Amish Friendship Bread...

I've never been into chain letters but chain recipes- one that keeps giving-- is a different story! I received this in my son's school cubby from another mom with a recipe for Amish Friendship Bread and a starter kit. A 10-day do and wait process that yields a cake-like Amish cinnamon bread (most popular) but can have nuts, raisins and chocolate chips added. A common practice makes a recipe batch, keeping one cup to start a new cycle, and giving the remaining three cups separated to three friends. The process of sharing the starter makes it somewhat like a chain letter. Can't wait to adapt to our version with the kids and taste the results of our efforts! 

We're on Day 8 today with results being shared with you this Friday-- Baking Day! Yay!

Squishing and mushing is all part of this 10-day fun bread-making process!

Happy Birthday to Susan's Savour-It!...

Here's to this weekend's casual home hot pot celebration to wish Susan's Savour-It! a HaPPy BiRthDaY 🎂-- I can't believe you're two years old! Looking forward with my family to continue cooking up a storm and sharing new and revisiting old food discoveries with my lovely friends and fans! Thank you for two great years!!

(◦′ᆺ‵◦) ♬° ✧❥✧¸.•*¨*✧♡✧ ℒℴѵℯ ✧♡✧*¨*•.❥ 

A Chinese hot pot photo gallery to feast the eyes & comfort the soul as we tune into Spring ahead...

For the ingredients in a previous hot pot post see here. 

Served with a nice cool and textural Spicy Beancurd Salad!

Those cute bear heads are actually fish cakes!

Often it's all about the dipping sauce concoction :)

Nothing better to cool down the fire (the yang (cooling) to the yin (heat)) than with a refreshingly cold Coconut Jackfruit Tapioca soup dessert with add-ins of prepared palm seeds and coconut gels. Just bring one can of coconut milk to a soft boil with syrup from a can of jackfruit, and adjust sweetness with rock sugar/golden sugar. Let cool and add chopped jackfruit, add-ins and cooked tapioca. See here for a similar recipe. 

So refreshingly gooooood!!

Gastropost-- Soul Kitchen...

During winter, nothing quite warms the soul like soul food. Originating from the kitchens of the Southern U.S., hearty servings of foods such as fried fish, shrimp & grits, cornbread and black-eyed peas have been doing just that for generations. Of course, along the way, there have been many dishes added to the comfort food canon — from chicken soup to stews. National Post`s Gastropost wanted to see what foods soothed gastroposters` souls. Whether it`s going straight to the source with a chicken-fried steak or a special connection to a lesser-known comfort dish, we got to show we got soul!

Excited to share that my husband`s birthday dinner to me-- French Slow-Cooker Chicken and Beans Cassoulet photo made it in today's National Post's Gastropost submitted to the mission of Soul Kitchen! He was pretty impressed...

See here for the two page Gastropost spread.

My dear hubby cooking up his favourite kind of French fare to prepare the slow-cooker.

Bone-in skin-on chicken thighs and mixed beans slow-cooked in tomato sauce.

Love me my cassoulet on boiled quinoa and a side helping of bread!!!

Korean Pork Belly Day with Nagasaki-Style Braised Pork Belly...

March third marks a celebration day of sumptuous prized pork belly in Korea. It is honoured on this day for it's name-- the first part of the Korean word for pork belly Samgyeopsal, is sam 삼 which means three, so third month, third day- how appropriate and fun! And oh what fun with a double dose on special... It also happens to be another important day in Japan, paying tribute to Girls' Day or Doll's Day Hinamatsuri (雛祭). To give nod to both cultures, I made a dish of Japanese braised pork belly (kakuni) in a clay pot. This is different than the popular Chinese red-braised pork belly (dong-po), in that you don't cook the pork in the accompanying sauce for hours but rather boil first the pork until tender simply in salted water and then cook in the sauce for a short time to render a light delicate flavour. Kakuni is a recipe that originated in Japan’s south-- lightly seasoned but sweet and gelatinous, its rich pork flavours benefit from being offset with the sharpness of mustard for dipping.

