August | 2013 | kimberly ah

Aug 16 2013

crafty adventures, Office Supplies, snail mail

Office Supplies from Japan

Remember the wonderful care package from my sister-in-law? I finally got a chance to try out these fun office supplies that she tucked in between the amazing snacks and sweets. First up are these pretty little flower and bird page flags. They are tiny sticky notes that I can include on catalogs and my calendar to remind me of things I love or want to remember for future reference. I tried to stick the “My favorite” on one Presley (who was sitting near-by during the photo shoot) but she wasn’t having any of it. (She’s still my favorite.) The flags came in the cute little canister, which makes them handy for carrying around or just looking pretty on my desk. Next up are these fun Deco Rush patterned tape runners. They are like regular tape runners, except they are only sticky on one side and they have fun patterns printed on them…kind of like clear washi tape in a handy dispenser. They have a little clicking mechanism, similar to a retractable pen, so the runner part is protected in your bag (or when the cat knocks it around the floor). And, they are refillable, too, so once you have the “case” you can buy all sorts of refills and interchange them to fit your mood. Hisae sent two cases–hearts and hippos–and a refill–chicks.So far I’ve used the hippos to mark a couple of events on my calendar. They are bright and fun and help make special nights–like a date with Billy & Angela–stand out in my week. And I started a little wave pattern of chicks on this envelope for one of my pen pals who actually raised some chicks this spring. The chicks in the wagons are killing me just a little bit. I’m excited to use these in card-making and mail art and to pick up a few more refills when we go to Japan next month.

Thanks, Hisae, for adding to the crafty goodness around here!

Tagged crafts, mail art, office supplies, snail mail, washi tape

Aug 15 2013

Honor Flight 50

Last Wednesday, Honor Flight Chicago flew its 50th flight of World War II veterans to Washington DC. I’m not sure if the women who founded the Chicago organization in 2008 ever thought it would take off and grow the way it has. Now, over 4,000 World War II Veterans have been honored with a trip to see their memorial in DC and we have many more on our waiting list to fly on future flights. The urgency of our mission is not lost upon any of us…

Most of you know that I’m in charge of collecting and organizing the “Mail Call” surprise on the flight. (If you’re new around here, please feel free to click the link for more details.) We are always looking for extra letters from both kids and adults to fill out the mail packs of Veterans who don’t have family to write mail. If you’re a letter writer or a card maker and you’d like to participate in thanking a veteran, please feel free to send the mail to our new Honor Flight Chicago Mail Call address below. (I used to get the mail sent to my home, but now we have a mailbox at the local UPS store to collect things…I enjoy having a tiny bit less mail clutter around here lately!)

Honor Flight Chicago Mail Call

c/o Kimberly Adami-Hasegawa

159 N Marion St #375

Oak Park, IL 60301-1032

Logo and 50th flight picture courtesy of the Honor Flight Chicago website.

Tagged celebrations, Honor Flight Chicago, snail mail

Aug 14 2013

1 Comment

Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, what's for dinner

Tomatoes Are Red, Limas Are Green…

Are those not the most gorgeous tomatoes, You’ve ever seen? (Sorry…I cannot resist a cheery rhyme about vegetables.)

On Saturday, while I was baking a cake, Naoto was harvesting tomatoes. There were a LOT of bright red ones! And, while he was at the garden, he ran into Haig, a fellow gardener, who added to our tomato bounty.Needless to say, our neighbors got tomato deliveries and we made caprese salads and panzanella this week. (And, if you live close and would like a tomato or two…please don’t hesitate to ask!) On Saturday afternoon, we finally cooked up my lima bean harvest…what you see above is the tiny ramekin that held my lima snack… Yes, we steamed a giant pot of water for less than two dozen tiny beans! I would love to try to grow limas again next year because they are soooo good when they are fresh! Even Naoto (a self-described lima hater) enjoyed one!

That’s about all of the harvest for now…still waiting to see if we will have a cucumber or a watermelon…in the meantime, it’s all tomatoes all the time! No complaints here!

