Recipe: Peanut Brittle

Ingredients + Materials

• 1 cup roasted sesame (you can roast it yourself or buy it roasted at Asian markets)
• 1 1/2 cups of unsalted roasted peanuts. Generic brands are better since they are smaller peanuts and thus easier to flatten later.
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• large wooden cutting board
• rolling pin
• large knife and something heavy like a pestle
• heavy duty aluminum foil
• spatula

Note: for a low-sugar version, substitute with 1/3 cup of sugar and the Splenda equivalent of 1/2 cup of regular sugar. Alternatively, use 1/3 cup of organic blue agave nectar and the Splenda equivalent of 1/2 cup of sugar. It’s not possible to use only Splenda because it will not melt.

Instructions

• Cover the cutting board with aluminum foil.
• Quickly roast the sesame at a low heat to a golden color then remove from heat. Skip this step if you have pre-roasted sesame.
• Spread 1/2 of the roasted sesame seeds evenly on the foil. Keep the remainder for later.
• Heat the sugar in a small pot over high medium heat and stir until the sugar melts into a light brown caramel. Drop the peanuts into the caramel and stir quickly but make sure to blend it all well. Turn off the heat and continue to stir the peanuts for about 1 minute.
• Use the spatula to pour the peanuts onto the aluminum foil. Sprinkle some of the remaining sesame over the peanuts.
• Quickly use the rolling pin to flatten the peanuts, at the same time sprinkling more sesame as you roll.
• While the peanut mixture is still warm, use the knife and rolling pin to shape it into a rectangle of about 1/2″ in thickness. Then use the knife and pestle to cut the sheet into small squares. It’s important to do this while the mixture is still warm or the brittle will shatter very easily once it starts to cool off.
• Let the squares cool off to harden and enjoy!

Tips

• The above should be done one cup at a time. If you double or triple the ingredients, you may not have enough time to flatten the sheet before the brittle cools off and becomes too fragile to cut.
• You can adjust the thickness of the brittle after your first try. The thinner the spread, the easier it is to eat. But you’d also have to work a little faster to spread it thinly and cut before the brittle cools off.

 Pictorial Instructions

 

Have you ever been on a flight where even your amateur eyes tell you the rickety plane’s propellers shouldn’t look bent? But you get on anyway, trembling, because if you didn’t, you might not find a way out of the jungle for another 2 weeks?

 

 

What about hopping on a crowded dinghy manned by 8 very drunk people on open seas with no life vest when the best swimming you can do is the backstroke from one side of the pool to the other at the shallow end?

 

Or, I know! What about having to hitch a ride back from the Blue Mountains on an ice cream truck because you wandered off from your tour group and they decided not to wait for you?

 

 

If you’ve not had such charming experiences, it’s probably because you haven’t traveled with me.  Those who have had the misfortune of traipsing around the planet with me have crowned me the unlucky charm. 

 

Floods, rabies, frostbite, false imprisonment and other such silliness seem to dog me at least once on each trip. But the truth is, I think mishaps are part of the anecdote–my travel vernacular, as it were.

 

But when, after a particularly challenging trip, I wake up in my own bed with all body parts intact and a lucid mind, I tell myself those things can happen to anyone. Maybe not in one lifetime to one single person, but sure, they happen.

 

Besides, if I hadn’t gotten on those planes or boats or ox cart (don’t ask), I never would have had the experience of scouring for the opium pipes you see above, or the calfhair and snakeskin babouches, or carnevale masks, or Moroccan wool felt tote:

 

Most of all, I would have missed out on one of my treasured finds, a guitar hand made of deerskin and intricately carved wood that I bought from a very cross-eyed Berber shepherd who tried to out-math me by speaking French. In my defense, the desert sun was frying my brain, I didn’t know where I was, and I generally find it very hard to count in any language other than Vietnamese, especially while having a fierce haggling session. If my house were on fire, this would be one of the items I’d cry over losing. I bet you thought I was going to say I’d rush in to save it, but what am I crazy? I don’t even know how to play the guitar.

 

Musical instruments and large art are two of the primary things I collect on my travels.   Yes, I’m that annoying person who now hovers around the overhead bin to make sure other travelers don’t cram their oversized bags against my yueqin or dan nhi or art tubes. Because the one time when I didn’t do that, this poorly constructed and extremely heavy cedar guitar from Sapa arrived in LA with broken strings.

 

Granted, it’s most likely the ugliest guitar ever made but I know somewhere, somehow, some poor soul had lovingly made it and now I was its steward.

 

So if you don’t mind encountering some Act of God or putting up with my paranoia over my fragile luggage on every trip, pack your bags and come on the road with me.  On second thought, maybe it’s safer to virtual-travel with me from your computer.

Tags: Berber, Blue Mountains, dan nhi, Sapa, yueqin

 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
1 minced garlic clove
1 tablespoons Ginger, grated
1/2 lime, juiced
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon chili paste
1 pinch of salt

1 teaspoon honey (optional)

2 pounds of salmon steak (beware of bones) with skin on or salmon filet

 

Directions:

Tags: grilled teriyaki salmon, recipe

Now that my passport is getting some needed rest, I’m going to focus a little bit more on the fashion angle of my blog. I’ll be doing some serious spring cleaning and as a result, start a new series on how to change up some looks. Especially during these economic times I don’t have the heart to shop (much) and have blogged about shopping only for investment items that will take me through the fickle fashion cycles…so I will put my money where my mouth is and see if this theory does really apply in real life. I’ve also been talking to a friend about how to pull looks around a certain bag to see if an expensive bag can be both a workhorse and an ornament.  The question is whether it still makes sense to spend so much money on a bag anymore?  Hopefully I will get her to post her pictures as well because she’s a mommy and will have a different perspective on her wardrobe. So that’s what I’ll be blogging about these coming days.

