Vegan Mac n Cheese

Hello everyone!

The finals are over, and you know what that means!!! I have time to cook!!!

I'm not vegan, and I'm not gluten free.  Also, mac n cheese is definitely not one of my favorite dish esin the world... I know.. how could I not like this All-American dish?! but anyway, I stumbled upon this recipe from Minimalist Baker, and it just seemed so interesting!  I mean, cheese sauce made of eggplant?  How cool is that? and the photos looked so good!!  So I decided to try it out  =)

Even though I grew up eating the Korean eggplant, I have yet to successfully incorporate the American kind into my cooking...  It always catches my eye though when I'm in the grocery store, and I was glad for a chance to actually go ahead and grab it and take it home this time ;)

I also grabbed some brown rice pasta because,, well, it's made of rice.  so it can't be bad, right?  haha

Oh, and I had to get nutritional yeast, and boy that was an adventure.  Who would've thought Trader Joe's would not have nutritional yeast!  I mean, that sounded like something TJ's would definitely have!  Danielle was helping me locate it, and eventually, we had to go to Whole Foods to find it, but find it we did!

The recipe is not too complicated, but it did take an hour and a half or so to make... I think it might have been because it took FOREVER to caramelize the onions, but it was totally worth it!

mmmmmmmm   so. yummy.

all I had to do for the eggplant is slice it, salt it, broil it, and peel it!  I may have eaten a few just roasted like this before I could peel  it...  and it was glorious. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely, so I won't reprint it.  just check it out here, but I did make a few changes, of course ;)

For one, I added fresh garlic (2-3 cloves) to the sauce before putting it through the blender, and I loved the taste.

and instead of leaving the pasta like this,,

I added kale and baked it for 10 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees!

The resulting dish was surprisingly good!  As a kale lover, I loved the added texture and flavor that the kale gave to the dish, and I have to say, I actually prefer this mac n cheese to the normal super cheesy ones!  =)

Hope you are having a great day, and let me know if you try this recipe out!  =)

--Janny

Thanksgiving in Pictures!

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by good food and company!  Our Thanksgiving was really everything we could have hoped for (minus the fact that we couldn't go home to see our families).

Shawn, my roomy, and I hosted Friendsgiving at our place, and we were joined by our guys to prepare the meal!  Long distance can really make or break a relationship, and I'm so thankful that ours have been going so well (knock on wood).  It is hard, I'm not going to lie, but it makes the time spent together that much more amazing!

We had to get over our I'm-So-Happy-To-See-You giddiness pretty quickly though since we had a whole Thanksgiving meal to prepare.  haha  but we got right to work, and had everything ready with time to spare.

all David and I had to do was to prepare this sweet potato roast dish, and while it was pretty easy to make, it was rather time consuming to set it up in this way  haha.  

It was fun though because I had this goofball to keep me company  =)

and TADA~  The finished product.

and I had to taste test of course  ;)

Our little (big) helpers for the night, Carl and David  =)

and the whole Friendsgiving crew!!

It was such a fun night, and I'm so glad we had our little friend-family to spend the Thanksgiving day with!

I hope you all had a wonderful time, and also hope that getting back to the reality after the extended break hasn't been too tough for you all.  It has been rather tough for me, to be honest, but I'll make it, I'm sure  haha

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful rest of the week!

--Janny

Life after classes

Hello everyone!

So classes have been over for a week now, and I thought I would have so much free time...  oh how incredibly wrong I had been...  haha

Even though Houston is in full summer mode, (80 to 90 degrees every day!)

I have been stuck inside most of the day learning music, or performing music..  Here is the Pierre Jalbert Piano Trio that I have to learn before I leave the country in 2 weeks that has been giving me so much stress haha.  

The piece itself is awesome, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I will be performing this the week I get back from Korea and Taiwan, after not touching my violin for more than 2 weeks, really really really stresses me out.  Not only do I have to learn this, but I have to learn 3 other new pieces during the next 2 weeks and the week I get back to this country, so...  yeah, so much for summer break, huh?   I just have to really plan it out well because my tendinitis has flared up again, and the last thing I need is to have to take time away from my violin even more..  le sigh.. 

During the nights, I have been performing this hilarious musical with the Music Box Theater here in Houston.  This week was the closing week, so we got to play for a full house almost every night, and it was so much fun!  =D   a lot of playing, and some more learning music really fast because we had 1 rehearsal before I had to jump into the performance (I was subbing for a friend), but it was all worth it because it was such a fun musical to play!

