Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

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Dear Google user, We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
One policy, one Google experience
Easy to work across Google Our new policy reflects a single product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether you're reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease.		Tailored for you If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We'll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you're searching for and get you those results faster.		Easy to share and collaborate When you post or create a document online, you often want others to see and contribute. By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to share in any Google product or service with minimal clicks and errors.
Protecting your privacy hasn't changed Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager, alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged. And we'll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).		Got questions? We've got answers. Visit our FAQ at http://www.google.com/policies/faq to read more about the changes. (We figured our users might have a question or twenty-two.)
Notice of Change March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Terms will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Please do not reply to this email. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. Also, never enter your Google Account password after following a link in an email or chat to an untrusted site. Instead, go directly to the site, such as mail.google.com or www.google.com/accounts. Google will never email you to ask for your password or other sensitive information.

Sourdough Starter, Day 1

Guess Kea and I are both back in grad school and have bread on the brain!

Last spring I started a new masters program in Public Health that took up all my non-work time, thus the lack of postings on this blog. Having taken the summer off from school, I've been happily filling all my free time with seeing friends that I ignored, picking up knitting projects I'd set down, and using cooking equipment that had been gathering dust.

One of my goals for this summer is to create a nice, healthy starter so that I can take that next step into breadmaking and tackle sourdoughs again. A few years ago I tried making a sourdough starter by following instructions from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. The starter went through all the textbook phases and was fine, but I was never happy with the bread that I made with it. Looking back, I was still too new to breadmaking, terrified of making any small mistake, and probably set my expectations too high (for myself and my bread). That, plus I couldn't bear throwing away all that starter every time I wanted to refresh it. This time, I am using instructions from Maggie Glezer's "A Blessing of Bread." Her starter instructions are the only ones I have come across that starts off by saying that she uses the minimal quantity of flour and water to reduce waste. Ahh...girl after my own heart! She also reassures her readers that organic flour, distilled water, and (after the starter is established) weekly feedings are all unnecessary, thus taking a lot of the expense and pressure out of the endeavor. What's not to like?

Unlike Kea, I can't complain of the same difficulty in finding good bread. Here in DC we have our fair share of respectable bakeries, but there is an undeniable gratification about making your own bread, and especially one from your very own starter. So for the next few weeks I will be documenting the process of my starter on this blog and hopefully inspire my fellow Bees to try their hand at one of their own, too. Wish me luck!

Bread in London

Greetings from London, everyone. I haven't posted here in almost a year. I don't know if any of you still check this site, but I figured I'd come and say hi to anyone who might be listening. I'm most of the way through my master's degree, exams and term papers are over, Boyfriend's been "kidnapped" for a family vacation, I've got the house to myself for a week, and for the first time in months I have free time on my hands. And I need an excuse not to start working on my dissertation right away.

Since this is a food/craft blog, let me start by saying that bread in England is bland. Well of course bread is bland, you might say. It is bread. But the grocery store bread you get here does not even taste like bread. It tastes like...nothing. The white bread tastes like styrofoam. The brown bread tastes like cardboard. I gave up on grocery store bread and went to the local bakery. It was marginally better, but still tasted like a puffy matzo cracker. Compared to British bread, even the humble, standard Hong Kong "Garden" loaf is bursting with nutty aroma. I can't understand it.

So now that I have free time, I've taken matters into my own hands and started making my own bread. I am operating under the general principle that the more egg, milk, butter, cheese and cinnamon (but not at the same time) I add my dough, the better. I have no idea how any of this works scientifically, but I don't care as long as it turns out anything but bland. Or burnt. Burnt is bad.

I've got some whole grain-ish, eggy, milky, buttery dough rising right now, and I'll post pictures when it's done.

Aside from the bread and the sausages (don't get me started on the sausages - ick), I am enjoying quite a lot of the food here in London. I can get so many ingredients that were rare or ridiculously expensive in Hong Kong. Like almond powder. Or whole wheat flour. And the yoghurt! It is so cheap and plentiful, I don't have to make it at home anymore. Boyfriend is in love with the cheese. And the Vietnamese food here is much better than what you can get in Hong Kong.

But seriously? How does every single commercial bakery in this country screw up bread?

3 Chicks + 3 Recipes = New Friends!

My boss is fond of telling me that I am an introvert, and it's true. I enjoy spending quality time with just a few people versus large groups, but because I also enjoy my "quiet time," it means that I am usually slow to make new friends. I am delighted to be able to say then, that I have two new friends - Liz and Kim - with whom to share my love for cooking and eating. It all started when Liz decided to pop in a DVD of Julie and Julia on a transatlantic flight. Liz hadn't been too enthusiastic about the movie but figured it would do for some mindless entertainment. Ironically, she loved it so much that as soon as Liz got off the plane she wasted no time and started a blog, cast an open call for partners, and picked out a cookbook.

