Pickled red onions

For some reason I bought three red onions for making the pickled nectarines, I don't know why. I don't normally use red onions in my cooking, I prefer sweet onions. So, I had a lot of left over onion that I needed to do something with.

I found a recipe for pickling them (and if you haven't realized I really do love just about everything pickled) at Closet Cooking here.

Because I had sooo much onion I chopped them up and put them in a half-gallon jar (just like I did to the nectarines, I guess it is a lucky thing that I have so many empty kimchi jars) and I quadrupled the recipe.


Both jars are cooling down on my counter right now, waiting to go into the fridge.

Spicy pickled nectarines

I found a recipe for pickling nectarines in the refrigerator by City Mama here and wanted to try it out.

The recipe calls for seven nectarines, but I could only fit four in a half-gallon jar as you can see in the picture.


I mostly just followed the directions, I used minced garlic I had frozen and I crushed the red peppers.


You can see the garlic floating at the bottom, and the onions are all on the top.

I haven't tried it yet, I just made it today.

Hello again.

Been away for a long time again. Oops.

I am writing two different blog posts right now. One about Korean dramas and one about the Korean language.

Is there anything anyone would like to see about either topic?

Thanks!

A brief update.

I lost all the pictures that I took of Jasmine since she was born. Luckily my husband has some of the pictures on his computer, but I am sad.

It is June, but our heater still comes on at night. >.<

This weekend we are going to go to the Valhalla Renaissance Faire.

I hate computers, especially mine

So.... we upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 and I think I lost everything. Pictures, essays, writing, work, bookmarks from the internet.

How to cook seaweed soup (miyeok guk 미역국) redux

So, I went to the local Vietnamese store to look for the seaweed for miyeok guk 미역국, but I didn't find it there. Then last weekend I went to the Korean store in Sparks, NV, Yim's Asian Supermarket. I found the seaweed there and took some pictures with my cell phone, sorry, but they are low quality.

This is the seaweed in Korean, and written in Romanized from the Japanese pronunciation, ito-wakame.


And I believe the black writing here in the center is the Japanese name of the seaweed, I am not 100% sure, so if anyone can read it please let me know.

Updating the windows

It may finally be spring here. I say may, because it hailed last Wednesday. :(

So here is what our first window used to look like.


There are snowflake clings from Wal-Mart, and kirigami leaf decorations. The idea for the leaves came from Zakka Life, I used origami paper.

Here is the second window.


On top we have shape and color clings from Dollar Tree. And on the bottom is an tree idea from Frugal Family Fun Blog that can be found here.

We are currently doing some crafts to update our windows, so hopefully I'll be posting some more pictures soon.

Tracing Lines

I often get a lot of people finding my blog by searching for tracing lines.

So I will now redirect you to donnayoung.org, more specifically their handwriting section. They have a great beginning manuscript section.

I hope that helps everyone that needs trace lines.

EDIT: I found another great website for tracing lines, this one allows you to type in your own words, http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ you can also type in words to be traced in cursive.

How to cook seaweed soup (miyeok guk 미역국)

EDIT: 3/16/2011 My mother visited last week and it was during her birthday, so I made 미역국.

My poor, often neglected blog.

If you are using a Microsft OS and cannot see the Korean characters, but you want to be able to you need to download and install the East Asian Language pack.

미역(miyeok) means seaweed/seaplant/sea vegetable. 국(guk) means soup, a broth based soup, e.g. chicken noodle soup would be considered a 국, but cream of mushroom would not.

I got the basic recipe for this from Maangchi on her page for miyuk-guk, there are many ways to romanize 미역국. Wikipedia also has a brief article and very basic recipe on their site.

So, starting with Maangchi's recipe I modified it to suit my tastes.

I forgot to take a picture of the seaweed package so you would know what kind to buy, I will try to remember to do it next time and add the picture to this post.

EDIT:5/25/11 I have pictures of the packages of seaweed now. http://homeschoolingjasmine.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-cook-seaweed-soup-miyeok-guk.html

Okay, Maangchi's recipe starts will 1 cup of dried seaweed and has you soak it for an hour, well I just took it and put it in a jar with a lid and soaked it over night, so I could start cooking right away in the morning.

I drained the seaweed.


And placed it in a large pot with 16 cups of water, like the recipe says, but I placed it on low heat so I could get the rest of the ingredients ready.


