Lavender Simple Syrup suggestions

A couple of people asked me what to do with lavender simple syrup, so I wanted to offer some serving suggestions. Granted, these aren't "healthy" or "nutritious" per se, but sugar syrups never are ;) This syrup is a treat, and as such, should be used sparingly.

1. Lavender Latté

We use an aeropress to make espresso at home, and I microwave milk since I prefer foamless lattés anyway. This is super basic - just add a teaspoon or so of lavender simple syrup to a latté, et voilà! A very fancy, sophisticated-tasting beverage that'd cost $5+ in a high-fallutin' third-wave coffee shop.

2. Vanilla Lavender Milkshake

Also quite basic. My immersion blender is my favorite kitchen appliance. It's amazing for making salad dressings, sauces, milkshakes/smoothies, puréed soups, etc. Cleanup is SO MUCH EASIER than a food processor or blender! For one milkshake, combine 3/4 cup vanilla ice cream, 1/4 cup milk, and 1 tbsp of lavender simple syrup.




3. Lavender Russian

It's kind of like a white Russian with a lavender "twist", but not quite traditional. I prefer to make this with milky coffee plus a strong coffee liquor like St. Georges NOLA Coffee Liquor, rather than the traditional vodka, coffee liquor + cream. Use equal parts milky coffee and strong coffee liquor, plus a splash of lavender syrup. Serve over ice.




4. Greek Yogurt with Lavender and Honey

Okay, I was going to post a recipe for something like chocolate lavender mousse, but then I felt like it would be kinda disingenuous, since I literally never make anything as involved as mousse. For this, all you need is some flavorful honey, plain greek yogurt and lavender syrup. This dessert is a lot healthier than pudding or a milkshake, and amazingly refreshing in the heat of the summer.

The strongest flavored honeys I've had are Tasmanian Leatherwood (truly, a tiny bit packs a big honey punch!) and Buckwheat honey, but my long-standing favorite is this one from Honey Gardens - I absolutely LOVE floral, crystally honey! Locally, I've found it in both Whole Foods and Rainbow Grocery.

To 1/3 cup of plain greek yogurt, 1/2 teaspoon of lavender syrup and mix thoroughly. Then add the honey and mix as much or as little as you like - personally I like to just swirl mine in so the chunky honey texture really stands out against the cool, creamy yogurt. Enjoy!

It's been awhile...

Wow - the last time I updated this blog was almost three years ago! It's hard to believe how much has changed, and yet I'm still the same gastronerd :) In October 2013, I hadn't yet told most folks, but I was about 13 weeks along in my pregnancy with Julian. He's now nearly two-and-a-half(!) and the funniest, sweetest little person ever. I know I'm *beyond* biased, but I truly got a good egg.

Our dreams of a wildflower garden out front didn't materialize -- winter 2013 was so chilly that the newly-planted vines froze to death, and though some flowers from the seed mix came up in spring, so did TONS of weeds and invasives. There were so many non-flowers, we mowed the whole area and mulched it over to supress weeds... :(

If you look carefully you can see me pruning
the apple tree - a favorite spring ritual.

But out back, we've got a sweet little Gravenstein apple tree and some tomatoes growing. And now that I have time, I've been doing a bunch of fun food projects at home (scroll to the bottom for recipes).

Almost ripe enough to pick!

Getting there..

On top of cooking lots of daily meals for the fam, over the past few weeks I've made a bunch of summer-inspired treats: orange blossom tapioca pudding, lavender simple syrup, and some *amazing* strawberry sauce. The sauce was so good, I went back to the market yesterday for a whole flat of strawberries, and tonight I'm making sauce with all of them!

Strawberry sauce is different from jam because there's much less sugar in it. I'm also using corn starch as a thickener, rather than pectin, for a saucy consistency. This sauce has an incredibly pure, concentrated strawberry flavor - it's the essence of that fresh strawberry scent - brought out by the lemon juice and touch of salt.

