Step by Step: Simply Scrumptious Banana Pancakes

Today: FOOD blog.

A few weeks ago I called my mom to get her pancake recipe, feeling hungry for pancakes. When she heard my request she reminded me that "You don't like my pancakes, Masumi" (In Japanese of course). So she decided to do what she's been doing often lately when I ask her for her recipe. That is, sending recipes of food that is similar to her food, but not exactly hers. No I don't question her about it since the recipes she sends turn out tasting awesome. :)

So she sent me a Japanese recipe for pancakes. It was the best pancakes I have ever tasted, seriously. I liked it so much that I'm hoping that somebody else will try it out! :)

Simply Scrumptious Banana Pancakes

Ingredients:
Mlik: ~175 ml.
Flour: 90-95 grams
Sugar: 30g
Baking Powder: 1 tsp 
One medium egg
One banana
Condensed Milk: As desired

Step 1:
Thoroughly mix the sugar and egg in a bowl.

Step 2:
Add milk in the bowl, and do NOT mix thoroughly. Lightly mix it. 

Step 3:
Use this sifter to add the flour and baking powder.

Step 4:
Scoop your desired amount of pancake mix onto your pan.
After you pour it onto the pan, cut very thin slices of bananas and add them in.
*If you cut the bananas too thick, only the bananas will be cooked well when you flip the pancake over.

Step 5:
After the pancakes are cooked, drizzle condensed milk on top.
This condensed milk matches very well with the banana pancakes! :)

I tried using my bunny & bear shapes! Enjoy :)

Masumi

How Your Food can Taste Better from Within

A while back my husband had shown me a discovery that he made about how to better enjoy your food while eating. :O

He told me to try consciously exhaling while chewing my food, and then to try inhaling while still eating. It was crazy. The food tasted better while I was exhaling than while inhaling! Chadsen, being smart explained that "smelling and breathing both have a major factor in determining how good your food tastes. Exhaling seems to engage more of the taste of what you eat." Today I tried this concept again while eating the Creme Brulee from Porto's, and oh how it tasted so delicious, especially when exhaling! (Sounds freaky haha) 

I challenge you to try it, see what happens :)

I realized that I do an overload of pictures per post, so I'll try to cut write more often with less pictures. Sound alright?

Food:  

Chadsen's first braised dish. Delish!

Ingredients:
Beef Chuck: 2 regular steaks
Baby carrots: approximately 1 cup
Onions: 1/2
Salt: As desired (we put ~1/2 Tbsp)
Pepper: few shakes
Cilantro (optional topping)

Recipe:
Begin to braise the beef for about 1 hr.
Cut the onions into cubes
Boil the carrots & onions while the beef is cooking.
After the beef is braised, add it to the boiled vegetables in a plate.
Add salt & pepper
Add cilantro if desired.

This Thanksgiving my side of the family again celebrated by making and eating sushi! (I forgot to take pictures at the delicious Kat family Thanksgiving dinner) X(
Some food was made, some bought.

As strange as eating sushi for Thanksgiving may sound, I found out that we might be pretty close to the origins of Thanksgiving! The historian on this Youtube video stated that the pioneers actually ate a lot of seafood for their Thanksgiving haha!
Hope he's not wrong, but if so feel free to correct me plz :O

Home-"made"

My pop & mum

Chicken Karaage

This is the Creme Brulee which had the enhancement of flavor due to exhaling while eating!
(It tasted amazing even without breathing out though :) )

 Sunshine:

Chadsen's dog.
My favorite dog. I miss him :(

Cute, no?

"Shifu is not impressed." - Chadsen

Mimi's growth is nice but spatially, it is becoming a little problem.

 Masumi

Contemplation: Graduate School

Upon completion of this upcoming Spring quarter, I'll be done my BA Social Work program at CSULA. Time has been approaching to start thinking about a masters program, but this graduate program ordeal has been boggling my mind for weeks. It's been making my eyebrows look like >:( for so long, they almost hurt. I had originally intended on getting a Masters in Social Work, but throughout my studies, I have begun to wonder:

Do I still want to study Social Work for Graduate School? Taking classes at this institution had been mostly a negative experience for me, in a sense where I felt rather dumb and bored during class. In the classes I didn't feel challenged to learn, everything taught was very repetitive. These feelings of course may be due to my own lack of diving into the texts as much as I should have, not getting more involved during class, or it may simply be due to the professors who taught the class. Something tells me that it may have been the program, maybe I didn't fit with it well? If the classes taught at other colleges are the same as the ones at my school, I definitely don't think I want to study it for my masters. Don't misunderstand though please, this doesn't mean that I don't have a passion for helping people make a change in their lives, that's still what I want to do as a career, help! The question is whether Social Work is the career choice. I love what the major lets you do, don't enjoy studying it so far, besides a few aspects of it.

There are a few other educational studies that I am looking into. The main one is the Masters in Public Policy Program. Throughout my SW studies, I have always looked through the lens of the big, macro perspective in helping people, and with an MPP you can definitely help on the big scale, since it's about policies. :O Then the question becomes, "Would you be able to give up counseling and the various social services services that a MSW would allow you to do, such as medical SW, clinical counseling, etc?" Again, I still want to be a disaster work volunteer in my elderly years, and with an MSW you can actually work on public policy, but not in such a wide range as the MPP program allows.

Although my classes seemed like a drag, my internship has been such a great, rewarding experience since I get to practice social work skills in communicating with people who are striving for improvement in their lives.

You know, something this important needs time to think about. 

Game Plan: Being an easily stressed out, worried person, I'm going to try relaxing and thinking it over, keeping an eye on things I enjoy and don't enjoy doing. I'll go over all of my educational interests until it narrows down. 

