notes from my food diary

As I nursed myself back to a healthier human being, I want to write a post about some awards that my food bloggers awarded me last month and this month.  This week I finally succumbed to a cold.  Even if it’s only a nose congestion, I was practically rendered useless as a mom and a worker.  My forehead seemed heavy and I couldn’t even smell anything, not in my food not anywhere.  Stuffy, just plain stuffy.  This because my son got a bug from school and I ended up being the other recipient.  It’s kinda funny because I remembered I asked him who’s not coming to school on Monday night.  He said, "Oh, so-and-so didn’t come today.  Even this girl was sick the other day and the day before."  He already had sniffles that day and that progressed into a marathon of cough later the next morning. 

So there we were, staying at home, I was totally exhausted too because of the sinus pressure in my head.  This was the signal from my body to tell me that it’s time to slow down a bit.  These past two weeks of full activities proved to be a bit too much on me.  On Saturday we went out to the country again and went to pick quinces, hardy kiwis, some Fuji and Ashmead apples.  The farms is called Morning Shade and it was located outside of Canby.  It was a bit of a long drive but worth it.  The main house is gorgeous, they have two friendly dogs which one of them showed us the way to the fruit trees.  We arrived at the farm around 3 in the afternoon and it couldn’t be better.  The day was warm and without rain, and even better, I found some late raspberries.  The farm is about 30 acres and it has marrionberries, blueberries, blackberries to name a few and vegetable garden.  They sell pumpkins in the fall season too.  I like the guy who owns the farm, whom I think is named Jim, he’s such a nice man.  He didn’t charge me for getting the raspberries because he was surprised that I still found some this late.  I picked about 6-7 cups and they’re free!  I had wanted to make raspberries curd for the filling of a layered poppy seed cake in a recipe that came from one of my baking books.  They should be so lovely together. 

The apples that we picked the week before in Hood River were combined with Ashmead apples I picked to become applesauce.  I was drowned in peels and seeds last Sunday.  It was a sticky job but again, worth it.  I wasn’t so thrilled with applesauce bought in the store, so I resolved to make my own.  They’re very good without any sugar but they’d be to sour for my son, so I only added 2/3 sugar from what’s required in the recipe.  I hope 10 pints would be enough to last us half of the year.  Oh, and I found a chocolate applesauce cake with brown sugar frosting recipe that sounds really great!  My, my…I’m just getting ahead of myself.  Not to mention what I want to do with the quinces.

But, now I’ve lost my trail of thoughts.  Back to the awards that were given to me.  I couldn’t believe the outporing love you gave me! 

In the month of September, Erla of Elra’s Cooking awarded me with the Brillante Weblog:

and also Ayin of AG’s Food awarded me with the Arte Y Pico:

finally this month, Andrea of Cooking Books awarded me with the E for Excellent Blog:

You all have made me feeling elated and grateful to have you as my friend, even though we’ve never met before!  I’ll try to be loyal to all my friends I’ve accumulated from blogging and sometimes it’s a hard work to keep up with all the wonderful posts they’re posted, but these awards remind me that it pays to be loyal and it pays to write here continuously.  Thank you again!

I’ll come back soon with more recipes when I could open my eyes longer than 10 pm

I finally had a time to write a post here.  I don’t know about you but my week has been very busy.  It made the week went by quickly but I barely had time to write and read other people’s blogs.  On the other hand, it’s a good break for me from the Internet because this month is a month that I won’t want to miss enjoying.  I really enjoy the fall months because the season offers me with lots of warm colors in food and landscape.  The air is crisp even if it sometimes feels a bit chilly on the nightime.  I am not going to write about some baked goods or recipes today, but merely wanting to write something I’ve done with some fall bounty that I purchased last week.

Kosui Asian Pears:

People who doesn’t live in Oregon notes that it seems to rain so much in Oregon all year long.  I couldn’t agree more, but surprisingly this October the weather has been quite dry.  We are enjoying seasonal warm weather and plenty of sunshine this week that we decided to go to Hood River last Saturday.  The day began quite cold but by midafternoon the sun peeked out of the clouds and by the time we arrived in Hood River, it was sunny, dry and rather warm. 

Red Anjou pear and Jonagold apple:

Our reason to go to Hood River was to visit the Gorge Fruit and Craft Fair.  The fair itself was not very my type of fun   I was hoping for more fruit sellers, but we only found a few.  Nevertheless, one stand sold very cheap apples which were Jonagold and Gala varieties.  They’re only $1 for 3 pounds so I bought 10 pounds worth of apples for I intended to make homemade applesauce later this week.  Besides apples, the farmer sold Asian pears which we really love to eat this time of year.  My hubby and I both agreed that the Kosui Asian pear was really crisp, not coyingly sweet and very fresh.  One bag of 5 Asian pears was sold only for $1.  What a bargain!

Forelle pears:

Later on that day, we stopped by at Smiley’s Red Barn to buy some more pears.  I found these Forelle pears that were the perfect size for my son’s lunch bag.  They’re very tasty and crisp, not to mention cute too!  And I also bought some Red Anjou for eating, no wonder Pacific Northwest is famous for its pears production.  We also stopped by at the Rasmussen farm to take some pictures in their pumpkin field.  We could see Mt Hood and Mt Adams clearly and the clouds formation was really amazing out there.

