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<-On the left my successful bread.

I love my bread-maker. It is convenient to make dough. In less than 2 hours after I dump all ingredients in it, the bread-maker mixes them, knead and raise the dough while I am doing something else. After testing various recipes and making hard or dry bread several times and, I now can make edible tender fresh and tasty bread. Recently I often bake my own bread to save money and save trip to the store. The bread from large bakery doesn’t taste good as home-made except some expensive healthy and artesian bread and one from small bakeries. I found a package of days old store bought bread. It is 12 Grain bread from major bakery. I looked closely at the package. On the package the letters says, No cholesterol, Low in fat, the good bread. I guess it doesn’t say delicious or tasty.
This bread was left on the counter top in my kitchen more than a week and there are no sign of mold or being old. My home made bread would be hard or moldy in 2-3 days after it was baked. Let’s look at the ingredients on the package. There are so many ingredients listed. They are many kinds of flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin mononitrate, Riboflavin, folic acid, water, High fructose corn syrup, …. , dough conditioner(sodium stearoyl lactyate monoglycerydes, calcium sulfate, enzymes, ammonium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide),….calcium propionate(mold inhibitor), soy flour, nonfat and dry milk. The bread doesn’t get mold because it include mold inhibitor. Does it change the taste of bread? How about dough conditioner? What is dough conditioner?
I agree this bread includes some healthy ingredients such as soy flower and brown rice among many unknown ingredients. I am not sure all these ingredients are natural and healthy though.
My plain home-made bread usually made of, flour (Un-breached enriched white, bread flower, wheat, barley, or such.), milk or water, oil or/and butter, sugar, salt, and active yeast. Some times I add sour cream or yogurt. Comparing with 38 ingredients listed above( see phtos) my bread only contains 6-10 ingredients. Pizza dough can be made of only bread flour, olive oil, salt, water, and active yeast. Making my bread is time consuming even using bread-maker. It will take 3-4 hours. When I need to include bread in the menu and didn’t have time to bake one, I buy bread. I often look at the label to find out the ingredients of the bread.Some bread from stores doesn’t contain suspicious ingredients or some chemical compounds and are natural, healthy, and delicious. I buy some bread from Costco bakery. I sometimes buy bread from a local Italian bakery which bakes their bread with traditional way although their bread doesn’t taste as good and gets dry the next day. Healthy bread such as artesian bread or Italian bread made of only natural ingredients are available but they are costly, Inexpensive way to serve healthy delicious bread is to find a failsafe recipe and bake my own bread. Also I feel safe to know what are in the bread.

Photo below was taken in Kent,WA

I wonder that how many pumpkin Americans consume and how many were curbed to lantern.
I didn’t eat pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie before coming to Seattle. In Japan, I cooked pumpkin with say sauce, sugar, and sake in Japanese soup stock to make Nimono as we do for other vegetables like potatoes and green beans.
I harvested several pumpkins from my garden. These pumpkins look like Kabocha pumpkin. However, it is hard to tell they are Kabocha or other ordinary pumpkin because some seeds are from large yellow pumpkin to be curbed and from composed Kabocha pumpkin seeds which were extracted before cooking and dumped into my composed bin. My father in Japan who is part-time farmer told me that pumpkin can be stored for a long time and pumpkin will be added sweetness several days after the harvest. I had Kabocha pumpkin in last summer in Japan from my parent’s garden, it was cooked Japanese way. It was very sweet and light. In Seattle my Kabocha like pumpkin didn’t taste as good as one in Japan when I cooked it by Japanese way. The reason may be something to do with the number of Sunny days and temperature in Seattle.
I made pumpkin bread from one of Kabocha like pumpkin and it was success and popular among my family and friends. My pumpkin bread recipe is drived from “Joy of cooking” 1997 edition but changed to meet my families taste.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flower
1 tea spoons ground cinnamon
1 tea spoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup Cooked and pureed pumpkin
1/3 cup milk
3 Table spoons melted butter
3 Table spoons vegetable oil
1 cup sugar ( half brown )
2 large eggs
Cooking instructions:
Preheat oven 350 degree. Grease loaf pan or muffin pans.
Mix the first 7 ingredients above together.
In food processor, blend well the rest of the ingredients, pumpkin, eggs, milk, oil, sugar and butter.
Add wet mixture above into the flower mixture. Beat and mix well.
Pour butter into the pan and spread evenly.
Bake until a tooth pick inserted in the center clean about 1 hour for loaf pan, 30-40minutes for muffin pans.

