These ornate Korean decorative towers adorned the main table at a birthday party we attended just this afternoon. My friend Bona made them for her son Joshua’s first birthday. Traditionally, they’re made of stacked colorful “dduk” (rice cakes), though hers were meticulously handcrafted from candy. A Korean baby’s first birthday (or “dol”) is a celebrated in a grand way, as my friend Connie told me, because in the old days it was challenging to raise an infant even up to his/her first year. I love learning about cultures other than my own, and when there are food and craft traditions that go with them, it makes the learning that much more interesting.

EDIT: Here are more cute photos from the birthday party!

Bona even made these animal figures from fruit! Cute!

I always wanted to go to one of these as a kid. I thought getting invited to a Tupperware Party was the height of an exciting social life!

My childhood was filled with Tupperware. My grandmas and aunts used them to store flour, leftovers and rice, among other things, and I often took lunch to school in them. I even have memories of using one of the rectangular red containers with compartments inside and a white top as a sewing box for home ec in school. So my recent fascination with Tupperware from days of yore comes as no surprise. It combines two things I love: vintageness + domesticity!

This old-school obsession actually started with seeing this pic of E. when he was younger.

Yes, that is a Smurf Cake, which he decorated himself! (Happy Smurf Day, lol!) My eyes widened when I saw the cake carrier underneath it. I remembered one like it EXACTLY from a neighborhood kid’s birthday party when I was little. I couldn’t type the words “vintage Tupperware” into Google fast enough!

I’ve been feeding my old-school obsession at a steady pace for several weeks now. The Internet is great for foraging for these vintage gems and has lots of devoted collector groups, some of which are over on Flickr. (How things from when I was growing up are now considered “vintage” is subject to another day’s discussion!)

Rummage through the kitchen cupboards from your childhood with me! Remember these?

* Canisters with center buttons that you had to “pop” for freshness

* Classic orange jug—always filled with ice-cold Tang!

* Yellow-and-cream food containers with that little swirly insigna

(Photos via **tWo pInK pOSsuMs**.)

eBay also has lots of excellent finds. Naaliw naman ako!

* Stackable lunch carriers

(Via mykraft.)

* Hours of endless fun with the Shape Sorter toy!

(Via froggrrll.)

And look, I found the exact kind of red case I used in home ec class in 6th Grade!

(Via sutton459.)

The biggest collection of vintage Tupperware ads, catalogs and posters is hosted over on the amazing Tupper Diva site. I’m obsessed with looking through it.

And, oh, yes Tupperware is apparently still alive and thriving. Here’s their website, along with their now-modern designs, like these awesome food keepers for chilis, avocado halves, onions and garlic.

I don’t have the space to start my own collection, but I’d like to find some of these as storage bins for my craft area. I think it would be great if I could organize all my stuff in all these retro cases. I’m really hoping to scour the next Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market for them!

I’ll be blogging about my old-school domestic obsessions every once in a while. It’s a growing list! (Next up: Good ol’ Pyrex!)

In a perfect world, I would have the chance to cook (and eat) every imaginable pasta shape out there. I’ve been thinking about pasta a lot recently, and this may be because I’m trying not to eat too much of it. Last night, in fact, I dreamt about making rigatoni with sausage and peppers. With homemade marinara sauce from ripe, plump Roma tomatoes, made bold with healthy servings of garlic, fresh basil and thyme, finished off with a hunk of warm, crusty bread.

In my hankering for all things pasta, I’ve unearthed these photos from one of the more memorable pasta meals I’ve made. It’s a no-holds-barred Chicken Alfredo (modified from this recipe), the kind you only make once every two years or so for fear that you’ll keel over after the last bite. The kind of pasta dish you hold in your memory—for the joy in making it as much as the joy in eating it!

I remember making this after discovering the pasta Shapes Library (yes, there is such a thing) over at the National Pasta Association website. I was looking through all the shapes and realized I’d never worked with Cavatappi before, so I promptly set about to remedy the situation by declaring dinner as an excuse to test-run this particular pasta shape.

