Peppermint Sugar Cookies

What's your favorite holiday song?

I think I must belong to an elite super group of people who have listened to obscene amounts of holiday music until they have unwittingly become armchair experts. 

Name your favorite holiday song and I can either name at least two of the artists who have recorded it without referencing the internet, sing the chorus, or both. I tested this by asking my Facebook friends for their favorite holiday song, and I am currently 8/8 nailing it in both categories.

That's pretty impressive for someone who has never willingly played a holiday song. This has all been absorbed passively from my exposure to my mother's insane holiday song collection. She estimates she has at least 200 versions of  just the song "Silent Night" to give you some perspective on how much holiday music she has.

My favorite is "The Wassail Song." I have no clue why really, I just love the refrain. Maybe it's because I can really belt it out* and the quality of singing is less important than the enthusiasm at which it is sung.  I also really love "Auld Lang Syne" but no one in their right mind would be comfortable with me singing that one.

Holiday songs are imperative to making these cookies. When I go over to my mother's house to bake cookies, they never stop playing.

*I can also belt out Frosty the Snowman both in English and Spanish. This is the only thing I know to say in Spanish, which goes to show you they teach you nearly nothing useful in mandatory language classes like "Help! I think I need a doctor!" but hey, I know a Christmas carol!

Yudofu (湯豆腐)

Kyoto, since it was the capital of Japan for so long, is steeped in history and tradition. One of those traditions still popular today is shojin ryori, or Buddhist cuisine. As Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the 6th century, so was the idea of vegetarianism for religious ideals. This cuisine became synonymous with Kyoto as Kyoto is home to some of the longest standing Buddhist temples and sects that still carry on this tradition.

As a whole, Japan is not very vegetarian-friendly. Dashi, made with dried bonito shavings, is omnipresent and veggie dishes on most menus will have some sort of fish in it, if only the broth. If you're a pescetarian, you're in heaven, but if you're vegan or vegetarian, I'm not going to be the best person to tell you how to navigate Japan and I recommend finding a blog that specializes in both Japan and veganism. I ate things in Japan that I'm still not quite sure what I ate, so I'm not going to claim any sort of authority on either subject. I normally write about Japanese American food!

Pumpkin Granola Cookies

Growing up in Southern California, Autumn does not herald itself in the same way as most people associate with the season.

Here, Fall isn't about the changing colors of the leaves (palm trees don't do that, sorry), nor the cool crisp morning fog that rolls in and begs you to turn on the kettle for a cup of tea (yeah no seriously, I wear flip flops year round). Hey, at least now we kind of have football with the return of the Rams.

Fall for me, and for a lot of Southern California natives, is when the Santa Ana winds start howling. For those unfamiliar with these winds, they even have their own Wikipedia page (and accompanying page on their mention in the popular arts). Also know as "devil winds," these winds are super hot and super strong, and account for how our wildfires get so out of control.

So when the ground bakes and cracks, when the air itself crackles with electricity, and the wind seems to go after you with a personal vengeance, that's when I know that Autumn is upon us.

I'll admit that Southern Californians are a little bit twisted, positively quivering to glug down Pumpkin Spice Lattes and don some scarves when the weather is trying to kill them and it's just as hot as ever. We seem to decide when the seasons change based on what the stores are selling.

So when the first Santa Ana winds of the season started, I immediately decided it was time to start decorating for Halloween and bust out the fall recipes that I've been saving all year.

Too bad I'm just not a fan of Starbucks' PSL.

Tomato Miso Soup (丸ごとトマトの味噌汁)

I bring you a break from my Japan adventures to make sure you have a chance to make this soup while tomatoes are in season!

Before we get to the recipe, I wanted to share a funny tidbit about food blogging in general that I really think applies to this recipe. I'm no bullshit. I really don't have the time or energy to pretend life is perfect. I've written about how disastrous I am in the kitchen, and just last week shared how I can't even eat spaghetti or salad without ruining a blouse.


As I've said before, this is isn't one of the more ambitious food blogs, but I'd like to think it's one of the real ones.

I wear an apron not for the fetishized Stepford wife effect, but because I'm really just fucking messy.

So when I set about making this recipe, I was able to make it with my mother's huge bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes. The problem with most heirloom varieties is they are very photo-ready. They tend to crack, have splotchy color, and seem to never be a uniform shape. Not exactly blog-worthy visually, but definitely delicious! But food blogging is about pretty photos. Really, no one cares about what I write up here; we eat with our eyes first. There's a reason Pinterest is popular: we are visual creatures. You can't take my word for it that the ugliest tomato ever is actually delicious. It's gotta look the part.

Some of the wonderful crazy colors!

Therefore I was faced with a choice: make the recipe with grocery store Stepford wife tomatoes, or not-so-pretty heirloom tomatoes? I could even make it with the perfect umblemished grocery store ones for just the photos, then eat the ones from the garden. But that just seemed to venture too far away from my style.

Instead I hosted a casting call of all the ripe heirloom tomatoes from my mother's garden and chose the prettiest ones for my photos! Is it perfectly round? Nope, but it tasted perfect. You'll just have to take my word on it.

