Island Inspired Guava Chicken

I wanted to make chicken drumsticks for the kids today.  I was going to do my normal drumsticks, with soy sauce, garlic, and an orange color jam (apricot, passion fruit, or marmalade).

However, being on the island of paradise and having access to some really fresh fruits, I decided to throw some guava and lime into this dish.

Island Inspired Guava Chicken

8 Chicken Drumsticks
1/2 Guava
1 lime
3 gloves of garlic
Soy Sauce
Brown Sugar
Oil



1) Deskin the chicken drumsticks and chopped the garlic
2) Chop guava into cubes

Guava

3) I put in 1/3 of lime, but you might want to skip this and use lime juice only.  The peel of the lime gave the dish a very slight bitter taste
4) Put some oil into a non-stick pan, when oil is heated, put in the chopped garlic
5) Then put in the chicken drumsticks and soy sauce.  I did not measure the soy sauce I put in.   I did two swirls from the bottle.
6) Let the chicken cook. Cover the chicken.
7) In around 10 minutes when the chicken is like half cooked, put in the guava cubes.

Add in Guava when the chicken is half cooked

8)  I also put in my 1/3 lime with peel with the guava cubes.  Again, the lime peel gave the dish a slight bitter taste. So, this step is optional.
9) Put in around 1/3 teaspoon of brown sugar.   I did not measure this when I put it in.  You can add more sugar if you like it more sweet.
10) Cover the chicken and let if finish cooking.

Done, ready to be served

11) Squeeze in lime juice to finish up the dish.

Island Inspired Guava Chicken Drumsticks

Aloha to a Cup of Java

We did a Kona coffee tour yesterday; I learned quick a few things about Kona coffee.

1) Coffee beans are cherries

Cherries on coffee plant 

2) It is picked when the cherries are ripe; once picked, the cherries go through a buoyancy test.  The cherries that float are bad, the ones that sink continues on the process of being coffee beans.


3) The cherries that sank get their skins remove.  The plantation washes the skin and dried the skin to make Cherry Kona Coffee Tea.  The inner seed move on to grading and selection.

Ripe cherries and the seeds inside

4) Most cherries have two seeds inside.  Around 4% have one round seed, and these become Peaberry Coffee

Seeds for Peaberry coffee

5) Of course, the grading and selection of the coffee beans are all done by machines.  Machines import from Costa Rica due to Costa Rica's rich history in coffee processing.  They showed us sifters to demonstrate how it's done.  Coffee beans larger or smaller than these sifters cannot be Kona Coffee.

Sifters to qualify beans for Kona Coffee and to grade the coffee beans

6) Once the beans are graded by size by the sifters, they go through another size and density test -- like the mixed nut effect in physics.

Machine shaking the beans, one grade size at a time.  The smaller, rotten, light beans goes to the bottom.  The big ones on top.

7) The good beans comes out on top.

These beans will move on to color grading

8) Once the beans go through color grading, it will come out of the shooter for roasting.

These beans passed the color grading

9) Roaster -- coffee beans have no taste.  Roasting breaks the beans to release oil in the bean.  The oil is what gives the beans the taste and smell.

10) After roasting, packaging happens and off to store shelves.


This is my brief recap of my coffee tour at Thunder Mountain Coffee in Kona.  The most interesting fact I took away from the tour is how decaf coffee come about.  The coffee beans are soaked in spring water to get the caffeine out.  Once the caffeine is out, they processed the beans to become decaf.  Now, what do they do with the caffeine spring water?  They sell it to Coca-Cola!

A Taste of Childhood: Butter Sugar Toast and More

Peanut butter jelly sandwiches probably is the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to childhood sandwiches; however, my version of childhood sandwich is the butter sugar toast.

Butter Sugar Toast
2 slices of bread
Toast the bread
Spread butter on the warm toasted bread
Sprinkle sugar on top of the melted butter

My night time snack last night -- Butter Sugar Toast

There is another variation to this toast -- which is the Peanut Butter Sugar Toast, simply replace butter with peanut butter.  It's delicious, but due to nut allergies, this has been banned from my household.


My colleague has given me permission to share her childhood sandwich --

Bread with Sweetened Condensed Milk

A slice of soft white bread
Drizzle sweetened condensed milk on the slice of bread


These are easy to make and importantly, every time I make butter sugar toast, it reminds me of my mother and how she used to make it for us when we were a kid.  The same for my colleague, when it comes to her bread with sweetened condensed milk -- it always reminds her of mom.

Happy Birthday: Ice Cream Mochi Donut Cake

At this point in my life, I have hosted my share of children birthday parties.  My proudest creation thus far is the Ice Cream Mochi Donut Cake.


2 dozens of Crispy Kreme original donuts (got a Groupon or LivingSocial deal, $10 for 2 dozens)
Multiple boxes of Ice Cream Mochi
Put an Ice Cream Mochi in each donut hole

I got extra ice cream mochi to serve to the adults.

Jook (Rice Porridge): Comfort Food for Her Spouse

I'm very grateful to my hospice volunteer experience.  It was a calling to become the first Cantonese speaking volunteer at Hospice.  I never expected to be serving the dying and their families at that point in my life.

I was assigned to patient A; hospice asked me to go and provide companionship.  I arrived at her apartment and discovered that her spouse needed the companionship more.  He was her caregiver and was trapped in the house all day to care for her.  She was on morphine to reduce her pain, but the morphine also made her very sedated.  He was losing her, he was lonely, and he was grieving.

I served this family for a few months.  The day she was actively dying, I visited her to say my good-bye.  Importantly, it was time to say my good-bye to her spouse.  I brought along with me a container of homemade jook for him that visit.

Jook, it's a comfort food in the Cantonese culture.  It is also called congee or rice porridge.  I grew up eating jook for breakfast.  Everytime someone is sick in the family, the first thing we do is to make jook.  If someone is grieving, we also make jook because we know it's hard for them to intake solid food.  So jook provides comfort and something easy for them to eat.

There are many methods to make jook.

One simple and lazy way is to use a slow cooker.

1 cup of rice
5 cups of water
5 small dried scallops
1 to 2 sticks of dried bean curd


Wash the rice, dried scallops and dried bean curd
Break the dried scallops and dried bean curd into pieces
Put everything in the slow cooker
Set high for 8 hours
Add salt for flavor when ready to serve

I usually do this before I sleep and jook is ready in the morning

You can substitute the dried scallops and dried bean curd to other items or you can remove these items and make plain jook.  However, this was the jook I made for my patient's spouse when I said my good-byes.