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening

Aug 13 2013

2 Comments

snail mail, Sweet Tooth, Those Were the Days

Sweet Tooth Part 2

I’ve been on a little bit of a vintage candy kick again lately. It all started with a Twitter conversation with Danielle about ZotZ. About a week later, I had a package full of ZotZ delivered to my mailbox! (Thank you, Danielle!) On the outside, ZotZ look like a regular hard candy. But when you bite into one, there’s a powdery inside made of acids and sodium bicarbonate that react with your saliva and create fizziness. It’s a little bit of a shock at first, but then you grow to anticipate the fizzy fun. ZotZ have been around since 1968, which seems like a long time considering how technologically advanced they are. They are pretty sour and a lot of fun! I’ve been enjoying/hoarding them, choosing a new bubbly flavor to try each day or so.

Recently, Naoto and I were perusing World Market and I bought a couple of candies that I enjoyed as a child. The first, Chick-o-Stick–a long orange stick of candy made from hardened sugar with peanut butter and coconut. I loved these as a kid and I was happy to eat this one up again without the help of Naoto. (He hates coconut.) For those who have never had one, it is kind of like a butter finger, but sweeter and without the chocolate. Chick-o-Sticks have been around since the Great Depression…I love thinking about eating a candy that my great-grandmother may have eaten!

And of course I had to pick up some Fruit Stripe Gum. Fruit Stripe is just as I remembered…super fruity and tasty for about ten seconds, then flat, no flavor. Womp. Womp… But it’s still delicious, and well worth the $1.25 I paid. Fruit Stripe has been around since the 1960s (when apparently no one cared how long the flavor in their gum would last). It really does evoke the best childhood memories…no matter how fleeting.

We are thinking about bringing some vintage American candies to Japan for our omiyage (souvenirs associated with location, as customary in Japan). I only have a few more weeks to collect some good ones for Naoto’s mom and sisters and their families. Can you think of any “must have” American candies we should take?

Tagged food, snail mail

Aug 12 2013

6 Comments

adventures, crafty adventures, homemaking

Shark Week Cake…& Party

As I mentioned Saturday, we went to a Shark Week Party this weekend. So much fun! Shark-fan Stacy decked out the apartment with hundreds of paper fish, shark decorations, shark-themed food and drinks, Sharknado! on the ceiling (if you haven’t watched it…you should!) and a shark-themed Brett, who sported these fabulous shark footie pajamas. Pictured above is a blurry Naoto at the Bloody Mary bar…he was studying the shark poster for the quiz later that evening.

Ever since the Shark Week party of 2011, I’ve been filling up a Pinterest board of all my favorite Shark Week ideas in preparation for another party. I fell in love with the idea of this cake*. So I spent Saturday baking a cake and making frosting. I never bake, so it always makes me nervous that the cake won’t rise or it will taste terrible…and cakes are especially stressful because you don’t really know how bad or how good things are until you cut it open at the party…

Thankfully everything worked out and the cake was quite tasty. I made this cake. I’ve made the cake a few times (but never the Cloudburst Frosting). I always use Hershey’s Extra Dark Cocoa Powder. It makes a nice, deep, dark chocolate cake that works well with all sorts of frostings. I decided to be daring and try to make the Cloudburst Frosting for the first time. It was surprisingly easy, though it did take all day because of waiting for the milk/flour mixture to cool down. But most of that time was waiting, not hands-on. The frosting was good–not too sweet or too buttery–like a slightly elevated buttercream. And it really was easy enough to become my new go-to recipe. (You know, for when I bake again next year…)For the toppings, I used Teddy Grahams, gummy sharks, vanilla wafer cookies, peach gummy rings, cocktail umbrellas and a toothpick with a typed BEWARE OF SHARKS sign. I giggled the whole time I was creating the little shark scene…Sigh…every week really should be Shark Week…

*Sadly, I cannot find the source for the original cake…both inspiration pins (here and here) only go to a picture. If you know the source, please contact me and I will include it!

Tagged adventures, celebrations, diy, food, homemaking, Shark Week

Aug 10 2013

4 Comments

Uncategorized

Shark Week

Do you celebrate Shark Week? We never really did until we met our neighbor friends. Tonight they are hosting a Shark Week party, complete with shark-themed cocktails, movies, decorations, dog and (thanks to me and Pinterest) a Shark-themed cake. I will share details next week, but for now, I’ll just share the shark sign that I created for the party. It is inspired by this awesome wood version. I made it a few years ago (also for a Shark Week party) and I kept my hand drawn templates online…so easy to recreate it! This year, I added glitter with my favorite glue pen…I hope the neighbors don’t mind a little shark sparkle.