Nagasaki-Style Braised Pork Belly (Buta Kakuni)
Makes 4 to 6 servings

2 lbs. slab pork belly (without bones), rinsed with cold water and patted dry
1/2 tsp. salt
handful of snow peas, peeled
1 cup water
1/4 cup sake
4 Tbsp. or 1/4 cup sugar
2-1/2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. mirin sweet cooking sake
Japanese hot mustard, or Dijon mustard for dipping

NOTE: Choose pork belly that has glossy pale pink colour and its fat firm and white.

Place pork in a pot and fill with water to cover and add salt; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook for about two hours while occasionally adding water until the pork becomes tender enough for a bamboo skewer to pierce through fairly easily. Let stand until cool. Add the snow peas to the pork broth and let simmer for a few minutes until crisp-tender; remove peas onto a plate. Let the pork broth cool, pack it and refrigerate or freeze for later.

Saving the pork broth for soup for Saturday's Chinese hot pot!

Rinse the pork in cold water, eliminate any debris and excess fat, and cut into bite-sized pieces. 

Add water, sake, sugar and pork in a pot or clay pot (as I'm doing) and bring to a boil. Then add the soy sauce and cover with a drop-lid, otherwise, cook slightly covered with regular lid.  When the liquid is reduced to about half, turn up the heat to high, and pour in the mirin in a circulating motion. 

Japanese sake bought in supermarkets are salted. For unsalted sake 
used for cooking I went for the cheapest drinking sake at the wine store.

Add the snow peas to the pot, give it a stir with the sauce and pork; and it's ready to serve.

Tender morsels of meat and its gelatinous texture nearly melts in the mouth, with snow peas that add colour and slight crunch. Served dipped with mustard the sharpness complements the pork's natural richness bathed in a light delicate sweet broth. Perfect served with steamed rice.

See here for more pork belly recipes in Korean- and Chinese-styles, and of course we can't not mention one of the king of pork belly preparations, Siu Yok (Crispy Roasted Pork Belly).

Global On-Line Cookbook Club-- From Words to Wok...

Do you love cookbooks and don’t know how to stop adding more to your book shelves? 📚 I am excited to announce I'd like to start a local cookbook club in Toronto as a branch off the virtual cookbook club recently launched by my friend Prachi Grover in Dubai-- From Words to Wok-- an on-line community of cookbook and food memoir enthusiasts, where every two months across the globe we cook from the same book and review it too. To start, members are asked to select from the 16 Piglet finalists which could be seen in her post below. There are three more days to vote for our first cookbook to review so if you would like to join us-- where ever you live, leave me a comment or email me at s5ng@yahoo.com. Read on for more for the Q &As on how this will run (for Prachi's original post see it here):

By Prachi Grover

My bookshelf is bursting with cookbooks and food memoirs (we are talking three digits) and each time I get a new one I am asked why do you need so many cookbooks or food memoirs? You may like to call it a fetish or a weakness but I prefer the word enthusiast

Some I like to cook from, some I open for inspiration and some make for great bedtime reads. Over the years I’ve made a little bond of sorts with some of them and some I’ve just had a casual fling with. Having said that, each time I sit down with one of my books I instantly get transported to the authors’ kitchens close and far. Unfamiliar cuisines, new ingredients, stories behind each of the recipes, new cooking techniques…it like getting a glimpse of their lives and diving into their hearts.

I can’t recall the exact moment when I fell in love with the idea of spending my entire life (and money:)) with cookbooks and food memoirs but I clearly remember flipping through my mum’s very fancy cake book each day after school (it is important that I mention that we never baked anything from there for it had the most complicated five tier wedding cakes but oh my it was so pretty) and copying recipes from the food sections of the magazines that she would rent from the local library; in her diary that she still maintains.

Over the last few years, I kept running into friends who felt the same and since it was clear that none of us had any intentions of exercising any kind of self-restraint we decided to celebrate this addiction instead.

Without further ado, I present to you; From Words To Wok.

What is From Words To Wok?

