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Archive for the ‘Thots’ Category

DoT’s Thot: I realized a little while ago that mothers typically pass on family recipes through the learn-as-you-grow and in-my-mother’s-kitchen methods.  Unfortunately for my sons, I did not make the transition to teaching my sons that way.  They have had occasional cooking lessons and they are handy at Boy Scout campout cooking — basic fried rice, pasta, eggs and bacon, hamburgers, etc.

The calls to Mom about cooking have occurred and I now have the time to record some recipes.  I have decided to amp up this blog’s section on the home cook  front — not the culinary-schooled finesse stuff, but the nitty-gritty, got to feed the family cooking.  This section is dedicated to recording requests from my sons and preserving family favorites as well as revisiting some childhood and adult favorites from Hawaii.  In addition, I will add in some of my Indian flavored dishes (some are fairly authentic and some are modified to my taste.  I am happy to report that this is because of requests from both sons — they happily want to learn to cook more.

Mom's Stir-fried Watercress Topped With Bacon

Family Favorite:  Stir-Fried Watercress Topped with Bacon

One of the absolutely favorite family side dishes is stir-fried watercress topped with flavorful bacon pieces.  Watercress is one of the very dark greens that cooks up quickly into a brightly colored, appealing vegetable and very easy to make. Watercress is in that class of deep-colored, healthful veggies, but we just like to eat this stuff.

Ingredients for Stir-fried Watercress Topped with Bacon

• Watercress (see related post on watercress)

• • 1 large Hawaiian bunch of watercress OR
  • 2 or 3 small bunches of mainland (e.g., California) watercress

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 small bouillon cube
• 1 teaspoon Asian  sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 4-6 slices of bacon

Steps to Cooking Stir-fried Watercress Topped with Bacon

• Clean Watercress and cut into 2 inch pieces
• Cook bacon

• • (I microwave mine)
  • wrap in paper towels
  • squeeze as much grease as you can out of the bacon
  • chop into small pieces
  • set aside

• Peel garlic cloves, cut and discard hard ends, slice thinly
• Put a wok on medium high and when heated add sesame and olive oils along with garlic
• When garlic sizzles and is translucent (30 seconds to a minute), add watercress
• Turn heat to high and add bouillon cube, smashing it on the bottom of the wok
• Stir fry on high until watercress is limp and very bright green (only takes a few minutes)
• Turn off the heat, transfer watercress, lifting it out of the water that comes out of the veggies
• Top with the chopped bacon and serve as a side dish or “okazu”

Cook’s Comments on Sitr-fried Watercress Topped with Bacon

If you are vegetarian, skip the bacon and chicken bouillon.  Flavor with garlic adding salt and pepper.  It is still a very nice veggie to eat as stir fry.  Don’t overcook, because the watercress becomes dull in color and it does not improve anything.

Hope you enjoy the recipe.  Aloha, DoT

Related Posts:

Long Bunches of Hawaiian Watercress and Short Bunches of California Watercress

Vegetarian Recipes:  Star Anise Flavored Boiled Peanuts

From Twitter, 8 September 2009 by @spcochenour -- "Harvesting potatoes. Hoping to get 1500 row feet harvested for storage today. http://twitpic.com/gzbch"

DoT’s Thot: Sometimes I wonder about the farmers and who will be growing our food in the future.  When I was a child, I had uncles and aunts and cousins who farmed back in Hawaii — growing banana, truck farming vegetables, hot-housing orchids, and even making charcoal.  Gradually that is fading away….

Potatoes Just Being Harvested

If you love potatoes or even merely consume them, haven’t you sometimes wondered about the source and the seasons?  I was onTwitter this morning and found this from @spcochenour — “Harvesting potatoes. Hoping to get 1500 row feet harvested for storage today. http://twitpic.com/gzbch“

Long ago, I remember a fellow engineer telling me about growing up in Idaho and harvesting potatoes.  He remarked that there was nothing as sweet as a potato fresh from the harvest — crunchy and sweet — that is how he described it — more like an apple….

My Garbage Can Potatoes

I’ve never really grown potatoes — only once did I try that leaky, recycled garbage can trick — more because I was curious — got tiny harvest of tiny taters.  It made me appreciate the bags and bins of potatoes I take for granted at the super market.

In the garbage can potatoes approach, you plant the little potato starters in a shallow layer of potting mix and keep adding stuff on top a layer at a time until the potato plants top the can and die off.  Finally, when you tip the can over, you can harvest potatoes that have grown out of the stems and rooted — fascinating, but I’ll leave the growing to the experts.

Better Potatoes and Review an Interesting Blog I Read for Fun and Info

Anyhow, seeing Stephen’s tweet drew me over to the picture and gave me a data point — it’s September and a farmer in Colorado is harvesting potatoes.  Something is really right when you know that.  So, here is his photo and you know how to find him on Twitter.