Jam has more sugar, which makes it more shelf stable, but I prefer to use as little sugar as possible, for flavor and health. If this sauce had double the sugar, we could pressure can it to keep for many months; instead, I'll store finished jars in the fridge. Since it's boiled, stored in sterilized jars and refrigerated, the sauce will still keep for quite awhile, preserving that concentrated summery strawberry-ness for months after the season has ended!

Oh. Yes.

Both recipes below scale really well. I tripled the lavender syrup, and am about to make ~4x the amount of sauce as well.

Lavender Simple Syrup

makes ~2 cups of syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp dried lavender flowers

In a heavy saucepan, heat water and sugar on medium until the sugar dissolves and the mixture begins to boil. Add lavender flowers, turn heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let steep for 30 minutes. Transfer to a glass container and store in the refrigerator - should keep indefinitely.

The Best Ever Strawberry Sauce

makes ~1 pint of sauce

3 cups chopped fresh strawberries (~3 big pints)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp corn starch
1 tsp lemon juice
tiny pinch of salt

In a heavy saucepan, heat strawberries and lemon juice on medium, stirring continuously. The strawberries will release a lot of liquid. When they begin to bubble, add the sugar, salt and lemon juice; stir to mix completely and turn the heat to medium low. Using a measuring cup or ladle, scoop out about 1/2 a cup of the liquid and set it aside.

Let the mixture continue to cook at a low boil until the strawberries and liquid are both a vivid red color and the liquid has evaporated down to about half its original volume, stirring and mixing as needed (it'll depend on the kind of pot you use). Whisk the corn starch into the liquid you set aside, then pour that into the pot and bring the heat back up to medium. Stir until the cornstarch has fully dissolved and the mixture has thickened.

I keep mine chunky, but if you prefer coulis-style sauce, blend with immersion blender or purée in food processor before transferring. Transfer to jars to cool. Store in refrigerator; should keep 3+ months.

Making Things: Hardware & Gardening

Last weekend, I got to participate in Hackbright's first-ever Hardware Hackathon, Silicon Chef! It was incredibly fun, challenging and inspirational. My team was working on ZigBee networking with XBee shields: tiny devices that create small personal area networks using radio signals to communicate on a "mesh network" -- that is, networks with no central control or high-powered transmitter/receiver.

In theory, we would team up with 1-2 other teams and generate, transmit & process signals that would activate LED lights, power a motor, send a message to an LCD screen, or some other fun & creative network project.

XBee shield with antenna

The idea was fairly basic, and we got these AWESOME SparkFun kits to build out our ideas - each kit had an Arduino redboard, a bunch of wires & resistors, LED lights, an accelerometer, LCD display, and booklet with illustrations on how to build each circuit. As it turned out, we spent the entire first day troubleshooting our XBee shields; we realized at the end of the day that they weren't actually compatible with the red Arduinos that were supplied in the kits [cue the sad "You Lose" gameshow music]. 

On Sunday, we returned with renewed energy, determined to build something cool with what *did* work. Our fantastic mentor, Bill Ward, showed up with Arduino Blue boards, which had the proper connectors to work with the XBee shields. After a brief brainstorming session, we decided to build an LED light show powered by a remotely-networked accelerometer. Fun AND pretty! We worked our butts off to get everything working, and in the end we were able to demo our project, albeit at the very last minute. Hooray!

Me (center) with teammates Joanna Ma (left)
aka @Pegui and Erica Baker (right),
aka @Ericajoy. Brilliant ladies!

Yes, I love seeds.

On the homefront, we've been working after-hours to get our garden into production mode. Sent off some soil samples for a test to make sure we're okay to plant directly into the ground, and in the meantime, we sowed a cover crop of buckwheat over the areas we hope to plant veggies. Buckwheat makes great green manure, meaning once it begins to grow, you till it under for extra soil nutrition. We also planted "Bee-friendly" and "Hummingbirds' Delight" flower mixes in our front garden beds, and have been watering them twice daily -- hope to see some of the little guys sprouting up soon!