I was little bit hesitant writing and posting food blog for a while I have been posting more Japanese blogs which is not food but my experience around Seattle. Please bear my English writing skills.

Now I decided to write some of my modified version of recipes from my favarite cook books, website and sometimes from the box or the bags of the ingredients.

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JAPANESE CURRY

This is Bretzke family’s favorite recipe. You can make your curry from curry powder and chicken soup stock. However, it will require several hours to make tasty curry. By using ready-made curry sauce mix from the box such as S&B Golden curry, you don’t worry about adding any other spices and make your curry in about one hour. I added garlic to this recipe. If you use pork instead of chicken, I will recommend you to add chopped ginger in addition to the garlic to enhance the flavor. I used S&B Golden Curry here.

Ingredients for 4 people

2-3 Chicken Breast or Thigh
1 whole Onion
1 carrot
1 clove of garlic
Curry sauce mix such as House Golden Curry (A half of 8.4 oz)Cooking Oil

Cooking Instructions
1. Peel and cut onion crosswise and chop into small pieces. Peel and chop garlic into small pieces.
2. Heat large frying pan, add cooking oil, and sauté onion slices and garlic above with low heat until they are transparent and started browned. It will take for 15 minutes.
Caution: Do not burn them. It will be bitter if it burned.
3. While onion is sautéed, cut up chicken into about 1 inch square cube. Peel potatoes and carrots, and cut them into similar size pieces.
4. After onion is cooked, add chicken and sauté with Onion with medium heat until chicken is fully cooked.
5. Add potatoes and carrot into the pan and sauté for 5 minutes.
6. Add 3 cups of water into a large stew pot and add sautéed meat and vegetables.
Notes: The amount of water can be varied by the brand of the sauce mix and your preference. If you like thick sauce, add less water than the instruction of the box.
7. Cook the pot with high heat and boil. When grayish bubbles float on the surface of the soup, remove them to clear the soup.
8. Turn the heat down to medium when no longer grayish bubbles form. Cook it until the vegetables are tender. Over cooking the soup will cause potatoes breaking down.

9. Turn off the stove, break down sauce mix into small pieces and drop them into the soup.
10. Melt sauce into the soup completely. If the sauce mix remains on the bottom of the pot, it will cause the curry to be burned easily.
11. Cook and simmer the pot over medium heat stirring constantly to avoid burn. Longer cook this, more delicious it gets. Usually the left-over curry next day tastes better than one you just cooked.

(This is Part 2 of the previous article. Please read the previous topic.)

This posting was delayed because my photos of WMS auctions along with my two laptop computers were stolen. I am hoping to create my tapenade and to post the picture soon.

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On the day of Washington Middle school’s(WMS) auction, I arrived at St.Demetrios(1) at 4:00pm, two hours before the auction started. I went to the kitchen and saw Thierry who is the famous chef in Seattle and is the chef in the hat at Rover’s. (2) He was another volunteer chef to cook main dishes for the guests. Thierry brought his own three assistant cooks. JohnP from St. Clouds came soon and assigned tasks to us. My first job was to carry several large pans of bread pudding and other items such as vegetables from his van to a walk-in refrigerated room. Then I sliced fresh bread, wrapped them in cloth napkins and put them in a bread basket. My last task in the kitchen was dish up hors d’oeuvres. WMS parents donated a lot of appetizers.Although they all looked tasty, the containers of appetizers were tin pans and paper plates. They didn’t look fancy enough to serve to paid guests. Jayne who was the organizer of the food preparation team brought nice plates, freshly-cut leaves and flowers. Another volunteer and I dished them up to the plates and decorate with leaves and flowers. The results was remarkable. The hors d’oeuvres looked like ones served at a nice restaurant. The same hors d’oeuvres looked more delicious and appetizing on the nice plates with a flower in the middle. Now my work at the kitchen was over. It’s time for me to go to the other side of the kitchen to be the guest.
Our servers were the students of WMS. JohnP of St. Clouds gave them quick server training. They turned into the nice young waiters and waiteresses instantly. They served the guests politely and very well. I learned later that JohnP used to be a teacher (see St. Clouds’ website 3). He must have been a good teacher.

Hors d’oeuvres were first served on the plates to the guests who was bidding the silence auction items. I learned all of appetizers which had occupied four large kitchen counters were gone quickly.