There’s so much more out there to try! How about these interesting-looking ones for your next meal? I think learning to pair which pasta shape to what sauce is an unexplored culinary art form, and I’m hoping to get several chances this year to uhm, “enrich my studies” (read: Cook and eat more of these things!). Look, there’s even a pasta shape for a curlyhead like me!

If YOU dreamt of pasta, what kind of dish would it be?

Making headway today on my red scarf for The Orphan Foundation while watching the US Figure Skating Championships–can’t wait for the Winter Olympics. (That’s Belbin and Agosto on screen!) And I’m loving my very useful cupcake tote. It was a Christmas gift from E.’s mom T. and I now use it for my portable projects. Hope this Saturday finds you loved and warm and crafty!

Today is a good day to blog about these sunshine-y cupcakes. Because it’s been raining in Los Angeles. A LOT.

We need a little reminder of the (almost) perennial Southern California sunshine around here. The weather is getting people all depressed! I personally love all this rain, but the fact that most Angelenos are mopey and boo-hooing this strange weather is the perfect opportunity to write about these yummy, summery cupcakes.

I made them for my friend Sara’s birthday. We were all going to have dinner at Loteria Grill, a Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard (awesome food!) I wanted to bring dessert that would pair well with all the enchiladas and tacos we’d eat with wild abandon, and at first I thought I’d make a Mojito Birthday Cake. The lime and mint in it, typical Mexican flavors, would do just the trick. And oh, yes, the rhum!

But as a lot of restaurants in the city, Loteria was going to charge me a (stupid) cake-cutting fee. Simply said, if you bring a cake into a restaurant that observes this policy, they’ll charge you for cutting and plating your dessert. Why would I or my friends have to pay to eat something I baked? Ridiculous! I called up the restaurant and countered, “Well, if I brought in some cupcakes, they won’t need cutting…would you charge me for those?” The person over the phone admitted no, they wouldn’t charge me if I chose to bring in cupcakes. Ha! HA!

These cupcakes were so much fun to make. I first set about making cupcakes with my favorite vanilla cupcake recipe (out of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook).

I used these really pretty cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty.

I then modified the rhum syrup from this recipe. This was the sweet, alcoholic kick that really elevated these from sweet, innocent vanilla cupcakes that they were to the sinful indulges that they became. I mean sugar + alchohol? Come on now, that’s debauchery in a cupcake right there!

After poking holes into the cupcakes and spooning the syrup on top, I waited a bit to make sure the syrup was throughly absorbed, infusing each little cupcake with the bright flavors that inspired the popular cocktail.

With a little help from Nonna, my little grater girl, I made a cream-cheese frosting with lime zest mixed right in.

After garnishing the tops with lime slices and sprigs of mint, I decided the cupcakes still kind of looked naked. Ayayay.

I realized I had some green sanding sugar in my decorating “toolboox,” and sprinkling those on completed my sweet, little sinful things!

¡Salud!

I hope it’s bright and sunshine-y where you are, and that you’re enjoying a mojito in the sun and thinking about me.

Pardon me.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m not flipping you off!

I burned three fingers on my right hand yesterday. And what you see above is my hand with burn cream on it. The stuff was supposed to sit in a thick layer on the burns for a good half hour. Which resulted in my weird (and kind of obscene) crab hand. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get the cream on everything, so I had to hold up my hand and fingers like that. Fun times.

Well, not really. I burned my fingers on a bowl from a microwave, out of all things. I heated up some food, the bowl got super heated and I picked it up without thinking. I couldn’t imagine a supposedly microwavable bowl would get that hot, but it did. It got SEARING hot, and it gave me the NASTIEST burns I’ve ever had (and I’ve been burned in the kitchen A LOT). They were so painful I had to focus all my energy into not going into shock. My brother’s girlfriend said that it probably hurt that much because fingers have a lot of nerve endings, because we use them to touch and feel surfaces, temperatures, etc.

I had to grip a bag of fake ice as we half-frantically dashed in the rain to the nearest pharmacy where I found this Burn Jel stuff. There was a whole bunch of other burn remedies on the shelf, but between you and me I picked this one out because it has a picture of a baking lady on it. Hee.