And so, that was how my DH and I found ourselves at Liz's house with her husband Tri, Kim (Liz's cousin), and Kim's BF on Sunday evening, faced with a mountain of red chili peppers, several pounds of ground sirloin, a package of truffle butter, a dozen different spices, and more.

While the guys heated up the grill and sipped wine on the deck, Liz, Kim and I got to work deciphering three recipes from the Top Chef cookbook/web site:
spicy fire wings with pineapple-jicama slaw,

black truffle burgers (sorry, cookbook-only recipe),
and strawberry apple crisp.
Despite some glaring editorial mistakes that required some educated guesses on our part (three QUARTS of chili peppers, people? Really??), the food all turned out excellent, if you can't tell from the photos, and we had a great time getting to know each other and messing up Liz's kitchen in the pursuit of a Top Chef-calibre gourmet meal. You'd never have guessed that Kim and I had never met before this, and that the three of us had never been in a kitchen together before. We made an super team and got dinner out on time, in a good humor, and without any major snafus. Two hours of cooking passed in a blur of happy chattering and a coordinated dance around each other and the butcher block island.

Thanks Liz! Can't wait for the next lesson!

Photos are all courtesy of Liz's DH, Tri, who is a fantastic photographer. Aside from working a 9-5 job, Tri also photographs local boxing matches for an online boxing magazine. Check out his other great pictures at www.tringuyenimages.com!

Holiday Baking

Yesterday was the perfect baking day. It started raining at 12am and didn't stop all night. By late morning, the rain had turned into big, wet snowflakes. It was cold and messy outside, so I stayed home and made a stew and dessert. The plan had been to start making candies for my holiday care packages, but it was too humid so it had to be cake instead. Well actually, a tart. An Austrian Linzertorte, to be exact.

I love Linzertortes. I love to make them, because the results are a lot more impressive-looking than the actual effort - they are as beautiful as making a perfect lattice-top pie, but much quicker and easier. I love the way they taste, and I love that if I have any extra dough, I can make Linzer cookies with them. I could also do away with the entire tart and go straight for the cookies, which are just as gorgeous, and travel well in holiday cookie tins.

I used this recipe from epicurious.com because it called for almond flour, which I had on hand.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Linzertorte-109549


Traditional Linzertortes all use a nut flour - usually almond, sometimes hazelnut or walnut. The recipes that didn't use ground nuts I passed on, because then I would just be making a spiced tart, not a Linzertorte. The nuts are usually what the store-bought versions skimp on too, which always makes for a huge disappointment. I don't have a food processor so I prefer to buy the nut flour. Almond flour is the easiest to find and least expensive. The large proportion of nuts to flour in the dessert makes the crust particularly fine and crisp-crumbly. While it's baking, the butter baking with the almond makes the most amazing sweet, rich, nutty aroma. Although the recipe is straightforward, the use of nut flour and almost a full jar of jam makes it a relatively expensive dessert to make, but oh, so worth it. You be the judge.

Ice cream

It must've been a couple of years ago that my mom first told me about how it's possible to make ice cream in a ziplock bag. I'm not sure why I haven't tried to make it up until now, considering that I've been experimenting with sorbet, but it was probably because I didn't know where to get rock salt.

If I'd ever bothered to look, I'd have noticed that coarse sea salt is available in my local supermarket for pennies.

So last weekend, I assembled a carton of milk, a bag of ice, some sugar, some vanilla flavouring, and some coarse salt.

At first, I tried the ziplock bag method. That's where you put the milk with flavourings inside a small sealed ziplock bag, which is in turn placed inside a larger bag full of ice and salt. And then you shake it. And shake it some more. And shake it until your hands freeze. And then you put on some oven mitts, and shake it again. Until, supposedly, it turns into ice cream. Unfortunately, my arms got tired first. I decided that the ziplock bag method is a novelty stunt good only for entertaining small masochistic children.

So then I dumped the partially frozen milk out into my rice cooker's pot (not having any other metal containers of the right size), and sat it in a mixing bowl full of salted ice. I stirred it first with a whisk, and then with a spatula, which was much less tiring.

It's remarkable how cold the salt makes the ice - frost condensed from the air started forming on the surface of the outer bowl.

Eventually, the mixture stiffened into something resembling a lumpy soft serve, and when it stopped getting any stiffer I tipped it into a container and put it in the freezer.

And there I stopped. And the ice cream got very hard. It probably would've been a better idea to take it out and give it a stir every hour or so, like I do with sorbet. But it was still good. It tasted like those milk popsicles, and was even better with chocolate syrup. I used 2% fat milk, but whole milk or even heavy cream would have made a much richer ice cream. I think I might try making frozen yoghurt next. If I can make that much yoghurt.

The flavour of money

I've figured out how to make my home-made sorbet taste all fancy and expensive.

Put basil in it.

Or rather, infuse the basil in the hot simple syrup, if you want to get all culinary.

And now that I know how fancypants sorbet makers get their sorbet to taste like that, all I can say is, that's so cheap! I was expecting magical fairy dust, or something.