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Save more on selected Buffalo treats
From September 3rd through 9th, you can save more on selected Buffalo treats.
**Buffalo tendon
5"-7"and 11"-15" sizes are available.These are made in USA from Buffalo that received No antibiotic,No growth hormone in their life.This treat is softer chew and great snack.
** 5"-7"Grass-fed Buffalo tendon
single: Normally,it is $0.79,but with sales price,it is $0.74
10 pieces: Normally,it is $7.66,but with sales price,it is $7.17
** 11"-15" Grass-fed Buffalo tendon
single:Normally,It is $2.47,but with sales price,it is $2.31
10 pieces: Normally,it is $23.90,but with sales price,it is $22.58
** Buffalo Trachea 6"
Buffalo Trachea 6" in size.These are made from Buffalo that received No antibiotic,No growth hormone in their life. Buffalo trachea is 2-3times more in weight,and a little thicker than regular beef trachea. This treat is crunchy,and great snack for dogs.
Watch how much Palette enjoy her Buffalo Trachea bellow. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from face book,please click here to watch video.
Palette and Buffalo Trachea
single:Normally,it is $3.38, with sales price,it will be $3.24
5 pieces:Normally,it is $16.50,with sales price,it will be $16.18
10 pieces:Normally,it is $32.20,with sales price,it will be $31.29
**This Buffalo trachea's sales price is valid while supply lasts
You can read/watch more on Buffalo trachea in the taste testing blog entry titled "Palette's note:Buffalo Trachea". Please click here to read the entry.
**Dehydrated grass-fed buffalo tripe strip
Dehydrated grass-fed Buffalo Tripe 6"and 12"available.This treats is crunchy snack. Due to natural products,width of this treat can vary.These are made in USA.
6" single: Normally,it is $1.20,with sales price,it will be $1.13
12" single: Normally,it is $1.70,with sales price,it will be $1.59
12" 10 pieces: Normally,it is $15.91,with sales price,it will be $14.85
**Dehydrated buffalo heart 8 oz
Dehydrated American Buffalo heart made in USA. This treat is sold by 8 oz resealable bag. Great as training treats.
Normally,it is $13.75,but with sales price,it is $13.22
Please enjoy treat hunt for your furry friends!!
** You can get Free shipping with order over $100 (No coupon code required)
** Orders will be shipped on every Monday,Tuesday, every other Wednesday.
** If you order on Saturdays, you can get free GDK treats. For more information on Snack Saturday offer,please click here .
** You can get FREE one count of lamb trachea(Lamb version of Moo-tubes) with every order!
** Watch how much Palette enjoy her Lamb trachea bellow.If you are a blog subscriber or reading from Facebook,please click here to watch the video.
Palette and Lamb Trachea
** We accept only US order,no international order please.
**If you become fan of our Facebook page, you can get "Fanonly"offer,and discounts. Please find "Yassy's Gourmet Dog Kitchen" on Facebook.
To visit our store,please click here or paste and copy the link bellow into your browser. http://yassysgdk.com/main.sc
**Buffalo tendon
5"-7"and 11"-15" sizes are available.These are made in USA from Buffalo that received No antibiotic,No growth hormone in their life.This treat is softer chew and great snack.
** 5"-7"Grass-fed Buffalo tendon
single: Normally,it is $0.79,but with sales price,it is $0.74
10 pieces: Normally,it is $7.66,but with sales price,it is $7.17
** 11"-15" Grass-fed Buffalo tendon
single:Normally,It is $2.47,but with sales price,it is $2.31
10 pieces: Normally,it is $23.90,but with sales price,it is $22.58
** Buffalo Trachea 6"
Buffalo Trachea 6" in size.These are made from Buffalo that received No antibiotic,No growth hormone in their life. Buffalo trachea is 2-3times more in weight,and a little thicker than regular beef trachea. This treat is crunchy,and great snack for dogs.
Watch how much Palette enjoy her Buffalo Trachea bellow. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from face book,please click here to watch video.
Palette and Buffalo Trachea
single:Normally,it is $3.38, with sales price,it will be $3.24
5 pieces:Normally,it is $16.50,with sales price,it will be $16.18
10 pieces:Normally,it is $32.20,with sales price,it will be $31.29
**This Buffalo trachea's sales price is valid while supply lasts
You can read/watch more on Buffalo trachea in the taste testing blog entry titled "Palette's note:Buffalo Trachea". Please click here to read the entry.
**Dehydrated grass-fed buffalo tripe strip
Dehydrated grass-fed Buffalo Tripe 6"and 12"available.This treats is crunchy snack. Due to natural products,width of this treat can vary.These are made in USA.
6" single: Normally,it is $1.20,with sales price,it will be $1.13
12" single: Normally,it is $1.70,with sales price,it will be $1.59
12" 10 pieces: Normally,it is $15.91,with sales price,it will be $14.85
**Dehydrated buffalo heart 8 oz
Dehydrated American Buffalo heart made in USA. This treat is sold by 8 oz resealable bag. Great as training treats.
Normally,it is $13.75,but with sales price,it is $13.22
Please enjoy treat hunt for your furry friends!!
** You can get Free shipping with order over $100 (No coupon code required)
** Orders will be shipped on every Monday,Tuesday, every other Wednesday.
** If you order on Saturdays, you can get free GDK treats. For more information on Snack Saturday offer,please click here .
** You can get FREE one count of lamb trachea(Lamb version of Moo-tubes) with every order!
** Watch how much Palette enjoy her Lamb trachea bellow.If you are a blog subscriber or reading from Facebook,please click here to watch the video.
Palette and Lamb Trachea
** We accept only US order,no international order please.
**If you become fan of our Facebook page, you can get "Fanonly"offer,and discounts. Please find "Yassy's Gourmet Dog Kitchen" on Facebook.
To visit our store,please click here or paste and copy the link bellow into your browser. http://yassysgdk.com/main.sc
Drinks in Japan: Sake
If you were asked to name a few Japanese drinks, things that would come to your mind maybe green tea, sake etc..
What is sake?
Sake is alcoholic drink in Japan, and made from rice,water, and malt. Alcohol percentage is lowered to about 15% by added water to sake before bottling. Sake is staple alcohol drinks in Japan like beer in the states, but difference is that sake can be served either warm or cold.Usually served in pottery bottle called "Tokkuri", along with small sake cup called "ochoko".
Tokkuri bottle opening is narrower than body to prevent heat from escaping from the bottle when it is served warm.
Ochoko has several kinds depending on purpose of serving sake. For ceremonial, such as wedding, sake cup opening is very wide,almost flat/ very shallow cup and this ochoco is called "Sakazuki". As for regular sake cup, you can find one with porcelain with some paintings on it.Regular ochoko sake cup is about the size of shot glass.
Sake is also essential seasoning for Japanese cooking.
How Tokkuri sake bottle is made?
You can watch the video of professional pottery master making Tokkuri sake bottle for Sake.
Tokkuri sake bottle making
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
How sake is made?
You can watch how sake is made.Video is in Japanese so, I will explain what you are seeing in English bellow.
How sake is made
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
The video above explains as followings.
1.Sake making starts from sake rice
2.Sake rice is milled to retrieve the center part of the rice grain
3. Milled sake rice is washed with water by hands
4. Rice will be soaked in water
5. After steaming rice, 1/3 of rice is taken and will be brought to kouji room (malt room)
6. Steamed rice is spread over cedar table, and malt powder is sprinkled over the rice
7. Malt changes rice starch to sugar
8. After 3 days later, malt rice is brought to bigger tank
9. Malt rice, steamed rice, water, and yeast plant are poured into the big tank and fermentation starts
10.Malt changes starch to sugar, yeast plant changes sugar to sake.These changes happen at the same time in the tank
11. After 1 month of fermentation,percentage of alcohol is about 20%.To this sake, water is added to lower the alcohol percentage to about 15%
12. Brewed sake goes through filtration,sterilization, and finally bottling process.
Different kinds of sake
You can find several kinds of sake in Japan.
** Honjozo shu - This is sake that alcohol is added to fermented sake before filtration process
** Junmai shu - This is sake that nothing is added other than water to lower the alcohol percentage before filtration (This is what you saw in the video above)
** Ama zake - This is literally translated to sweetened sake. Generally white cloudy color sake made from fermented rice and alcohol percentage is generally low
** Ryouri shu - sake for cooking
** Sho chu - Distilled drink, made from rice or potatoes with malt.Usually alcohol percentage is higer than sake and at about 25%.
In previous entry titled " Japanese Pickles (Tsu ke mo no) ", I wrote about Japanese unique ingredients " Ume boshi" -pickled plum.
In Japan, you can make green plum liquer called "Ume shu" with green plum,rock sugar, and sho chu. I used to pick plum from "Ume shu" bottle, and ate the plum, I sometime had "Ume shu" drink.
How do you make "Ume shu"; Green plum liquer?
What is sake?
Sake is alcoholic drink in Japan, and made from rice,water, and malt. Alcohol percentage is lowered to about 15% by added water to sake before bottling. Sake is staple alcohol drinks in Japan like beer in the states, but difference is that sake can be served either warm or cold.Usually served in pottery bottle called "Tokkuri", along with small sake cup called "ochoko".
Tokkuri bottle opening is narrower than body to prevent heat from escaping from the bottle when it is served warm.
Ochoko has several kinds depending on purpose of serving sake. For ceremonial, such as wedding, sake cup opening is very wide,almost flat/ very shallow cup and this ochoco is called "Sakazuki". As for regular sake cup, you can find one with porcelain with some paintings on it.Regular ochoko sake cup is about the size of shot glass.
Sake is also essential seasoning for Japanese cooking.
How Tokkuri sake bottle is made?
You can watch the video of professional pottery master making Tokkuri sake bottle for Sake.
Tokkuri sake bottle making
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
How sake is made?
You can watch how sake is made.Video is in Japanese so, I will explain what you are seeing in English bellow.
How sake is made
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
The video above explains as followings.
1.Sake making starts from sake rice
2.Sake rice is milled to retrieve the center part of the rice grain
3. Milled sake rice is washed with water by hands
4. Rice will be soaked in water
5. After steaming rice, 1/3 of rice is taken and will be brought to kouji room (malt room)
6. Steamed rice is spread over cedar table, and malt powder is sprinkled over the rice
7. Malt changes rice starch to sugar
8. After 3 days later, malt rice is brought to bigger tank
9. Malt rice, steamed rice, water, and yeast plant are poured into the big tank and fermentation starts
10.Malt changes starch to sugar, yeast plant changes sugar to sake.These changes happen at the same time in the tank
11. After 1 month of fermentation,percentage of alcohol is about 20%.To this sake, water is added to lower the alcohol percentage to about 15%
12. Brewed sake goes through filtration,sterilization, and finally bottling process.
Different kinds of sake
You can find several kinds of sake in Japan.
** Honjozo shu - This is sake that alcohol is added to fermented sake before filtration process
** Junmai shu - This is sake that nothing is added other than water to lower the alcohol percentage before filtration (This is what you saw in the video above)
** Ama zake - This is literally translated to sweetened sake. Generally white cloudy color sake made from fermented rice and alcohol percentage is generally low
** Ryouri shu - sake for cooking
** Sho chu - Distilled drink, made from rice or potatoes with malt.Usually alcohol percentage is higer than sake and at about 25%.
In previous entry titled " Japanese Pickles (Tsu ke mo no) ", I wrote about Japanese unique ingredients " Ume boshi" -pickled plum.
In Japan, you can make green plum liquer called "Ume shu" with green plum,rock sugar, and sho chu. I used to pick plum from "Ume shu" bottle, and ate the plum, I sometime had "Ume shu" drink.
How do you make "Ume shu"; Green plum liquer?
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video. "
All you need is green plum "Ao ume", rock sugar "Koori zatou", and sho chu and sterilized jar. I am not certain but, you might be able to find ingredients at Asian stores in the states. I have seen "Ume shu" bottle itself at Asian stores in the states. Popular brand of Ume shu in Japan is called "cho ya".
You can drink "Ume shu" straight, with ice, with added hot water.
Daruma san ga koronda (Red light,Green light)
When my husband and I have conversation, now and then, it is on cultural topics and it is always interesting to find out the similarity or differences between the two cultures;American culture and Japanese culture.
Recently, we were talking about kids' game. My husband was talking about the game he played as a kid;"Red light,Green light", and I found it to be interesting because we played similar game as a kid in Japan called "Daruma san ga koronda". I would guess there would be many version of American "Red light/Green light" kids' game in the world, but I thought I would share how we , as Japanese kids, play the game.
According to gameskidsplay website , American version goes one kid become a stop light and other kids will be lining up 15 feet away from the stop light kid, and stop light kid shout "Green light" as he/she faces away and other kids move forward to touch the stop light kid. Then he/she says "Red light" turning back and other kids must be stay still and if the stop light kid caught someone moving after shouting "Red light", the ones that were moving is out. So, for the stop light kid, taking all kids out is his/her win, and for other kids, moving close enough to the stop light kid and touch him/her is their win.
Japanese version of this is called "Daruma san ga koronda" -meaning "Daruma doll fell down".
"Daruma" is usually red round doll with beard painted without eye.Daruma doll is lucky doll and when you make a wish, you will paint one eye on the doll, and when the wish has come true, you will be painting the other eye.Bellow, you can see how the doll is made.
Making of Daruma doll
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
At the very first scene of the video, you see Daruma dolls with eyes painted are being piled up. At the end of the year, people bring the Daruma dolls to the temple after their wish has come true and every year, monks burn the daruma dolls and people buy new one for the new year. The daruma doll burning event is called "Daruma kuyou".
In Japanese version of "Red light/Green light" , the stop light kid is called "Oni"-meaning "goblin" in Japanese. Then, other kids will be lining up at the starting line. Those kids would shout "Hajime no ippo"-meaning "One step ahead" in Japanese, and moving forward. However, depending on the regions,you can make " first step" with 3-4 steps while shouting the line "Hajime no ippo", some region makes just one step ahead. It depends.
