and have been trying to find new ways to use it other than adding it to sparkling water which is definitely on for summer.

I used the microwave potato chip recipe floating around the internet for these sweet potato chips. Amazingly they did become crispy and tasted just like potato chips. After all all those thousands of people on the internet could have been lying. No problem slicing the potato thin enough with just a regular knife. I'm torn about this recipe. It takes a really long time to make a tiny quantity (2.5 minutes on high for about 8 chips) but now that chips can be made at home, can I justify buying potato chips any more?

March: Eating Out

Birthday lunch and dessert at Amadeus Restaurant in Ann Arbor. Bigos topped with kielbasa, with salad and crusty French bread. The accompanying sour cream really enhanced the stew. Followed by a rich, dense hazelnut torte. I specifically selected this restaurant for their wide range of European style cakes and was very pleased with both the main and the cake. The atmospheric decorations and ambience were a nice bonus.