Pineapple jam.....

The last time I learnt to make pineapple jam and tarts...my teacher - Ms Bong would painstakingly cut away the skin, "eyes" and cores of the pineapples and then grate each of them by hand. She'd wear thick gloves while doing all these 'cos she had bad experiences either cutting herself accidentally or shaving her knuckles on the grater. And after all the tedious grating, she'd stand over the stove for the next couple of hours....stirring the pineapple to ensure that it doesn't burn or stick to the pan.

So you can imagine my reluctance to make my own pineapple jam for the tarts. In previous years, I had just bought the ready made pineapple jam from the supermarkets for convenience sake even though I must admit that the store bought jams did taste kind of strange.

Now that I'm in the states, it's almost impossible to find ready made pineapple jam (I did look in Boston Chinatown but I didn't find any). Out of desperation, I've decided to make my own pineapple jam!

BUT (!) to save me the trouble of preparing the pineapples...especially when I've a phobia of grating my knuckles (did that once and it really hurt terribly!)...I've decided to use canned crushed pineapples instead (don't think Ms Bong will be too impressed if she finds out). Got 4 such cans from Shaws Supermarket.

So I drained out the juices and poured all 4 cans of the crushed pineapple into the pot. I used the Le Creuset pot 'cos of it's non-corrosive nature as pineapple can be highly acidic. To the pineapple, I added one cinnamon stick, 4 cloves, a star anise, 2 cups of white sugar and 1/2 cup of brown sugar (you can vary the sugar quantity depending on how sweet you like the jam to be). And then I kept stirring the pineapple jam over a low heat until I got the sticky, thick & dry-ish consistency (approx 2 hours). Almost there.....but you can still see some liquid....cook till all the juices have evaporated.

Now....this is more like what I'm talking about!

It's not difficult at all to make this jam (since I've cheated with the canned crushed pineapples!)....but it's just super time-consuming. And you can't really leave the pineapple to cook on the stove without keeping an eye over it in case it burns and sticks to the pan. I'm glad I had David Bromstad (HGTV) to keep me occupied while cooking the jam!

With frozen cookie dough....who needs to bake from scratch!

I have seen all sorts of frozen cookie doughs being sold in the US supermarkets but never really thought of trying them until recently when we ate some really yummy peanut butter cookies made from a frozen cookie dough at a house viewing last weekend (yah, only in the states do you get milk and cookies while viewing houses!). Between the 3 of us (RG, me and our realtor), we almost ate up the entire plate of cookies *oops*

So on our Sunday morning grocery shopping trip, we bought 2 packets of frozen cookie dough - chocolate chunk & oatmeal raisin. The cookies are amazingly simple to make. As you can see below, the cookie dough has already been rolled into individual cookies.

All I had to do was to preheat the oven to the stated temperature, break up the individual pieces of dough, place them on a cookie sheet and then just pop them into the oven. I used both cookie doughs for some variety.
In less than 15min, the yummy cookies are ready to be eaten!
It's SO simple and convenient. You get to enjoy freshly baked cookies at anytime of the day in minutes....you can have different types of cookies depending on your craving-of-the-day....and you don't have to worry about storing leftover cookies as you need only to bake the quantity that you wish to eat. The frozen dough lasts a long time in the refrigerator too.

I wonder why these frozen cookie doughs aren't common in Singapore? I have seen them before in the "expats' supermarkets" like Marketplace but I have never seen them at NTUC or Sheng Siong. While I definitely won't be eating them on a regular basis 'cos they do contain a lot of sugar....but it's nice to have them once in awhile or when you have last-minute visitors especially the young ones.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Holiday boozing...(drink responsibly!)

While there's no Chinese New Year holiday in the states....it is a national holiday today - President's Day. So we are also getting a long weekend break over here.

When we were out doing our grocery shopping the day before....we decided to drop by the liquor store to replenish our beer. We had just wanted to buy some of RG's favorite beer - Samuel Adams....but we ended up with a whole lot more as I saw some whiskey and vodka on the shelves and suddenly realised how much I miss drinking those. I also bought some mixes to make my own whiskey sour and tequila sunrise.

Alcohol is very inexpensive here. A box of 12 bottles of 12 fl oz only cost between USD9-15. The super huge bottle (1.75L) of whiskey that I bought was USD32.99 and vodka (750ml) was just USD15.99.

We'd usually buy the seasonal beer brew whenever available...just to try something different each time. The latest Sam Adam seasonal beer has been made with 5 noble hops...it sounded pretty interesting so we bought it. I must say however that the taste was pretty disappointing...it's definitely not going to make it onto our favorite list.

We'll be having a friend over for CNY day lunch (tom yum steamboat!)....the booze will come in handy in keeping everyone cool and in a jolly good mood! But of course, we'll be drinking responsibly and nobody is gonna drive afterwards.

Nor'easter lacked punch....

A storm alert was issued for Jan 10, 2010 which predicted that a nor'easter would hit our area bringing 9-15" of snow. It was to be the second heaviest snow storm since the one in December 2009 where we got almost 25" snow accumulation.

However, we ended up with mostly rain throughout yesterday and it only started snowing closer to sunset. The snow accumulation was way lower than predicted - of approx 5" of crusty mix. We woke up this morning to a bright sunny day. I can imagine the town kids to be very disappointed with the school-as-usual!

The areas most badly hit were in Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland. Think DC is getting it real bad this winter (termed the "snowmageddon" by Obama!). It has been the snowiest winter for them in a century. The city is obviously not equipped to deal with such heavy snow storms hence the entire city has to shut down completely during heavy storms.

New England on the other hand has been so used to heavy snowing....that there'd be many snowplough vehicles with tonnes of salt/sand on stand by even before the storms hit the area....and the roads get cleared pretty fast. In fact, the snowplough contractors are complaining of the lack of snowfall this year which affected their earnings. RG and I were expecting a whole lot more snow than what we are actually getting....so I think that's a good thing! =)

Here are some photos of the day after the weak storm. The sun is out....and everywhere is looking so beautiful! RG is amazed by how it can be so sunny yet cold and snowy at the same time. The turkeys were out early this morning....trodding through the snow in a single file!

Our snowplough guy came early this morning to plough our driveway and cleared the snow off the cars and walkways.

More CNY goodies....

Received another parcel with more CNY goodies. Thanks KayJay!!! *muak muak*

You gals are really spoiling us with all these yummy stuffs. Don't think we have ever had so much CNY goodies even when we were celebrating CNY back home! kekekek...

I've hung up the four cute little dancing "lions" from Kayjay on our fireplace mantel....

...I actually like that they look kind of out of place on the very "western" mantel...an interesting juxtaposition of east and west coming together!

Here's the arrival of good fortune....through our main door. YEAY!

Pineapple tarts....and their disappearing act

Now you see them......

and now you don't!