But before I head into the abyss also known as my very scary closet, I have to say the spring cleaning must begin inside my head.  Fashion serves no purpose if it’s murky between the ears.  The disconnect between how you feel on the inside and how you look on the outside destroys the purpose fashion serves.  How is it possible to rock a look when on the inside all you have is dead weight?  This year has already flown by so quickly and as the first quarter draws to a close, my birthday rears its ugly head and I know I have to fight yet a little harder against the aging process. I don’t feel old but darn it all if I don’t already see my body betraying me. I don’t believe in aging gracefully; in fact, I plan on tumbling downhill kicking and screaming.  So yesterday I began a 90-day program that blends pilates, yoga, cardio and extreme core exercises. The worst part was not waking up this morning in pain in places I didn’t know I had in my body but looking at the pictures taken of myself in my swimsuit before I started the class yesterday.  The “before” photos are supposed to serve as incentive for sticking with the program, but in fact I find them to define the five stages of grief. So far I’ve been in denial (that’s not my derriere in the picture–someone must have doctored those photos!), gotten angry (who the heck invented gravity!), tried to bargain (maybe I don’t really have to ever go swimming again), and gotten depressed (trust me, flabbiness can bring on the blues). I’m just waiting for acceptance to kick in.

I’ve learned to live without a scale and, for the last ten years or so, have gauged my “comfort weight” with how loosely or snugly I fit in the same pair of  jeans.  I”ve been on and off the yoga/pilates wagon and wish I could get back inside a dance studio on a regular basis.  But as stress and life get in the way, I’ve let laziness become a symptom of my lifestyle, and this body that was once so toned is becoming a sad marshmallow. Not even a nice firm marshmallow but one of those melting ones when you make rice crispies.

But unlike other things that I can’t easily change in my life, my health, body, and mind are things I can control.  I’ll blog about my progress at the 30, 60, and finally 90-day mark of my training.  Who knows, I might even find the courage to get into a short dress at that final milestone.  And actually leave the house in it.  Maybe then I can finally accept the fact that this is the only body I’ll have for the rest of this ride. So I’d better treat it right. I hope you’ll join me in your spring cleaning.

Tags: core exercises, Fashion, pilates, spring cleaning, yoga

 

All this talk about Vietnamese food has made me a little homesick for Vietnam. Although we immigrated to the US way back in 1975, there’s not a single April 30 (the day Saigon fell) that I don’t count how many years we’ve been away from the first home that I’ve ever known.  The first time I went back to VN all of my childhood memories were challenged by my adult eyes and Americanization. I’d worked and lived in Hong Kong before that trip, but I was still in total culture shock.  In my own country. That was no longer mine.

 

I had all these romantic notions of French villas and breezy afternoons under a Flamboyant tree (cay phuong) but instead walked through shabby streets frozen in time.  At the time, it felt like Vietnam was stuck in a time warp, never having progressed past 1975.  The buzz for a new VN was simmering though, especially in anticipation of the lifting of the trade embargo.  When VN finally got its groove somewhere in the 90s, it reminded me of the gold rush days in California.  Lots of real excitement and (un)founded hopes from both the civilian and business perspectives.  I remember talking to lawyers who set up camps in this brave new world about their trials and tribulations.  It was very much like the wild, wild west in the far, far east.

 

The population got younger and younger on each of my subsequent visits and soon the American war was just something they read about in history books. I was a child when the war ended, and I hope the children of the next generations continue to enjoy being Vietnamese in a time of peace.  This is a selfish wish because I still have so much to see and do in VN. The pictures that you see here are from a recent visit to Cat Ong Island in Ha Long Bay. We trekked around the island and saw the verdant countryside…

 

on a very warm day with just enough humidity for me to be uncomfortable in my own skin. Even the water buffalo were looking for cover…

 

and yet I went ahead with the steep 2-hour trek to the highest point on the island, drenched in a lovely mix of bug-repellant spray and my own perspiration (who said traveling was glamorous?):

 

This is what I saw from the top (pardon the deja vu as I might have posted this picture before):

 

I reluctantly left the peak after the tour guide bribed me with a delicious home-made lunch he’d planned for me. It turned out to be at a private home of someone in the village who also had a teeny tiny convenience store set up in her living room. We had a wonderful 5-course lunch, and then I was ready for a nap:

 

That’s my tour guide in the striped shirt. He looked so scrawny and yet he was as strong as an ox. He carried my heavy suitcase over his head, wading in water to his chest, when our boat couldn’t be pulled to shore because of high tide. This was the same kid who, besides hiking with me on this day, also led me by kyak around the bay the day before and on a mountain bike around Cat Ba Island the day after. During the few days with him, he was always curious about the places I’d seen yet never expressed a desire to travel outside of VN.  He told me he was contented to show his country to tourists from around the world; why go anywhere else when I have all of this, he asked me when we were at the top of the island.  Some people can search a lifetime for a place to call home, and others wake up knowing they are already home. I envied his certainty.  I hope he gets his wish to one day open his own travel agency. In peace time, all dreams can come true.

Tags: Cat Ong Island, green papaya, Ha Long Bay, high tide, kayak, mountain bike, Vietnam, water buffalo