At this point, the Oni kid will be facing away covering his/her eyes and placing his/her face on tree or wall, and after hearing other kids shout "Hajime no ippo", Oni kid will shout "Daruma san ga koronda"-meaning "Daruma doll fell down". When Oni kid is shouting this line, other kids can move forward,side ways,backwards,whatever direction they want to move.
Then, Oni kid will turn back after shouting the line, and call kids' names that he/she caught them moving and kids their names were called out come to Oni kid and hold hands and other kids need to touch the Oni kid to release the kids in hold,saying "kitta" -meaning "cut" in Japanese making slow karate chop motion in between Oni kid hand and the hand of the first kid being caught if the kids trying to help the other kids from Oni kid could come close enough to do so, or between kid in hold and kid in hold.Only the released kids can run away from the Oni kid.
When released, the kids that were released from Oni kid must run as fast as they can trying to be away from Oni kid.As soon as Oni kid notice some of the kids in hold were released, he/she says "Tomare"-meaning "stop" in Japanese. And at that point, kids on the run must freeze.
Then, under the agreed rule between kids, Oni kid makes certain number of steps from the tree/wall and tries to touch the released kid. Kids that were touched are out.
When Oni kid is looking at the other kids, other kids must stay still however long he/she is looking at.
Oni kid can shout the line "Daruma san ga koronda"-Daruma doll fell down, as fast or slow as he/she can to trick the other kids.
Daruma san ga koronda
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Now, if cats play the "Daruma san ga koronda", what it will be like? Here is an answer for you.
Cat plays "Daruma san ga koronda"
Now, I am wondering if Palette could play "Daruma san ga koronda". Well, I saw a Border collie was playing the game. Maybe I can teach her how to play the game.
Dog plays "Daruma san ga koronda"
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
What kids of games do you play with your dogs/cats?
Palette and I play "Find it" game, where she stays at one spot and I go around the house and hide the treats or toys and she goes find with cue "Find it" or we play "Frisbee/ball".
Next games we would like to play will be "Daruma san ga koronda" or maybe.. tickle game as you see with the kitten bellow? That must be fun!
Tickle & surprise kitten
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Recently, we were talking about kids' game. My husband was talking about the game he played as a kid;"Red light,Green light", and I found it to be interesting because we played similar game as a kid in Japan called "Daruma san ga koronda". I would guess there would be many version of American "Red light/Green light" kids' game in the world, but I thought I would share how we , as Japanese kids, play the game.
According to gameskidsplay website , American version goes one kid become a stop light and other kids will be lining up 15 feet away from the stop light kid, and stop light kid shout "Green light" as he/she faces away and other kids move forward to touch the stop light kid. Then he/she says "Red light" turning back and other kids must be stay still and if the stop light kid caught someone moving after shouting "Red light", the ones that were moving is out. So, for the stop light kid, taking all kids out is his/her win, and for other kids, moving close enough to the stop light kid and touch him/her is their win.
Japanese version of this is called "Daruma san ga koronda" -meaning "Daruma doll fell down".
"Daruma" is usually red round doll with beard painted without eye.Daruma doll is lucky doll and when you make a wish, you will paint one eye on the doll, and when the wish has come true, you will be painting the other eye.Bellow, you can see how the doll is made.
Making of Daruma doll
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
At the very first scene of the video, you see Daruma dolls with eyes painted are being piled up. At the end of the year, people bring the Daruma dolls to the temple after their wish has come true and every year, monks burn the daruma dolls and people buy new one for the new year. The daruma doll burning event is called "Daruma kuyou".
In Japanese version of "Red light/Green light" , the stop light kid is called "Oni"-meaning "goblin" in Japanese. Then, other kids will be lining up at the starting line. Those kids would shout "Hajime no ippo"-meaning "One step ahead" in Japanese, and moving forward. However, depending on the regions,you can make " first step" with 3-4 steps while shouting the line "Hajime no ippo", some region makes just one step ahead. It depends.
At this point, the Oni kid will be facing away covering his/her eyes and placing his/her face on tree or wall, and after hearing other kids shout "Hajime no ippo", Oni kid will shout "Daruma san ga koronda"-meaning "Daruma doll fell down". When Oni kid is shouting this line, other kids can move forward,side ways,backwards,whatever direction they want to move.
Then, Oni kid will turn back after shouting the line, and call kids' names that he/she caught them moving and kids their names were called out come to Oni kid and hold hands and other kids need to touch the Oni kid to release the kids in hold,saying "kitta" -meaning "cut" in Japanese making slow karate chop motion in between Oni kid hand and the hand of the first kid being caught if the kids trying to help the other kids from Oni kid could come close enough to do so, or between kid in hold and kid in hold.Only the released kids can run away from the Oni kid.
When released, the kids that were released from Oni kid must run as fast as they can trying to be away from Oni kid.As soon as Oni kid notice some of the kids in hold were released, he/she says "Tomare"-meaning "stop" in Japanese. And at that point, kids on the run must freeze.
Then, under the agreed rule between kids, Oni kid makes certain number of steps from the tree/wall and tries to touch the released kid. Kids that were touched are out.
When Oni kid is looking at the other kids, other kids must stay still however long he/she is looking at.
Oni kid can shout the line "Daruma san ga koronda"-Daruma doll fell down, as fast or slow as he/she can to trick the other kids.
Daruma san ga koronda
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Now, if cats play the "Daruma san ga koronda", what it will be like? Here is an answer for you.
Cat plays "Daruma san ga koronda"
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Now, I am wondering if Palette could play "Daruma san ga koronda". Well, I saw a Border collie was playing the game. Maybe I can teach her how to play the game.
Dog plays "Daruma san ga koronda"
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
What kids of games do you play with your dogs/cats?
Palette and I play "Find it" game, where she stays at one spot and I go around the house and hide the treats or toys and she goes find with cue "Find it" or we play "Frisbee/ball".
Next games we would like to play will be "Daruma san ga koronda" or maybe.. tickle game as you see with the kitten bellow? That must be fun!
Tickle & surprise kitten
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Japanese/Chinese cooking: Buta man (Steamed pork meat filling buns)
Now and then, I crave for steamed buns. You can buy those at Asian store, but Asian store we go to is2 hours drive away. So, I tend to make from scratch and have fun with it.
Recently, I made "Buta man", which is steamed buns with pork meat filling. "Buta" in Japanese means "Pork". So, I thought I would share how to make "Buta man" here.
When you watch Kung fu movies, or Japanese Animation, you sometimes may see characters eating "buns" steamed in bamboo steamer or characters making them or maybe you would see the bun makers as background.
On top of my head, I think you may recognize the girl named "Mui" who use the Kung fu technique to make buns in the movie titled "Shaolin soccer".
Shaolin soccer "Mui" makes sweet buns
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
The sweet buns she makes in the movie is called "Mantou" or "Chinese steamed buns" and they are basically filled dumpling.The buns she made in the movie looks very different from steamed buns in Japan;both appearance and ingredients.
I think that some of the dishes in Japan has Chinese food influences, but it is adapted to Japanese culture and made with a little different ingredients or called different. Just like "Sushi" is adapted to American culture and you find sushi made with avocado "California roll" in the states but, I do not think you would find those in Japan.
Another kind of steamed Chinese buns called "Baozi ", which is filled steamed buns made with yeast, are more like the one you would find in Japan. "Baozi" has many variation in fillings.
In Japan, you would find "karee man" (steamed bun filled with curry flavored meat with vegetable,dough is yellow color), "Niku man " (steamed bun filled with meat usually ground pork filling), "An man" (steamed bun filled with sweet Azuki beans paste). You can usually find them being sold hot at convenience stores after September through winter in Japan. Other seasons, you can buy those at frozen section and all you need to do is to steam them for about 15 minutes or so on stove top.
Here in the states, you can find the "Baozi" or steamed buns frozen at Asian stores, but variety seems to be narrower than Japanese ones.
If you have about 3 hours to spare, you can make your own from scratch. Most of the time out of the 3 hours is down time; waiting for dough to proof so, not much cooking involved. If you have kids, they can participate the bun making and have fun with it. You can be creative for the fillings. I am sure that kids will be experts on this creative department
So, how do you make "Buta man;steamed bun with pork fillings"? Here is how.
Buta man (steamed buns with pork meat fillings)
<Steamed bun dough;8 buns>
1. Preheat the oven at 200F
2. To 1.5C of warm water 110F temperature, add 2 tsp of dry yeast and 2.5 tbs of table sugar and stir and wait til you see some bubbles coming up on top (let it stand about 5 minutes to 10 minutes)
** Take the water temperature to make sure the water is not too hot or too cold for yeast to be activated. Too hot temperature would kill the yeast and it would not proof as much as you wish it would be.
3. To other bowl, add 1/2C of unbleached bread flour, 2.5C of unbleached all purpose flour, 1/4tsp of table salt, 1 tbs of baking powder and mix well.
4. When you see the bubbles on yeast-water-sugar mixture after about letting it stand about 5-10 minutes, pour the mixture into flour mixture and add 2 tsp of milk and 1 tbs of vegetable oil and knead till surface becomes smooth (about 8-10 minutes kneading)
5. When the dough surface becomes smooth and elastic, roll the dough to ball and drizzle extra virgin olive oil in the bowl flour mixture was in, and grease the inner side of the bowl and coat the rolled dough with extra virgin olive oil lightly and put the rolled dough back into the bowl and seal it with saran
6. Turn off the oven and place the sealed bowl with rolled dough in the oven and set the kitchen timer 90 minutes
7. While you are waiting on the dough to proof.. move onto filling making.
<Pork meat filling>
** Filling is for 2 batches worth. I usually makes filling for 2 batches and freeze the leftover fillings.That way, next time when I want to make again, all I need to do is to just make the dough.
8. Chop 1.5 of middle size Onions fine and cook in the skillet with chopped canned bamboo shoot 2 oz, and turn off the heat when onion is cooked to translucent in color,and let it cool down
9. To one bowl, add 1 lb of ground pork, 1tbs of table sugar,3 tbs soy sauce, 2 tsp of oyster sauce, 2 tsp of sesame oil, 1 tsp of corn starch, and sprinkle Molton's Natures season (seasoning blend bottle with blue cap), and mix lightly and add cool down onion bamboo shoot mixture to the meat mixture and mix well (but do not over mix)
10. Cover the filling bowl with saran, keep in the fridge till the time you need to use
11. After 90 minutes, the dough in the oven should be proofed. Divide the dough to 8 portion and roll to balls and place onto non stick foil sprinkle with all purpose flour in the cooking sheet.Then cover with saran and put it back to oven to proof again. Set the kitchen timer 15 minutes.
12. While waiting on the second proof, take out the parchment paper and cut to 3"x3" square. You need 8 of them.
13. When you hear the beeping of kitchen timer on 15 minutes proofing, now you will fill the dough with filling. Take the filling out from fridge.
14. Take one ball out and roll out to about 4"-4.5" diameter circle and press the 1/2" inner side all around
** Make sure not to roll out too thin because if the dough was too thin, dough can break during the steaming process
15. Divide the meal filling to half and half will be for your next batch so freeze them. With the other half, divide to 8 portion and roll one portion and press some and make like mini burger pattie
16. Place the mini pattie onto the rolled circle dough, and pinch the dough together.
** To pinch the dough, take far side edge dough and nearest edge of dough, and press. Then take both (left and right) side of edge of dough and press to seal. Then, twist on top. It is helpful if you had small bowl of water to dip your finger in and help the dough to seal well.
** Make sure the twisted top is sealed well. Otherwise, during the steaming process, twisted top can open and meat juice would come out.
17. After filling the dough, place the filled dough onto cut-out parchment paper you have prepared. and put the bun with parchment paper on cookie sheet and cover it with saran again and put it back to oven and set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes to proof again
18. While you are waiting on the filled dough to proof.. set the steamer to steam the buns
** One way you can steam stuff is to use wok with bamboo steamer but you can steam stuff other way
The way my mother and I steam stuff is to use big pan and vegetable steamer and one kitchen towel.
This is how I set up to steam..
** The pan in the picture is 11" and I pour water in the bottom and place the vegetable steamer and steamer's bottom part is set. Make sure that water depth is just enough to touch the vegetable steamer and you should not feel the water puddle above the vegetable steamer. If the water was too deep than it should, your bun would get soggy bottom.
19. Set the stove on to medium heat and let the water come to boil
20. After water is boiling and filled bun is proofed, place the bun with enough space between on top of the vegetable steamer, and set the kitchen timer 15 minutes.
Filled buns are set on top of vegetable steamer..
21. Cover the lid with kitchen towel in between. Edge of the towel should be fold back like the picture bellow. Kitchen towel helps suck up the steam and it prevents steam going back down to the buns. If there were no towels used, steam drops to buns and you will get soggy buns.
** With bamboo steamer, you do not need towel to prevent steam dropping to the buns because bamboo suck the steam
Cover the lid with kitchen towel..
22.After 15 minutes of steaming, voila! you get steamed buns!
Steamed buns!!
Steamed bun on the plate..
This is how it looks like inside..
"Found you,mom. What you snacking behind my back?"-Palette
This is how you will be begged by your furry friends..
** Wet nose alert **
Enjoy!
Palette nose was tortured for 3 hours with my bun making smell. So, I gave her very tiny piece. You can see how wet her nose is. I should eat the bun away from Palette next time
Recently, I made "Buta man", which is steamed buns with pork meat filling. "Buta" in Japanese means "Pork". So, I thought I would share how to make "Buta man" here.
When you watch Kung fu movies, or Japanese Animation, you sometimes may see characters eating "buns" steamed in bamboo steamer or characters making them or maybe you would see the bun makers as background.
On top of my head, I think you may recognize the girl named "Mui" who use the Kung fu technique to make buns in the movie titled "Shaolin soccer".
