Every year, my co-worker, Linda feeds our office to our very brim. Well, this year was a bittersweet experience. Linda retired last week but before she left, she cooked us one final feast. Well her husband did but does that really matter? They went all out, turkey, homemade dressing (a deluxe style stuffing), homemade gravy and garlic mashed potatoes. I’m drooling just thinking about it…and I didn’t have turkey this past Thanksgiving so it was perfection.

The delicious lupcheong dressing and turkey.

Look at that! He sliced up the turkey perfectly and separated the white and dark meat. I like the dark meat, how about you folks?

Dressing made from scratch? Yes, please.

Perfect mashed potatoes. I like my mashed potatoes smooth but these had great texture.

Gravy from the drippings, flavorful and not too salty at all.

Speaking of homemade, my other co-worker made cookies for everyone. They tasted great, sorry I didn’t get a picture of the cookies! It was two shortbread cookies drizzled with caramel. It was wrapped in parchment paper and tied up with twine, how rustic! It’s little things like this that warm the heart…

Here’s something I experimented as a Christmas Eve treat for my office. Chichi Dango Mochi with a chichi dango heart. I made a two layered mochi (green and white for christmas) and topped it with a red heart (or as red as I could get it). Chichi Dango definitely takes a bit of effort in making and cutting (oh the cutting!) but the effort was totally worth it. I’m so glad I got it to work!

Extra hearts? Thank god for Katakuriko. Aren’t these hearts the cutest? I can’t wait to experiment more with this mochi recipe, I bet it would sell well in a craft fair too! Ahhh…if anyone wants the recipe, let me know and I’ll try to post it up!

How did potpourri come about? And why did the t become silent? Just a random thought for the day. This weekend is going to be full of rest mixed with cleaning mixed with horror. Horror? The fall semester starts on Monday for UH. Yes. Enjoy the terrible traffic again. Punahou does make it terrible but UH makes it worse. This semester as a warning is going to be insane already. I have three big events I’m helping to plan that will all take place before October 6th. I wouldn’t be surprised if I disappeared off the face of the earth during this time. I am also planning to take two classes. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. I’ll have to go to class this week and see how the assignment schedules are. Then again, my need to procrastinate on all my assignments may lead me to blog more often. Who knows? The only reason why I wouldn’t want to drop any of my courses is because I bought my textbooks already and boy were they expensive this semester!

No complaints of course. Still happy to take courses for free. Yay. I hope everyone is doing well. I’ve been pretty busy lately because I’ve had to work on my kitchen. It’s coming together! Almost surreal. Hope to have pictures to share on it soon. 🙂 Here are some random pictures to share…

Lamb Shanks from Costco. Doesn’t it look good on this package? I love lamb….

So like, this is how it looks after baking in the oven. Okay it doesn’t look anywhere close to the package but the taste is great! Tasted good. Don’t waste those bones, get some good marrow in there to suck out. A bit pricey but tasty.

Have you ever had pig’s feet? I’m sure I have in the Chinese style. This is pig’s feet, Korean style. It kinda looks like how it tastes. Very gelatinous and umm that’s about it. Not a big fan. I can say I tried it though!

Bossam! I created this plate, doesn’t it look pretty? I bought one of those ready to eat packs from Palama Supermarket and added kimchee to serve up. Was delicious. Nowhere near Jong Ga but we can’t go there anymore so I have to learn how to make this myself!

Hi folks! Quick update for a late Sunday night. I’ve had quite a day. I headed to work to work on my paper. It was a lot of resting as opposed to writing but I feel a little bit better about the paper. I worked on my outline a bit so I have more of a direction of what to write. I really think this paper is going to come down to the wire and that’s terrible. Anyway, instead of flash drives, I send myself a copy of my paper on e-mail so I can’t lose it. Guess what I ended up doing? It was a nightmare come true, I sent the e-mail to a mailing list rather than to myself. I don’t even know how that happened! The e-mail address is nowhere near how my e-mail is spelled and it wasn’t like I was rushing to get this done. Sheesh. Luckily the mailing list is very small and I was notified by one of them tonight that I had done it. I immediately wrote back to everyone and apologized and asked them to delete it. There’s nothing bad in my e-mail or draft, just bad that I sent it to them!

Anyway, tonight I started prepping food for this week’s lunches. I was ENTIRELY too ambitious. I got a bag of that fake meat to hydrate and I wanted to try my hand at seasoning it with kalbi sauce to create a bibimbap. Well bibimbap includes a LOT of vegetables. I spent so much time slicing up vegetables and seasoning them to cook, it was crazy.

The meat came out okay but I think it got seasoned TOO much. I also wanted to make kimchee gyoza. I seriously am nuts. I made those by hand and cooked them too. I think the cooking and prep took about 3-4 hours tonight. I am tired. I give Korean people a lot of credit for their dishes, nothing but respect. So how am I going to leave this post? McDonald’s French Fries. Those things are already so good but I heard they had this shake and season thing right now so I had to try it!

It comes with it’s very own “shake” bag with the seasoning you choose inside. It’s very easy to do and the seasoning packets really latch onto the fries!

Here are the two seasonings we have in Hawaii. My favorite? I like the garlic parmesan over the zesty ranch. I definitely would like to get it again before it goes away! It’s for a limited time only. I think I heard Japan has a nori flavor. Of course they do, we need that here! Anyway, the seasoning comes free with an order of medium or large fries…or of course with the value meals. When I ordered it, I asked for the seasoning specifically. They don’t come automatically with the fries so make sure you ask!

Garlic Parmesan

Zesty Ranch