Little sprouts, all in rows 

Speaking of sprouts, we have those too... Rainbow chard, lettuce mix, broccoli raab and mustard greens, to be precise. They didn't take more than a few days to pop their pretty heads up out of their starter pots, and in a couple weeks, will be ready to go into the ground. If our soil test results come back with the thumbs-up, we have all these other seeds that we'll start at that time -- I can't wait!


And finally, here's a pretty picture of our cranberry bean plant, who's really going off right now. We'll probably save 10-15 beans to sprout into new plants, since we won't get much of a meal out of the total harvest these pods will produce. That being said, I'm sure we'll cook up a few of them, just to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor ASAP!

Beauteous beans

Back from a break

I've been on a bit of a hiatus over the past month... So much has happened!! Here's the run-down:

(1) I finished Hackbright!!!

Our program ended about a month ago, though it still feels really fresh. I miss being with all the brilliant HB ladies & instructors every day, but carry the experience with me and am constantly using the lessons I learned there, programming and otherwise. Check out this short video of our career day -- the culmination of the program!

 

My project is still in "stealth" mode, so you won't find it on the web. Ha! Not really stealth, but I'm implementing unit testing and some APIs before deploying. It's a barter web app for businesses, and will be a valuable tool for us, friends who run their own bizs, and others, so it's gotta be solid when I launch. Wish me luck!


(2) I got married (again)!!!

What happens when you don't want a big, intense, emotionally-/financially-/life-draining "wedding"? You end up with 3 (or more) little ones! Whoops :)

Wedding #1 - June 9, 2013

A friend recently said, "It seems like you guys have gradually gotten more & more married over the past year." She's right! We had a religious ceremony + party last June for my husband's family, and a civil marriage ceremony in Oakland last December. Then this past month, my parents hosted a celebration for us back in NJ... Whew!

It still feels surreal to have had so many "weddings", since one of the reasons we hadn't wanted to do a whole big shebang was that we didn't want people making a huge fuss over us -- fusses tend to lead to stress, fights, meltdowns and such. But it turns out the people who love you most actually *want* to make a big fuss over you when you decide to spend your life together & sign a form about it. And because we had no major expectations, we left the planning to our families both times, which kept relations pretty chill. Luckily we both have awesome families, so have now had 2 awesome wedding parties; one on each coast!

Officially "married," at
Lake Merritt in Oakland
Dec 20, 2012

The most recent of the parties was on June 1st, also my dad's birthday! It ended up being a family reunion of sorts, with cousins, aunts, uncles & friends flying in from Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Seattle, Las Vegas & even Peru!! We felt so lucky, so blessed, so grateful... and we still do. We have so much love around us!

#3 - Dad's toast with the fam! June 1, 2013

There was barbecue & bluegrass, cupcakes galore, cousins & their adorable offspring, so much hugging & laughing. It took us a couple weeks just to come down from the euphoria of the weekend.

So finally I'm back in the swing of things. We've been smoking fish on our new stovetop smoker which is fantastic. I'm working on some code challenges and tutorials, going back in to Hackbright a few times a week, generally appreciating what life has to offer right now, and of course - always learning!

Bigtime Week 9

Another week is flying by and we're getting really close to Career Day (May 7)! Things are moving along pretty well with my project, though of course there's always going to be more to do on it.

For now, here's a flow chart I put together for a tech talk on MVC (Model-View-Controller) model in Flask. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, MVC is the architectural framework for the type of applications we're all building, and Flask is a web framework for implementing MVC.

Making it helped me understand all these moving parts and how they interact with each other; getting a firm grasp on these parts meant I was able to focus a lot more on writing my code and planning ahead... It feels great to have demystified one tiny little portion of web engineering for myself! Hope others might find it useful too.

On Intense Creativity & Building Things... Week 8 of Hackbright!

Curious. Driven. Thoughtful. Inquisitive. Funny. Irreverent. Brave.