Shaolin soccer "Mui" makes sweet buns
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
The sweet buns she makes in the movie is called "Mantou" or "Chinese steamed buns" and they are basically filled dumpling.The buns she made in the movie looks very different from steamed buns in Japan;both appearance and ingredients.
I think that some of the dishes in Japan has Chinese food influences, but it is adapted to Japanese culture and made with a little different ingredients or called different. Just like "Sushi" is adapted to American culture and you find sushi made with avocado "California roll" in the states but, I do not think you would find those in Japan.
Another kind of steamed Chinese buns called "Baozi ", which is filled steamed buns made with yeast, are more like the one you would find in Japan. "Baozi" has many variation in fillings.
In Japan, you would find "karee man" (steamed bun filled with curry flavored meat with vegetable,dough is yellow color), "Niku man " (steamed bun filled with meat usually ground pork filling), "An man" (steamed bun filled with sweet Azuki beans paste). You can usually find them being sold hot at convenience stores after September through winter in Japan. Other seasons, you can buy those at frozen section and all you need to do is to steam them for about 15 minutes or so on stove top.
Here in the states, you can find the "Baozi" or steamed buns frozen at Asian stores, but variety seems to be narrower than Japanese ones.
If you have about 3 hours to spare, you can make your own from scratch. Most of the time out of the 3 hours is down time; waiting for dough to proof so, not much cooking involved. If you have kids, they can participate the bun making and have fun with it. You can be creative for the fillings. I am sure that kids will be experts on this creative department
So, how do you make "Buta man;steamed bun with pork fillings"? Here is how.
Buta man (steamed buns with pork meat fillings)
<Steamed bun dough;8 buns>
1. Preheat the oven at 200F
2. To 1.5C of warm water 110F temperature, add 2 tsp of dry yeast and 2.5 tbs of table sugar and stir and wait til you see some bubbles coming up on top (let it stand about 5 minutes to 10 minutes)
** Take the water temperature to make sure the water is not too hot or too cold for yeast to be activated. Too hot temperature would kill the yeast and it would not proof as much as you wish it would be.
3. To other bowl, add 1/2C of unbleached bread flour, 2.5C of unbleached all purpose flour, 1/4tsp of table salt, 1 tbs of baking powder and mix well.
4. When you see the bubbles on yeast-water-sugar mixture after about letting it stand about 5-10 minutes, pour the mixture into flour mixture and add 2 tsp of milk and 1 tbs of vegetable oil and knead till surface becomes smooth (about 8-10 minutes kneading)
5. When the dough surface becomes smooth and elastic, roll the dough to ball and drizzle extra virgin olive oil in the bowl flour mixture was in, and grease the inner side of the bowl and coat the rolled dough with extra virgin olive oil lightly and put the rolled dough back into the bowl and seal it with saran
6. Turn off the oven and place the sealed bowl with rolled dough in the oven and set the kitchen timer 90 minutes
7. While you are waiting on the dough to proof.. move onto filling making.
<Pork meat filling>
** Filling is for 2 batches worth. I usually makes filling for 2 batches and freeze the leftover fillings.That way, next time when I want to make again, all I need to do is to just make the dough.
8. Chop 1.5 of middle size Onions fine and cook in the skillet with chopped canned bamboo shoot 2 oz, and turn off the heat when onion is cooked to translucent in color,and let it cool down
9. To one bowl, add 1 lb of ground pork, 1tbs of table sugar,3 tbs soy sauce, 2 tsp of oyster sauce, 2 tsp of sesame oil, 1 tsp of corn starch, and sprinkle Molton's Natures season (seasoning blend bottle with blue cap), and mix lightly and add cool down onion bamboo shoot mixture to the meat mixture and mix well (but do not over mix)
10. Cover the filling bowl with saran, keep in the fridge till the time you need to use
11. After 90 minutes, the dough in the oven should be proofed. Divide the dough to 8 portion and roll to balls and place onto non stick foil sprinkle with all purpose flour in the cooking sheet.Then cover with saran and put it back to oven to proof again. Set the kitchen timer 15 minutes.
12. While waiting on the second proof, take out the parchment paper and cut to 3"x3" square. You need 8 of them.
13. When you hear the beeping of kitchen timer on 15 minutes proofing, now you will fill the dough with filling. Take the filling out from fridge.
14. Take one ball out and roll out to about 4"-4.5" diameter circle and press the 1/2" inner side all around
** Make sure not to roll out too thin because if the dough was too thin, dough can break during the steaming process
15. Divide the meal filling to half and half will be for your next batch so freeze them. With the other half, divide to 8 portion and roll one portion and press some and make like mini burger pattie
16. Place the mini pattie onto the rolled circle dough, and pinch the dough together.
** To pinch the dough, take far side edge dough and nearest edge of dough, and press. Then take both (left and right) side of edge of dough and press to seal. Then, twist on top. It is helpful if you had small bowl of water to dip your finger in and help the dough to seal well.
** Make sure the twisted top is sealed well. Otherwise, during the steaming process, twisted top can open and meat juice would come out.
17. After filling the dough, place the filled dough onto cut-out parchment paper you have prepared. and put the bun with parchment paper on cookie sheet and cover it with saran again and put it back to oven and set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes to proof again
18. While you are waiting on the filled dough to proof.. set the steamer to steam the buns
** One way you can steam stuff is to use wok with bamboo steamer but you can steam stuff other way
The way my mother and I steam stuff is to use big pan and vegetable steamer and one kitchen towel.
This is how I set up to steam..
** The pan in the picture is 11" and I pour water in the bottom and place the vegetable steamer and steamer's bottom part is set. Make sure that water depth is just enough to touch the vegetable steamer and you should not feel the water puddle above the vegetable steamer. If the water was too deep than it should, your bun would get soggy bottom.
19. Set the stove on to medium heat and let the water come to boil
20. After water is boiling and filled bun is proofed, place the bun with enough space between on top of the vegetable steamer, and set the kitchen timer 15 minutes.
Filled buns are set on top of vegetable steamer..
21. Cover the lid with kitchen towel in between. Edge of the towel should be fold back like the picture bellow. Kitchen towel helps suck up the steam and it prevents steam going back down to the buns. If there were no towels used, steam drops to buns and you will get soggy buns.
** With bamboo steamer, you do not need towel to prevent steam dropping to the buns because bamboo suck the steam
Cover the lid with kitchen towel..
22.After 15 minutes of steaming, voila! you get steamed buns!
Steamed buns!!
Steamed bun on the plate..
This is how it looks like inside..
"Found you,mom. What you snacking behind my back?"-Palette
This is how you will be begged by your furry friends..
** Wet nose alert **
Enjoy!
Palette nose was tortured for 3 hours with my bun making smell. So, I gave her very tiny piece. You can see how wet her nose is. I should eat the bun away from Palette next time
Why do dogs don't come when called?
In previous entry titled "Why do dogs love to chase car,bicycles,joggers ", I wrote that our stumpy little dog "Palette" and I play a little game on walk from the time when she was puppy. She and I step to the side and stay still on walk when we see cars and we keep walking again when cars passing by. I also wrote that if your dogs know "come" command, it could be a life saver command especially if your dogs have tendency to dash out as soon as the doors open.
How to teach "Come" command was one of the things we learned at puppy training class. I think teaching your dogs "come" command from young age is very important for their safety.
As you have read before, first thing I taught her before teaching "come" was door manner with "wait" command. This way, you can teach your dogs to wait at the door until they are called and you can prevent "door dasher". And if your dogs know "come" and if it were reliable command, you can use "come" command if/when dogs encounter dangerous situation or in case your dogs dashed out from the door due distraction like a squirrels.
One time, when we were on road trip at rest stop, for some reason, her harness slipped away from Palette and I saw a big truck slowly coming into the rest stop and I saw Palette tried to walk forward with normal speed. That was real scary moment. My heart was beating so fast. But my husband called her "come" and luckily, she turned around and ran back to us. It was new place for Palette and, I can see Palette might have been interested in sniffing the ground she has never sniffed. But "come" command saved her life, and I never forget the scary moment.
For me and Palette, "sit" is the beginning of everything.I taught her to "sit" before all things she enjoys. "Sit" before being pet or getting attention from me, "sit" before meal, "sit" before the doors open,"sit" before fetch ball/Frisbee,"sit" before getting leash connected to her collar for walk ( Later, I taught her "turn around " command and she sits facing out to get her leash connected to her collar.Now, she sits facing out without me telling her to do so.) ..
So, in her mind, everything she enjoys starts from "sit". The fact that dogs know "sit" bring everything they enjoy works on your favor too because "sit" becomes sort of attention grabber from your dogs, and it helps your dogs to take a breath and calm down.Cushion between the command you are to work on."Sit" is core of all things.
When I was working on the door manner with Palette, very first thing I taught her was to sit before the door open.Then, taught her "wait" (impulse control), and finally taught her "come".
How do you teach your dog "Sit"?
1. Hold the treats in your hands and let your dog sniff
2. After you got your dog's attention, bring the treats to up around the dog's nose and move it back around their head. As dogs would follow the treats with nose to get to it, automatically, their butt should touch the ground.
3. As soon as their butt touch the ground, click the clicker and give them a treats. Repeat over and over again.
** If your dogs jumping up or standing on their hind legs with air pawing, your treats are positioned too high for them to automatically sit on their own. Try holding the treats a little lower and try again.
** In other words, if you were to teach" stand on their hind legs" with air pawing, if you hold the treats higher, you can teach them the trick.
I have seen people pushing the dogs' back down to teach "sit" but teaching without physical touch is more effective because they need to "think" what you are asking them to and probably more eager to learn things from you.
Now, your dogs know "sit".
How do you teach your dogs to "wait" at the door?
When I taught Palette to wait at the door, here is how I taught her.
1. Let her sit in front of the door, slowly opened door just a bit. If she starts standing up, I said "Try again", and just closed door and slowly open door again. When she could hold "sit" with door opened a bit,I clicked the clicker and gave her treats.
2.As time goes by, I opened door open wider and wider and eventually she could wait when door is open wide.
3.Next,when the door is opened widely and Palette was sit still, I said "wait" and click the clicker right away and gave her the treats. And eventually, time on wait got longer.
** By repeating this over and over,she got ideas that as long as her butt is on floor,door open wide.
And after being able to let her stays sit till door widely opened, I stepped out from entrance, and let her "stay" on the spot. By then, she knew "stay" command. But here is how you can teach your dogs "stay".
How do you teach your dogs "sit-stay"?
1. Let your dogs sit and say "stay"
** Don't move/step away or your dogs would move.
2. Wait about 5 seconds and click the clicker and give them treats
3. Repeat 1&2 over and over and when they do good on them, say "stay" and one step back from your dog and wait 5 seconds and if your dog kept "sit" position, walk back to them, and click the clicker and give them treats.
** If they follow you when you one step back, just walk back to him to the position you want them to "sit-stay" saying "Try again"
** When you walk forward to your dogs, they should back up. Use your body without physical touch.
** It is important for you to walk back to them before you will click the clicker because dogs may break the "stay" and move forward to you to get the treats.Give treats when they are on "stay",not when they walk up to you.
** As time goes by, I have added extra seconds, added distance from Palette, tried different posture such as "down-stay", and also added distraction when she could hold good solid "stay" at good distance with longer time on "stay". But do not try adding extra time on "stay" and longer distance at the same time. Just add one thing at a time.
** I tried rolled ball in front of her, run around her, run around her with happy voice, jumping around her... anything that might break her "stay". This is great practice for impulse control too.
** After she did great "sit-stay" inside the house, I worked on "stay" outside too apart from door manner practice.
When training outside the house, leash comes handy for training. Especially if your house has no fenced yard, it is more so for training outside.
One of the thing I use for outside training for Palette is called " Check cords".
Check cords..
It is a polypropylene rope, and as I understand it, people who are training their dog on tracking,field training tend to use this type of long rope. Mine in the picture is 50 feet long so, it is pretty long rope. Things I like about this rope is that it is easy to detangle the knots and not just when training purpose, I can use this to let Palette go for potty in heavy snow day without being pulled and slipped. Longer leash like this comes handy on such days.
Palette in the snow with check cord..
This is when Palette and I played "Find the bully sticks in the snow" game. She found it in the snow and brought it back into the house. You see that Palette is with check cord not regular leash..
If you were interested in watching the video how we played "Find it" game in the heavy snow, you can see in previous entry titled "Picnic in the snow ".
When I was practicing "sit-stay" outside, I started from "sit-stay" without me stepping back,and worked up to "sit-stay" with one step back.. same thing I have worked on inside the house but from the scratch because environment is much different and, even if your dog knows "sit" inside the house, it does not necessary means they can "sit" outside as they could. So, worked on the "sit-stay" from zero.
After she can "sit-stay" outside, I started working on it at door manner practice too. So, she hears me say "sit. wait." and door opens wide and I step out and she hears "stay" and from there, I worked on longer time, longer distance and worked up to the time she can stay still like statue at the door.
When she master all these, I worked on "come". I think that easiest way is to use their natural instinct.
How do you teach your dogs to "come" when called?
Here is how I taught Palette "come". I worked on this first inside the house (less distraction), and then practiced it outside. When practicing outside, I used check cords instead of regular leash.
1. Let your dogs "sit"
** Remember, everything they love would start with "sit"
2. Call your dog name and simply run to opposite direction from your dogs
** Dogs naturally love to chase. They would most likely chase after you.
3. When they come running to you, say "come" and click the clicker and give them treats and big praise.
** IF just you running away from your dog was not enough to encourage them to chase after you, maybe you can squeak toys in front of them and let them get excited first before you taking off, and then, run away from your dogs squeaking your dogs favorite toys. When they come running to you, say "come" and click the clicker and give them treats with big praise.
Palette with earless squeaky bear..