From Words to Wok is an online community of cookbook and food memoir enthusiasts. We are people who have a huge collection of cookbooks and don’t know how to stop adding more to our book shelves. Since we don’t have any intentions of controlling this habit we decided to do the next best thing: become a part of this group where we can legitimize this kind of behavior. Because when you are a part of this group you will need to review books and that means heading to the nearest bookstore (borrowing from a library or friend works too but hey who are we fooling, really?)

How can I become a part of this group?

If you adore cookbooks and food memoirs as much as we do, you are going to love your time here. To become a member you just need to commit to reviewing one book every two months. Join us here.

Can I invite other members?

Yes. If you have friends and family who, like us, are equally passionate about cookbooks then please drop us a message so we can send them an invite.

If I do decide to join the group, are there any rules that I need to follow?

Not really, except that we only discuss the book in focus and review at least five out of the six books chosen for the year. Also we’d love to share the link to your blog and/or social media links with the other members of the group so request you to please drop us a message so we can add that to our directory.

How are the cookbooks/food memoirs selected?

Since shortlisting books was really becoming a huge task after several discussions with some of the members who showed interest in joining this community in its initial stages we decided to stick to the finalists of the Piglet Awards each year. The Piglet inspired by The Morning News’ Tournament of Books is where the 16 most notable cookbooks of the year face off. Read more about it here.

What are the books that we’ll be reviewing this year?

Our year will be from March’16- February’17 and since we will be reviewing one book every two months we will be reviewing six books every year. Members will vote and the six that get the most votes (from the 16 Piglet finalists) will be the ones we will be reading this year.

The 16 finalists for 2016 are:

A Bird in the Hand by Diana Henry
A Girl and Her Greens by April Bloomfield and J.J. Goode
Eat Mexico by Lesley Téllez
Gjelina by Travis Lett
Made in India by Meera Sodha
Mamushka by Olia Hercules
Modern Jewish Cooking by Leah Koenig
My Kitchen Year by Ruth Reichl
Near & Far: Recipes Inspired by Home and Travel by Heidi Swanson
Senegal by Pierre Thiam and Jennifer Sit
Seven Spoons by Tara O’Brady
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt
The Food of Oman by Felicia Campbell
The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook by Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez and Julia Turshen
The Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire Ptak
Zahav by Michael Solomonov

How can I suggest a cookbook/food memoir?

For now, we will be picking books from the 2016 Piglet Awards Finalists but please drop us a message if you have a suggestion and we can run it past the entire community so members can vote.

What do I need to do to review the book?

Read the book from cover and try out recipes across courses so you can evaluate if the author delivers on her/his promise.

How many recipes do I need to try from the book for the review?

At least 4-5 (across courses).

Do I need to photograph the recipes as well?

No. But it is always lovely to click some and share. It will help inspire the others who are struggling with the recipes or time or both.

Do I need to buy the book to conduct the review?

No. Please feel free to borrow from a library or a friend. A lot of authors also share some of the recipes from their books online; so you can also look for those if you don’t want to buy the book or pool in with a couple of friends and share the book.

Can I post the review on my personal blog?

Yes, please. We’d love that! Just remember to share the links in the group here so we can all read and learn from your experiences. The intention is to have albums for each of the books where we can all share snaps and links to our individual reviews.

Can I join if I don’t have a blog?

Yes, of course!

How can I share my review if I don’t have a blog?

You can share your reviews on your personal Facebook account as a note and share the link with us in the album for that particular book.

When will new book be announced?
1st of every alternate month after which we will have two months to read, savour and review the book.

If I join in the middle of the reviewing cycle can I still participate?

Yes!

Is this only an online community?

No, we’d love you to organize meet ups in your city to discuss the book. You may choose to simply share your review over coffee or each member may decide to cook and take a dish from the book but whatever you do we’d love to know about it so please share it with all of us in the group. At Dubai, we’d be organizing meetups at the new branch of Book Munch at Bay Square (opening soon). So if you are in Dubai or passing by please let us know we’d love to have you over. Dareen is creating a cookbook heaven at this branch and has been very encouraging and supporting. We can’t wait to have our first meet up (hopefully really soon).