Bacon Wrapped Mochi (餅の豚巻き)

I love mochi.

I've written odes to mochi.

My last meal on earth would involve mochi. Possibly several courses of mochi.

I love mochi stuffed with red bean paste, flavored with purple sweet potatoes, baked with coconut, stuffed with fresh fruit, grilled until puffy and covered in soy sauce, stuffed with peanut butter, covered in chili paste, served with boy chok and beef...

I've yet to meet a mochi I didn't love.

Mochi and I understand each other on a deeper level.

If you've only tried mochi when it is either A) filled with ice cream or B) as a topping for frozen yogurt, you are missing out. If you've never had a savory dish that included sticky rice cakes, you are a poor poor soul.

Here's an easy-to-make, easy-to-love recipe for a savory mochi snack. I was inspired by my recent trip to the 626 Night Market, where Nani Kore Hawaii had huge skewers of Korean mochi wrapped with paper-thin bacon for sale. Mine certainly upped the meat to mochi ratio!

Salted Nut Bars

Best. Cookie. Ever.

No seriously, I'm not the biggest fan of sweets, but this bar cookie rocks. It's an old family recipe that was obviously way ahead of its time because now treats like salted caramel and sea salt desserts are all the rage.

When we used to go up to a cabin in Big Bear Lake, CA to snowboard, my mother would bring these cookies to serve for dessert after her infamous turkey soup. These freeze amazingly, and you can just zap them for a couple seconds to thaw them, or even just wait for your coffee to cool down a bit and they will be edible by then. I just gnaw on them frozen.

Shown here with my Peppermint Sugar Cookies

I love bar cookies because I really hate using a rolling pin. If you look, I haven't included a single recipe that uses one in all my years of blogging. I just don't have the counter space here in my little shit hole of an apartment, and it's a bother. Plus bar cookies are less time consuming to make large batches without having to form cookies. And you never have to worry that you overcrowded the cookies and your cookies will turn out funny shaped as they spread.

Bar cookies are for smart but lazy people, basically.

Baked Brie with Figs

Certain foods can take your brain on a trip down memory lane. Your grandmother's chocolate chip cookies, your mom's pot roast, everyone has some meal that triggers a happy nostalgic time in your life.

A lot of my happy nostalgic foods are straight from the earth. My grandparents have always had a garden filled with fresh veggies: sweet peas and their beautiful flowers, giant heirloom tomatoes, and peppery radishes with dirt still clinging to the roots. My parents have citrus, avocados, and even cherimoyas hanging from trees throughout the year. Biting into a fresh summer peach, still warm from the sun as it ripened on the tree, takes me back to running around in my parent's orchard where my brother and I used to throw oranges that had been knocked down by the Santa Ana winds at each other.

One fruit that I almost never eat nowadays is figs. They have a short season, don't ripen well off the tree, spoil relatively easy, and I work on the weekends which makes the local farmer's market off-limits. So when I visited my grandparent's house, it was a delight to have a bag full of ridiculously ripe figs to enjoy. My grandmother has a fig tree in her front yard for as long as I could remember, but as a kid I was wary of figs. They were weird, in my youthful opinion, too many contrasting textures and too honey-sweet. I liked sour plums and zesty kumquats; I was one of those weird kids that liked grapefruit with no brown sugar or broiling needed.

It's a funny thing, to take a bite of this dish and wax nostalgic about a fruit you didn't like as a kid.

One thing I can confidently say is that I have always liked brie, rind and all.

Gluten-Free Cranberry Bliss Bars

My mom loves Starbuck's seasonal cranberry bliss bars, but unfortunately she recently has become sensitive to wheat gluten. For Christmas, I set about researching how to make some gluten-free bars.

In case you haven't heard of the Starbuck's cranberry bliss bar, it is only available around Christmas and it seems to be one of the most universally beloved baked goods they offer. Cranberries, cream cheese frosting, and chunks of white chocolate make for a nice balance of sweet, savory, and tart.

My mom is a sucker for anything cranberry, so this is a guilty pleasure for my mother, and she is very tempted every holiday season. Much to my mother's surprise, there is actually tons of reliable copy-cat recipes posted on the internet already. However, I was looking for a jumping-off point that I could use to make a gluten free recipe. And a good gluten-free flour to use. On a suggestion, I picked up a bag of Cup4Cup from William's Sonoma. On the record, this isn't a sponsored push for the product, but I was exceedingly pleased with the results.

Tragedy struck while making this recipe: while preheating the oven, my friend said, "Hey... I smell gas."

My oven has been periodically giving up on me, or taking 20 minutes to get to the proper temperature, but that day it finally officially died on me. We had to open all the windows since I was accidentally trying to gas us all to death, and I had to hope that a couple days in the fridge wouldn't harm the bar batter.

I brought it over to my parent's house to bake, and thankfully I can report that you can refrigerate the base for several days before baking, if needed. Just increase the bake time by about 10 minutes.