I didn’t get it on the burn immediately, so it took about an hour to really work. It has lidocaine in it and some aloe vera.  I had to use it for a long time before it finally worked—some cushy gauze helped. I had to wince my way through a stirfry and the simplest things, like turning the key in a lock or zipping up my jeans.

Today my fingers are doing better, but I had to wrap them for  a good part of the day because I kept hitting the sore parts. But the Burn Jel has really helped—as I write this I have no blisters and the pain is almost all gone.

I’m writing about this because I realized last night if I had damaged my fingers beyond repair, I wouldn’t be able to cook or craft. It’s my cautionary tale to you—PLEASE don’t be a klutz like me in the kitchen (well, anywhere for that matter)! Believe me—you need your fingers!

Just a quick post to let you know that Craft Hope Project 6 is underway. The deadline is February 14, 2010.

Craft Hope is a collective crafting movement. The site sets up projects that anyone can make handcrafted gifts for. In the past year, they’ve sent dresses to little girls in Mexico, dolls to children in Nicaragua and quilts for homeless children in Michigan (among others). Each one of those projects were loving gifts, handcrafted in a unique, special way. I haven’t had the chance to jump in and join in all the craftgoodness, but this time I’m going to join Project 6. How timely it is—it’s a crochet (or knitting) project, and I had just written about the grandma who taught me how to crochet.

Project 6 will be in partnership with The Orphan Foundation’s Red Scarf Project.

The Orphan Foundation serves thousands of foster teens throughout the U.S. They provide college scholarships, connect them with mentors and internships, send them care packages, and testify for them before Congress. Each year 25,000 students ‘age out’ of the foster care system and the Orphan Foundation is committed to helping them become tomorrow’s successful citizens. They launched the Red Scarf program in 2005 to send red scarves to warm the hearts (and necks) of college-bound youth. They began taking these donations to include in their Valentines Day care packages.

I’m excited to work on my first project for a cause this year! I’ll keep you posted (and you can keep me accountable!) of my progress.

I’m missing the holidays, even if they DID drive me mad. I decided to make most of my Christmas gifts, and my hands were busy all the time. Sometimes, I’d even fall asleep with bits of thread and cloth in my hair. But all in all, I really DO love making gifts for friends and family, no matter how chaotic it all gets.

I’m sitting here thinking about all the lavender sachets I made for friends (so easy because I used precut charm packs from Moda):

And the all tha packaging fun as I made this version of Bake It Pretty’s Russian Friendship Tea (lemonade+orange drink+instant tea=yum!):

After all that craftmadness, I’m kind of itching to make something again, and soon. Oh, wait. Isn’t Valentine’s coming up?

I’m writing this post today because it’s my grandaunt’s birthday.

Ma. Luz Pura Ykalina Fuentes was simply Lola Luz to me. Having never married, she lived with us up until her death several years ago. I had other talented grandmothers who introduced me to the crafts I’ve grown to love and practice today. But it was only Lola Luz who taught me ganchillo, which is the Spanish word for crochet.

She was a schoolteacher and so had the skill and patience to teach an overly anxious, impatient little kid like me how to sit still and be quiet with some thread and a crochet hook. My first attempts at it were disastrous. Angsty even at eight years old, my first projects were granny squares so tight they curled up into tight little wads of jumbled thread. And I was a perfectionist even then, so I would throw my projects on the floor with a frustrated wail and with hot, fat tears rolling down my cheeks, I’d dramatically declare: “I’m NEVEEEERRR going to be good at this!”

Lola Luz loved us with her own brand of stern. So when my would-be doilies ended up on the floor, she didn’t coax me back to them with a gentle voice. She would knit her brows, purse her lips and with a harrumph say something she often repeated to me as I faced the challenges of growing up, “Indi ka mag siling indi! Kabalo ka gid lang pro!” (“Don’t say ‘never!’ You KNOW how to do it!”) The confidence in her voice often snapped me back to my own. And I would somehow sniffle my way to a semblance of calm as she sat there quietly working on her own project, patiently waiting for me to come around. I would eventually, though pouting the whole time, reach for the yarn to try again. It took several tries, I actually think it even took years, before I really learned to do it correctly—with the right thread tension, the right way to hold the hook, the right way to crochet, just like Lola Luz.

