Tsukune

Tried out making my first Tsukune following Tastemade Japan's recipe!
Tsukune is Japanese meatball often cooked on skewers. It goes well with soy based sauce. 

I like this recipe because it's more like meat pancake so it's so much easier to prepare and cook.

It's great for side dish or eat it as a meal with rice bowl. Try it out!




Tsukene:
- 150g ground pork or ground chicken
- 100g firm tofu
- 1/4 stick of naganegi(Japanese leek)
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1 white egg, set yolk aside
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp corn starch
- 1 tsp salt

Sauce:
- 50g enoki mushroom
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp mirin(japanese cooking wine)
- 1 tbsp sake
- 3 tbsp potato starch with 3 tbsp water, mixed

Garnish:
- 1 cup, green onion chopped
- 1 yolk


1. Mix all Tsukune ingredient in a bowl very well.

2. Preheat the medium size skillet to med-high, pour the mix in.

3. Flatten the mix into pancake form, spread it to skillet size, make sure you have enough space to flip the meat pancake.

4. Cook for 6-8min. Flip then cook for another 5min. Check inside is fully cooked and set on a plate.

5. In the same skillet, cook enoki for few min. Then add Sauce ingredients until thickens.

6. Pour the sauce on meat pancake.

7. Garnish with green onion and yolk.

T-shirt Rug

Things you can do with unused t-shirts.
There's always that free t-shirt giveaways or you don't wear anymore.

I used them to make into yarn and crochet them into rug. I bought 5 drawers from IKEA to put into my studio but I didn't want to damage my wooden floor. It was hard to find exact rug size I want and it took a while but I choose to crochet my own rug that fits just right!

I started with making a t-shirt into strips and spool into a ball. The best  fabric to use is an old bed sheets! That makes lot of yarn!

My studio is still a mess to show yet, but hopefully in the winter I can spend time to decorate the place the way I want it.

Outfit Inspiration 6

Comfortable casual wear with boyfriend jeans. T-shirt is from Pixar's Up from Hot Topic.

Hot Topic : "Adventure is out there" t-shirt / Orb : leather belt / Joe Fresh : boyfriend jeans / Converse : chuck taylor ox casual shoes

Little Smile

Tried out another drawing of new brush I used.

Homemade Mayonnaise

One good thing about making your own mayo is that you only make the amount you need to not waste them. I found the recipe here for original recipe that you can try.

The recipe here, I modified based on what I have in my cabinet, and it still tasted good. The biggest change I made in the original recipe is that I reduced the oil amount to 1/4 cup instead of 3/4 cup. So essentially this is low-fat mayo recipe that I modified to my taste.

To add more flavor I used my taco seasoning recipe for fish taco.



Seasoned Mayonnaise:
-1 large egg yolk
-1 1/2 tsp lemon juice or lime juice
-1 tsp white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
-1 1/4 tsp dijon mustard or honey mustard
-1 tsp salt
-1/4 cup canola oil

Optional:
-1 tsp taco seasoning, add more for preference

1. Whisk every ingredient except for canola oil. Whisk for 30-40 second.

2. While whisking, add canola oil 1/4 tsp at a time until it's nice and thick. Add more salt if needed.

3. Then add taco seasoning for more flavor.





It's bass season right now so we decided to have nice chunky deep fried fish taco with the mayo!
You can check out here for more bass fish recipe!

Quick Sketch

Quick sketch I did for experimentation with brushes.

How Many Expressions Do You Have?

Have you bought so many frames(like me) because they were on sale or you don't have picture to frame yet?

Here is a little activity you can do with your kids or couple do together!




I bought this poster size frame from IKEA that I wanted to put on the wall but didn't have picture to frame it. So what Tim and I did was reuse the back side of the paper that comes with the frame, painted yellow circle and each of us took turns to draw faces.

It ended it up being fun mini project so I wanted to share this!







Materials:
- Yellow marker or yellow pencil crayon
- Black marker
- 1 photo frame


1. Flip the paper that comes with the frame and measure how any yellow circle you want.




2. Fill in the circle. You can remove the matte board in case it gets dirty.






3. Take turn with your partner to and draw funny expressions in the each circle.




Ta-da~!
Here is a temporary art piece that you can frame on the wall until you want to replace them. Because this was an activity we did together back in 2014, even still we have it framed.

Give it a try!