Even during all that, we did manage to fit some cooking and baking and generally just eating lots of food, as you may have come to expect from us.  haha.  Sometimes, we did resort to ramen at midnight, but after a long night of performing, that's all you crave at times.  We know it's not good for us, but it sure was delicious.  Oh, and we made some broccoli/tofu side dish to go with it so we felt a little better haha

We also went out to eat, which is pretty rare for us, but,, desperate times call for desperate measures? actually, it was just on one of our H-Mart trips, and someone had ordered this in front of us in the food court, and it looked so good that we just haaadd to get it ourselves  haha  It was pretty amazing though  =p

Our experimental kitchen also got some action when we tried to make a loaf of seaweed bread.  In Korea, we eat seaweed, called Gim, a lot, and it's one of my favorite side dishes ever!  I mean, just give me some rice, Gim, and some Kimchi, and I'm set to go just about every meal.  So we thought we'd incorporate it into bread and see how it turned out. I had high hopes for doing a recipe for it here on the blog if it turned out well...

The making process went smoothly, and we had fun trying to take some action shots of the Gim falling into the dough, etc.

but while it looked really good when it came out of the oven and all that...

it wasn't really blog recipe worthy...  and we ended up eating it with some Kimchi...  haha

yeah... so we'll just keep experimenting a little more, and maybe we'll perfect it at some point!

There has also been some craft projects,,,

and lots and lots of packing...  our apartment is looking so chaotic and empty all at once!

In our free time, when we manage to find some, we've been exercising and getting into the usual David/Janny fooling around, doing things like this..

=)
so that's been my life after classes so far!
I'm sure there will be even more of that in the next week and a half until I graduate, and I'm going to try to make the most of my last week and a half in Houston.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a wonderful week!
--Janny

Valentine's Night In!

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day!
Unlike last year, we actually got to celebrate it on the actual day!
I did end up having to be at school until 7, but we celebrated afterwards with a homemade dinner and a spa night!  For our dinner, we decided to do an Italian themed dinner with some bruschetta and spaghetti, all made from scratch.  We tend to have a bit of difficulty going out to eat if it's something that we can easily make at home, and since we were craving Italian cuisine, we knew making it ourselves would be much more fun and romantic for two kitchen nerds like us  ;)

so a couple of days before, we prepared the bread for the bruschetta!

mmmmm  jalapeno cheddar bread made from scratch and baked in our dutch oven!!  recipe here.

and in the process of being turned into the most amazing bruschetta!

and TADA!!!!

 It tasted soo amazing.  and I love how it looks all colorful and happy as well  =D

and we made the spaghetti sauce from scratch as well!

nothing too terribly exciting; just adding different ingredients and simmering for a whole day...  but it tasted incredible!  much better than any restaurant spaghetti sauces we've tried  ;)

and dinner is served!!

and then, of course, we had to have dessert.  so we made some cookies!  some aged chocolate chip cookies (I'll elaborate later in another post  haha!)   and it tasted amazing!  we are total fans of aging cookies.  mm hmm.

and we made a heart shaped one too because if you can't be cheesy like that on Valentine's Day, then when can you, eh?  but as you can see,,, it didn't turn out quite as we expected  haha

Before we started the movie, we decided to open our gifts, and!!!!!  this was in the bag David got me!!!  A new spiffy camera!!!   he knows me so well  =D  all of my blog photos have been being taken with the iphone 5, and while it has been ok, it is definitely not the best.  I've been meaning to invest in a better camera for awhile now, and he got it for me!  Such a thoughtful guy, and I am so blessed to have him in my life  =)

I got him a robe because he's always wearing a parka in his apartment when it gets a bit chilly (warm? yes.  comfy? no.), and also because we wanted to do a spa night, and you can't do a spa night without a fluffy robe!

so here he is modeling the robe and showing how he feels about putting green substance on his face  haha

and the transformation!!

yes, it may look weird, but it feels sooo nice when you wash it all off!

Then, we watched the movie Before Sunset to wrap off the night.  We really enjoyed Before Sunrise (the first of that trilogy) but we weren't as enamored with the second installment... we'll have to see how we like Before Midnight!  have you guys watched this series?  Did you enjoy it?

Anyway, we had a wonderful Valentine's Day, and we hope you all had a wonderful day as well!

 Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!
--Janny

Date Day!!

Hello everyone!!

Happy Labor Day weekend to all of you, and I hope you are all enjoying some time off from work/school and spending some time with your loved ones!

It's been kind of funny because this three day weekend happened after only the first week of school  haha  but honestly, this was so needed, and probably much appreciated by all of the Rice University student body, I'm sure  ;) 

Another reason I've been looking forward to this weekend was because...!!!   David is finally back in Houston!  =D  
No more long distance, oh yeah~  *doing a little happy dance*

I mean, it was only for the summer, but I'm always glad for it to be over  =)

To celebrate, we scheduled a 'date day'!   so instead of going on a date night, we just did a marathon of dates all day!

The 'date day' actually began the night before when we took a leisurely walk over to the Hermann Park and the Miller Outdoor theater to catch the Golden Dragon Acrobats! 

It was pretty crowded on the lawn with hundreds of people out and about enjoying the slightly cooler Houston evening, but we found ourselves a little spot of grass and sat there holding our breaths and wowing with the rest of the crowd as the acrobats performed amazing tricks after tricks.

It was such an awesome performance, and it was really great to just enjoy being back together after 3 months of being apart  =)

We had to call it an early night because I had an audition the next morning, but we resumed our date marathon after my audition!  

For lunch, we headed to Jason's Deli because I was craving their salad (the salad bar there is the best!).  I know, I know, it's a chain, and David protested a little at first because that's where his department tends to get all of their 'conference foods' from, but what can I say, when a girl is craving a salad, this is the place to be!  haha

and besides, they have soft serve ice cream!  It was a big childhood thing for me, so whenever I see soft serve ice cream, I get uber excited  haha   

making little sculptures with their brownie bites and ice cream  =p

Then, for our next date, we went grocery shopping.

Yup.

It's one of our favorite things to do together  haha

I mean, how can you not like grocery shopping?  It inevitably leads to amazing (hopefully.. but at the very least, experimental!) food experiences!  We usually just meander through different aisles, discussing which dishes to try next/which ones we want to repeat, etc. and always end up with an overflowing cart by the end  haha.   

And this time was of no exception.  We had originally gone to the store without much of a plan, but when we got there, we decided to get ingredients for the Korean seafood pancake (파전) and make that!  and while we were walking around, we decided to have Korean cold noodles (냉면) for dinner as well!    We went to the frozen section and saw the noodles with the pre-made sauce, and then thought... why not try to make the sauce/broth ourselves?  I was a bit hesitant at first because I thought it would be too difficult, but David convinced me otherwise, and off we went to go buy more stuff for the broth!  haha  this is how it always goes with us.  Whenever one of us is hesitant about trying something, the other is usually excited about it, and then we go ahead and do it anyway...

So we came home, and embarked on the next leg of our dating marathon.  Cooking dinner together!  We had to start the broth early because it needed to boil for an hour, and then chilled, so we started that first.

Then, we went to go buy a little pot for my little 'garden'.  I've wanted a garden of my own for awhile now, but David was a bit hesitant about this one because we are both gone so much (who's going to water them?), and he wasn't sure how plants would do in the scorching Houston weather.  But we had such a perfect opportunity to do a little experiment because we had just gotten a whole lot of green onions for the seafood pancake, so off we went to Home Depot to buy my green onions a home!

and tada!!!

My very own little green onion 'garden' on our kitchen windowsill  =)

Amulet came back home while David and I were digging up some dirt, and when she heard what we were doing, she gave us the 'oh, David and Janny are doing something crazy together again' look and went inside  haha

Now here's hoping that they do a little better than our last 'gardening' experience...

Then, we really got to cooking so that we (Amulet, David, and I) could all eat dinner together before David and I left on our last segment of the dating marathon.

double skillet action!

our 냉면!!!

haha  =)  dinner crew!

The 냉면 was a bit... interesting.  I think it was lacking in the salt and vinegar department, but hey, now we know.  live and learn.  haha.  the seafood pancake, however, was SO good!!!  and so easy to make too!  I'll have to post a recipe soon so all of you can enjoy it as well!

With our bellies full, we headed off to dance off the calories with the Rice Ballroom Dance folks  =)   We met last year around this time at the first Rice Ballroom Dance meeting, so it seems that we've done a full circle  =p

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful rest of the Labor Day weekend!!

--Janny