I also looked at his blog called Field and Table and now that I am blogging about his stuff, I can always go and look to see what’s up over there in Fort Collins.  His blog is an interesting read for us backyard gardeners.  For example, he markets heirloom tomatoes locally and grow my own, because of the scarcity and cost of those in my local market.

I used to fly out to Denver to work in Aurora periodically and would drive past the sign pointing to Fort Collins.  Now I will think of farming, too,  when I think of Fort Collins.

I don’t know Stephen (yet), but thought that some of us out there would find his stuff interesting and so I am sharing.

Aloha, DoT

Related Articles and References:

• Neem (in Wikipedia)
• Temperature Affects Pakalana Blooming
• Wikipedia: Alpinia zerumbet
• Flowers of American Samoa
• Wikipedia: Prosopis pallida
• Growing Bougainvilleas
• Prosopis pallida: kiawe, keawe, algaroba, mesquite by Kim and Forest Starr

Related Posts:

• Vegetarian Recipes:  Star Anise Flavored Boiled Peanuts
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Neem Tree; Miracle Herb from India
• Scene in Hawaii:  View from My Mother’s Hospital Room
• Scene In Hawaii:  Rooster at the Shopping Center
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Pakalana, One of My Favorite Fragrant Vining Flowers
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Manoa Lettuce, My Favorite Salad Greens
• In My Mother’s Garden:  the White Hibiscus Dad Gave Mom
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ginger Oil Chicken
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ahi Sashimi with Shiso, Chili Pepper, and Shoyu
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Shell Ginger Hidden Among the Red Ginger
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Red Ginger in Hawaii
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Kiawe Tree Revisited
• Scene in Hawaii:  Monarch Butterfly Caterpiller in a Supermarket Garden Shop
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Bougainvillea “Dragons”
• Scene in Hawaii: Hawaiian Snowflakes, Rainbow Shower Tree Haiku
• A Note on Monarch Butterflies in Hawaii
• Grow Tomatoes Review:  Chinese Purple Tomato Fried Rice Recipe

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DoT’s Thot: Sometimes we forget just how proud we can be of the profession we have been in — in this case, engineering.

A Memory Triggered About Roll, Pitch, and Yaw

I recently saw another article about the safe landing of an aborted flight and remembered this incident that occurred about 5 or 6 years ago.  I was on a business trip from LAX to the East Coast.  It was one of those full business trip flights on a jumbo jet that left early in the morning and dumped us on the east coast in the afternoon.  I did the usual thing, getting there early to wait for the flight.

We got on board for what should have been a boring flight.  I snapped myself into my seat belt, took out my newspaper and folded it up small enough to read without intruding on my neighbor’s space.  Soon we were taxiing down the runway.  An ex-C5 pilot-friend once described flying a jumbo jet as “…hours and hours of sheer boredom punctuated by an occasional  few moments of terror”.  Ever since that I always brace my nerves on take-off and on landing.  We lifted off and I suddenly felt the yaw — not roll (wings up and down), not pitch (nose up and down), but a kind of shimmying in the lateral plane.

You Can Only Sit Tight on That Jumbo Jet

I sat there and thought to myself — “This is not good “.  Quickly I grabbed the safety card to look at the aircraft configuration — 2 engines on this plane –I murmured, “…if we lose one engine, the plane would start to go around in a circle like a rowboat with only one oar — the pilot is using the rudder to fight the rotation …”

I feel uneasy and tried to catch my breath — sure enough, it was not 30 seconds later that I heard the pilot on the loudspeaker — “Sorry folks, we had a little fire in the left engine; we put it out, but had to turn it off.  We can fly just fine with one engine, but I’m afraid we have to turn back.”

I thought to myself  — “Do we dump fuel — full tanks or do we land with all the fuel onboard?  A few minutes later, we landed, full tanks and all, with one nice solid “Thunk” and braked past the yellow fire trucks and ambulances lining the runway.  We pulled up to our gate and get out normally.  Some of us, engineers and nerds, hung around to see what the pilot would say.

Bless the Aircraft Flight Simulators

When most of the passengers had gone, he emerged and we asked. “How was it?”.  He said, “I tell you what; I was really happy to discover that the actual plane flies better than it does on the aircraft flight simulators in this situation.”

With that, I turned and asked the agent, “How soon can you get me on the next flight with this airline?” I figured that if the pilots were that well trained; I’d take my chances with them.

Aloha, DoT

P.S.  I have had several friends who worked on the aircraft flight simulators for those aircraft and I love their work.

P.P.S.  I salute the women (and men) out there who are working as engineers and scientists — good for you!!  I especially salute everyone who grew up here in the land of plenty and worked like mad to learn what it takes to work in the hard sciences — that is a lot of discipline.

NOTE: DoT has been posting from Honolulu since late July when she left California to help her mother through some medical procedures. She will be doing so until she can return to Orange County.

Golf Course View From Mother's Hospital Window, 20 August 2009, Honolulu

DoT’s Thot: Finding the silver lining in our cloud was appreciating the view from the hospital room that mother was in and enjoying the sunset one day.

