A Wonderfuly Costco weekend!

I luuurve Costco! I'm a huge sucker for cheap stuff and good deals and that's why I love Costco! For the benefit of those who have been living in a cave for the last decade or so (though, if one has been living in a cave, I suppose internet access isn't likely), Costco is an American-based warehouse supermarket for the members. The basic membership costs a little more than $30 a year and membership benefits include purchasing groceries in insanely huuuge quantities for very cheap. I had not shopped for groceries in more than 2 weeks so this Costco trip was waaay overdue. Can you believe I spent over $200? I can't either. But anyway, we did get a lot of stuff (including liquor) so it wasn't too bad.

The highlight of my splurge was the frozen Maryland crabcakes. For the past few months, I have been having a seafood withdrawal symptoms due to the shortage of good, fresh seafood in my diet! Living in the Midwest, it's quite a challenge to get reasonably-priced fresh seafood. Recently, I have been craving for crab in particular. I think those scintillating Ruby Tuesday commercials featuring the new crab cake appetizer dish helps to fire a lot of the seafood withdrawal neurons in my brain. Being the suckah that I am, I did go to Ruby Tuesday (RT) and tried their crabcake. It was quite tasty but at $9 per pop (only one pathetic crabcake per order), it was a bit too rich for my blood. The RT crabcake was a little overcooked (charred) but there were quite sizeable crab meat chunks visible. It was served with a spicy mayo sauce and a mini baby green salad.

Since then, I've just been wanting to eat some seafood all the time. It doesn't help that my one and only sushi-eating friend was out of town for a whole month! Solution: Costco crabcakes. We immediately made some as soon as we got home. There were a few ways to heat them up: (1) microwave, ech(!), (2) pan-fry, or (3) bake and then broil. I chose the third option because I was a bit occupied (which I will get to later) and so, couldn't labor over my pwetty crabcakes the whole time. The turned out beautiful and delicious! I had mine with some Indonesian Cap Jempol chili sauce and it was perfect!



As you can see for yourself, the crabcakes didn't have gigantic chunks of meat (which I would've preferred) but it was very well-seasoned and is really, really good considering they ARE frozen! I mean, really, us beggars in the Midwest cannot be choosers. Fortunately, I bought two boxes of these yummy crabcakes at Costco. It'll have to last me until I visit a place with access to the sea.

Besides a whole lot of frozen seafood and unhealthy stuff, I managed to squeeze in a lot of wonderful fresh fruit. I bought a whole pound of Chilean-imported blueberries. Not only are they nice and plump, they pop and ooze fresh, sweet yet tart goodness when you bite into them. I especially luuurve a handful of blueberries with my morning cereal. Also, I can just eat blueberries naked, all them themselves. Now, THAT is perfection.


However, I have also been in the mood to bake muffins. There's nothing better than a warm blueberry muffin with a cup of hot tea on a cold winter day while you're knitting or reading or just watching TV. But, I restrained myself from degrading my fresh blueberries and made oatmeal cookies with dried fruit instead. It was horribly cold yesterday and the the wind never stopped blowing! I flipped open one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best Light Recipe, and used the oatmeal cookie recipe. Before adding the raisins, I halved the dough into two portions. Into one, I added the classic, traditional raisins. To the other batch, I added some dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

BEFORE


AFTER


The cookies turned out delicious and were crisp on the outside while it was chewy in the middle. Now that they have been sitting around for a day in the tupperware, they have crisped up more. I personally like chewy cookies so I probably should've underbaked them even more but the flavor is good. The oatmeal raisin cookies are simple and you can't go wrong with them. The oatmeal white chocolate cranberry cookies were quite exciting to me. It has a refreshing combination of sweetness and tartness that I really enjoy. I gave some to my colleagues and they remarked how they couldn't believe the cookies were "light" and that's pretty cool. So far, the light recipe cookbook hasn't disappointed. Even though all the recipes call for lower-fat or lighter substitutes, the flavor and taste is never compromised.

Another thing I tried out this weekend (I sure did a lot of stuff, huh?) was to make mochi. Not really "make" because I just basically heated one dried mochi in the toaster oven. It was pretty cool because the mochi transformed from this flat disc to a puffed-up ball of chewy goodness. I had it with some soy sauce and sugar, but it wasn't as delicious as some other mochi I had with peanuts and sugar. Hmmm... I think I need to get a pack of kinako (soybean powder) that the Japanese traditionally sprinkle on mochi.



Ok, one last thing I did (the activity that kept me from pan-frying my crabcakes) was I (FINALLY!) finished my second knit bag, lining and all! If you remember, a while ago, I made a knit bag for my sister. Since I had so much leftover yarn, I decided to make another one for myself. The second bag is considerably bigger and the main difference is the lining. Instead of a pretty, flowery pink lining, I chose a green tea-ish shade of cotton that matches the green color of the yarn. It turned out pretty awesome and I'm so glad I finally finished this project. And hey, it doesn't hurt that I can use the bag and show my creation off the world. Yippee!

Halloween goodies!

