Stop Motion Videos With Food

I don't think I've ever shared my delight for stop motion photography and animation. But I do like it very much. In fact I still remember Sesame Street doing interstitials with stop motion and claymation. To this day there's an undeniable aesthetic wrapped in pure nostalgia for me when it comes to stop motion. I'll always be in search for the next best stop motion videos. But for now PES pretty much rules the competition and most deservingly at that.

Anyway, here are a couple videos produced by PES:

Maybe I'm a dork but since I've seen this video, whenever I think of making spaghetti, Western Spaghetti comes to mind. Random thought.



Not a pro at most arcade games, except for Contra 3 and Galaga, but I love to play video games nonetheless. I'm just really lucky to have a husband who plays more than me and introduces me to some incredible games like Zelda series.  He's even thinking about getting me Sims3 on the Xbox...very exciting. But PES does a fun fantastic job at using all kinds of elements to portray some of the classic games.



I wish all fireworks were made of pennies and Peeps!



Loved what you've seen so far? Visit PES at EatPES.com, see you there!

This Recipe Is A Winner...

Colorful culture...colorful flavors. This is how I'd like to dress and dance through town!

What does a woman do when she is craving curry but finds out she doesn't have coconut milk to complete her recipe?

Hot diggity dog! She finds herself perusing her favorite blogs and finds "Tom's Trinidadian Chicken Curry" on The Pioneer Woman Cooks blog, of course.

My friend Mindy introduced me to The Pioneer Woman about two years ago. I've been a fan of Ree Drummond ever since I scored more love points from my then boyfriend (now husband) by making her "Olive Cheese Bread." That appetizer is soooo delicious we make it on special occasions only. If not, my husband and I would definitely turn into two very happy fat silos. You get the picture.

Anyway, there was no coconut milk in my pantry tonight but I had the rest of the ingredients (except for the actual Trinidad curry & mehti seeds) for her recipe. No worries...just follow her instructions and ogle over her photography and this will easily become your family's favorite curry recipe. It's in our archives now.

Thank you Mindy and thank you, Pioneer Woman + Tom's Trini spices.

Note: I would've posted my picture of my take on Tom's Trinidadian Chicken Curry but trust me the picture would not have done it justice. Go to Ree's site and you'll see how beautiful it really is. :)

"Trinidad-Carnival-Savannah-04.jpg" photo courtesy of sfmission.com from Flickr's Creative Commons.

Hot Soup FTW Style

I've recently learned to establish a healthy habit of drinking hot tea or water after my meals. Usually the drink of choice is hot green tea or japanese green tea if it can be found. There are multiple articles out there encouraging more people to drink hot water or soup after a meal. I'm a firm believer in this healthy habit and so is my digestive system.

Whenever possible, soups are gradually being incorporated into our meals. I know my parents always did and now it's time this new family of mine do the same. I'm huge fan of soup and I hope to share more asian-inspired soup recipes with you soon. But the first soup recipe that will be shared is a version of my mother's. She used fresh mustard greens for hers but any dark hardy leafy green can definitely be invited to the hot tub party.

Sexy, leafy & green...I heart Kale.

Here's what you'll need:

5 Cups of water or beef stock
4 Cups of chopped Leafy Greens of your choice (I use Kale)
4 Teaspoons of Beef Bouillon (if you don't use Beef Stock)
3 Smashed cloves of Garlic
1/2 Teaspoon of Ginger powder or 1 Teaspoon of Fresh Grated Ginger
Salt & Pepper to taste (I always add a little more pepper)

• Bring the 5 Cups of water or beef broth to boil.

• Add the Beef Bouillon for those of you that just used water.

• Add Garlic, Ginger and Salt & Pepper.

• Finally Add you Greens and let boil until hardest part of the green is tender. I never cook my greens until they turn yellow or completely meshed. You still want the greeness and freshness.

• So there you go. Wow, I think this might be my first all-veggie dish. But for you meat lovers out there, if you want meat, add a cup or two of cubed beef to boiling water. Let boil until cooked/tender then add your greens.

Enjoy some hot soup that's good for your body and your digestive system. Happy BMs everyone!