Looking Uphill Out of the Window

Mother is Getting Well:  She Had a Nice View from Her Hospital Room

We watched the sunset from this window one evening when she was able to sit up, the day following her surgery.  We were able to sit Mom in a chair by the window and watch as the sky darkened and pink streaks appeared in the west.  She ate her hospital dinner there and we were happy, because she was told she could come home the next day.  The golf course greens and the hillside homes with trees was a nice diversion that evening — our scene in Hawaii — a golf course view from the hospital window.

Aloha, DoT

P.S.  Mom is recuperating nicely.

Related Articles and References:

• Temperature Affects Pakalana Blooming
• Wikipedia: Alpinia zerumbet
• Flowers of American Samoa
• Wikipedia: Prosopis pallida
• Growing Bougainvilleas
• Prosopis pallida: kiawe, keawe, algaroba, mesquite by Kim and Forest Starr

Related Posts:

• Vegetarian Recipes:  Star Anise Flavored Boiled Peanuts
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Neem Tree; Miracle Herb from India
• Scene In Hawaii:  Rooster at the Shopping Center
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Pakalana, One of My Favorite Fragrant Vining Flowers
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Manoa Lettuce, My Favorite Salad Greens
• In My Mother’s Garden:  the White Hibiscus Dad Gave Mom
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ginger Oil Chicken
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ahi Sashimi with Shiso, Chili Pepper, and Shoyu
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Shell Ginger Hidden Among the Red Ginger
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Red Ginger in Hawaii
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Kiawe Tree Revisited
• Scene in Hawaii:  Monarch Butterfly Caterpiller in a Supermarket Garden Shop
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Bougainvillea “Dragons”
• Scene in Hawaii: Hawaiian Snowflakes, Rainbow Shower Tree Haiku
• A Note on Monarch Butterflies in Hawaii
• Grow Tomatoes Review:  Chinese Purple Tomato Fried Rice Recipe

Rooster at the Car, Investigating 21August 2009

DoT’s Thot: Roosters were a familiar sight in the Hawaiian countryside when I was little, but I never expected to see one while going to town to shop at the drug store and go to the market in the shopping center.

Scene in Hawaii:  Rooster in the Shopping Center Parking Lot

While visiting in Hawaii, I decided to go to Long’s Drugs to get a few things.  CVS had bought the chain and I lost the Longs in California.  I miss that place because of the merchandise which was not quite so generic and ubiquitous.  Here in Hawaii, it is so strongly branded that the Longs stores are being kept intact by CVS.  I went to the one in the shopping center on Waialae and 4th Avenue in Honolulu.

Rooster in the Parking Lot at the Shopping Center

Rooster!

The weather was hot, so I went to find a shaded parking spot.  Over on the opposite side, 5th Avenue, there is a little strip of grass with trees.  I went and parked my nephew’s car in the shade.  I grabbed my purse and started out the door and stopped short.  There I saw a rooster, a colorful little guy scratching in the grass.  I popped back in and grabbed my camera.  Here are some photos.  The rooster reminded me of the chickens people had in the country.  Here in a town shopping center the rooster strutted about freely, scratching, pecking, and totally unafraid of me.

Back when I was young, I knew that some people kept chickens for eggs or sometimes roosters for cock fights.  This one looked like someone’s pet that had escaped. Anyway, that’s the scene in Hawaii for the day.

Aloha, DoT

P.S.  I have seen it several times since.  apparently this is an urban animal -scene in Hawaii.

Related Articles and References:

• Temperature Affects Pakalana Blooming
• Wikipedia: Alpinia zerumbet
• Flowers of American Samoa
• Wikipedia: Prosopis pallida
• Growing Bougainvilleas
• Prosopis pallida: kiawe, keawe, algaroba, mesquite by Kim and Forest Starr

Related Posts:

• Vegetarian Recipes:  Star Anise Flavored Boiled Peanuts
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Neem Tree; Miracle Herb from India
• Scene in Hawaii:  View from My Mother’s Hospital Room
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Pakalana, One of My Favorite Fragrant Vining Flowers
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Manoa Lettuce, My Favorite Salad Greens
• In My Mother’s Garden:  the White Hibiscus Dad Gave Mom
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ginger Oil Chicken
• Cooking in Hawaii:  Ahi Sashimi with Shiso, Chili Pepper, and Shoyu
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Shell Ginger Hidden Among the Red Ginger
• In My Mother’s Garden:  Red Ginger in Hawaii
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Kiawe Tree Revisited
• Scene in Hawaii:  Monarch Butterfly Caterpiller in a Supermarket Garden Shop
• Scene in Hawaii:  Hawaiian Bougainvillea “Dragons”
• Scene in Hawaii: Hawaiian Snowflakes, Rainbow Shower Tree Haiku
• A Note on Monarch Butterflies in Hawaii
• Grow Tomatoes Review:  Chinese Purple Tomato Fried Rice Recipe

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