Are these competitions?

No!

Will there be any contests or any surprises?

Yes, expect some occasional surprises and contests.

If you have any more questions please leave me a comment. Looking forward to this year of reading and cooking with all of you.

Best Breakfast Potatoes Ever...

I love me a big breakfast and will choose any style of potato side over toast any day. Here is an awesome best-ever brekkie potato bake to complement your morning fuel favourites. 

Best Breakfast Potatoes Ever (adapted from Foodnetwork.com's Ree Drummond)
Makes 4 to 6 servings

3 pounds potatoes (about 4 large potatoes), roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped
1 green onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. seasoned salt (my favourite is Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning-- so flavourful on everything)
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

NOTE: I had a bunch of mini sweet peppers to use up so replaced the amount for bell peppers.

Preheat the oven to 425F. In a large bowl, toss together potatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, olive oil, seasoned salt, cayenne pepper (optional) and some kosher salt and pepper. 

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, shaking the pan twice. Raise the heat to 500F and bake until crisp and brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper before serving.

I always use my toaster oven for small batches like this.

Roasted to perfection-- slightly crispy on the outside, tender inside and a whole lotta' flavour!

Served up with eggs and bacon makes for a wonderful way to start the weekend with the family!

Staying Healthy With Workplace Health Hacks...

We spend so much of our time and life at work, whether we're working for someone or for ourselves, these hours can have a profound effect on our overall health, well-being and our relationships. One personal example stands out. A close friend recently changed her job from working long hours and some weekends managing multiple projects, years of ritual 10-minute desk lunches, near zero breaks to an office that puts employees' health first with an emphasis on family-work life balance. Talk about change.... how does a play room equipped with a ping pong table and board games, catered Monday lunches, accessible healthy snacks and free daily fitness classes, with a 9 to 5 work day sound? Her husband tells me the change in his wife's personality and stress level have been significant, and their relationship as well as with their kids have improved dramatically. Well, let's think about it for a minute... when you are so wrapped up, busy producing and meeting deadlines with no time to come up for air, what little energy is left to consider your well-health (even with the best of intentions); we know that taking care of ourselves can feed the mind and soul with nourishment and replenishes, and help better our productivity but when you're in the thick of things, the reality of pulling away can prove difficult. Happy for my friend and lucky for her, but not everyone works in a Google-type office where employees are lavished with countless health-in-mind perks, so what are some of the things we can inspire ourselves to do to improve our health while at work? When Nuts.com approached me to collaborate on sparking a conversation about workplace health hacks, I couldn't be happier to jump on board. They're gathering various ideas on ways to staying healthy during the work week and along with other bloggers, we're sharing our top tips to improving the work-life. Here are mine:

With an emphasis on the top three listed hacks, #1-- Find a workout or walking buddy. Set up a week-by-week schedule (pre- or post- work day or lunch) and stick with it. Hold each other accountable by keeping one of the other's workout shoe. No show, means your friend doesn't get her steps in either. Since I work out of my home and more and more people do these days, I think it's even harder to follow a workout routine. It's so easy to make an excuse and not make the commute to get the work out in-- I'm kinda tired; my son hasn't been eating well, soooo...; it's colllld out there!! When you're at your workplace already you might as well (you need to take a break anyway), you'll have to meet your friend about the shoes and it'll be harder to dodge why you were thinking of not (so much for motivating each other). I was toying with this idea with my girlfriend who's joined a yoga membership for three months, and I desperately need to get back at it, so let's see what happens... I would hate her to miss her workout because of me, but I guess that's the point here right? 

#2-- Stand more. If possible elevate the height of your desk/working table/work station or suggest to have a designated shared area where people can take turns working upright. Research says that sitting, especially for prolonged periods of time is just plain bad for your health for a variety of reason and also due to lack of movement. My friend Florence tells me, her new job has an office meeting room equipped with a walking station that her and her colleagues have access to. It's set up so that they can walk and work at the same time-- great for one person to make conference calls or when you need to read something. She says, it's a great benefit to 'urban' offices because it allows them to still feel active. Having not to commute anymore, she gets less steps in so this is a great 'excuse' to go for a walk now. I say, that's super fantastic-- look at that cool space!