The auction stated with nice jazz music played by Washington Middle school jazz band. I decided to peek in the kitchen to find out what was going on before live-auction started. I saw soup was simmering in the two huge pots.
After the silent auctions, all the guests were seated to their assigned seats. When the live auction started, our meal began with a glass of wine and a slice of bread. Our waiter brought white cheese in dark pink sauce on the plate. We wondered if it is for bread or for something else. It was for the soup. The waiter brought soup in the small pot and poured in each plate. If they brought soup with everything mixed in, we would not have seen pink and white inside. The nice colorful contrast made us hungry and wonder what would be the next. It was very pretty and the soup was tasty.
The main course was served the next. The roasted salmon covered with tapenade and bread pudding with sautéed green on side were on the plate. I thought tapanade was for the bread dip and this was the surprise. The salmon was bit salty but delicious. My husband who usually doesn’t like pudding loved this bread pudding.

After main meal, time for the Dessert dash. To get a dessert, the guest wrote how much they would pay for their dessert and the total amount of each table was presented to the auctioneer. The dessert bid of each table were compared with other tables’. The guests at the table of Highest bid can select their dessert first, the second highest select theirs the next and so on. We were the third highest bidder. My husband and one other guest brought a large delicious looking 6 layered-chocolate cake to our table. It was very hard to cut with all layers without smashing because some layers were mushy. The most of them were broken into several pieces. My slice didn’t look good but it was very luscious. The cake was so large and after 10 of us at the table had our portions, more than a half of the cake was left to share with other tables.
The cake was so tall and was hard to be carried to the neighbouring table. As a matter of the fact one of the guest at our table took it to the teachers’ table and part of the cake fell off. He made a big mess on the table. Fortunately nobody got hurt or got messy. I learned that the dessert which looks really great may neither be suitable to carry nor to be sliced into pieces.
These were my experience participating Washington Middle school’s auction. I am going to help precooking chicken the day before the Garfield High school’s auction soon. So please keep reading my blog.
Unfortunately my WMS auction photos got stolen with my laptop computer. So I cannot post any photos of WMS auction. Please imagine a lot of people in the Greek Church having delicious full course dinner with nice entertainment.
Website of references
(1) St. Demetrios church website: http://www.saintdemetrios.com/

(2) Rover’s, Seattle website: http://www.rovers-seattle.com/

(3) St. Clouds, Seattle website : http://www.stclouds.com/

I had an opportunity working at a restaurant kitchen for three days by volunteering food preparation for Washington Middle School’s fund raising auction. The restaurant was St. clouds(1). I was very excited working in the commercial kitchen for the first time. John Platt, who is owner and the chef at St. clouds, was very nice to let us use his kitchen and gave us cooking instructions. Our job was mainly peeling, cutting, chopping, and mixing vegetables and other ingredients. Some people may think it is boring and tiring. But I love cooking and loved this task. I brought my Japanese knife and tried it out then borrowed the restaurant’s knife. I learned while my Japanese knife may be good to cut large pieces or slicing vegetables, I liked using the restaurant’s knife which was more efficient chopping vegetables into very small pieces than my knife.

One of dishes which I helped cooking was bread pudding. It is interesting coincidence that I helped making the bread pudding after I wrote about the pudding in the British food. I asked JohnP if this pudding was British. He told me we were preparing French pudding not British. According to him, French loved bread and made pudding using day old bread.

At my first day at St. clouds, my job was peeling and slicing onions. Two of us tackled many onions. Amazingly we had no tears in our eyes. Next I chopped and minced fresh thyme. All chopped onions were placed into huge metal pans with melted butter and oil on the bottom and spices and minced fresh thyme and other spices were added to it. I mixed these onions with all sort of spices with my rubber-gloved hands. Onions were ready to be cooked to be caramelized in the oven. Meanwhile, other volunteers were cutting the crust off from day-old bread which the head of food preparation volunteers got free from Essential baking Co.(2). Essential baking Co. is one of the best bakeries in Seattle. The day-old bread was still tasted delicious. I helped cutting crust off bread and non crust part into smaller pieces while I snacked delicious crust which would go to composed bin soon.

At the second day, onions were already caramelized and ready to be used. I spread one layer of chopped bead into 8 large metal pans. Other volunteers were chopping pears into small pieces and cooked them with caramelized onion in a large frying pan. The pears looked like red potatoes. Two of us spread onion-pear mix in the pans. We added another layer of bread pieces. Meanwhile, two ladies were mixing eggs, milk, cream, and blue cheese with spices in the large container. We got this egg and milk mixture and mixed well and pour into the eight pans. Our final task for pudding was pushing bread down to soak into the liquid to prevent being dry. JohnP told me push floating bread pieces down every 20 minutes. While I waited to press bread pieces into liquid, I helped chopping a lot of pickled green olives into paper corn size to prepare Olive Tapanade.