Greek-spirations: Dolmades

One of these days we're going to take a trip to Greece...but for now Greek Festival it is.

This weekend my husband and I made our yearly trip to Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church's Greek Festival. This festival has got to be one of the best tasting festivals I've ever attended and I've attended quite a few. There is no cooking quite comparable to church-lady cooking, better yet, Greek church-lady cooking.

If my blog doesn't quite express how wonderful it is, let the lines of people speak for the tastiness of the food. We waited for about 40 to 50 minutes just to get into the cafeteria for some homemade Dolmades (doh- mah -des), Spanakopita (span-ah- koh -pee-tah), Pastitsio (pah- sti -tsyo) & Gyros (soft g, yee-roh, like the word "hero") served outdoors with another wait time of about 20-30 minutes. But I would encourage everyone to not get discouraged by the lines. It is worth every minute you're standing there yearning for that first bite.

My favorite dish from this festival has got to be their dolmades. It's a combination of the exotic (grape leaves) and serious comfort food (rice & beef). You can get 3 for $6 but for a festival that comes once a year, I went for 6 of this babies. For an evening, I feasted like a Greek while the live band beckoned the brave and the tipsy to join in their traditional dancing. What a treat and we certainly can't wait for next year.

So for this blog I wanted to share a video I found on YouTube of how to make "stuffed vine leaves". I need to go and find some canned grape leaves first, then I'll be making this myself pretty soon. Oh yeah, and the dolmades at this church were covered in a béchamel sauce, or I think it was. Either way, I'm going to attempt to make these and I will post my stuffed grape leaves on this blog.

Enjoy this cute video of how to make "Stuffed Vine Leaves":



"oia,greece" photo courtesy of jonrawlinson from Flickr Creative Commons

Cooking Light Competition...Gather!

Yeah that's right, I took the liberty of using the younger Newman...

Hey everyone it's another announcement for a recipe contest that I might try and enter. Due to my schedule these past two weeks, I definitely missed out on The Real Women of Philadelphia contest. Oh well next year. However, this new competition I just found is not due until June 15, 2010 at 11:59:59 PM. Ooh Ooh Yes!

Cooking Light magazine calls this one "Ultimate Reader Recipe Contest". The rules are that you enter your recipe using one or more of their sponsor's products. The list of sponsors include:

• Al Fresco All Natural Chicken Sausage
• Avocados From Mexico
• Sargento reduced sodium natural cheese
• Domino and C&H sugar
• Eggland's Best Eggs
• McCormick/Perfect Pinch seasoning blends
• Newman's Own pasta sauces

Now, I'm confident that you have something good up your sleeves when it comes to these ingredients. You can enter for ego's sake or better yet a Grand Prize of $20,000 with six other winners up for $500 a person.

This is doable for me. And it might be just what I need to get myself to not be too shy about sharing my food with more people. I know you're thinking, well, you're writing a blog on your recipes how is that any different? You're right it's not very different. Yeah I will go for this one, win or lose.

Now are you going to join me? Say you will, that would be too fun. And if we don't win, we'll just post our recipes on my blog and see what the rest of the world thinks. How bout it?

I'm being totally serious. Enter with me and after the deadline, send me your recipes and I will post them and credit them to their respective contributors.

Oooh this is exciting. Now I must get back to my creative suite in order to come up with a banging recipe. Good luck!

Where I've been...

So FTW, WTF? Where have you been? You've been gone for about a week and you just recently posted a recipe for Caribbean Jerk Chicken Pizza and Mother's Day but what about the other days? Super Mario Galaxy cupcakes and that was all she wrote?

Well, yes and no. It's called, it's-graduation-season for those of us with big families. I've been gone to visit my clan and bake graduation cupcakes for my sister Anzie's college graduation. It was a blast to be stuck in the kitchen with all that goody good sweets both hot and cold just waiting for me and my sister Sam to create something worth seeing and eating on her celebration night.

We looked at our time and all our options around town and ended up using Hello, Cupcake!'s idea for graduation deliciousness. Of course, their cupcakes are amazingly gorgeous. But we came close. Yeah, close enough to look like grad caps.