Amazon.com just had a huuuge home & garden sale the other day (Oct. 23rd) and I convinced the boyf to buy my Christmas present then. Yippee yay yay! I'm gonna get a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas! Woohoo! What's even better is that we got it at a great deal! Yeapz, I'm a suckah for great deals. When grocery shopping, I rarely ever get anything that's full price. If it's not on sale or if I don't have a good coupon for it, I don't put it in my cart 95% of the time. I also try to pay attention to the prices being scanned at the cashier because hey, sometimes computers make mistakes! Whenever I tell the cashier about the mistaken price, I always pay the correct labeled price despite getting dirty looks from both the cashier and the person behind me. Bah! They don't pay my bills *winkz*

Anywayz, with the approach of Halloween, I've been inspired to watch scary movies and bake Halloween-themed goodies. This past weekend, I watched the movie "Halloween" on TV. Yep, I've never watched it before and it wasn't too bad for being the first "slasher" movie ever. As with most other horror movies, I get frustrated with the characters' stupidity. For instance, in the movie, the doctor who was looking for the escaped psychotic murderer psychiatric patient Michael Meiyers, was waiting outside Michael's old home believing that he will eventually go there. It took him about 2 hours of standing around doing nothing outside the old house for him to spot the car that Michael stole before escaping the psychiatric ward. Sheesh!

And then, the main character is even worse! Each time she thinks she has killed Michael, she didn't even confirm that he's dead. She would then leave a weapon (the knife) near him and hang around the house instead of going to a neighbour's for help. Sigh~ I suppose if the characters in horror movies weren't that dumb, no one would be killed and the movie wouldn't be that scary any more.

I'll be attending a friend's Halloween party this Saturday and depending on the weather that afternoon, I'm either going apple-picking or watching "Grudge 2" in the theatres. I'm probably going to bake a super fudgy brownie for the party and I might bake a batch of nutella-kiss cookies to bring to work. I've never baked a brownie from scratch since I've always found the boxed mixes to be super cheap and easy. But I've usually had problems with the mixes. It would turn out charred around the sides a lot and it wouldn't result in the fudgy, thick consistency that I want. Maybe it's the mix or maybe I just baked them too long, we'll see. The nutella-kiss cookies were inspired by an episode of "Everyday Italian" that I recently saw on the Food Network. Besides containing the yummy nutella spread, the batter is then dipped in orange sugar (for a festive Halloween feel) and topped with a Hershey's kiss. I'm looking forward to that! I'll definitely take pictures of those cookies!

Yummy yummy yummy I got fun in my tummy of a weekend!

I was inspired to splurge on fresh produce this weekend so I went to the Green City Farmers' Market in Lincoln Park this past Saturday. Usually, I only buy whatever produce are cheap or are on sale at the grocery store because that's the only way I can afford fresh ingredients on my meagre graduate student stipend. (Those damn university slave drivers!!!) So anyway, I got up at about 6.30am (a miracle by my standards) and trudged my way up north on the bus. The bus took its own sweet time to arrive so I reached the farmers' market only at 8am.

The farmers' market basically consists of various tents under which farmers showcase their fresh fruits and vegetables. There were also a number of bakers and cooks selling their stuff. I started out by scouting out all the stands at least once to get an idea of what everyone was selling. As you may already know, it's the peak of summer and most of the berries and peaches are ripe and luscious right now. I was delighted to find out that most of the farmers do not use herbicides or pesticides to grow their crops because I'm starting to get a tad paranoid due to recent media reports on their harms. Naturally, due to my zombie-like state in the A.M. hours, I forgot to bring along my camera *sob* and thus, I can't share the wonderful sights of the market. But anyway, the vivid colors and sweet smell of the berries induced me to buy a pint of strawberries and raspberries each. Their scent was so tantalizing that I popped a few into my mouth as soon as I paid up. I couldn't taste much difference between the organic raspberry and a normal one. However, the organic strawberry just simply burst with flavor! Although the organic strawberry is much smaller than the normal one, its color is much deeper and its flavor richer and sweeter!

I also bought a blueberry-peach crepe for 2nd breakfast (yes, 2nd because I already had some cereal at home prior to my departure for this trip). The blueberries and peaches were of course purchased from the farmers in the market and were so fresh I could have cried. Unfortunately one drawback with the crepe is that there just wasn't enough fruit in it for $6. Near the crepe stand was a bakery tent selling home-baked goods. Some of the items include fruit or savory galettes and organic cookies. I was sooo very tempted to buy a beautiful plum galette but decided against it because I wanted to try baking my own. Being the very far-sighted person I am, I had to plan for lunch! So I purchased a fresh baguette, some tomatoes and a bunch of basil. I cannot believe that the big bunch of basil I bought was only $2! Two dollars would've only gotten me a few sprigs at the grocery store. So anyway, back to lunch. Unfortunately, none of the farmers sold mozzarella so I had to stop by a grocer for my mozzarella.

As you might've guessed, I wanted to make a sandwich with basil, mozzarella and sliced tomatoes. Really, can a sandwich be any more Italian? Check out the food porn ;) *harhar*




I tried toasting it for the ooey-gooey mozzarella texture but it only made the mozzarella release some liquid and burnt the basil a bit. Never toast green leaves!!! Anyway, it still turned out delicious. I drizzled some olive oil over the cheese and sprinkled some salt and black pepper for flavor. Yum~ Must do it again.

As if that's not enough, I decided to make creme brulee. Yes! I recently bought a creme brulee set including 4 ramekins, a butane torch and a recipe book on eBay (luuurve eBay). I decided to try the "light'n'breezy" recipe that uses half the cream and replaces the other half with 2% evaporated milk. The custard part of the creme brulee turned out creamy and smooth although I had to be more careful to not overbake it in the future. The torch was slightly problematic because it would extinguish itself every few seconds, which, as you can imagine, is very irritating! However, I managed to caramelize the layer of sugar on the creme perfectly *joy*