Filed under: food, recipes by ramune

John Maus – Keep Pushing On

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The other week I was invited to a friend’s place for lamb vindaloo. I decided to make a dessert and the first thing that came to my mind was mango curry ice cream, and was there such a thing? If there wasn’t, could I figure out how to make it? Thanks to the internets, I found a few different recipes that all had elements I liked. Instead of going with one, I decided to combine elements from two recipes to achieve what I wanted. Luckily it turned out well and they were a hit at the dinner party.

Ingredients

Directions

If you’re interested in the original recipes, they can be found here:
GLOW Mango Curry Gingersnap Ice Cream Sammiches
Mango Curry Cardamom Ice Cream

Filed under: family, favorites, food, holiday by ramune

The Soft Moon – Parallels

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It’s that time of year again . . . and this year changed my life. My brother picked up four ostrich eggs (one full and three blown out) as well as some tiny (quail?) eggs to mix it up a bit this year. It was a bit intimidating to start out on a massive egg, but once I got going I was hooked. I didn’t have a plan going in, but just took it a step at a time and am pretty psyched with the results.

My brother boiled the one full ostrich egg and used it as his “battle” egg for our Easter egg wars (clearly there was no competition). After he opened up the egg, we were all pretty grossed out by the translucent quality of the egg white.

Click on the photos for a larger view and more specifics.

Filed under: baking, food, holiday, nutella, photography, self-portrait, silliness by ramune

Kisses – People Can Do The Most Amazing Things

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Welcome to another World Nutella Day! This is my third year celebrating World Nutella Day (check out 2009 and 2010) and I think I overdid it a wee bit. I started off by baking extra pizza dough, that I made earlier in the week, into sweet/salty breadsticks (or Nutella Dunkers™) and dunked them into a freshly opened jar of Nutella.

This evening, while at a fancy(pants) restaurant, I slyly wrapped two delicious buns in nakpins and put them in my bag to have for dessert at home . . . with Nutella of course! So delicious.

How did you celebrate World Nutella Day?

Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso

Filed under: design, food, gift, holiday by ramune

Mucca Pazza – Modutrongulous

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Where did December go? I was all wrapped up in family/holiday/travel craziness and never got around to updating my posts.

I hope the new year is treating you well so far. I spent my New Years Eve in Chicago cosmic bowling with family (there were more than 20 of us) and seeing Mucca Pazza (probably the greatest band to see on New Years Eve, and one of the greatest bands to see live). The following morning my sister and I were the support crew for my brother and cousins who ran the polar bear 5k and plunged into Lake Michigan. After photographing them, I stripped down to my bathing suit and went for a quick dip as well. It was cold. Crazy cold . . . 22F with a 20 mph wind (so it felt like 2F). My feet and hands were so numb when I came out of the water that my sister had to help me get my clothes back on. Although it is one of the more insane things I’ve done, I felt pretty great after thawing out.

We followed the insanity at my brother’s friends’ place, where his chef friend (who also ran and plunged) fed us with delicious (warm!) matzo ball soup. It was the perfect thing to eat after a freezing dip in the lake. That evening was my aunt’s wedding, which was full of good times, and now I am back to reality . . .

Before Christmas I jarred and designed labels for the “Lithuanian” cherry liqueur I made with my mother this summer/autumn from tasty farmers market sour cherries. Here is the result . . .

Filed under: food, holiday, nutella, photography, silliness by ramune

Tom Waits – Chocolate Jesus

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It’s that time of year again . . . it’s World Nutella Day! It’s been snowing here most of the day, but I was determined to hunt down the illusive Nutella jar and get its photo (then eat its contents). I found this one attempting to hide in a tree. Busted. Here is last year’s Nutella Day post.

Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso

Filed under: food, ice cream by ramune

It’s been a bit since I put my ice cream maker to use and it’s already mid-August. I still have dreams of making maple bacon ice cream (soon my friends . . . soon), but I happened to have some delicious white peaches from the farmers market and found a lovely (and simple) recipe from David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” (see my fig ice cream from last year). Although I didn’t manage to get a photo of the final product (it disappeared pretty quickly when I brought it to a friend’s place), I did enjoy learning how to easily peel the skin off of a peach. You simply put the peaches into boiling water for 20 seconds and then pour cold water on them until they cool down. It shocks the peaches and the skin rubs right off.

I plan on making the ice cream again and maybe will update this entry with an actual photo. Until then, please excuse my poor excuse for a project this week and drool over some skinned peaches.

Filed under: collaboration, food, holiday by ramune

My favorite of my Easter eggs this year

This past Saturday I spent almost the entire day (nine hours) making margučiai (Lithuanian Easter eggs). Some of my friends came by to learn how to decorate the eggs and I was pleasantly surprised to see them pick up on it so quickly and develop their own styles. I find the whole process very meditative and wish I could decorate eggs more than just once a year. If only I could start a career in decorating Lithuanian eggs . . .

For more photos from Easter, you can see my Flickr set here.

One of my favorite eggs

Cherry blossoms

Vaidila made some really elaborate eggs

A bundle of eggs, as you can see the blue worked the best

Vaidila’s video of my sister, me and my mother making margučiai. My sister pointed out that we all use the same “pinky on the egg” technique.

Filed under: baking, food by ramune

Delicious goodness in dough form

Holy lateness, I can’t believe I have let almost a month go without an update. I will try to catch up on the missing posts this week. Hopefully you will forgive me once I tell you about the best cookies I’ve ever made. If I could send them to you via the interweb tubes I would, but I think it might get messy and possibly ruin my computer (I think I read somewhere that gooey chocolate chips and dough do not mix well with electronics).

A while ago Smitten Kitchen had a recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookies and I could not wait to bake them. I am a big fan of baking chocolate chip cookies (and the batter . . . oh the batter!) and I must say, these were by far the best I have ever baked. I think the secret is the melted butter. I could be wrong, but just look at that dough! It’s so smooth and velvety. To “show” you how good they are, I had 18 cookies on a plate and in a matter of minutes there were only two (it helps that my aunt and five cousins were visiting from Chicago). Smitten Kitchen has never led me (or anyone I know for that matter) astray, and I am so glad that she posted this delicious goodness.

Mmmm . . . I might bake some more tonight for my enamels class tomorrow (I like to feed them).

Filed under: food, nutella, photography, silliness by ramune

February 5th, 2009 is World Nutella Day! Unfortunately I only found this out at 2:30 PM today, but I still had enough time to run out and buy myself a jar of Nutella (I know . . . how could I not already have a case in the pantry?). Initially I had grand visions of dunking my face in a vat (or a smaller vessel for practical purposes) of the amazing hazelnutty chocolaty goodness, but due to plans for the evening (not a wise decision to show up to dinner with a face covered in Nutella . . . or is it?) I decided to share my love with Bobute, who has traveled the world (well only Europe so far) with me. Normally she has Black Raspberry ice cream but for this special day she switched it up and got a special treat.

I was not the only one celebrating World Nutella Day though, Samer actually took my idea and put it to use. If you are on the East Coast you only have another 20 minutes of World Nutella Day, so find the nearest Nutella jar and start scooping.

02.09.09 UPDATE – My entry made it onto the World Nutella Day 2009 roundup!

Filed under: food, photography by ramune

In an attempt to catch up on these posts, I am posting two photos today. The first one is from last week’s farmers market. I imagine this won’t be the last since now is the time when all kinds of tasty veggies and fruits will be making an appearance.

Peppers at the Farmers Market