Author: Allison

Categories
TikTok

Banana chocolate-chip muffins

I love bananas, but I don’t tend to buy them very often.

Because… fruit flies. They always attract fruit flies.

But every once in a while I’ll buy them because maybe there’s another recipe, or they’re on sale, or they just sounded really really good… and of course I never eat them up in time before they start to go brown and attract fruit flies.

And so this is one of the things that I really love making with bananas that have definitely started to overripen a little bit.

I love muffins. I really really love banana chocolate chip muffins. And these have the added benefit of having pecans in them, which totally makes them healthy! Totally legit for breakfast.

These are just sweet, tasty, but filling muffins, and they’re really really good. And it’s the perfect thing to do if you’ve got some bananas going old.

When I bought bananas for the kiwi muffins, I ended up with a bunch leftover.

We didn’t get around to eating them before they started to overripen, which means OH DARN guess I have to make something with them.

I love banana bread, but given the choice I always end up making banana chocolate chip muffins. They’re pretty much my favorite type of muffin!

Banana chocolate chip muffins

adapted from Kitchen Confidante

Ingredients
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup (half a stick) unsalted butter
  • 1 egg
  • 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 cup chopped pecans (optional)
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips, plus more for topping
Cooking Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two muffin pans with cupcake liners.
  2. Cream sugar and butter. Mix in eggs, one at a time, then add the bananas.
  3. Sift or whisk flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add pecans if using.
  4. Add dry ingredients and buttermilk to egg mixture, alternating until incorporated. Try to end with the dry ingredient addition, and be sure not to over mix. Stir in chocolate chips.
  5. Fill each muffin tin 3/4 full, then top with remaining chocolate chips.
  6. Bake muffins for about 18 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

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Categories
Maki Recipes TikTok YouTube

Seven Treasures Roll

What do you treasure in life – aside from living beings because you know, we all treasure our parents, our friends, our partner, our pets… but what are the things in life that you treasure?

For me… I treasure peace and quiet.

I treasure snuggly blankets.

I treasure the internet because it can be a trash fire at times but it gives me a way to express myself without really having to, you know, deal with people.

I treasure good food, obviously.

I treasure dancing. I’ve danced all my life and it’s something that even to this day really lights me up inside.

I treasure fuzzy socks. You can probably find me year-round wearing fuzzy socks, I love them so much.

And I treasure books with satisfyingly happy endings.

What do you treasure?

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Categories
TikTok

Pink and green triangle kazari sushi

Most of my life I thought of myself as not a creative person.

There’s so many times I’ve said, oh, I’m just not creative enough for that. Oh, that’s so cool that other people are doing that, but I’m just not creative.

And for me, it felt like the truth.

I didn’t have that many opportunities to be really really creative.

In dancing, it was always doing somebody else’s choreography. With programming, yes, you could be creative with solutions, but you’re kind of always given a specific problem to solve and then you have to figure out how to solve it, so it’s not really go create anything that you want to create.

And the thing with the sushi is I am all of a sudden getting the opportunity to be super super creative on a daily basis.

I have to be so so so creative and when you’re given that opportunity… all of a sudden the creativity begins to flow.

Weird, that.

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Categories
YouTube

Tosilog

I was not exposed to Filipino food at all, growing up. I had never been to a Jolleebee, never tried adobo, never even had lumpia until I was well into adulthood!

But between streaming, youtube, making more filipino friends, and finding more filipino restaurants in our area… that has completely changed in the last few years.

I can quite enthusiastically say I love filipino food, and I’ve cooked quite a few different dishes.

BUT one dish that I’ve sort of tried, but never actually made, is the filipino breakfast dish, tosilog.

Cured pork belly, garlicky fried rice, and a fried egg. Everything about that sounds amazing, and another fishcoin redemption by busdriv3r was the perfect excuse to make it happen!

Our ever so useful sous chef, shrimpy, made the tocino for us – the cured pork belly.

So all we have left to do is make the sinangag and put it all together!

Sinangag is garlic fried rice. And it’s super simple to make! We’re using a recipe from Panlasang Pinoy.

Start by crushing five cloves of garlic. I already peeled my garlic, but if you crush it with the papery skin still on, it’ll be a lot easier to remove.

I… just like peeling my garlic by hand. I dunno, it’s a thing. shrug

Pour a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a wide pan, and add your crushed garlic. You want the garlic to slowly cook as you heat the oil, so add it while the pan is still cold.

Warm this over medium heat, mixing occasionally, until the garlic has started to turn golden-brown and smells nutty and wonderful. Don’t let it get too dark, it’ll continue cooking with the rice and you don’t want to burn it!

Next, add your rice. Ideally, you’ll be using day-old rice that’s been in the refrigerator overnight. This will help dry it out, so it fries up nicely. If you have jasmine rice that’s the preferred type, but I’m going with sushi rice that was leftover from the sushi I’ve been making for TikTok.

Oh… have I not mentioned that yet? I’ll be making a video about that soon, but in the meantime if you’re on TikTok, let me know – I’m SushiDayTV!

Okay – back to the sinangag. When you add your rice, be careful! This is a good time to use a splatter screen or a lid if you have one – the rice is popping EVERYWHERE. It’s a serious danger zone, my gosh.