Final day at the restaurant kitchen, I chopped chives for the Tapanade. I washed many pans, knifes, pots, spoons and everything. I was surprised that dish washing machine was not like one at my house. I scrubbed and rinsed to remove any food waste on the pans. The dish washing machine rinses dishes or anything inside twice and sanitizes them. It only took about 5 minutes. The restaurant doesn’t need many plates using this machine. Only it need person pre-washed dishes and insert it to dish washer. The last task was to help rotating 6 bread pudding pans clockwise from bottom to top, left to right every 20 minutes. This will help cooking pudding in the pans evenly. The pan was very heavy. The chef has to have muscle.

These were my three days’ experience working at restaurant’s commercial kitchen.

I enjoyed meeting and talking other volunteers at St. clouds. I was excited going to auction to help final preparation for 2 hours in advance. And I will be the guest to try out the final meal after 3 days of our hard work. Please read my next blog article to find out the meal at the WMS auction night.

References
(1)St. Clouds restaurant website. http://www.stclouds.com/
(2) Essential Baking CO. website: http://www.essentialbaking.com/

Picture left: My Udon soup, Right: Japanese Udon noodle recipe book. I didn’t produce noodle itself. I used the soup recipe only.

I love eating Japanese Udon soup(See: http://japanesefood.about.com/od/udon/a/aboutudon.htm. ). I haven’t found a good Udon restaurant around Seattle area.
I saw several English website about Japanese Udon soup recipes. Many of them were American versions of Japanese Udon soup and not authentic Japanese recipes. (See http://www.foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails.aspx?dishid=7588, http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/japanese-noodle-soup-recipe.htm) I decided to create a delicious Authentic Japanese soup for Udon and test it.
I applied Udon soup recipes from Japanese Udon cook book (picture above) and websites. (Sorry all in Japanese, http://www.okanoue-udon.com/g/tuyu.html , ttp://nakanoya.net/dashi.html ,
http://allabout.co.jp/gourmet/udon/closeup/CU20020117tuyu/index.htm
Here is how I have been testing my soup.

The first test
My American family was the first testers. I followed the exact seasoning and process from the book(See the picture above). It was too salty and soup color was too dark.

Second trial to improve my recipe
I asked my old Japanese neighbor, who cooks often for events for Japanese temple and Japanese Language school, to test my soup. I created two types of soup for this trial. I used the exact recipe from the cook book for one. I used less seasoning for another. The first soup was too salty but the second was fine. However, my neighbor pointed out something missing in the taste. I used her suggestion to create another soup for the third trial.

Third trial by more native Japanese
It was organized by my friend. 7 Japanese house wives and my American friend were participants. I created three different soups, the first soup which was boiled some ingredients longer than others, the second soup which was cooked short, and the third which replaced one ingredient to another. I created survey asking about each soup if it was too salty, if it required another ingredients or seasoning, and there were any suggestions in order to improve my soup.
I was nervous. My recipe will be tested by Japanese who grew up eating Authentic Udon soup. They all loved my soup. One even commented that she hasn’t eaten Udon soup this good since she had came to America. Another mentioned that the aroma of the soup reminded her grandmother’s noodle shop in Japan. Success! All of them liked the second soup.

The forth trial and final
How do Americans like my Udon soup? I organized a birthday party for my husband. Since I try to create perfect Udon soup, I added Udon soup taste testing as a part of the event. This is a good opportunity to find out how Americans (Satellite) like Authentic Japanese Udon soup. About 30 people mostly our American friends and neighbors. Few were European, and Asian descendants. I served Udon soup which did the best so far. The result was unexpected. Most of my American friends finished their bowl of Udon soup. I saw only two people left some in the bowl. Two out of 30 was very promising. This authentic Japanese Udon soup seemed to do well to Satellite.

Conclusion of the testing.
This Authentic Japanese Udon soup trial was very interesting. My Japanese Udon soup may become popular for Satellites while many popular trendy Japanese restaurants serve fusion foods. Many Japanese friends asked me to open Udon fast food restaurants where they can visit. I am not ready to do this business yet. There are a lot of problems to solve. Udon soup is not large enough to fill Americans stomach. More menu items were needed to open the restaurant. My Udon Soup was served with green onion and fish cake. More toppings such as Tempura, eggs, meat, and etc need to be added. The restaurant need to meet health department requirements such as food handling permit and use of commercial kitchen. The location of the restaurant, the size, and number of the employees are the other issues. I need the business plan to start it right and to borrow money from bank.
If I overcome these obstacles and will be ready to work very hard to be restaurant owner, cook, waitress, and cash resister, I may open my own Udon restaurant someday.