Next week my husband and I are planning to attend an MPP informational session, so things should clear up from there. Giving myself a year to think about graduate school has taken a big burden off of my shoulders, allowing time for me to investigate and discover what career I want to have in my future years. My real goal is again to be a good mother in the future, but at the same time I really want to be able to help with the finance and one day support my parents (I love mum & dad) with a career that I love. There are other things that I would love to study though, but not as a career.

If you can tell, I'm quite in a educationally mental mess, but I'm determined to figure this out. I can't wait to figure it out.

Sunshine:

HUSBAND: Until recently I had seen Social Work in a dark light because of my bad experiences with the classes. After talking to my husband about my feelings toward the major (he being a psychology major) I had come to see it as I had originally saw it before coming to CSULA, a career of hope! It feels so nice to see the Social Work career positively. 

Mormon Girl for Obama

It's been a while!

Two weeks ago I began suffering from the flu. When I had thought the sickness was starting to leave this week, a friendly sinus infection came to visit and has decided to stick around. For years I hadn't been sick for over a day or two, so this is an unusual case. :O

I felt so grateful for my sweet husband who kept prioritizing my health and took such good care of me during these stressful times. Only if he hadn't gotten sick from me, sorry about that! Mom, thanks for visiting and taking care of me, bringing along delicious desserts. :) I'm also grateful for my Kat parents for bringing food and goodies. Thank you thank you, thank you.

Content Relevant to Title:
So many people must be tired of hearing about the presidential elections like this girl who cried over it. At the same time, I know so many people look forward to making their vital contribution to electing our president who will be serving us for four years, like I am! Being sick, and having such an important event coming up, I cannot miss my chance to discuss who I am voting for with hopes not to arouse any contentious feelings. I always try my best in general to have an open eye and clear vision when making judgments and this presidential election was no exception. 

Being a Mormon and a future employee in the Social Services, I had the chance to hear opinions from both the Republican and Democratic voters. Of course many of them spoke with much emotion when sharing their political stance and personal choice. It had bothered me how fellow citizens bash on other parties or presidential candidates because those remarks seem full of pride, and it creates separation. Chadsen said "You can disagree without being disagreeable. It doesn't give you  permission to be rude to other people". 100% agreed, pahtnah. I see so many people making very "unfriendly" remarks toward the other parties. Although we may not agree on the systems or ideas of differing parties, we ought to know from history that segregation does not create a better nation. It creates animosity, and it does not create a productive world. At least in my opinion.

Going back to the subject, as Mormons my husband and I have been wanting to like Mitt Romney for quite a while because, he's Mormon. People must think that we are voting Romney simply on the basis that, we're also Mormon. I do remember thinking, "It would be nice to have someone with the same living standard and beliefs guide our nation." After watching the presidential debates, hearing both of their speeches at the DNC and RNC, who did I pick? I have decided to vote for President Obama. I feel that he has been and still will be a great president, a wonderful representative of our nation. I can almost say that it seems clear to me that he is the right one after observations. He has been a great president these past four years, and I feel that another four years will only do us good. He first hand knows how the middle-class struggles, giving an example of his grandparents attaining an education during his DNC speech and expresses desire to keep helping the middle class. I love how he encourages citizenship amongst us citizens to counter the common selfish thought of "What will America do for me?" He is realistic. He is such a symbol of hope to me. I feel connected to him. The bills that he has passed shows how he cares about the those whom he represents and serves. I love how he invested in renewable energy. Mitt Romney, if elected may do good for the Nation, but I feel that his concern is not as much about the people but rather more for the economy as dictated in his presidential speech. I do not know how or when my husband and I would attend graduate school if Obamacare was taken away. From watching both candidates, I sense that Obama has a greater concern for the American people as he has proven over the past four years, as Romney has a greater concern for the economy, which he himself has proven his skills in financial development over the years.

Simply said, you can say that I like "Bronco Bamma" more. I want a president like him to look at as my national leader. I want to support a president who cares about the people. Regardless of who gets elected, I hope to remember that the position which both candidates are striving to attain come with such heavy responsibility. We ought to honor both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney for wanting this immense duty of being president, which involves unimaginable hours of work. 

This is in no way to say that my opinion is best and I am right, so hopefully people won't be offended. I did want to disclose who I am voting for and the reason behind this decision. :) I strongly encourage you all, if you haven't, to watch at least their presidential speeches and if possible even their "highlights of their debates" which is shown on news agencies like CNN. Ask yourselves who you are voting for and why. This is such a wonderful privilege for us to be involved in choosing our president to represent us for the next four years. For those who are of a certain political party, please try taking off your hat for a moment and think about this election as citizen instead of a party member, because after all we're fellow brothers & sisters in the USA. :))

FOOD:   

This is a refreshing salad that I quite enjoyed!
Ingredients
1 Cucumber (big)
3 ume-boshi (Japanese sour plum)
Sliced green onions (as desired)
Ground white sesame (1 Tbsp)
Miso (2 tsp)

1. Smash the cucumber, making sure it is cracked. Then cut them into bite-sized pieces.
2. Mix the green onions, white sesame & miso in a bowl.
3. Add the ume-boshi & cucumber.

Using a real tomato instead of tomato sauce makes the biggest difference in your spaghetti. Try it! :)
I will post cooking instructions in the next post!

I love mumsy for bringing this. Sakura-mochi <33

Can you see the witch & bat pasta?
Since we were sick on Halloween we celebrated with these Halloween pasta purchased from Bed Bath & Beyond into our chicken noodle soup.

Sunshine:

From: Dear Husband

Cal Poly Pomona corn maze!

They like to snuggle together a lot.

Where is Shifu?

Snuggle snuggle snuggle. Why so cute?

 

Masumi