The squeaky bear in the picture is the squeaky toy that Palette enjoy squeaking for 5 years despite the fact that the bear ears got chewed off by her. I know if food treats did not work for her to motivate her to chase me, I can take this toy, squeak in front of her a bit and runs opposite direction. She sure would chase me with tongue hanging out.
** For solid recall (come when called 100% ), never call your dogs to tell them negative things such as when you do nail trimming, bathing, leaving for work, or if dogs did potty accident, never call them to the spot to scold them.Just clean up the potty accident and work on the potty training.This can become reason why dogs do not come when called.
When I do nail trimming or bathing Palette, I say nothing, and I just come to her and work on things.I never call before things she might not love.
Always call them when something good is coming. When they know that their name is called by you means always something good happens, they sure would come trot to you in a second.
** You can practice many times throughout the day if you wanted to. When I was teaching Palette "come", I gave her a pop quiz/jack pot time with this practice. I just called her name when she is least expected me to call her name.
For example, when she sees me reading newspaper and she is 2 feet away laying on side, I called her name and said "come". She perks up and one step forward to me and I say "Good girl" and my hand is in treat bag and she trots to me to claim her rewards. This is kind of like a fun game and we had treat bag at every room so that we can call her name at any time,and can give her treats when come.
Now, food treats are at random for Palette to come when called but she still gets head scratch or tummy rubs or other non food rewards is given and she comes when called even if she does not know if the rewards are food or non food. After all, you cannot have treats all time with you. Food treats became at random as her recall becomes more solid.
"Come" command also good one to use when your dogs are barking at something outside. Since I do not want to eliminate all barking, I let Palette bark a couple of time, and I say "Thank you.Come". And she comes and she sits beside me and gets treats.
And as always, each member of your family should work the same way to practice training issues. Also, training takes times, and there is no quick fix. You need to commit yourself, and be consistent, be patient, and be calm. Training is not chore,rather chance for us and dogs to have fun and to have our bond stronger...So have fun training positive way.
If you were interested in reading on clicker training, you can read on clicker training in previous entry titled "Clicker training:clicker is your friend ".
How to teach "Come" command was one of the things we learned at puppy training class. I think teaching your dogs "come" command from young age is very important for their safety.
As you have read before, first thing I taught her before teaching "come" was door manner with "wait" command. This way, you can teach your dogs to wait at the door until they are called and you can prevent "door dasher". And if your dogs know "come" and if it were reliable command, you can use "come" command if/when dogs encounter dangerous situation or in case your dogs dashed out from the door due distraction like a squirrels.
One time, when we were on road trip at rest stop, for some reason, her harness slipped away from Palette and I saw a big truck slowly coming into the rest stop and I saw Palette tried to walk forward with normal speed. That was real scary moment. My heart was beating so fast. But my husband called her "come" and luckily, she turned around and ran back to us. It was new place for Palette and, I can see Palette might have been interested in sniffing the ground she has never sniffed. But "come" command saved her life, and I never forget the scary moment.
For me and Palette, "sit" is the beginning of everything.I taught her to "sit" before all things she enjoys. "Sit" before being pet or getting attention from me, "sit" before meal, "sit" before the doors open,"sit" before fetch ball/Frisbee,"sit" before getting leash connected to her collar for walk ( Later, I taught her "turn around " command and she sits facing out to get her leash connected to her collar.Now, she sits facing out without me telling her to do so.) ..
So, in her mind, everything she enjoys starts from "sit". The fact that dogs know "sit" bring everything they enjoy works on your favor too because "sit" becomes sort of attention grabber from your dogs, and it helps your dogs to take a breath and calm down.Cushion between the command you are to work on."Sit" is core of all things.
When I was working on the door manner with Palette, very first thing I taught her was to sit before the door open.Then, taught her "wait" (impulse control), and finally taught her "come".
How do you teach your dog "Sit"?
1. Hold the treats in your hands and let your dog sniff
2. After you got your dog's attention, bring the treats to up around the dog's nose and move it back around their head. As dogs would follow the treats with nose to get to it, automatically, their butt should touch the ground.
3. As soon as their butt touch the ground, click the clicker and give them a treats. Repeat over and over again.
** If your dogs jumping up or standing on their hind legs with air pawing, your treats are positioned too high for them to automatically sit on their own. Try holding the treats a little lower and try again.
** In other words, if you were to teach" stand on their hind legs" with air pawing, if you hold the treats higher, you can teach them the trick.
I have seen people pushing the dogs' back down to teach "sit" but teaching without physical touch is more effective because they need to "think" what you are asking them to and probably more eager to learn things from you.
Now, your dogs know "sit".
How do you teach your dogs to "wait" at the door?
When I taught Palette to wait at the door, here is how I taught her.
1. Let her sit in front of the door, slowly opened door just a bit. If she starts standing up, I said "Try again", and just closed door and slowly open door again. When she could hold "sit" with door opened a bit,I clicked the clicker and gave her treats.
2.As time goes by, I opened door open wider and wider and eventually she could wait when door is open wide.
3.Next,when the door is opened widely and Palette was sit still, I said "wait" and click the clicker right away and gave her the treats. And eventually, time on wait got longer.
** By repeating this over and over,she got ideas that as long as her butt is on floor,door open wide.
And after being able to let her stays sit till door widely opened, I stepped out from entrance, and let her "stay" on the spot. By then, she knew "stay" command. But here is how you can teach your dogs "stay".
How do you teach your dogs "sit-stay"?
1. Let your dogs sit and say "stay"
** Don't move/step away or your dogs would move.
2. Wait about 5 seconds and click the clicker and give them treats
3. Repeat 1&2 over and over and when they do good on them, say "stay" and one step back from your dog and wait 5 seconds and if your dog kept "sit" position, walk back to them, and click the clicker and give them treats.
** If they follow you when you one step back, just walk back to him to the position you want them to "sit-stay" saying "Try again"
** When you walk forward to your dogs, they should back up. Use your body without physical touch.
** It is important for you to walk back to them before you will click the clicker because dogs may break the "stay" and move forward to you to get the treats.Give treats when they are on "stay",not when they walk up to you.
** As time goes by, I have added extra seconds, added distance from Palette, tried different posture such as "down-stay", and also added distraction when she could hold good solid "stay" at good distance with longer time on "stay". But do not try adding extra time on "stay" and longer distance at the same time. Just add one thing at a time.
** I tried rolled ball in front of her, run around her, run around her with happy voice, jumping around her... anything that might break her "stay". This is great practice for impulse control too.
** After she did great "sit-stay" inside the house, I worked on "stay" outside too apart from door manner practice.
When training outside the house, leash comes handy for training. Especially if your house has no fenced yard, it is more so for training outside.
One of the thing I use for outside training for Palette is called " Check cords".
Check cords..
It is a polypropylene rope, and as I understand it, people who are training their dog on tracking,field training tend to use this type of long rope. Mine in the picture is 50 feet long so, it is pretty long rope. Things I like about this rope is that it is easy to detangle the knots and not just when training purpose, I can use this to let Palette go for potty in heavy snow day without being pulled and slipped. Longer leash like this comes handy on such days.
Palette in the snow with check cord..
This is when Palette and I played "Find the bully sticks in the snow" game. She found it in the snow and brought it back into the house. You see that Palette is with check cord not regular leash..
If you were interested in watching the video how we played "Find it" game in the heavy snow, you can see in previous entry titled "Picnic in the snow ".
When I was practicing "sit-stay" outside, I started from "sit-stay" without me stepping back,and worked up to "sit-stay" with one step back.. same thing I have worked on inside the house but from the scratch because environment is much different and, even if your dog knows "sit" inside the house, it does not necessary means they can "sit" outside as they could. So, worked on the "sit-stay" from zero.
After she can "sit-stay" outside, I started working on it at door manner practice too. So, she hears me say "sit. wait." and door opens wide and I step out and she hears "stay" and from there, I worked on longer time, longer distance and worked up to the time she can stay still like statue at the door.
When she master all these, I worked on "come". I think that easiest way is to use their natural instinct.
How do you teach your dogs to "come" when called?
Here is how I taught Palette "come". I worked on this first inside the house (less distraction), and then practiced it outside. When practicing outside, I used check cords instead of regular leash.
1. Let your dogs "sit"
** Remember, everything they love would start with "sit"
2. Call your dog name and simply run to opposite direction from your dogs
** Dogs naturally love to chase. They would most likely chase after you.
3. When they come running to you, say "come" and click the clicker and give them treats and big praise.
** IF just you running away from your dog was not enough to encourage them to chase after you, maybe you can squeak toys in front of them and let them get excited first before you taking off, and then, run away from your dogs squeaking your dogs favorite toys. When they come running to you, say "come" and click the clicker and give them treats with big praise.
Palette with earless squeaky bear..
The squeaky bear in the picture is the squeaky toy that Palette enjoy squeaking for 5 years despite the fact that the bear ears got chewed off by her. I know if food treats did not work for her to motivate her to chase me, I can take this toy, squeak in front of her a bit and runs opposite direction. She sure would chase me with tongue hanging out.
** For solid recall (come when called 100% ), never call your dogs to tell them negative things such as when you do nail trimming, bathing, leaving for work, or if dogs did potty accident, never call them to the spot to scold them.Just clean up the potty accident and work on the potty training.This can become reason why dogs do not come when called.
When I do nail trimming or bathing Palette, I say nothing, and I just come to her and work on things.I never call before things she might not love.
Always call them when something good is coming. When they know that their name is called by you means always something good happens, they sure would come trot to you in a second.
** You can practice many times throughout the day if you wanted to. When I was teaching Palette "come", I gave her a pop quiz/jack pot time with this practice. I just called her name when she is least expected me to call her name.
For example, when she sees me reading newspaper and she is 2 feet away laying on side, I called her name and said "come". She perks up and one step forward to me and I say "Good girl" and my hand is in treat bag and she trots to me to claim her rewards. This is kind of like a fun game and we had treat bag at every room so that we can call her name at any time,and can give her treats when come.
Now, food treats are at random for Palette to come when called but she still gets head scratch or tummy rubs or other non food rewards is given and she comes when called even if she does not know if the rewards are food or non food. After all, you cannot have treats all time with you. Food treats became at random as her recall becomes more solid.
"Come" command also good one to use when your dogs are barking at something outside. Since I do not want to eliminate all barking, I let Palette bark a couple of time, and I say "Thank you.Come". And she comes and she sits beside me and gets treats.
And as always, each member of your family should work the same way to practice training issues. Also, training takes times, and there is no quick fix. You need to commit yourself, and be consistent, be patient, and be calm. Training is not chore,rather chance for us and dogs to have fun and to have our bond stronger...So have fun training positive way.
If you were interested in reading on clicker training, you can read on clicker training in previous entry titled "Clicker training:clicker is your friend ".
Bento box culture in Japan
In the previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients ", I wrote about how different Japanese school lunch system is from American school lunch menu/system and about lunch box day at school when kids bring homemade lunch box to school.
In Japanese, lunch box is called "Bento". It is part of Japanese culture and,usually, parents get up early and make Bento box for kids to bring to school. School usually have Bento box day once in a while and when they have special events like sports festival, parents bring the Bento box for family members and when kids got lunch time break from events, kids and parents sit around the Bento box and eat them.
School lunch system continues up to junior high school year and, when I was a high school students, we students brought Bento box every day.
High school did not have cafeteria. Instead, vendor visited school around lunch time and offered drinks ,pre packaged Bento box, Onigiri (rice ball) or sandwich.
At university I went to had cafeteria and staff cooked meals there, and also we had vendors coming to offer drinks,pre packaged Bento box,Onigiri (Rice ball), and bread. At university years, I lived on my own close to university. So, at lunch time, I went back home and cooked lunch and relaxed till next class time and I went back to class.
Bento box culture does not stops at University years. Many people who go to work also bring Bento box. My father brought mother's homemade lunch box every single day. Mother woke up very early in the morning and when I need Bento box to bring to school as well, she made 2 Bento boxes for us. She made Bento box for years and years. Very long time. I make Bento box for my husband too. I do not make cute artistic Bento box but he does bring homemade lunch everyday to work.
What are in the Bento box depends on each family, but ours were usually rice ball or bed of rice, some meat dish, some vegetable dish and fruits. When I was very little, I remember mother put piggy faced flan for Bento box as special desert. Or I remember seeing bunny apple as fruits;sliced apple peeled like bunny.
Bunny Asian pear;Asian pear slice peeled like bunny
My very first time to visit the state was with home-stay program. One of the days stayed in the state had field trip to Canada (Vancouver). Home-stay program director asked host mothers to let us bring brown bag for lunch.
What my host mother put in the brown bag was a stick of raw celery, a whole apple, and peanut butter and jelly (I do not remember what kind of jelly it was). It was one of those culture shock moment. Because I had never ate raw celery before, I had never had a whole fruits in lunch box, and peanut butter and jelly sounded too sweet. Everything was new to me.
So, how Bento box culture has started in Japan?
According to wikipedia, Bento culture has started around Kamakura period (around 1333) when dried meal was invented. Then at about Azuchi-Momoyama period (at about 1600),wooden bento box was invented like today, and it was eaten at special events like at tea party.
Then, at Edo period (at about 1800), rice ball a.k.a. Onigiri was born wrapped with bamboo leaves, and eventually metal lunch bento box was born and today, you can find all kinds of Bento box at stores.
To read about Bento box at wikipedia website,please click here .
Bellow are two of the Bento box we have at home.
Bento box
Bento box..when middle part on lid opens..you can find the chopsticks..
As you can see, bottom part of Bento box has divider, and you can control portion of rice to be packed in, and I have put 4 muffin tin cups on the top portion to show you those are the usually the place where side dishes are packed in.Fruits are usually peeled,and cut to portion and kids bring in tupperware.
There are many more Bento box with better function from the one that keeps box cool or warm for long time. Bellow is one of those Bento box.
Bento box with rice container that keeps rice warm..