Authentic Japanese Udon soup recipe website:
You can make Udon soup easily by following this website instruction:
http://www.japan-guide.com/r/e105.html
http://importfood.com/recipes/udon.html.
Ingredients may be bought at Japanese grocery store.
If you have questions about ingredients of Udon soup, please add your comment.

Before I came to Seattle, my idea of American food was Pizza, Hamburger, Fried Chicken, and beef steak. I am always interested in finding out what is American foods, especially what American think of American food. There are interesting descriptions about Cuisine of United States including histories posted in Wikipedia. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_food).
I got an opportunity going to a dinner party to ask its guests what they think is American food. Their answers were: Fried Chicken, Pizza, Hamburger, corn on the cob, Pork & beans, Chile corn carne, Pumpkin pie, corn bread, barbecued beef steak, Gumbo, Turkey, roasted meats, mashed Potato, Broccoli, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Spam, Potato chips, nachos, peanut, Iced tea, Ice cream, cob salad, scone, Cereals, Cheez Whiz and Spaghetti-Os. Someone pointed out that many foods above originated from somewhere else. I researched a bit to find out the history of some of these foods which are not well known their origin.

• Corn on the cob seems to be American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_corn).
• Fried Chicken is brought by Scottish (http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodmeats.html#friedchicken).
• Pork and beans were invented during Civil War and it is surely American. (http://www.metnews.com/articles/2006/reminiscing072006.htm)
• The recipe similar to Chile corn carne was written by Sister Mary of Spanish in 17th century according to Southern western Indian legend. (http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Chili/ChiliHistory.htm ).
• The original recipe of Pumpkin pie was French. http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory/PumpkinPie.htm)
• Spam is definitely American food invented to send to US army during WWII. (http://www.spam.com/)
• Potato chips were invented in US. (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/potatochips.htm).
• Nachos were first created in Mexico. (http://www.oed.com/learning/word-stories/nachos.html ).
• Peanuts came from Brazil.(http://www.peanut.com/aboutpeanuts.asp)
• Iced tea was invented in US. (http://www.teausa.com/general/icedtea.cfm)
• Cobb salad was created in Hollywood in 1937 and American. ( http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/CobbSalad.htm).
• Gumbo came from Africa and gumbo is term Okura. ( http://www.foodreference.com/html/artgumbo.html ).
• Cheez Whiz is American.( http://www.answers.com/topic/cheez-whiz?cat=health )
• SpagettiO’s is American.( http://www.campbellsoupcompany.com/history_1960.asp ).

Although many foods came from somewhere else, I found foods which were born in U.S. They are Corn on the cob, Spam, potato chips, Iced Tea, Cobb salad, Cheez Whiz and Spagetti-O’s. This is getting interesting!
One friend mentioned that American made unique foods by mixing together the best food of one culture and the best food of another. Another said that if the food is not authentic from other country, then it is American. Some had a hard time to think of any foods as American. I asked him what he had eaten at home when he was a child. I grew up in Japan eating Japanese food mostly and assumed he must have eaten American food at home. He grew up eating Norwegian foods at home. I realized my sons ate a lot of Japanese foods at home. 20.1% of Seattle residents speak other language than English at home. (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html ) Seattle public school receives students from more than 70 countries and 129 languages are spoken in the schools.( http://www.seattleschools.org/area/bilingual/index.htm) United States are the large melting pot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_pot ). As someone said, American foods now seem to be the results of multicultural integration.
By searching American food using google, I found an article “10 foods that make America great”.( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8392312/ ) The 10 American foods listed in the article are ‘New England Clam chowder’, ‘Pastrami’, ‘Shoofly pie (Pennsylvania)’, ‘Smithfield Ham (Virginia)’, ‘Po-boy(Louisiana)’, ‘Fajitas(Texas)’, ‘Chicago hot dogs(Illinois)’, ‘Chile Verde (New Mexico)’, ‘San Francisco sourdough (California)’, and ‘Olympia Oyster (Washington)’.

My favorite American foods or restaurants are Dicks Hamburger and Milkshake (http://ddir.com/ ), Ivars Fish and Chips and white clam chowder (http://www.ivars.net/ ), Piecoras Pizza (http://www.piecoras.com/ ) in Seattle. My favorite American cook book is Betty Croker’s picture cook book first edition from old aunt of myhusband.(http://www.amazon.com/Betty-Crockers-Picture-Cookbook-Crocker/dp/0028627717.) I love old American recipes from this book and always the results are delicious.
If you read this, please write comment about your favorite American food.