Aug 09 2013

7 Comments

coffee talk, Trader Joe's

Coffee Talk | Trader Joe’s Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate

Our local Trader Joe’s (the Oak Park location) put their new Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate on the shelves last week and sold out instantly. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, since cold brew is the latest craze in coffee brewing right now. Nonetheless, I was mad at Naoto for not snagging some up sooner. When it arrived again in the store shipment a few days later, Naoto pulled a couple of bottles for me. (One of the many, many perks of being married to a TJs guy.)

Last week, I was hitting the afternoon slump–the time of the day when, if I look at the napping cat for too long, I tend to join her. Instead, I pulled the concentrate out of the fridge with high hopes.

It’s good. Very good.

The bottle recommends one part concentrate to two parts water or milk. I like my iced coffees with cream (hot coffee is to be drunk black, unless it’s Dunkin Donuts!), so this is what I mixed up:

2 oz Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate

3.5 oz water

0.5 oz cream

splash of simple syrup

Serve over ice.

Lately I’ve been too lazy (seriously, so lazy) to make simple syrup, so I’ve been substituting with agave syrup. It’s surprisingly good!

I’ve been drinking iced coffees in the mornings and in the afternoons thanks to the conveniently chilled bottle in the fridge. And at $7.99, it’s done wonders for our coffee budget (which includes constant trips to Panera, Dunkin Donuts and Caribou throughout the week!) And it’s made us curious to try making cold brew of our own…one of these days!

Tagged coffee, Trader Joe's

Aug 08 2013

2 Comments

adventures, cocktails, what's for dinner

K&N and the Girl & the Goat

Naoto has been wanting to eat at Stephanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat for years. Our neighbors have eaten there a few times and have raved about it so much. Naoto has been trying to get us a reservation for awhile now…he was especially anxious to eat there after we ate at Little Goat and had such a delicious experience.

Last Friday, we were able to go after one of his co-workers offered up her reservation to us. (Thanks, Missy!) So at five o’clock on a Friday night, we sat down to a dining adventure at the Goat. My favorite part was the cocktails. Don’t get me wrong–the food was AMAZING–but my cocktail, the Foghorn, was the scene-stealer (pictured above with Naoto’s boring beer). The Foghorn is, according to the menu, “SanFrancisco’s answer to the Manhattan”. It is made with gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur and orange bitters, garnished with an orange peel. So simple, but when it’s the right mix of quality ingredients and good proportions, simple can be so good! It was sweet, but not too sweet and no one ingredient overpowered the others–a perfect drink in my book. I also enjoyed the Charlie Ross cocktail (gin, sugar and bitters)…so tasty!

The menu at Girl & the Goat is separated into three parts: veggies, fish and meat. It is a small-plate restaurant, where you order several things and share a few bites of each thing. I like this style of restaurant, because if something is underwhelming, it’s good to know something new and different will be showing up at the table soon. But, at Girl & the Goat, nothing was underwhelming.

We ordered six dishes (pictured in order below): Squash Blossom Rangoon (crab and yogurt inside a lightly fried squash blossom), Kona Kompachi Crudo (raw fish with aioli and pork), Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon (salmon with a peach panzanelle salad), Roasted Cauliflower (pure heaven, with pine nuts), Sweet Corn Goat Cheese Wontons (goat cheese wontons served with tiny heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn and popcorn!) and Wood Oven Roasted Pig Face (pork cheek served with a fried egg and potatoes). Every dish was really creative and interesting, but my favorite was probably the most simple–the cauliflower. Naoto and I roast cauliflower pretty often around here, and it’s pretty delicious, but it’s nothing like this. I can’t stop thinking that they must really have a secret to making it so good… I’m glad Naoto let me eat most of the cauliflower, and because of his generosity, I only had a bite of the pig face. He was crazy excited to eat Girl & the Goat’s most popular dish. Of course, we had to get coffee and dessert. Naoto got the Miso-Butterscotch Budino (a creamy miso and butterscotch pudding with cashews, pineapple and bacon toffee on top). After this dessert, and the other miso dessert at the Little Goat Diner, I’m convinced that Naoto has the utmost respect for Stephanie Izard and her skills with this Japanese ingredient. I ordered the Goat Cheese Bavarois (brown sugar cake topped with blueberries, caramel krispies and goat cheese). I would tell you that the creamy goat cheese was the best part of this dessert, but then I’d be leaving out how amazing the brown sugar cake was, and the blueberries, and the caramelized krispie gems…What I liked best about Girl & the Goat was that it’s a casual restaurant…no white tablecloths or pretentious servers…it’s just incredibly creative food in a comfortable atmosphere. We definitely want to go back again…the menu changes all the time, so it would be fun to go back in another season to see what’s new. And to get another Foghorn.