This is what we did:

• For the mortar board (the top of the graduation hat...didn't realise it was called a mortar board) we used wheat thins and dipped them in melted chocolate bark. I stayed up till 2 a.m. making those babies for the next day. Let them dry on wax paper.

• For the bottom of the hat we delved into mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And the tassel was used with Twizzler's Pull 'N Peels.

• For glueing the grad hat together we used chocolate frosting.

• For the tiny diplomas, my sister Sam kneaded, rolled and cut out gum paste and finished them with a licorice tie. My sister Sam is good with details and never afraid to try anything. This woman can CREATE!

It was such a wonderful time of celebration for my sister. We had great food, courtesy of my Mom. We enjoyed many laughs with my little niece as the star of the show. And without the help of each of my family members, we wouldn't be able to pull off such a fun, filling and overflowing graduation party for my sister.

Anzie, I am so proud of you and I wish you best for your future. There is nothing you can't do and can do that will ever change how much we, your family love you and support you.  I also wish this for you, Nolen (will post your pic when I get them). You have a wonderful life ahead of you and we are so glad to be a part it. Love you both and congratulations again!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom

This blog is for my mother, who is the inspiration for what I do today when it comes to food. I've had the privilege of growing up in a home where there was always a meal on the table. When it came to food, my mom could stretch a penny or a baht and still come up with fantastic meals. Her kitchen was and still is open 24/7.

When I was a kid, I never appreciated her cooking and food to the fullest. I used to be embarrassed to take her food to school in a bento canister because I didn't think I was rich enough or cool enough to eat sandwiches like the rest of the kids. It's funny how now I wish she would make my lunches and I ended up never really liking sandwiches anyway. Now that I'm making her recipes for my husband's lunches, I would try and find any excuse to bring her to where I live and have her cook for us. I'm still working on that excuse.

Her dishes are what many people pay to get in line to eat. She taught me how to layer flavors as I watched her stir-fry beef and chinese broccoli. She taught me how to get the most out of garlic and just recently taught me how to get the most juice out of limes. Simple ingredients combined together to make any picky eater ask for seconds...that is a talent of hers.

She may not have graduated with the same level of education as me, but she has all the wisdom that even world leaders can't measure up to. I respect her for her strength. I love her for her patience and kindness. And I will always keep her near through her recipes and my love of food. She is the reason why I cook the way I do. She is the reason why I enjoy life's bounty in an open market or at the supermarket. She is the reason why I am beautiful and strong. I thank the Lord for such a woman in my life.

I love you, Mom.

Caribbean Jerk Chicken Pizza

Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot! Yes, summer is approaching and all those daydreams of the beach are soon to become a reality for some of us. My husband and I thought we'd celebrate sooner by making one of our favorite pizzas: Caribbean Jerk Chicken Pizza.

It's easy and fun to make. Trust me on this one.

Here's what you'll need:

Pre-made store bought pizza dough (wheat is fantastic)
1 1/2 lbs of Chicken Breasts or a Rotisserie Chicken
1/2 Bottle of Buffalo Wild Wings Caribbean Jerk sauce
1/2 Bottle of BBQ sauce (we used Hunt's this time)
2 Cups of Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
1 Cup of Diced Yellow or White Onions (red might be just as tasty)

• Pre heat oven to 425 degrees.

• If you're using raw chicken breasts, make sure you boil the chicken until cooked. For extra flavor add some salt, boil raw chicken in chicken stock or add chicken flavored bouillon cube. Once the chicken is cooked, let it cool then start shredding it.

• If you're using Rotisserie Chicken, just shred it.

• Prepare dough in pizza pan.

• Sprinkle 1 1/2 Cups of Mozzarella Cheese on the dough.

• Sprinkle shredded chicken and onions.

• Mix the BWW Caribbean Jerk with the BBQ. Spoon the sauce over the pizza. If you like more sauce then by all means add more. If you like it a little more spicy add more BWW Caribbean Jerk for a nice kick.

• Sprinkle the remaining Mozzarella Cheese on top.

• Pop that pizza into the oven for about 20-24 minutes. 

Enjoy this hotness with some cold pineapples on the side.

Remember this video?