Break the rice down with a wooden spoon, since your refrigerated rice is probably all clumped together. Then stir it into the garlic and oil.

Once everything is combined, you can let the rice sit, only stirring once in a while. This will give it a nice crispy crust.

After a few minutes have passed, add about a half teaspoon of salt, then cook for another few minutes, until the rice starts to brown.

Your sinangag is now ready! Serve it with some sort of protein – such as the tocino that Shrimpy made – and a fried egg. And voila – you’ve got a tasty filipino breakfast!

Sinangag

from Panlasang Pinoy

Ingredients
  • 2 1/2 tbsp cooking oil (vegetable or canola)
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 3 cups cooked white rice, preferably leftover jasmine rice
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
Cooking Directions
  1. Heat the cooking oil in a wide pan.
  2. While the cooking oil is being heated, add the crushed garlic. Note: make sure that the oil is not hot when you add the garlic. Let the garlic slowly cook while the oil gets heated until it becomes golden brown and crisp.
  3. Add-in the rice; gently stir to distribute the ingredients. Continue to cook for 3 minutes.
  4. Sprinkle the salt over the rice and continue to mix all the ingredients gently. Cook for another 3 to 5 minutes.
  5. Transfer to a serving plate. Serve with your favorite entrée.
  6. Share and enjoy!

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Categories
YouTube

Tocino

If something involves pork belly, I’m pretty much guaranteed to love it, and this tocino is no exception!

It’s a Filipino cured pork dish, often eaten with sinangag (garlic fried rice) and a fried egg for breakfast. I chose to use pork belly, but other cuts of pork such as the butt or the ham are common as well!

Tocino

from Foxy Folksy

Ingredients
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 tbsp salt
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1/4 cup fruit juice (pineapple, apple), (optional)
  • 1/2 tbsp finely ground black pepper
  • 1 tbsp rice flour (optional)
  • 2 lbs pork (butt, ham, or belly), cut into 1/4″ thick slices
Cooking Directions
  1. In a big bowl, combine all ingredients except for the pork. Mix well.
  2. Add the pork and mix well. Mix at least several minutes, to an hour or more.
  3. Transfer to a covered container and place in the fridge. Cure up to 3 days.
  4. To cook, boil the tocino with 2 cups of water in a pan. When most of the water is gone and the sauce starts to thicken, you can add 3-4 tablespoon of cooking oil if needed (fattier cuts shouldn’t need oil).
  5. Let the pork cook over medium heat until the sauce caramelizes and meat is browned.

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Categories
TikTok YouTube

Glasses kazari sushi

I really love the trend of better representation in media, because stereotypes are just such a weird thing.

They’re weird for people who fit the stereotype, because then they get pigeonholed and they’re only allowed to be that one thing.

But it also sucks for people who don’t fit the stereotype, because it feels like, am I allowed to be this thing if I don’t look a certain way, if I don’t act a certain way?

Me, I’m a nerd, I’m not a dude with glasses but I’m totally a nerd.

I’m programmer, I geek out about science, I love math, I read science fiction and fantasy all the freaking time.

By all ways of looking at it, I am absolutely a nerd but I don’t fit that stereotype.

So a lot of the time I felt like I don’t fit in enough to be considered a nerd.

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Categories
TikTok YouTube

White flower kazari sushi

Back when I was dancing as a teenager, I used to have a tradition for every show.

On the first night of the show, my mom and I would stop at a flower shop on the way to the theater and we would pick up a huge bouquet of carnations.

And then when we got to the theater everyone would get one. Every dancer, every teacher, the costumers, the stagehands… everybody gets a flower as kind of a thank you for putting together the show.

I loved getting carnations for everybody but oddly enough, my favorite flower that you kind of get any time you get carnations is those baby’s breath that came with it.

I don’t know what it is about them that they’re so delicate, but I just love them so much. So I would kind of keep those for myself.

Everybody else gets a carnation, but the baby’s breath… those are for me.

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Categories
TikTok

Poo-Shi

So many of us have creative dreams that we never quite pursue.

Maybe you want to be an artist or a writer or a dancer or a musician or anything where you’re creating something… but you’re scared.

What if you’re no good? What if nobody likes it? What if you just can’t do it?

I’ve had a lot of friends come to me and ask how do I do it, and the thing that I tell them every single time is: make your shitty art.

And that might sound like an insult, but it’s the truth… no matter what you try to do, you’re going to be terrible at it at first.

Your art is gonna suck, and that’s okay, because if you ever want to be any good you’ve got to get through the shit first.

So make your shitty art, share it with the world, and someday you’ll be amazing.

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Categories
TikTok

Tiger Stripe Sushi

I love the practice of referring to stretch marks as tiger stripes. It just sounds so fierce.

I haven’t been pregnant yet – I have no children, but I do have stretch marks on my legs from when I hit puberty and my hips just blossomed like crazy.

So I’ve got these stretch marks on the outsides of my legs, and society tells us that’s something that you should hide: hide your stretch marks, hide your cellulite, hide any imperfections about your body.

But the thing is – the human body is nothing to be ashamed about. We’re all beautiful in our own ways, and all of this is just natural.

So I let my stretch marks shine, and hey – they’re tiger stripes.

That’s fierce.

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