A barn in Hood River:

Mount Adams in the background, taken in the corn maze in Rasmussen Farm:

All and all, the day was gloriously wonderful.  I love taking a trip to the Hood River and got some fresh fruits, it’s really worth the drive.  A few days later coming home from work, I was thinking of taking some photographs of the apples and pears.  I was imagining and composing what I want to accomplish in the photos in my head while I was driving.  My aim was to make these fruits look like a painting, a still life of fruits, a subject that I found endearing to me.  Lucky for me the day was nice, it offered me some sunshine and the timing was perfect.  I was very pleased with the photos that I took that day and I want to showcase them right here.  I feel very blessed to live in the Pacific Northwest because I get to enjoy these wonderful seasonal fresh fruits.  I hope you all find these photos refreshing and could experience the idyllic setting from where the fruits were grown.

Summer is finally here in Oregon.  For the last part of June, the weather finally turned very nice with clear blue sky and warm sunny day every day.  July turns out to be even better, I think we could kiss goodbye to the rain for a while now

I’ve never in my life thought that I would do home canning.  Several of my friends have done canning peaches several years back and each summer they told me to join them, I was still unsure.  I was afraid I wouldn’t do good job in sterilizing jars, making sure the canned stuff reach proper temperature, making sure the sealing was done properly and many other disturbing thoughts I could think of.  But in the mean time, I bought a canner, one dozen jars, jar lifter, and labels!  I am weird in that way, I know I would try this home canning business sooner or later, but I just haven’t figure out when yet.

This year I become brave enough to try it, especially when the season of strawberry picking started.  Living in Oregon, the U-pick farms are abundant, the variety of strawberries for picking is far superior than the strawberries from California, and talk about Hood strawberries!  They are among the sweetest strawberry you could taste in the world, even though they’re not so big in size.  So two weeks ago, me and my family went out picking strawberries in Damascus area.  We got a loadful of juicy strawberries which then were prepared right away.  I separated some for making jams and the rest were frozen for later use.  It turned out that my fear of making jams went out the window the moment I heard "ping" sound went off from one jar to another!  Yippeee… Me, a suburban mom, making jams?  I have become more domesticated than my mom!

From then on I was going jam-crazy.  I made blueberry jams simply because there’s a cookie recipe that looks very good with the jam sandwiched between the cookies—that’s another post to write about.  I made apricot jams because I knew I would use them in my cakes, tarts, pastry and everything.  All in all I made three bluberry jams, five strawberry jams, and four apricot jams so far.  I’ve been thinking of making mango jams and when I mentioned this to my hubby, he thought I’ve gone mad!    No really, mango jam is very delicious, right?  And let’s not forget canning fresh peaches!  Oh, how I love them…

In between making jams, I have to pack several luggages in preparation for our vacation this coming Sunday.  We are going, no make it driving, to Southern California for three weeks.  Yeah, road trip!  My brother-in-law and his family from Germany would come (again) to visit my in-laws this summer and we also have a chance to see my sister-in-law and her two boys from Jakarta in California before they go back home next week.  I also want to visit my parents and my best friend down there.  Other than family time, I’m planning to see California beaches, maybe going Highway 101 south and eat tons of delicious foods!  And do you know what I’m bringing to California?  My jams of course!   I will share the jams with my mother and mother-in-law.  

One last thing before I go, I was given an award by Mrs Ergul, a sweet gal from Singapore, just recently.  It is a "I Love You This Much" award.  You’re simply too kind, Pei Lin!  I’m actually quite embarrased to get an award because I seldom participate in giving award to my friends.  Not that I don’t like/love my friends though.  Since it’s time to feel generous, I will pass this award to:

Amanda from Slow Like Honey

Riana from For the Love of Baking

Rita from Mochachocolatarita

Kajal from Aaplemint

Patricia from Technicolor Kitchen

There…hope you all have a wonderful summer!  I’ll  be back in August!

Last Thursday I went to this pastry shop called Sweet Dream Desserts with Sarah, my co-worker from work. We both have sweet teeth and I haven’t been able to visit the shop so I definitely wanted to go there. It’s just opened earlier this summer in a town near my hometown. The pastry chef, Natasha Olman, has worked at Papa Haydn for 8 years before opened her own shop. Her creations are similar to Papa Haydn’s both in form and taste. The shop offers American-style pastry desserts but in a more sophisticated execution. What we tried were (forgive the names for which I couldn’t remember the specifics):

Lemon Charlotte Cake:

Chocolate Mint Pie:

Caramel Macchiato Cake (front):

Caramel Macchiato Cake (top):

My favorite was the Caramel Macchiato Cake. It’s smooth and dense filling with heavenly buttercream really melt together together in one package! Not to mention the beautiful presentations for all the cakes!

Sweet Dreams Desserts
617 7th Street

I’ve just joined Foodie Blogroll this week. I hope to know more foodie bloggers around the world and I persuade you to do the same! Visit Jenn’s blog, The Left Over Queen to see how you can join.

Now…what do you think of that Adzuki beans pudding with coconut milk sauce?