I find myself repeating these words when asked about my colleagues at Hackbright Academy. Everyone is intense about something: traveling, tinkering, dancing, cooking; intensely critical, intensely ambitious, intensely focused.  We must be intense, otherwise we wouldn't thrive in this environment, where we set aside our insecurities to plunge headfirst into pursuing a dream once thought inconceivable.

Programming gives us an entirely new way to control our environments, in super-creative capacities. Suddenly, we all have new tools at our disposal. Suddenly, we can talk to machines in their languages and make them DO things we want them to -- and the ramifications of this newfound power are almost unlimited.

Arduino micro-controller, able to
communicate with lights,
cameras, motors & more! 

We've discovered that robotics isn't just for high-level scientists in research labs, and programming isn't just for tech-wizards who started in grade school. Today, affordable technologies like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, along with vast repositories of open-source software & project guides, enable anyone with a basic knowledge of programming and a knack for problem-solving to build nearly any practical computerized gadget they can imagine.

Raspberry Pi, the brains behind
the automatic pet feeder

So while I'm not about to construct an automatic cat feeder this weekend, I *am* already reading the instructions, checking out the code on github, and talking to my partner about how he can help with each step of the project. It feels amazing to know I can take control of my surroundings by building things that make life easier, more interesting and ultimately, more functional.

Leap motion controller

And in the past week, I've seen my classmates demonstrate 3D motion sensors, devise their own algorithms, instruct our teachers on new technologies, and encounter more "A-HA!" victory moments than I can count. What an amazing transformation from when we started! As intense people, we can be pretty hard on ourselves -- but it's clear to me that we've all acquired a new superpower. From "Hello, world" to "Watch out, world" in just 10 weeks!

Fish & Code and Code & Fish

Somehow I deleted an entire blog post that had been saved from earlier this evening. Here's the replacement.

Tech -- it's already Week 6 at Hackbright! We've finished the formal curriculum and are beginning our projects, which is really exciting. I'm happy with the project I chose & have already had an awesome time storyboarding, mapping and creating my data model. Had an energizing meeting with my mentor where she pointed out small gaps in my data model and potential clusterf*cks to avoid -- SO HELPFUL! I continue to be absolutely blown away by the calibur of the teachers, alum and other mentors.

Yes, there are FOUR kinds of oysters here.
If you ask, I'll tell you where to get 'em!

Food/Life -- Had another insanely busy but awesome weekend. I managed to squeeze in a bikram class each day before I had to tutor, which keeps me calm, balanced & pumped full of endorphins, and is a minor foil to sitting in a chair all week. Was regaled on Saturday evening with a lovely bouquet of flowers & a few dozen oysters from my husband (aka the sweetest person I know) to celebrate my Hackbright halfway point. Then we explored an Asian strip mall in Milpitas and discovered a pretty respectable (ie, actually *Japanese*) sushi place. We had whole mackerel sashimi and I so wish I'd taken a picture of their gorgeous presentation! Rows of beautifully folded sashimi slices, with the fish body curving around them and seaweed salad accents, topped with a pile of shaved green onions & ginger. After you eat the sashimi, they deep-fry the carcass karaage-style and you eat it like a cracker. A hot, crunchy, greasy fishmeat and fishbone cracker... Heaven :)

On Sunday we made smoked albacore tuna salad to sample for the folks at Three Stone Hearth on Wednesday (Hackbright friends might recognize it as my Monday lunch). It's really good. Here's the recipe:

Smoked Tuna Salad (4-6 servings)

Ingredients

• 8-10 oz smoked tuna loin, chunked
• 4-5 radishes, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 medium shallot, finely diced
• 1 dill pickle, diced
• 1/2 cup parsley, rough chopped
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise or mayo substitute
• 2 tbsp plain yogurt (I use 2%)
• juice of 1 lemon
• fresh black pepper

Instructions:

Combine first 6 ingredients in a mixing bowl; stir to combine well. Add mayo, yogurt & lemon juice and fold mixture to thoroughly incorporate the dressing into the salad. Stir to less to keep the tuna chunky; more if you like it mashed-up. Sprinkle on some fresh black pepper to taste and refrigerate before serving.