Welcoming Fall

With the beginning of fall I have decided to do a pancake bonanza!

After all, what goes better with fall, beautiful weather, a clean apartment, sunlight than pancakes?

As we know, Saturday I made Almond Oat Pancakes but Sunday, I made Sweet Potato Waffles from a recipe I found in The Sugar Mill Caribbean Cookbook.

Sweet-Potato Waffles with Orange Butter
Adapted from The Sugar Mill Caribbean Cookbook by Jinx and Jefferson Morgan

Orange Butter:
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 T curacao liquor
1 T grated orange zest

(I'll add here that I didn't make the orange butter- I just put my own homemade jam on)

Sweet-Potato Waffles:
2 Cups flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t salt
3 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups cooked, pureed sweet potatoes
1 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup melted butter
2 T grated orange zest (I also didn't use this- basically I didn't have oranges)

Whip together ingredients for orange butter in a small bowl until mixture is fluffy and put aside.

Sift first first 3 ingredients and set bowl aside. In another bowl, combine egg yolks, sweet potatoes, milk, sugar and butter and add to flour mixture. Beat egg whites until they are light and fluffy and fold into mixture.

Cook away in a hot waffle iron!

The recipe recommends that you serve it with orange butter, maple syrup and garnish with orange slices (I just used salted butter and jam).

Enjoy!

Later this week I plan on making Whole Wheat Brown Sugar Banana Bread Pancakes and Hearty Raspberry Pancakes! Can't wait!!

Hurricane!

So here in Brooklyn, Hurricane Irene was scheduled to tear through the city and cause MASS CHAOS AND THE APOCALYPSE! Or, at least that's what I had been expecting based on how people were reacting to the potential storm. Friday afternoon I went to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for dinner to find it the busiest I had ever seen, and significantly lacking in milk. Apparently when a huge storm is scheduled to come and all hell breaks loose, and the electricity may be cut, people believe it is good to stock up on milk. Which of course doesn't go bad when the fridge is out or anything like that...also, in preparation for the storm, the MTA decided to cut service yesterday (saturday) at 12 until Monday afternoon or so. So no one can go anywhere.

I'd like to point out now that nothing really happened. It rained heavily for a bit, and lightly a lot, and has been windy, but that's about it. A few trees and branches have also fallen but nothing too major, however I have been spending most of the time in the apartment. Nothing much is going on with work because no one can travel, so I've been keeping busy at home, taking advantage of my "vacation". I've been doing a lot of baking, cooking, canning and spinning. Just made a lovely Blushing Peach Jam Instead of adding pectin, however, I boiled it for 25 minutes, stirring continuously to get it to a nice gelatinous texture.

I also made Almond Oat Pancakes Saturday morning which I definitely plan on making again. My only recommendation would be to add a little more milk or water because the batter was very thick, making it difficult to cook all the way through.

Another thing I made this weekend was Blackberry Pie in a Jar. This was actually the second time I made it and I think the first time I made it I liked it better...the first time, I used half blackberries and half raspberries so it was less tart. I also omitted the extra butter and just sprinkled a little bit of cinnamon sugar on top of the crust (after poking some holes). These were really fun to make because they were perfect little individual sized pies! Much more exciting than messy slices! Along the note of messy, however, a piece of advice- put the filled jars on a cookie sheet when baking because despite poking holes, it always ended up leaking overboard out of the jar!

August.

In New York real estate, August is the busiest month of the year. So it comes as no surprise then, that I have been incredibly busy. Everyday there's new apartments to see, new ads to make, advertising to do, apartments to show (and of course, haggling to be done to try to get people to rent said apartments). In some ways however, it has been relaxing too. Because I work near my apartment, between doing all of these things, I often have some time to go back to and eat a homemade meal, or organize for a little bit at a time before rushing back to apartment showings.

Tonight was one of the first times in a while now that I've had time to sit down and "play" with some tea (currently, I'm still experimenting with a Taiwanese tea I received- I think I'm getting a better handle on it now). After spending a lot of time organizing this evening, it was very relaxing. Having a clean and calm environment really does make such a difference in drinking tea and I've really been enjoying the new furniture I got recently. It seems to make everything else seem more, "homey".

I wish I could say there was more of a purpose to this post, but really I just wanted to express my own contentment.

I can't wait to go to The Tea Gallery/Mandarin's Tea Room tomorrow! (well, today, technically)

New Furniture!

One of the tenants that I've been working with offered to sell me some of their furniture because they didn't want to deal with moving it. I gladly took it off their hands and yesterday happily moved it into my apartment.

This is the first piece- it's a beautiful handmade Mexican chest. Each side opens up for storage (and I was able to store away a lot of things because it's so big!)

Glowing dogs!

And I also got a china hutch which has worked well to store all of my teapots, cups, saucers and other such things. Unfortunately the door broke when moving it, so I have it sitting off to the side and will have to repair it later with some wood glue :(

Raw Vegan Almond Milk!

A few months ago, I cut out drinking milk almost entirely, so since then, I've been drinking soy and almond milk. While store bought almond milk is healthier than soy milk, I don't like the fact that there are so many "other" ingredients and it's much more processed (I like to try to stick to foods where I understand what most of the ingredients are). Earlier this week, I came across this interesting recipe for Raw Vegan Almond Milk

It's surprisingly simple, so I figured, why not try it? I soaked about half a dozen almonds in water overnight, and threw them in the blender with about 22-ish oz (I really didn't measure it) of water along with a pinch of salt and about a teaspoon of agave nectar and blended away! To strain it, I used a large mesh tea strainer. Overall, I think it turned out pretty well, I think mine probably came out as "skim" so next time I'll try adding more almonds but I'm definitely planning on doing it again. After all, it's cheap, easy and healthy- what's not to like?

Sketches 2!

And here are some sketches from Florence.

Sketches!

Yes, I came back from Istanbul over a month ago, but I finally realized I should have uploaded some of my sketches from the trip...Here are some selections from my sketch book in Istanbul.