Then I took an onion and halved it, then sliced it.


Then cut the slices in half.


If you are like me you can do the other half of the onion and add it to the soup also.


I couldn't find beef brisket at the store, so I bought lean stew meat.


As you can see it is still a little fatty, so I took the pieces trimmed them down and cut them into smaller pieces.


After that I turned the heat up to get the soup to start boiling. I add half a coup of frozen sliced garlic.


I cannot remember where I read about this, but if you use a lot of garlic and would rather not use the store bought preminced or crushed garlic, you can do it yourself at home and just freeze it. I grow garlic, but I use more than I can grow, so I will also buy it from the store and peel it, slice it and put the pieces in a old water bottle and freeze them.


You can also mince the garlic and put plastic wrap on a cookie sheet, spread the garlic out on the sheet, freeze the sheet and after it is frozen cut the garlic into about 1 inch squares, which is about 2 tablespoons and put the squares into a plastic zip-loc type bag in the freezer. I wish I remember where I learned this from to give proper credit, but oh well, probably some sort of bento site. You can also do this with green onions.

I also forgot to take a picture of the fish sauce and sesame oil, to show what brands I use and I am all out of them right now, hopefully I remember to take a picture of them later.

After everything boils for about 20 minutes you are done and have a batch of seaweed soup.


I normally make a double batch and freeze most of it. If you do plan on freezing it don't add tofu. I found out the hard way that tofu does not freeze well and had to throw out a lot of soup :(

If you are wondering how kids will like this, Jasmine is 4 years-old and eats it all the time.

Horribly behind on blogging, so sorry.

12/24/2010
OMG. So much dust on this blog. Sorry.

So, the co-op finished a week before Thanksgiving. I think it went okay, not great, but not horrible.

2/21/2011
Eeek! I just found this post in my drafts section, of course not finished, and barely written so let me finish it.

Let's see. Okay, so the co-op classes from last semester that I taught were journalism and crafts, they went okay. This semester I am only teaching one class, cooking and I think it is going much better than the classes last semester. Jasmine is taking a preschool class both hours and really enjoys it.

Jasmine is still taking taekwondo (태권도) at Carson ATA. We stopped bowling, it was fine the first two weeks, but then I think Jasmine just got bored of it, she whined the whole time. We are fine with that, she isn't at a point yet were she gets the idea of scoring and improving the score, plus the lightest ball they had was six pounds which was still very heavy for her.

Last semester I took Drawing 1 and Survey Art History 1. The drawing class was really good and I am taking Drawing 2 this semester. The Survey Art History 1 I took online and it was horrible, there was zero feedback from the teacher, so I will take the second part at the school. I plan on getting my associates of fine arts here, at Western Nevada College, but I don't know if I will continue on, probably not until Jasmine is older.

Jasmine is still going to WNC's child development center while I am in classes, I think she likes it, mostly because she gets to play with other kids. There are only a few kids on the street that we live on and they are all older and in high school.

I started a book reviews page, hopefully you can see the tab up above. There isn't anything there right now, but I think that I really need to get back into the habit of writing, and hopefully this will help and maybe it will remind me to update the main blog more. I am planning to go back and do reviews for all the books previously listed here and more, especially since Jasmine loves books even more now. She will sit in her room and "read" her books, she makes up stories based on the pictures.

I think I might also add a tab for my crafts, so I can post pictures of the projects that I finish, but I need to find the cable for the digital camera first. Yes, I lost the special cable for the camera, and it is a new camera and will only take this one cable. Grrr. I hate when I do that, but I do it all the time. Oh, just found it, my husband had it by his computer.

I also think that I might add a tab for cooking, branch out the blog a little bit and maybe that will help with the updates and less digital dust.

Also, if anyone has any tips on how to get a finicky eater to eat in a daycare/school setting they would be much appreciated. Jasmine is like me and won't eat breakfast, I pack her lunch for the daycare. I thought I would finally get to do all the fun bento style lunches, but she won't eat lunch. She will eat the snack during snack time, but that is it. So, she doesn't eat her first real meal until we get home at 2:30pm. Obviously she isn't starving, she will eat the food, it is what she eats when she gets home, she just won't eat it at the daycare.

Hopefully this post makes sense to you all.