On top lid back has mesh bag that you can stick chopstick container in place. You can stick knife/forks/spoons if you want to. Then, you see tupperware and stainless steel container on bottom part. Tupperwares,you can put side dishes and stuck them up and stainless steel container is for rice. You cannot microwave them but, what you do is to pour boiling hot water into the stainless steel container for instructed time and pour the water out from container and pack the rice in and lid on and voila! You can eat warm rice at lunch time. Stainless steel container lid is a little different.
Bento box with rice container that keeps rice warm..
When you take each containers out, this is what you would be seeing at.
Stainless steel container that keeps rice warmer...
The container's lid is different.
Pre-packaged Bento box lunch is also available at convenience stores, inside the Shinkansen (fast train in Japan.They runs at 300km/h.That is about 186 m/h), and at kiosk area at each station.
The pre packaged Bento box you get at the station is called "Eki ben". "Eki" in Japanese means "station" and "ben" is short for "Bento". When you buy one of those Eki ben, you tend to get pre packaged Bento box with dishes made with local specialized ingredients.
I came across a couple of youtube videos on Bento box in Japan.
Japanese food culture "Bento"
Kawaii Bento
In Japanese, lunch box is called "Bento". It is part of Japanese culture and,usually, parents get up early and make Bento box for kids to bring to school. School usually have Bento box day once in a while and when they have special events like sports festival, parents bring the Bento box for family members and when kids got lunch time break from events, kids and parents sit around the Bento box and eat them.
School lunch system continues up to junior high school year and, when I was a high school students, we students brought Bento box every day.
High school did not have cafeteria. Instead, vendor visited school around lunch time and offered drinks ,pre packaged Bento box, Onigiri (rice ball) or sandwich.
At university I went to had cafeteria and staff cooked meals there, and also we had vendors coming to offer drinks,pre packaged Bento box,Onigiri (Rice ball), and bread. At university years, I lived on my own close to university. So, at lunch time, I went back home and cooked lunch and relaxed till next class time and I went back to class.
Bento box culture does not stops at University years. Many people who go to work also bring Bento box. My father brought mother's homemade lunch box every single day. Mother woke up very early in the morning and when I need Bento box to bring to school as well, she made 2 Bento boxes for us. She made Bento box for years and years. Very long time. I make Bento box for my husband too. I do not make cute artistic Bento box but he does bring homemade lunch everyday to work.
What are in the Bento box depends on each family, but ours were usually rice ball or bed of rice, some meat dish, some vegetable dish and fruits. When I was very little, I remember mother put piggy faced flan for Bento box as special desert. Or I remember seeing bunny apple as fruits;sliced apple peeled like bunny.
Bunny Asian pear;Asian pear slice peeled like bunny
My very first time to visit the state was with home-stay program. One of the days stayed in the state had field trip to Canada (Vancouver). Home-stay program director asked host mothers to let us bring brown bag for lunch.
What my host mother put in the brown bag was a stick of raw celery, a whole apple, and peanut butter and jelly (I do not remember what kind of jelly it was). It was one of those culture shock moment. Because I had never ate raw celery before, I had never had a whole fruits in lunch box, and peanut butter and jelly sounded too sweet. Everything was new to me.
So, how Bento box culture has started in Japan?
According to wikipedia, Bento culture has started around Kamakura period (around 1333) when dried meal was invented. Then at about Azuchi-Momoyama period (at about 1600),wooden bento box was invented like today, and it was eaten at special events like at tea party.
Then, at Edo period (at about 1800), rice ball a.k.a. Onigiri was born wrapped with bamboo leaves, and eventually metal lunch bento box was born and today, you can find all kinds of Bento box at stores.
To read about Bento box at wikipedia website,please click here .
Bellow are two of the Bento box we have at home.
Bento box
Bento box..when middle part on lid opens..you can find the chopsticks..
As you can see, bottom part of Bento box has divider, and you can control portion of rice to be packed in, and I have put 4 muffin tin cups on the top portion to show you those are the usually the place where side dishes are packed in.Fruits are usually peeled,and cut to portion and kids bring in tupperware.
There are many more Bento box with better function from the one that keeps box cool or warm for long time. Bellow is one of those Bento box.
Bento box with rice container that keeps rice warm..
On top lid back has mesh bag that you can stick chopstick container in place. You can stick knife/forks/spoons if you want to. Then, you see tupperware and stainless steel container on bottom part. Tupperwares,you can put side dishes and stuck them up and stainless steel container is for rice. You cannot microwave them but, what you do is to pour boiling hot water into the stainless steel container for instructed time and pour the water out from container and pack the rice in and lid on and voila! You can eat warm rice at lunch time. Stainless steel container lid is a little different.
Bento box with rice container that keeps rice warm..
When you take each containers out, this is what you would be seeing at.
Stainless steel container that keeps rice warmer...
The container's lid is different.
Pre-packaged Bento box lunch is also available at convenience stores, inside the Shinkansen (fast train in Japan.They runs at 300km/h.That is about 186 m/h), and at kiosk area at each station.
The pre packaged Bento box you get at the station is called "Eki ben". "Eki" in Japanese means "station" and "ben" is short for "Bento". When you buy one of those Eki ben, you tend to get pre packaged Bento box with dishes made with local specialized ingredients.
I came across a couple of youtube videos on Bento box in Japan.
Japanese food culture "Bento"
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Popular Bento culture in USA
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Kawaii Bento
If you were a blog subscriber or reading this entry from Facebook, please click here to watch the video.
In Japanese, "Kawaii" means "cute".
I think that homemade lunch box from scratch is not only nutritious but also the good way for kids to at least try many ingredients. For adults, lunch Bento box is cheaper way to eat lunch and tasty.
I am very impressed to think how long my mother kept making Bento box for family and, help us family be healthy with home made Bento box for years.
If you were to make a Bento box for your family, what they will be like? Some of mothers have very artistic talent and very impressed with it.
Palette's note:FURminator deShedding tool
Have you ever wondered if you could actually see how other dogs are enjoying the products before purchasing one? Not just pictures,but in video so that you can actually SEE how the products are being used? I have started series titled "Palette's Note", which you can read about products detail and see video clips from Palette's taste test.
This time,it is not about treats. I like to put out detail on FURminator;deShedding grooming tool .
The FURminator deShedding tool picture above is small size ..
FURminator deShedding tool is a grooming tool with metal tooth with rubber handle. FURminator shapes like a slicker brush,but teeth is not like needle sharp all the way, and narrow interval between tooth and FURminator pick up the loose/dead hair much better than slicker brush.
In a way, I think that it uses similar idea of metal tooth of shedding blade, but I personally prefer this tool over shedding blade because I can brush Palette with straight lined tooth not oval lined tooth, and I can put gentle, equal pressure on the tooth. It picks up loose/dead hair much better than shedding blade.
Bellow is a picture of the head and handle of the FURminator.
FURminator deShedding tool head..
FURminator deShedding tool handle..
What I like about this tool most is how much Palette enjoys being Furminated, enough to be able to fall asleep at the end. And, for me, I like the fact that it takes dead/loose hair off from her very nicely and I like the easy grip handle. Very comfortable in hands.
This FURminator deShedding tool is available in 3 sizes; small,medium, and large.
In previous entry titled "Why do dogs shed? ", I wrote that each hair grow from hair follicle, and eventually die (shed) and then the new hair grow. So, what we see with shedding is cycle of this dead fur replaced with new hair. And due to artificial light effects, indoor dogs shed more than outdoor dogs, and dogs shed as seasonal changes; in fall,dogs tend to have more under coat to keep themselves warm, and come spring, they would shed the undercoat.
Also, ratio of under coat,outer coat are different from breed to breed and how much under coat they shed are depending on the breed.
Dogs shed with stress, too. Good diet is also the base for healthy skin and coat or overall health. Diet lacks in omega3 can make coat dry,brittle, and not shiny and they tend to shed more.
As you already know, I have switched Palette's diet to fresh food diet; raw diet 3 years ago, and her coat got shinier and less shedding than she was on kibble. She still sheds but much less than before.
Not only good diet, but also daily brushing your dogs helps control/reduce shedding. Brushing action spread the natural oil around body. Also daily brushing reduce dander (Pets' dead hair/skin) in the air, which might trigger allergic reaction in some human .
Other than daily brushing,good diet, using air dryer when you bath your dogs reduce shedding amount too. If you bath your dogs at home, brush your dogs first and then bath your dog, dry their fur with Air dryer and brush them again. That way, you will find less loose/dead fur in the tub and cleaning after the bathing is much easier that way. And you would probably find less fur on the ground compare to towel dry after bathing.
You can read more on tips/tools for bathing your dogs in previous entry titled "Bathing your dogs ".
Let's watch Palette enjoying FURminated. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Palette and FURminator
Can you see even if she was playing with her favorite squeaky bunny toys, she pause for a moment and come on to the fluffy bed to be Furminated? You see that she brought her favorite squeaky bunny toy to the fluffy bed but she decided to abandon the toy when she gets Furminated. You will see her yawning too so you can see how much she enjoys FURminator.
In the video clip above, I have mainly brushed her back. Before the video was taken, I brushed her with soft brush,flea comb to make sure there is no tangle hair on her, and then used the FURminator. After the video was taken, I worked on other areas such as sides,thighs,chest etc..and Palette fell asleep..
As you can see, I have been using the small size of the FURminator. I am not in pressed schedule or I do not have many dogs in the house and, small sized tool does the job fine for me.
Often times, you will see the FURminator demonstration videos on the internet or at box pet supply stores and you see tonz of fur on the floor around dog that is Furminated. I do not get that much of excess amount of fur off from Palette (Pembroke Welsh Corgi). Probably because I brush daily and use other brush before using the FURminator and her diet is different, breed is different..but Palette likes it, I like the fact that does great job removing the dead/loose hair off from her much better than other brush and, I use the tool when I groom Palette.
Now, I came across another youtube video on dog with Furminator. For some dogs, if you use FURminator outside the house, I wonder if you will see the scenes like this. Birds may want to use the fur for their nest
If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Shiba
Enjoying to be FURminated!
FURminator gets me sleepy! Y.A.W.N..
Sliding down from the fluffy bed..FURminator got me sleepy enough to fall asleep..
Now I woke up from the nap, I will go back to squeaking my bunny toy..
*** Before using the FURminator, it is best to use other brush first to make sure there is no tangle hair on your dogs.
*** When you brush with FURminator, brush with gentle pressure on the brush. Do not press hard to the skin.It could irritate the skin.
*** Make sure to keep the cap on to protect the tooth after using the tool..
To visit our store,please click here or paste and copy the link bellow into your browser.
http://yassysgdk.com/main.sc
This time,it is not about treats. I like to put out detail on FURminator;deShedding grooming tool .
The FURminator deShedding tool picture above is small size ..
FURminator deShedding tool is a grooming tool with metal tooth with rubber handle. FURminator shapes like a slicker brush,but teeth is not like needle sharp all the way, and narrow interval between tooth and FURminator pick up the loose/dead hair much better than slicker brush.
In a way, I think that it uses similar idea of metal tooth of shedding blade, but I personally prefer this tool over shedding blade because I can brush Palette with straight lined tooth not oval lined tooth, and I can put gentle, equal pressure on the tooth. It picks up loose/dead hair much better than shedding blade.
Bellow is a picture of the head and handle of the FURminator.
FURminator deShedding tool head..
FURminator deShedding tool handle..
What I like about this tool most is how much Palette enjoys being Furminated, enough to be able to fall asleep at the end. And, for me, I like the fact that it takes dead/loose hair off from her very nicely and I like the easy grip handle. Very comfortable in hands.
This FURminator deShedding tool is available in 3 sizes; small,medium, and large.
In previous entry titled "Why do dogs shed? ", I wrote that each hair grow from hair follicle, and eventually die (shed) and then the new hair grow. So, what we see with shedding is cycle of this dead fur replaced with new hair. And due to artificial light effects, indoor dogs shed more than outdoor dogs, and dogs shed as seasonal changes; in fall,dogs tend to have more under coat to keep themselves warm, and come spring, they would shed the undercoat.
Also, ratio of under coat,outer coat are different from breed to breed and how much under coat they shed are depending on the breed.
Dogs shed with stress, too. Good diet is also the base for healthy skin and coat or overall health. Diet lacks in omega3 can make coat dry,brittle, and not shiny and they tend to shed more.
As you already know, I have switched Palette's diet to fresh food diet; raw diet 3 years ago, and her coat got shinier and less shedding than she was on kibble. She still sheds but much less than before.
Not only good diet, but also daily brushing your dogs helps control/reduce shedding. Brushing action spread the natural oil around body. Also daily brushing reduce dander (Pets' dead hair/skin) in the air, which might trigger allergic reaction in some human .
Other than daily brushing,good diet, using air dryer when you bath your dogs reduce shedding amount too. If you bath your dogs at home, brush your dogs first and then bath your dog, dry their fur with Air dryer and brush them again. That way, you will find less loose/dead fur in the tub and cleaning after the bathing is much easier that way. And you would probably find less fur on the ground compare to towel dry after bathing.
You can read more on tips/tools for bathing your dogs in previous entry titled "Bathing your dogs ".
Let's watch Palette enjoying FURminated. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Palette and FURminator
Can you see even if she was playing with her favorite squeaky bunny toys, she pause for a moment and come on to the fluffy bed to be Furminated? You see that she brought her favorite squeaky bunny toy to the fluffy bed but she decided to abandon the toy when she gets Furminated. You will see her yawning too so you can see how much she enjoys FURminator.
In the video clip above, I have mainly brushed her back. Before the video was taken, I brushed her with soft brush,flea comb to make sure there is no tangle hair on her, and then used the FURminator. After the video was taken, I worked on other areas such as sides,thighs,chest etc..and Palette fell asleep..
As you can see, I have been using the small size of the FURminator. I am not in pressed schedule or I do not have many dogs in the house and, small sized tool does the job fine for me.