Tagged adventures, cocktails, coffee, food, summer

Aug 06 2013

4 Comments

Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, summer manifesto

Garden Update: Leaning Towers of Tomatoes

This week at the garden, I was informed that I bought “terrible tomato cages”.

Thanks for the “advice”, fellow gardener…a couple of months too late.

This first year has been all about learning. I didn’t remember from my dad’s garden (which is about twenty times the size of our plot) that tomato plants grow this much. I didn’t do a lot of research about each of the tomato varieties that we planted, but if I had, I would have learned that Brandywines (the tomatoes pictured above) are very heavy, and tend to weigh the plant down a ton. We should have staked it with a pile driver. (Kidding.) Now that we are harvesting the tomatoes, I feel like as long as we can keep the plants standing and producing, we’ve succeeded for Year One.Right now, since we cannot turn back time and buy sturdier cages, we are doing what we can to keep the plants stable and (as much as possible) out of the walking paths in the community garden. We bought some sturdy stakes and have tried to situate them in a way that holds up the cage along with the fruit-laden plants. We also brought some twine to the garden so we could tie up the wayward branches (as seen above on one of our Early Girls). Our garden plot isn’t going to win any Garden of the Year awards–especially considering the Wild West portion (pictured above…seriously, have you ever seen such a mess of plants?!) but we are really happy with our tomato harvests so far. We’ve pulled juicy red tomatoes from each of our four varieties and they are all sweet and delicious and there are many, many more green ones in waiting. As long as we can keep the plants standing, I’m sure we’ll be eating tomatoes throughout August and into September. We’ve also harvested a few more peas and some lima beans–not quite enough to make a side dish, but enough for me to have a first little taste of freshly picked peas and limas…a win in my book.

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening, homemaking, summer

Aug 02 2013

3 Comments

gardening, home is a 1970s apartment, homemaking, summer manifesto

The Summer Balcony

The balcony is in full summer mode right now. Everything is blooming like crazy, even my old geraniums! (They started blooming in mid-June and have been going strong ever since!) And, I’m happy to report that it’s August 2nd and ALL of my plants are not just alive, they are thriving! I think this is only partly due to the fact that I’ve been diligent about watering, but mostly due to the mild weather and the fact that I picked pretty easy going plants this year.

In the spring, Naoto and I relocated the bird feeder to the north end of the balcony. We also decided to stop filling it during the summer. The birds can find plenty of food in nature right now, and the birdseed makes such a mess on the balcony and blows into my flower pots, starting weeds in my flowers. We’re happy to fill it up again in the winter to feed the birds when they need it most and (more importantly) to give Presley back her birdwatching pastime. Once we created more room, I made a little conversation area on the south end of the balcony. It’s hard to work with the space, since it’s only five feet wide. There’s not much room for walking (as you can tell by the fact that the chairs are soooo close together!) It’s not perfect, but it’s fine for small gatherings. We’ve had our neighbor friends over quite often lately and it’s been wonderful to take advantage of the mild summer nights out there. On the north side, we have our little bistro table and the “potting area” (the pile of pots in the corner). In the morning, this area is nicely shaded for early morning letter writing, reading and crafting. (You know…the things I should be doing instead of watching the TODAY show!)

I’m a little nervous that August is going to be sweltering since we’ve had such a perfectly mild summer so far, but for now, I’m just going to try to soak up as many hours as I can outside.

Tagged decorating, garden, gardening, home, home improvement, homemaking, summer