Grandma's birthday

Tomorrow is my grandma's birthday and tonight my mom and I threw her a mini-party with just the three of us. My mom made great steak with mushroom sauce. There was also shrimp, to make it surf and turf.

We finished it off with a birthday cake my mom and I collaborated on: chocolate with peanut butter frosting. Mmmm....

xo, Kristin

Halloween cookies

Happy Halloween (almost)!

Yesterday my dorm threw a Halloween party and I made cookies. Foot-, hand- and bat-shaped sugar cookies.

I also made regular and vegan pumpkin cookies, which aren't pictured. Wow they were so good. I'll make them again and post pictures <3

Recipe found here.

Xo, Kristin

PotLuck

Martin and Debbie have arrived safely in Japan, and wont have internet for a little while, and I am on a month break from school and get to avoid preparing anything more difficult than a bowl of cereal! :D :D

I guess the blog's going to take a couple weeks hiatus. In the meantime, I leave you with some pictures from the potluck party I threw in my dormitory.

The good thing about potlucks is a lot of people bring food, and so you don't have to eat the food you yourself prepared for the potluck. The other people get stuck doing that. Ha ha! Plus, the added advantage of actually throwing the potluck means that you get to keep all the delicious leftovers.

Other people prepping food. That's what I like to see! Here we have pasta, egg plant, melting chocolate, and something green.

Mac prepares a spinach, strawberry, and fetta salad. OMG YUM.

Gorging on food. Sipping wine. Enjoying the Olympics. 

Kristin

Okonomiyaki Dinner Party

For those of you who don't know, okonomiyaki is a sort of cabbage pancake eaten in Japan. Okonomiyaki is relatively healthy, cheap, and ooo so delicious. Hands down it was my favorite food when I lived in Japan.

Not only does it taste AWESOME, but there's a certain social aspect that goes along with eating okonomiyaki. It's a food you eat with friends while sitting gathered around the electric grill to chat and make food together.

Since it's so cheap and easy to make, I decided to do okonomiyaki for tonight's impromptu dinner party.

Now, okonomiyaki can get complicated. You'll see some recipes online that call for special flour, daikon, things that you can only find at Asian specialty stores, etc. These are unnecessary. If you want to eat good okonomiyaki, all you really need is eggs, flour, water, cabbage, and the contents of your fridge.

Tonight's dorm fridge haul included:

tomatoes
onions
garlic

Not so involved, but enough extra ingredients to make a good, vegetarian okonomiyaki. We topped it with mayonaise and tonkatsu sauce and it was awesome!!

Batter and chopped vegetables

Okonomiyaki pancake

Over-ripe cherries

Finished !

Rating: 9.5/10
Prep Time: 1 hour (included frying up a TON of pancakes)
Difficulty: 3/10

Kristin