Often times, you will see the FURminator demonstration videos on the internet or at box pet supply stores and you see tonz of fur on the floor around dog that is Furminated. I do not get that much of excess amount of fur off from Palette (Pembroke Welsh Corgi). Probably because I brush daily and use other brush before using the FURminator and her diet is different, breed is different..but Palette likes it, I like the fact that does great job removing the dead/loose hair off from her much better than other brush and, I use the tool when I groom Palette.
Now, I came across another youtube video on dog with Furminator. For some dogs, if you use FURminator outside the house, I wonder if you will see the scenes like this. Birds may want to use the fur for their nest
If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook, please click here to watch the video.
Shiba
Ohh..FURminator!
Enjoying to be FURminated!
FURminator gets me sleepy! Y.A.W.N..
Sliding down from the fluffy bed..FURminator got me sleepy enough to fall asleep..
Now I woke up from the nap, I will go back to squeaking my bunny toy..
*** Before using the FURminator, it is best to use other brush first to make sure there is no tangle hair on your dogs.
*** When you brush with FURminator, brush with gentle pressure on the brush. Do not press hard to the skin.It could irritate the skin.
*** Make sure to keep the cap on to protect the tooth after using the tool..
To visit our store,please click here or paste and copy the link bellow into your browser.
http://yassysgdk.com/main.sc
Brandy strawberry,strawberry jam, instant strawberry ice cream and strawberry drinks
When I was a kid,often times I stood right next to my mother and helped her preparing for meals or for snack or family member's birthday cakes. It was fun because you get to mess with hands and be creative and tell her how about this or that and even though I did not make those all by myself ,I felt like I have accomplished something. And when I ask her questions why do you do this or that, she tells me the reasons and it was good learning experience too.
In this entry, I thought I would share some of the food from childhood memories.
Pancake was one of those things that I remember making with my mother. When we made it with fruits, banana was the choice. We sliced banana and chopped smaller size and toss them into pancake butter and baked them.
This is kicked up version of pancakes with brandy strawberry.
So, how do you make "Pancake with Brandy strawberry"? Here is how.
Pancake with brandy strawberry
<Pancakes>
1. To the bowl, add 1 C of Unbleached all purpose flour,1 tbs of sugar,2tsp baking powder,1/8tsp table salt and mix well.
2. To the other bowl, add 1 C Milk, 1 egg, zest of 1 whole lemon, capful of vanilla extract, and 1 tbs of butter melted and mix well.
3. To the bowl of wet ingredients (the bowl of milk mixture), add dry ingredient mix (flour mixture) little by little and stir
** Just mix until you do not see lumps of flour in the batter but be careful not to over-mix.
4. To the skillet with medium high heat, drop 1/2 tbs of butter and let it melt and grab the paper towel with tong and wipe it around wait til the skillet get hot enough.Once hot enough, turn the heat down to medium heat.
** You can test the hotness with splashing one drop of water onto the skillet. If you hear the sizzle, it is hot enough. Turn the heat down to medium heat.
5.When skillet is hot enough, use ladle and pour pancake batter on the center of the skillet
** By using ladle, and pour the batter aiming onto the center of the skillet, always pancake will be same size
6. Wait until you see the slow bubble showing up and edge getting brown.
7. Flip it over and wait till it gets cook through.
** My mother taught me how to flip using clean small hand towel.
** She put the towel onto skillet and taught me that when you flip, you sort of push away from you by holding handle near you downward and push away and make motion like scooping up with wrist snap and try push up the hand towel in the skillet when it gets down to tip of the skillet. Then catch. Before flipping over, makes a couple of small pull and push motion helped position the hand towel. Also, you need to push the hand away with quick movement not slow.Otherwise, it won't flip or won't be able to catch.
** With hand towel, it is not like real flipping it over but it helps practicing the hand movement.
** When you flip the pancake, do not press it down
8. When pancake is done,plate them up and pour some of brandy strawberry over and enjoy!
** IF you make blueberry pancakes etc, here is what I normally do. When I buy fresh blueberry, I puree in mixer and pour onto ice cube tray. When it froze, I bag them up in freezer bag. Then, whenever I feel like making blueberry pancakes, I thaw the one ice cube and mix in into the batter.
I see a lot on TV that people make blueberry pancakes by dropping whole blueberry onto batter, but if you do so, you get blueberry's bursting flavor just when you hit the blueberry spot. I prefer to taste blueberry with every bite. So, I puree the fruits and add into batter. To the recipe above, 1 ice cubed puree blueberry works good. The recipe itself makes about 4-6 pancakes with about 5" diameter.
<Brandy strawberry>
** Before working on the pancake, make this brandy strawberry first
1. Slice strawberry to about 1/4" thickness and put them into tupperware and sprinkle white table sugar and pour splash of V.S.O.P brandy and mix well and let it sit on counter while making pancakes.
** V.S.O.P means Very special original pale and aged at least 5 years in wood.
** You can adjust sweetness by adding more sugar to the strawberry mixture, if it were too sweet, add more brandy.
Another thing my mother and I used to make a lot is strawberry jam. Here in the states, I have seen the recipes calling for pectin powder to make jam, but me and my mother never used one. You really don't need pectin to make strawberry jam. I recognized that some of the recipes says "simmer","low temperature", or recipe has no lemon juice. I am not certain but,I am guessing that if they use lemon juice or if cooking temperature were much higher,they should not need pectin powder to gel. I never had any problem not using pectin powder.
One another thing I recognized skimming through recipes you find here in the states is amount of sugar. Some of the recipes are calling for way too much sugar.
So, how do you make "Strawberry jam"? Here is how.
Strawberry jam
1. Take leaf part of 1 pound strawberry off, and if strawberry were big, cut to quarter
2. To dutch oven (I use Le creuset ), toss the strawberry and pour 14 tbs of white table sugar. If you go by weight of sugar for easy measurement, it is about 7 oz weight.
3. Stir well with wooden spoon and coat the sugar around strawberry and get the stove top on with medium high heat.
4. Stir slow and you will see that juice from strawberry coming out and sugar dissolved and eventually, it becomes like syrup consistency.
5. It will eventually boil. Stir consistently when boiling and skim off the foam that comes on top with spoon and put the foam onto small container.
** By using the small container to store skimmed foam, you save the trip to sink every time you take the foam out.
6. Liquid would start thicken and when you put the silver spoon onto the jam and place it on plate, you will see that it gel
7. To gel, it takes about 26 minutes. After you know it gel, remove from the heat, add 1tbs of lemon juice and stir and pour into jar.
8. When it gets cool down, put it in fridge and enjoy the jam. One pound of fresh strawberry yield about a little over 1 cup. Fresh strawberry jam tastes much better
** I skimmed as much foam I could but I could have skim a little bit more..
** Since I knew I would finish it off quickly, I did not do any canning steps; sterilizing jar and stuff. If you follow canning steps, it would last lot longer.
This is where it gets weird where my next idea coming from. In previous entry titled "Palette summer treats diary ;July 16th 2010 " , you read that I made frozen yogurt treats with strawberry for my stumpy little dog. That Strawberry treat smelled so sweet and wanted to make something for us human too. So, I thought, why not "Ice cream". So, I decided to make strawberry ice cream. However, I do not have ice cream maker, so I picked up vanilla ice cream from store and here is how I made instant strawberry ice cream.
So, how do you make "Instant strawberry ice cream"? Here is how
Strawberry ice cream
1. Buy a pint of vanilla ice cream
2. Place the ice cream container in big bowl and keep in fridge for about 8 hours to melt
3. Pour the melted ice cream into the bowl
4. Add about 5-7 tbs of strawberry jam and mix well and put the ice cream back in to container, and freeze
** Since you are adding stuff into ice cream, you will get more than 1 pint of finish products.You need a small container to store extra ice cream.
I think you can make all kinds of ice cream with your creativity. You probably could add melted chocolate and stir and put those back in and you get chocolate ice cream. If you add candied ginger to melted vanilla ice cream,you get ginger ice cream. If you add green tea powder, you maybe able to make green tea ice cream. If you add blueberry jam, you made blueberry ice cream...there are lots of ways to make your own ice cream. I love green tea ice cream a lot and next time when I make own ice cream, I will try and see how it comes out.
Other than 3 ways with strawberry, there are two more. It is strawberry drinks I made a lot when I was a kid.I still make those now and then.
I see you can get strawberry milk powder at grocery store but why not make your own with fresh strawberry?
<Strawberry milk>
1. Take leaf part off from strawberry and toss a couple of them onto small bowl and smash them with potato masher. Or you can puree in mixer.
2. Put smashed/pureed strawberry to mug and add sugar and pour milk and stir
<Strawberry sprite>
1. Take leaf part off from strawberry and toss a couple of them onto small bowl and smash them with potato masher.Or you can puree in mixer.
2. Put smashed/pureed strawberry to mug and add sprite and stir
Strawberry sprite is something my family made face at it when I first made when I was a kid, but I made them a lot.Try and see if you like them.
Enjoy!
In this entry, I thought I would share some of the food from childhood memories.
Pancake was one of those things that I remember making with my mother. When we made it with fruits, banana was the choice. We sliced banana and chopped smaller size and toss them into pancake butter and baked them.
This is kicked up version of pancakes with brandy strawberry.
So, how do you make "Pancake with Brandy strawberry"? Here is how.
Pancake with brandy strawberry
<Pancakes>
1. To the bowl, add 1 C of Unbleached all purpose flour,1 tbs of sugar,2tsp baking powder,1/8tsp table salt and mix well.
2. To the other bowl, add 1 C Milk, 1 egg, zest of 1 whole lemon, capful of vanilla extract, and 1 tbs of butter melted and mix well.
3. To the bowl of wet ingredients (the bowl of milk mixture), add dry ingredient mix (flour mixture) little by little and stir
** Just mix until you do not see lumps of flour in the batter but be careful not to over-mix.
4. To the skillet with medium high heat, drop 1/2 tbs of butter and let it melt and grab the paper towel with tong and wipe it around wait til the skillet get hot enough.Once hot enough, turn the heat down to medium heat.
** You can test the hotness with splashing one drop of water onto the skillet. If you hear the sizzle, it is hot enough. Turn the heat down to medium heat.
5.When skillet is hot enough, use ladle and pour pancake batter on the center of the skillet
** By using ladle, and pour the batter aiming onto the center of the skillet, always pancake will be same size
6. Wait until you see the slow bubble showing up and edge getting brown.
7. Flip it over and wait till it gets cook through.
** My mother taught me how to flip using clean small hand towel.
** She put the towel onto skillet and taught me that when you flip, you sort of push away from you by holding handle near you downward and push away and make motion like scooping up with wrist snap and try push up the hand towel in the skillet when it gets down to tip of the skillet. Then catch. Before flipping over, makes a couple of small pull and push motion helped position the hand towel. Also, you need to push the hand away with quick movement not slow.Otherwise, it won't flip or won't be able to catch.
** With hand towel, it is not like real flipping it over but it helps practicing the hand movement.
** When you flip the pancake, do not press it down
8. When pancake is done,plate them up and pour some of brandy strawberry over and enjoy!
** IF you make blueberry pancakes etc, here is what I normally do. When I buy fresh blueberry, I puree in mixer and pour onto ice cube tray. When it froze, I bag them up in freezer bag. Then, whenever I feel like making blueberry pancakes, I thaw the one ice cube and mix in into the batter.
I see a lot on TV that people make blueberry pancakes by dropping whole blueberry onto batter, but if you do so, you get blueberry's bursting flavor just when you hit the blueberry spot. I prefer to taste blueberry with every bite. So, I puree the fruits and add into batter. To the recipe above, 1 ice cubed puree blueberry works good. The recipe itself makes about 4-6 pancakes with about 5" diameter.
<Brandy strawberry>
** Before working on the pancake, make this brandy strawberry first
1. Slice strawberry to about 1/4" thickness and put them into tupperware and sprinkle white table sugar and pour splash of V.S.O.P brandy and mix well and let it sit on counter while making pancakes.
** V.S.O.P means Very special original pale and aged at least 5 years in wood.
** You can adjust sweetness by adding more sugar to the strawberry mixture, if it were too sweet, add more brandy.
Another thing my mother and I used to make a lot is strawberry jam. Here in the states, I have seen the recipes calling for pectin powder to make jam, but me and my mother never used one. You really don't need pectin to make strawberry jam. I recognized that some of the recipes says "simmer","low temperature", or recipe has no lemon juice. I am not certain but,I am guessing that if they use lemon juice or if cooking temperature were much higher,they should not need pectin powder to gel. I never had any problem not using pectin powder.
One another thing I recognized skimming through recipes you find here in the states is amount of sugar. Some of the recipes are calling for way too much sugar.
So, how do you make "Strawberry jam"? Here is how.
Strawberry jam
1. Take leaf part of 1 pound strawberry off, and if strawberry were big, cut to quarter
2. To dutch oven (I use Le creuset ), toss the strawberry and pour 14 tbs of white table sugar. If you go by weight of sugar for easy measurement, it is about 7 oz weight.
3. Stir well with wooden spoon and coat the sugar around strawberry and get the stove top on with medium high heat.
4. Stir slow and you will see that juice from strawberry coming out and sugar dissolved and eventually, it becomes like syrup consistency.
5. It will eventually boil. Stir consistently when boiling and skim off the foam that comes on top with spoon and put the foam onto small container.
** By using the small container to store skimmed foam, you save the trip to sink every time you take the foam out.
6. Liquid would start thicken and when you put the silver spoon onto the jam and place it on plate, you will see that it gel
7. To gel, it takes about 26 minutes. After you know it gel, remove from the heat, add 1tbs of lemon juice and stir and pour into jar.
8. When it gets cool down, put it in fridge and enjoy the jam. One pound of fresh strawberry yield about a little over 1 cup. Fresh strawberry jam tastes much better
** I skimmed as much foam I could but I could have skim a little bit more..
** Since I knew I would finish it off quickly, I did not do any canning steps; sterilizing jar and stuff. If you follow canning steps, it would last lot longer.
