抹茶

Happy Thursday! It got cold, and my phone thinks it's going to thunder tomorrow. What happened to the summer I was waiting for? :<

I had Spring Break this week because Steven is home on his real one. Super time for adventures!

It started over the weekend where we gathered at Carolyn's house and played her giant Risk game. The thing is flippin huge. There was five of us, and it took about three hours for Steven and Carolyn to jointly take over the world before calling a truce. (Jacqi was allowed to keep a bit of Australia) It was pretty epic.

Tuesday we (same peeps minus Jacqi) woke up hecka early and drove with Carolyn to school. Steven and John and I played pool in the student union, a really fun game called cutthroat. Then Steven's friend who actually attends that school came by and we played regular doubles. When that got old we tried some ping pong, and then we took naps.

When Carolyn finally got out of class we booked it on down to Little Tokyo to see Steven and John take on the Special 2 challenge at Orochon ramen. They've got ramen in increasing levels of spicy, starting at 7 and going to 1, then BEYOND 1 there's Special 1 and Special 2. If you can at Special 2 in a half an hour you get your picture on the Wall of Bravery. I had a 6 and that was spicy enough for me. Steven and John's was a brick red and had sliced jalapenos coating the surface. But Steven did it! And lived! It was extremely impressive and entertaining.

Bought an anpan from the supermarket down the stairs from there after, but it wasn't too great.

Today we attempted panda bread again. Tried different yeast and added more water and a bit of sugar to the cocoa powder before mixing it with the dough. The cocoa modification seemed to work, but the yeast didn't seem to activate this time either. We also did all the kneading by hand, so it never got as rubbery as when we left it to the bread machine. So flavor-wise, today was an improvement, but it's still not yet something I'll consider conquered.

Since Carolyn doesn't really like the tea made from her giant canister of matcha (抹茶) powder, I used some to make some other green tea flavored treats. Chucked some in some ice cream, which didn't follow any recipe but still turned out as ice cream.

Also attempted to make my own anpan, with matcha in the bread. I'd already wanted to make a green tea bread, since that was my favorite part of the original panda bread, so when I was looking up recipes I came across the idea of doing the red bean paste bun with green tea bread. IE matcha anpan.

Used this recipe, which was marvelous. Bought some smooth red bean paste from Mama-ya, which is something I also want to use in anman if I can ever not kill yeast again. The tea flavor and color is really subdued, but the bread itself is probably the best bread I've ever made by hand. Even though I almost ruined it because it was sooooo sticky that I think I must have originally put in two cups of flour instead of three. But we fixed it and they turned out great!

When I put the pictures in Facebook just now I realized those hot cross buns have to be from nearly a year ago -- time to make them again!!

I don't know why no pictures from my six weeks as house chef didn't make it into the album. I only took one of St. Patrick's Day green food. I guess because most of it was salads and economical foods rather than neat looking things like soup in a pumpkin. Because according to that album, I only make snacks and desserts! Which is almost not true at all.

Going to make coffee frozen yogurt with honey blended Greek yogurt when the frozen mixing bowl is frozen again. :3

-Steph