This is one of my own crochet projects from last year.

It’s going to be a Babette Blanket, a crocheted throw made of different-sized granny squares joined together. (Like the one you see below, from The Purl Bee. If you’re interested in the pattern, you can purchase and download it from the Interweave online store, HERE.)

I had to abandon it because I still tend to be much like the impatient little kid when I was eight. It’s somewhat of a large undertaking. I have to crochet more than 60 granny squares, some of them very large, some of them tiny. I was off to a good start, as you’ll see. But I was soon overwhelmed by the enormity of it. And the longer I spent away from it, the more I couldn’t bring myself to go back to it. (If you crochet, you’ll understand that your tension changes when you’re not working on a specific project anymore.)

But I’m looking at these pictures, all my beautiful thread colors and remembering Lola Luz, I HAVE to go back to it, don’t I? If I said I’m going back to it to honor my grandma’s memory, I don’t think she’d like that very much. That was her way. I think if she were alive she would say, “Do it because I KNOW you can.” Her confidence in me then is something that I have, in the dregs of crafting or through the anxieties of everyday life, learned to unlock from the rooms of my mind.

And so maybe this weekend, in a little spot of sun somewhere, in a tiny patch of quiet, I’ll loop yarn through my fingers the way she taught me and crochet again. With confidence.

Happy birthday, Lola Luz. Thank you for everything you taught me. And like you always used to tell me, ten cuidado, wherever you are.

—

Thank you to Tito Boy and Tita Edwina for all those awesome, old-school Fuentes photos from days of yore.

At 8-ish o’clock in the evening, I was in my jammies heckling at the TV as I watched the historic Iron Chef battle between Team Flay/Comerford and Team Batali/Lagasse. It was an event of gastronomic proportions that I couldn’t miss.

I had been waiting for that episode for months. Even if I was sure I’d catch it in real time on the West Coast, I made backup plans and asked E. to record it on TiVO. And thinking about it now, I would watch the episode again!

I took special interest in the episode because of Cristeta Comerford, the Filipino head chef at the White House who has cooked meals for two administrations now (the Obamas kept her on after she served the Bush family for many years).  She was such an inspiration, this tiny thing moving around among the towering figures of her male counterparts, confident, quick and intelligent. I was very proud of her. She didn’t just hold her own, but she took the win with Bobby Flay.

Michelle Obama announced the secret ingredient: the White House garden. The chefs had their pick of the freshest herbs and vegetables from the garden (and its own honey farm) and, with local ingredients, inspired a mouthwatering menu that made me swoon. And they made the judges swoon, too. The event’s critical palates were those of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, actress Jane Seymour and Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin. (I love how Emeril seems to be having a philisophical discussion with those radishes!)

The menus focused on local and sustainable ingredients and included Blue Point oysters, bay scallops, clams, lobster, heritage turkey and quail, pork, artisanal cheeses and fresh dairy. Here are the prize dishes that took the win for Comerford and Flay:

Fennel and Apple Salad with Blue Point Oysters
Eggplant and Carrot Salad with Crispy Lobster and Squid, with White House Honey
A fresh twist to the Manhattan Clam Chowder with broccoli and broccoli raab, local clams and crab mixed with fingerling potatoes, chorizo, lemongrass, garlic and ginger
BBQ pork accompanied by vegetables
Sweet Potato Tart Topped With Meringue, and a side of ginger ice cream

THIS blog has a great summary of the episode, including the recipe for the prize-winning Cauliflower Gratin that Nigella Lawson spooned with a big smile into her mouth, because she says cauliflower and cheese is very British comfort food. I can’t wait to make it myself, it should be perfect for winter.

After the show, I was warm and happy with thoughts of food, so I ended the night curled up in bed with a new cookbook I got for Christmas. An awesome start to a New Year; I can’t wait to make this year into a delicious one. And I hope yours is just as yummy!

*All photos courtesy of Food Network