This is where it gets weird where my next idea coming from. In previous entry titled "Palette summer treats diary ;July 16th 2010 " , you read that I made frozen yogurt treats with strawberry for my stumpy little dog. That Strawberry treat smelled so sweet and wanted to make something for us human too. So, I thought, why not "Ice cream". So, I decided to make strawberry ice cream. However, I do not have ice cream maker, so I picked up vanilla ice cream from store and here is how I made instant strawberry ice cream.
So, how do you make "Instant strawberry ice cream"? Here is how
Strawberry ice cream
1. Buy a pint of vanilla ice cream
2. Place the ice cream container in big bowl and keep in fridge for about 8 hours to melt
3. Pour the melted ice cream into the bowl
4. Add about 5-7 tbs of strawberry jam and mix well and put the ice cream back in to container, and freeze
** Since you are adding stuff into ice cream, you will get more than 1 pint of finish products.You need a small container to store extra ice cream.
I think you can make all kinds of ice cream with your creativity. You probably could add melted chocolate and stir and put those back in and you get chocolate ice cream. If you add candied ginger to melted vanilla ice cream,you get ginger ice cream. If you add green tea powder, you maybe able to make green tea ice cream. If you add blueberry jam, you made blueberry ice cream...there are lots of ways to make your own ice cream. I love green tea ice cream a lot and next time when I make own ice cream, I will try and see how it comes out.
Other than 3 ways with strawberry, there are two more. It is strawberry drinks I made a lot when I was a kid.I still make those now and then.
I see you can get strawberry milk powder at grocery store but why not make your own with fresh strawberry?
<Strawberry milk>
1. Take leaf part off from strawberry and toss a couple of them onto small bowl and smash them with potato masher. Or you can puree in mixer.
2. Put smashed/pureed strawberry to mug and add sugar and pour milk and stir
<Strawberry sprite>
1. Take leaf part off from strawberry and toss a couple of them onto small bowl and smash them with potato masher.Or you can puree in mixer.
2. Put smashed/pureed strawberry to mug and add sprite and stir
Strawberry sprite is something my family made face at it when I first made when I was a kid, but I made them a lot.Try and see if you like them.
Enjoy!
Palette's summer treats diary; August 12th,2010
In the previous entry titled "Palette's summer treats diary;June 13th,2010
", I wrote about how excited our dog, "Palette" becomes when she hears
the command "Go get leash" for walk. And, get excited about her cool
down treats. Palette really loves my cool down treats, and when we come
back home,she literally right pass over me and position herself in the
kitchen and wait in her imaginary line for the treats with bubbles
around her mouth.
Here in this "Palette's summer treats dairy" series, I thought it would be interesting for you to tour around our kitchen to see what kinds of cool down treats she is getting. Now, I will pass a pen to Palette to write her diary here.
August 12th,2010
Dear diary,
As always, I waited for my mom get ready for walkie, and called me from bottom from the stairs. "Palette,go get a leash".
She woke me up,opened the crate door, started getting ready for walkie. Mom takes long time to get ready, so after I got out from the crate with looong stretch and big yawn, I was resting on floor but decided to go back to the crate and snooze a little bit more.
Are you ready for walkie yet,mom?
She said "Let's go for walkie". My ears perked up, and I went to get my leash for walkie, handed to mom and as soon as I know my leash is attached to my collar, I passed through mom and headed down to the door. Walkie is my favorite activity of the day!
Now,off to the walkie. We were enjoying all the exciting smell in the air, exciting doggy news on the ground and then heard low sound from behind. Big monster is moving toward us with big mouth on their back! That big monster is fed at every house,and it stops and goes but following us two, and I have decided to take mom for high speed walkie.
Running away from big monster with tongue hanging out, I looked back and continued running till the spot I need to reply back to furry friends with pee-mail.
Mom said the monster is called "Garbage truck" and it will be back again next week. Maybe I should tell mom to change the walkie time. I hate to miss reading exciting doggy news on the ground.
On the way home, I found a lady working on her flower garden and I got to greet her. I got nice petting from the lady. She asked mom " Is she a good girl?" Because she saw mom and I practicing "walking nicely" before and she saw me getting yummy with mom's clicker sound. Mom said to her "Yes."
I knew she would said so, I am a good Corgi. I can walk nicely on leash (Mom says she feels like she is carrying an empty bag unless I see a squirrels or being chased by a monster on our walk
So...Now is the time for..? Frozen Yogurt Treats!?!
Today,I got Frozen seedless watermelon broccoli yogurt treats.
Frozen seedless watermelon broccoli yogurt treats..
Here is how you make them.
1. To the mixer, add seedless watermelon cut to chunks 8.4 oz, steamed broccoli 8.5 oz, Stonyfield organic plain yogurt 10 oz, and puree them.
** The watermelon used for the treats were "Seedless".That way, you do not have to pick the seeds.
** With Broccoli, I just bought bunch of Broccoli, cut to chunks and steamed.
** Cruciferous family vegetables such as broccoli,cabbage, cauliflower,brussel sprouts should be fed in moderation since they can suppress the function of thyroid in dogs.
2. Pour those onto ice cube tray and freeze
** This will be about 24 blocks of treats in ice cube tray with my mom's
** Frozen watermelon broccoli yogurt treats whole batch is roughly about 364 kcal (you can see more detail here at nutritiondata.com website). So, each ice cube given is about 15kcal
** Mom wanted rough kcal to be as close to real one, and she used Nutrition fact food label on the back of yogurt she used. She typed in the information provided in the nutrition label on the yogurt..
"Can I taste testing the treats too?" I asked mom when she was making the treats the other day. I am good at catching mom or dad snacking yummy. They should know I like to be included
Then, I got a small lick. Hmm.. that was good!!
After the treats are frozen solid, mom was trying to put the treats in the bag. I got a sneak peek..
Target found! Wish I were taller. I need a piggy ride!!
Uh-oh... I got caught. Smile
OMG!! Yummy!
Give it a big sloppy kiss to the treats! See how wet my nose is?
The treats were so yummy. This is the best part when you go for walkie I wait nicely in front of freezer door.I know where they sleep in
By the way, as temperature goes up, mom started hearing more of ways to cool down or cool down treats. I know you can get commercially made cool down frozen treats from grocery store but, take a look on ingredients list bellow.
"Water,dried whey,soy flour, peanut butter syrup,vegetable fat, dried whey, whey protein,soy lecithin, Polysorbate 60 and 23 more ingredients follow"
If you get the commercially made frozen treats, biggest part of the treats are water,whey,soy flour and sugar. This treat is also fortified with vitamin supplement too. When you can make your own easily with much much more simple ingredients, with healthier ingredients, why not make your own?
Mom thinks it is not just problem in ingredients list.She also guesses most people who buy those commercially made frozen treats would feed the whole thing.They probably not going to scoop up only a section from the cup. Mom does not know how many kcal per cup of the treats but looking up the peanut butter label on jar,she thinks it will be high fat high calorie treats because 2 tbs of peanut butter, even the one mom has-low sodium,33% less sugar says 190 kcal and out of the 190 kcal, 130 kcal is from the fat in the products! Considering peanut butter syrup is in top 4 ingredient on the commercially made frozen treats, maybe lots of sugar, and high kcal.
Along side the commercially made frozen treats, you can find other people's frozen yogurt treats recipes. I find most basic one is yogurt,banana,peanut butter,honey. As you have read above, just 2 table spoons of peanut butter is already 190 kcal , and out of the 190 kcal, 130 kcal is calorie from fat.Honey is natural sweetener in a way, but I do not know why human feel the need to add more when much simpler stuff is good enough for us. Some recipes use flavored yogurt such as French vanilla, but those flavored yogurt is very sugary and if you add more sugar to that with peanut butter or honey...it will be very very sugary treats.
To make the point, lets say mom used Organic Stonyfield French vanilla yogurt as a base. In one cup, French vanilla yogurt has 30 grams of sugar, if she made it with plain yogurt there is 13 grams of sugar. Why choose the sugary flavored yogurt?
I am sure I would enjoy the commercially made frozen treats, or treats made with sugary ingredients but everything I like does not necessary means they are good for me. Of course, homemade frozen yogurt treats with peanut butter,honey,banana is better than commercially made frozen treats though..
To get equal calorie to 2 table spoons of peanut butter, I need to eat roughly 12-13 watermelon broccoli yogurt treats! I do not mind but it is a lot of treats,lol.
Stay cool and enjoy summer!
Here in this "Palette's summer treats dairy" series, I thought it would be interesting for you to tour around our kitchen to see what kinds of cool down treats she is getting. Now, I will pass a pen to Palette to write her diary here.
August 12th,2010
Dear diary,
As always, I waited for my mom get ready for walkie, and called me from bottom from the stairs. "Palette,go get a leash".
She woke me up,opened the crate door, started getting ready for walkie. Mom takes long time to get ready, so after I got out from the crate with looong stretch and big yawn, I was resting on floor but decided to go back to the crate and snooze a little bit more.
Are you ready for walkie yet,mom?
She said "Let's go for walkie". My ears perked up, and I went to get my leash for walkie, handed to mom and as soon as I know my leash is attached to my collar, I passed through mom and headed down to the door. Walkie is my favorite activity of the day!
Now,off to the walkie. We were enjoying all the exciting smell in the air, exciting doggy news on the ground and then heard low sound from behind. Big monster is moving toward us with big mouth on their back! That big monster is fed at every house,and it stops and goes but following us two, and I have decided to take mom for high speed walkie.
Running away from big monster with tongue hanging out, I looked back and continued running till the spot I need to reply back to furry friends with pee-mail.
Mom said the monster is called "Garbage truck" and it will be back again next week. Maybe I should tell mom to change the walkie time. I hate to miss reading exciting doggy news on the ground.
On the way home, I found a lady working on her flower garden and I got to greet her. I got nice petting from the lady. She asked mom " Is she a good girl?" Because she saw mom and I practicing "walking nicely" before and she saw me getting yummy with mom's clicker sound. Mom said to her "Yes."
I knew she would said so, I am a good Corgi. I can walk nicely on leash (Mom says she feels like she is carrying an empty bag
unless I see a squirrels or being chased by a monster on our walkSo...Now is the time for..? Frozen Yogurt Treats!?!
Today,I got Frozen seedless watermelon broccoli yogurt treats.
Frozen seedless watermelon broccoli yogurt treats..
Here is how you make them.
1. To the mixer, add seedless watermelon cut to chunks 8.4 oz, steamed broccoli 8.5 oz, Stonyfield organic plain yogurt 10 oz, and puree them.
** The watermelon used for the treats were "Seedless".That way, you do not have to pick the seeds.
** With Broccoli, I just bought bunch of Broccoli, cut to chunks and steamed.
** Cruciferous family vegetables such as broccoli,cabbage, cauliflower,brussel sprouts should be fed in moderation since they can suppress the function of thyroid in dogs.
2. Pour those onto ice cube tray and freeze
** This will be about 24 blocks of treats in ice cube tray with my mom's
** Frozen watermelon broccoli yogurt treats whole batch is roughly about 364 kcal (you can see more detail here at nutritiondata.com website). So, each ice cube given is about 15kcal
** Mom wanted rough kcal to be as close to real one, and she used Nutrition fact food label on the back of yogurt she used. She typed in the information provided in the nutrition label on the yogurt..
"Can I taste testing the treats too?" I asked mom when she was making the treats the other day. I am good at catching mom or dad snacking yummy. They should know I like to be included
Then, I got a small lick. Hmm.. that was good!!
After the treats are frozen solid, mom was trying to put the treats in the bag. I got a sneak peek..
Target found! Wish I were taller. I need a piggy ride!!
Uh-oh... I got caught. Smile
OMG!! Yummy!
Give it a big sloppy kiss to the treats! See how wet my nose is?
The treats were so yummy. This is the best part when you go for walkie
I wait nicely in front of freezer door.I know where they sleep inBy the way, as temperature goes up, mom started hearing more of ways to cool down or cool down treats. I know you can get commercially made cool down frozen treats from grocery store but, take a look on ingredients list bellow.
"Water,dried whey,soy flour, peanut butter syrup,vegetable fat, dried whey, whey protein,soy lecithin, Polysorbate 60 and 23 more ingredients follow"
If you get the commercially made frozen treats, biggest part of the treats are water,whey,soy flour and sugar. This treat is also fortified with vitamin supplement too. When you can make your own easily with much much more simple ingredients, with healthier ingredients, why not make your own?
Mom thinks it is not just problem in ingredients list.She also guesses most people who buy those commercially made frozen treats would feed the whole thing.They probably not going to scoop up only a section from the cup. Mom does not know how many kcal per cup of the treats but looking up the peanut butter label on jar,she thinks it will be high fat high calorie treats because 2 tbs of peanut butter, even the one mom has-low sodium,33% less sugar says 190 kcal and out of the 190 kcal, 130 kcal is from the fat in the products! Considering peanut butter syrup is in top 4 ingredient on the commercially made frozen treats, maybe lots of sugar, and high kcal.
Along side the commercially made frozen treats, you can find other people's frozen yogurt treats recipes. I find most basic one is yogurt,banana,peanut butter,honey. As you have read above, just 2 table spoons of peanut butter is already 190 kcal , and out of the 190 kcal, 130 kcal is calorie from fat.Honey is natural sweetener in a way, but I do not know why human feel the need to add more when much simpler stuff is good enough for us. Some recipes use flavored yogurt such as French vanilla, but those flavored yogurt is very sugary and if you add more sugar to that with peanut butter or honey...it will be very very sugary treats.
To make the point, lets say mom used Organic Stonyfield French vanilla yogurt as a base. In one cup, French vanilla yogurt has 30 grams of sugar, if she made it with plain yogurt there is 13 grams of sugar. Why choose the sugary flavored yogurt?