Photo Credits: Florence Wang

I have been fortunate in that my culinary profession required me to stand, walk, and speed walk most of my workday. Recipe development, testing, cooking, baking, product developing, presenting and catering needs you on your feet, and so for me it was about wearing the proper comfy shoes, outfitting the workspace with good flooring or mats (at Kraft, the homestyle kitchens we worked out of had cork board flooring) and industrial kitchens always had safety and feet-friendly mats for long standing; sitting becomes brief, enough to rest, stretch and rotate the feet, and at times for longer periods working on administration in the office (typing up recipes, research, etc.,). Now, as a food blogger, I am often stuck at the computer hours at a time, typing away and the time seems to disappear. Before I know it, it's noon and I haven't got off my chair for over two hours. When I do, I walk around and stretch, rest the eyes and grab some food or fruit. I always have water within reach (my office desk is my dining table :)). I am hoping to find a suitable bar table soon (been looking for one like forever) for the corner spot in my kitchen to pair up with my bar stools, so I see myself moving my laptop to work in that new space occasionally and blog while standing instead of constantly hunkered, back-crowned sitting down.

If you want to see my life and day as a Food Blogger read it here.

#3-- Get a shared blender. Take the challenge with your peers on rotation to make a healthy breakfast or break-time smoothie for everyone. This leads to trying new foods and open the discussion on healthier eating. For Food Revolution Day in previous years, I knew of people who brought a blender to work to make healthy beverages for their workmates to honour the day of real food awareness and celebration, and people loved it so much they end up keeping one there permanently.

Other things that could be awesome when it comes to food, request that vending machine suppliers or in-house cafeteria offer healthy snack options such as nuts, granola bars, fresh fruit, and yogurt. I find that more and more companies that provide food offerings to their employees are becoming health-aware, and if these things are not already there, just ask the right person to get it going. Better yet, make your own and bring from home. Here are some great healthy work snack recipes to try brought to you by Nuts.com. For more information, check out their healthy snacking page for tips and recipe ideas on a range of snacking scenarios from low-carb, high-protein snacks to late night and road trip snacking.

As a blogger and such as the work life of many of us relying on the computer and digital gadgets, I try (I really do try) to rest my eyes in every 30 minute intervals away from the computer screen for about two to five minutes. Staring outside my window, a photo or a paper with an inspirational quote and meditating away from what I'm working on helps to take a mental break, and I like that you really get in tuned with your breathing- it goes deeper and is more relieving. My artist brother Dan working hours on end, sometimes well into the earliest of mornings on his hand-crafted double-hand-sized statues tells me he gets his break by stepping outside, going for a walk, driving out to get a coffee, and to get some real people interaction. Working from home can be lonely, and social media as much as we are engaged on it, is still not a live person you can see, hear and talk to. You come back to your work with fresh eyes, a new energy and we both believe our products will result better for it.

My brother Dan aka Marten Go, founder of Preserved Dragons was not aware 

I took a shot of his work-in-progress a while back, but happy he approved I can use it :)

Ironically, this past weekend I walked into my much-anticipated macaron-making class with friend and city famous macaron instructor Mardi Michels, and a big bag of ground almonds was sitting on her counter with the big label across Nuts.com :). Mardi swears by their superfine ground almonds and only uses this brand for her macarons. And here I am partnering with Nuts.com to get the word out about healthy workplace practices, which is really translating back to my own blogging/work life from home. Working for yourself inside the home requires I think even more discipline to be health- and well-being-aware because it's just too easy to fall in your everyday home routine and forget. I read somewhere, maybe it's The Happiness Project where the author knew of a woman who worked out of her home office-- she never failed to put on her work wardrobe, make up her face and take a walk around the block on a daily basis before returning home to start her work day. Clever right?!  I may just adopt that--- but you know, maybe when it's not so cold out.... brrr!! :)

What are your top tips for staying healthy at work?

Nuts.com