I just got home from a short family trip to the Izu Peninsula in Japan, where they proudly call the home of “onsen”, means hot spring. As usual at times like this, I will leave you with a swift post and a recipe that I have featured before but thought some of you may be interested in an easier technique.
Being competitive has never been part of my persona. It isn’t one of the virtues of being a quitter, which I like to use as the reason I was never good at sports and why until this very day, I still cannot technically swim (but I float professionally). It’s not that I’m not into winning but just that I don’t like to be proven losing. I’m a walking cliche. But recently I have been braving the turbulent water for the love of my new favorite website and the recipe contest they throw every two weeks.
The demonic cold that has left me muted lingers… In my thirty-some years of exceedingly LOUD life I was never able to prove that “silence isn’t louder than words” until yesterday when I tried to instruct the mailman on the phone to simply leave the package by the front door. ”…eeev….eeeh… by… eh… oore…”. ”Excuse me, miss?”. ”(regrouping my voice)… Leeeee… ehh by… UUH.. OOOORE…UH!”. That went on for a few moments but I got the job done… Even though my head feels like a loaf of stale bread brined in flaccid cola then baked in a 375ºF oven which will eventually turn into an inedible pudding…, a warm message from a D.ear reader gave me a shot of medical positivism and reminded me that, no matter how small and insignificant, I have a recipe to share.
I’m mega-watt sick guys. Really. STAY AWAY on the other side of the computer and try not to touch the screen I am highly contagious! This is like the 100+ times I’ve gotten sick since I moved to Beijing because my unevolved Canadianess is no match for China’s uber-advanced virus. My further disrespect for it led me to go out for a night of harmless chatters over my favorite Sichuan face-torching/throat-choking dishes, which left me MUTED after I came home. MUUUTED, people. Paralyzed and powerless even when I saw a lift of a leg at the sofa across the apartment (!!!!…!!!!….!..). ZIP! I am Ariel without a fairy tale… well plus… a couple other things but you get my point.
I am a quitter. Yup, I am. My life has been a progression of consecutive quitting and frankly I’m surprised I haven’t ended up a… (uh wait… maybe I have…). And this is not some clever rhetorics people use as a prelude for self-flattery that usually come sneaked in the subtext. No. Really. I major quit. So the other day when I had a hunch about a cake but it came out just about as palatable as my high-school photos, my natural instinct urged me to stab my hunch in the back and return to my couch with my bag of cheetos and my romance with being a quitter (legs shaking and all).
I recently got a little nut job on almond milk, ever since Food52 published an almond milk recipe that unleashed my inner obsession to answer the GREATEST mystery of mine. The mystery being -why does the typical snacking almonds lack the perfume-y aroma in Asian almond milk or almond extract? Perfume? Almond? YES! Asian almond milk should be perfume-y and aromatic, NOT the bland milk-like substance America has come to know whose only worth is to be a secondary milk-substitute for the lactose-intolerants. It has true and honorable culinary status here in Asia, valued for its distinct and elegant aroma which frankly mesmerized me since childhood.