I am sure I would enjoy the commercially made frozen treats, or treats made with sugary ingredients but everything I like does not necessary means they are good for me. Of course, homemade frozen yogurt treats with peanut butter,honey,banana is better than commercially made frozen treats though..
To get equal calorie to 2 table spoons of peanut butter, I need to eat roughly 12-13 watermelon broccoli yogurt treats! I do not mind but it is a lot of treats,lol.
Stay cool and enjoy summer!
People food for thought Part IV: Whole Grain
These days, more and more people including myself are interested in cooking with fresh food, locally grown food, and eat healthier.
Many gourmet burger joints that offer burgers made with fresh ingredients are popping up, some celebrity chefs are working on encouraging people to cook with fresh ingredients,not processed food, and also helping people to be educated on fresh food.
For example, as I wrote in previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients Part II ", since Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution campaign;bring fresh food to school lunch menu, I have started noticing many more celebrity chefs are working on their own project to encourage people to eat fresh food not processed food.
Well known chef Emeril Lagasse now has his new show called "Fresh Food Fast" at cooking channel, featuring fresh food meals made out from locally grown,seasonal ingredients. According to his website , he teaches how to pick local produce, and show viewers how to cook quick and easy meals with fresh ingredients.
Rachael Ray is working on bringing school gardens supported by her Yum-O!organization, government, private, community non profit funds etc. The vegetables, herbs grown in the school gardens are to go into school lunches. She also helps school creating school lunch menus.
Along with this fresh food movement, I started hearing more words "Whole Grain" in Ads, on package of cereal, chips,pasta and bread packages. In previous entry titled "People food for thought ", I wrote about so-called "Healthy food" not necessary be healthy when you read the food label.
So, are products labeled "Whole grain" on the package really good for you?
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, now you can find a sweet sugary popular kids' breakfast snack labeled as "Whole grain". Whole grain sounds very healthy choice, but it is also very very sweet snack. Even if the package says "Whole Grain", I am not comfortable serving up the sugary,high calorie breakfast day in day out to kids.
What is Whole Grain really?
I came across a website called "Nutrition Action " that you can see the whole grain picture. As you see in the picture, whole grain is a berry that contains all parts; endosperm, bran/kernel, and germ.
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, endosperm has few nutrients and it is starchy part. Then, bran/kernel is the part where you get most fiber from, and germ is the part where you get most nutrients from such as Vitamin B and Irons.
So, if you think about it, the less processed the berry is, the more you get benefit from the berry. As Jeannine writes in her article, the products made with refined flour has less nutrients because the processing removes the nutrient-packed part of the berry; bran and germ, leaving starchy part of the seed;endosperm. Then, to compensate for the loss of the nutrient in the process of making refined flour, company would add the vitamins back in by fortifying the products with lost nutrients such as thiamine,riboflavin,folic acid,niacin, and iron.This is the term where "enriched" flour coming from.
Similar to "Enriched" flour, if you shop around flour, you may find the term "Unbleached" or "Bleached" on some flour package.
What are the differences between "Unbleached" and "Bleached" flour?
According to whats cooking america website , "Bleached flour" is flour that were bleached chemically to make it more whiten in color, "Unbleached flour" is flour that was aged and bleached naturally with oxygen in the air.If you pour some of each type of flour side by side, you will see the difference in color. Unbleached flour is a little yellowish due to existence of beta-carotene (Vitamin A). I personally prefer using "Unbleached" flour because I like the idea that the flour is naturally bleached, and I feel it makes nicer smell, tastier bread etc..
What to look for in Whole Grain products?
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, professor of clinical nutrition in Dallas "Jo Ann Carson" encourage people to keep things simple, choose good quality whole grain sources (one in low with sugar,sodium, saturated/trans fats)
To read Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, please click here .
Back to sugary sweet popular kids' breakfast, bellow are some ingredients from ingredients list on two products label.Product A is sugary breakfast snack that you can see the term "whole grain" on their package, and product B is whole grain chocolate flavored cereal.
Product A;
"Whole wheat flour, enriched flour,sugar,soybean/palm oil,polydextrose,dextrose, high fructose corn syrup,corn syrup solids,whole grain barley flour glycerin,molasses,inulin,salt,corn starch,and levening agent,wheat starch,cinnamon, gelatin,caramel color,soy lecithin, and other vitamins listed on their package"
That is far from simple list of ingredients and contains lots of sugar (sugar is listed in top 3 in the ingredients list),and coloring.
Product B;
" Whole grain,corn,sugar,corn meal,corn syrup,whole grain oats,canola/rice bran oil,cocoa processed Alkali,color added,salt,dried corn syrup,corn bran,barley molt extract, trisodium phosphate,vanillin,vitamin E,BHT and other vitamins listed on their package.
As other breakfast item, long ingredients list, and sugar is listed in top 3 ingredients, so very sugary cereal with BHT.
Since many people are more health conscious, sandwich joint is started offering sandwich made with wheat bread.
Did you know that wheat bread is not the same with whole wheat bread?
According to the article written by Gloria Tsang at health castle website, bread color being brown does not necessary means you are eating "whole wheat bread" or "whole grain bread", and some of the brown bread has caramel coloring in the ingredients list.
She also states that "rye bread", "multi-grain bread" does not necessary means you are eating the bread made with minimally processed whole grain.She suggest to look for the word "Whole" in the ingredients list. Some wheat bread is made with refined white flour with whole wheat flour.
To read full article at health castle website,please click here .
I was flipping over the brown bread package to read the label the other day at grocery store, and noticed that brown colored bread, such as pumpernickel bread for example has caramel coloring too.
So, back to the wheat bread sandwich joint, their wheat bread ingredients goes as followings.
"Enriched flour, water, whole wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, contains less than 2% of the following: wheat bran, yeast, salt, soybean oil, dough conditioner ,cracked wheat, sodium ,lactylate,caramel color, dried honey preparation (honey powder, invert sugar, wheat starch, soy bran flour, silicon dioxid, mineral oil."
This is good example of what the writer Gloria Tsang at health castle website was writing about;using the combination of refined white flour with wheat flour AND you see the caramel color in the list.
So,it is very important for you to read the label before buying if you pick up the "whole grain" products. Package's term does not necessary means the product you just picked is made with nutrient rich whole grains.
If you have time to make your own whole wheat bread, baking the bread would be the best way to be sure you get the real deal.
To make whole wheat bread, if you bake one in the kitchen, you do not need long list of ingredients. All you need is whole wheat flour,water, yeast, sugar or honey to poof the dough,pinch of salt. You will recognize what each ingredients are, and simple list of ingredients. I admit that it is time consuming work but end result is priceless. If you have kids, they can work with you to make bread and it will be fun family time.
I love cooking and I love baking bread too. In the past, I made lots of French bread and enjoyed baking them with all different kinds of method to achieve nice bread color,texture,hole size in the bread etc... It takes time from start to finish but I enjoyed the freshly baked breads. And, our stumpy little dog "Palette" loved the bread day and she got tiny nibble of crust. It is to say sorry to torture your sensitive sense of smell for hours with bread making
I have not made whole wheat bread yet, but in the near future, I would love to try and see how it comes out.I knead the bread dough with my hands and it gives me nice arm exercise for a day too
Many gourmet burger joints that offer burgers made with fresh ingredients are popping up, some celebrity chefs are working on encouraging people to cook with fresh ingredients,not processed food, and also helping people to be educated on fresh food.
For example, as I wrote in previous entry titled "Cooking with fresh ingredients Part II ", since Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution campaign;bring fresh food to school lunch menu, I have started noticing many more celebrity chefs are working on their own project to encourage people to eat fresh food not processed food.
Well known chef Emeril Lagasse now has his new show called "Fresh Food Fast" at cooking channel, featuring fresh food meals made out from locally grown,seasonal ingredients. According to his website , he teaches how to pick local produce, and show viewers how to cook quick and easy meals with fresh ingredients.
Rachael Ray is working on bringing school gardens supported by her Yum-O!organization, government, private, community non profit funds etc. The vegetables, herbs grown in the school gardens are to go into school lunches. She also helps school creating school lunch menus.
Along with this fresh food movement, I started hearing more words "Whole Grain" in Ads, on package of cereal, chips,pasta and bread packages. In previous entry titled "People food for thought ", I wrote about so-called "Healthy food" not necessary be healthy when you read the food label.
So, are products labeled "Whole grain" on the package really good for you?
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, now you can find a sweet sugary popular kids' breakfast snack labeled as "Whole grain". Whole grain sounds very healthy choice, but it is also very very sweet snack. Even if the package says "Whole Grain", I am not comfortable serving up the sugary,high calorie breakfast day in day out to kids.
What is Whole Grain really?
I came across a website called "Nutrition Action " that you can see the whole grain picture. As you see in the picture, whole grain is a berry that contains all parts; endosperm, bran/kernel, and germ.
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, endosperm has few nutrients and it is starchy part. Then, bran/kernel is the part where you get most fiber from, and germ is the part where you get most nutrients from such as Vitamin B and Irons.
So, if you think about it, the less processed the berry is, the more you get benefit from the berry. As Jeannine writes in her article, the products made with refined flour has less nutrients because the processing removes the nutrient-packed part of the berry; bran and germ, leaving starchy part of the seed;endosperm. Then, to compensate for the loss of the nutrient in the process of making refined flour, company would add the vitamins back in by fortifying the products with lost nutrients such as thiamine,riboflavin,folic acid,niacin, and iron.This is the term where "enriched" flour coming from.
Similar to "Enriched" flour, if you shop around flour, you may find the term "Unbleached" or "Bleached" on some flour package.
What are the differences between "Unbleached" and "Bleached" flour?
According to whats cooking america website , "Bleached flour" is flour that were bleached chemically to make it more whiten in color, "Unbleached flour" is flour that was aged and bleached naturally with oxygen in the air.If you pour some of each type of flour side by side, you will see the difference in color. Unbleached flour is a little yellowish due to existence of beta-carotene (Vitamin A). I personally prefer using "Unbleached" flour because I like the idea that the flour is naturally bleached, and I feel it makes nicer smell, tastier bread etc..
What to look for in Whole Grain products?
According to Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, professor of clinical nutrition in Dallas "Jo Ann Carson" encourage people to keep things simple, choose good quality whole grain sources (one in low with sugar,sodium, saturated/trans fats)
To read Los Angeles Times article written by Jeannine Stein, please click here .
Back to sugary sweet popular kids' breakfast, bellow are some ingredients from ingredients list on two products label.Product A is sugary breakfast snack that you can see the term "whole grain" on their package, and product B is whole grain chocolate flavored cereal.
Product A;
"Whole wheat flour, enriched flour,sugar,soybean/palm oil,polydextrose,dextrose, high fructose corn syrup,corn syrup solids,whole grain barley flour glycerin,molasses,inulin,salt,corn starch,and levening agent,wheat starch,cinnamon, gelatin,caramel color,soy lecithin, and other vitamins listed on their package"
That is far from simple list of ingredients and contains lots of sugar (sugar is listed in top 3 in the ingredients list),and coloring.
Product B;
" Whole grain,corn,sugar,corn meal,corn syrup,whole grain oats,canola/rice bran oil,cocoa processed Alkali,color added,salt,dried corn syrup,corn bran,barley molt extract, trisodium phosphate,vanillin,vitamin E,BHT and other vitamins listed on their package.
As other breakfast item, long ingredients list, and sugar is listed in top 3 ingredients, so very sugary cereal with BHT.
Since many people are more health conscious, sandwich joint is started offering sandwich made with wheat bread.
Did you know that wheat bread is not the same with whole wheat bread?
According to the article written by Gloria Tsang at health castle website, bread color being brown does not necessary means you are eating "whole wheat bread" or "whole grain bread", and some of the brown bread has caramel coloring in the ingredients list.
She also states that "rye bread", "multi-grain bread" does not necessary means you are eating the bread made with minimally processed whole grain.She suggest to look for the word "Whole" in the ingredients list. Some wheat bread is made with refined white flour with whole wheat flour.
To read full article at health castle website,please click here .
I was flipping over the brown bread package to read the label the other day at grocery store, and noticed that brown colored bread, such as pumpernickel bread for example has caramel coloring too.
So, back to the wheat bread sandwich joint, their wheat bread ingredients goes as followings.
"Enriched flour, water, whole wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, contains less than 2% of the following: wheat bran, yeast, salt, soybean oil, dough conditioner ,cracked wheat, sodium ,lactylate,caramel color, dried honey preparation (honey powder, invert sugar, wheat starch, soy bran flour, silicon dioxid, mineral oil."
This is good example of what the writer Gloria Tsang at health castle website was writing about;using the combination of refined white flour with wheat flour AND you see the caramel color in the list.
So,it is very important for you to read the label before buying if you pick up the "whole grain" products. Package's term does not necessary means the product you just picked is made with nutrient rich whole grains.
If you have time to make your own whole wheat bread, baking the bread would be the best way to be sure you get the real deal.
To make whole wheat bread, if you bake one in the kitchen, you do not need long list of ingredients. All you need is whole wheat flour,water, yeast, sugar or honey to poof the dough,pinch of salt. You will recognize what each ingredients are, and simple list of ingredients. I admit that it is time consuming work but end result is priceless. If you have kids, they can work with you to make bread and it will be fun family time.
I love cooking and I love baking bread too. In the past, I made lots of French bread and enjoyed baking them with all different kinds of method to achieve nice bread color,texture,hole size in the bread etc... It takes time from start to finish but I enjoyed the freshly baked breads. And, our stumpy little dog "Palette" loved the bread day and she got tiny nibble of crust. It is to say sorry to torture your sensitive sense of smell for hours with bread making
I have not made whole wheat bread yet, but in the near future, I would love to try and see how it comes out.I knead the bread dough with my hands and it gives me nice arm exercise for a day too
