Life Above the Clouds

Welp, I still have tortillas from my first Costco purchase. Since I can only eat so many quesadillas, I'm doing my best to find other ways to use them. Here's a recipe that I adapted from Phyllo dough. The tortillas in this recipe crisp nicely and you can pull these tarts apart and eat them like chips and dip!

(Inspired by allrecipes)

I've been using this recipe for laundry detergent since I posted it in December. It's a little labor-intensive and time consuming, but I thankfully found another recipe that doesn't require any boiling or stirring or water for that matter.

• Two cups finely grated soap
• One cup washing soda
• One cup borax

Mix the ingredients well and store them in an airtight container. Use two tablespoons of this mixture for every full load.

(Inspired by Savvy Sugar)

Another great Pinterest find is these yogurt covered berries! They're the perfect little snack, and I also threw in some bigger strawberries to use in smoothies. All you have to do is blend them with milk or juice and throw in some other fruit if you like.

All you have to do is use a toothpick to dip the berries into honey flavored Greek yogurt. I actually used regular Greek yogurt and added my own honey. Use a second toothpick to line them up on a cookie sheet lines with wax paper and pop them in the freezer. After about an hour, you can store them in an air tight container or plastic bag.

If you want to snack on strawberries too, I suggest cutting them in to smaller, bite-size pieces. They're pretty impossible to bite through once they're frozen.

(Inspired by The Caffeinated Chronicle)

I asked for this genius edge brownie pan for Christmas because let's face it, the chewy edges are by far the best part of the brownie. Unfortunately, it got put away in my cabinet and forgotten. Well thankfully, I was craving something gooey and chocolaty...nothing a brownie can't fix! I've actually never made brownies from scratch and didn't realize that a stove was involved, but it actually isn't too difficult to whip up some of your own chocolate goodness.

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch square pan (or a really awesome edge brownie pan).
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and water. Cook over medium heat until boiling. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth.
3. Mix in the eggs and vanilla.
4. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the chocolate mixture.
5. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
6. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

(Inspired by Allrecipes)

Mmmm I love deviled eggs like this ranch version I made a while back. I also love avocados. Seriously, I could eat them with a spoon. So after making this recipe I quickly discovered that deviled eggs + avocado = DELICIOUS!

I found a great looking recipe for Monkey Muffins using leftover bread dough or biscuit dough. I'm still not sure why it's called monkey bread, but I think it's absolutely decadent. It's coated in butter and you get to eat it with your hands! It came out more like a pull-apart cinnamon roll, but that's OK because I love cinnamon rolls too.

• Refrigerated Biscuit Dough
• 1 stick of butter
• Sugar
• Ground Cinnamon
• Sweetened, Condensed Milk

I hope you guys enjoyed the first edition of my Japanese eats! This trip was filled with plenty of delicious and interesting foods, and after spending ten days abroad, there was way too much for one post. Here's the rest...my stomach is grumbling already.

Japan seems to be the land of everything cute, including this bear-shaped pastry filled with vanilla bean custard. They even used a macadamia nut for the nose...how cute! These next desserts were every bit as scrumptious as they look! My friend took me to a lovely french restaurant/bakery on the top floor of a mall called La Maison Ensoleille Table.

We tried this Matcha Cookie and Cream Tart with Strawberries and a Marble Chocolat Tart. I have to admit that I did crunches immediately after we got home. At least there was some fruit so I can pretend they were a little bit healthy.

All over Japan there are these restaurants called Maid Cafes. All of the waitresses dress up in maid costumes and call you master. Well I couldn't understand them, but my friend translated. I wanted to experience all things unique to Japan and my friend and I just happened to stumble into Popopure Maid Cafe in Akihabara where the Backstreet Boys filmed their music video "Bigger." (Have I ever mentioned that I'm a huge fan of the Backstreet Boys?) Anyway, one of their specialties is a Japanese omelet, and the waitress will draw on it in ketchup! Amazing.

When the cherry blossom trees bloom in spring, hoards of Japanese people rush to the parks to "hanami" which is the tradition of flower viewing. It looked more like a Japanese tailgate party. Groups of friends eat, drink, and enjoy spring. Plenty of people bring their own picnics, but there are a lot of food stalls around too. Here's a traditional Japanese snack called okonomiyaki. It's sort of like a pancake with cabbage and egg. We decided to pass on the mayonaisse topping.

Of course, we also had to go to Disney Sea. It's like the Japanese version of California Adventure. One of the fun things there is that they have different flavored popcorn for each area of the park. We started off with a regular sea salt.

The strawberry was amazing, and the sweet scent just beckoned you to buy more.

We found curry in Arabia. This one is my friend's favorite. With a little curry powder, I think you could make a similar version at home.

I have to admit, we didn't actually try the milk tea popcorn but I wanted to take a picture of it anyway. It definitely smelled like milk tea! Oddly enough, we found this in Cape Cod.

I think cranberry popcorn was in New York. This was our least favorite, but it still wasn't so bad.

Other popcorn flavors that we didn't try were black pepper and caramel because we thought they weren't different enough.

Lastly, we went to Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese BBQ restuarant. They have these all over the world, including Los Angeles, but I've never been. We got some pretty typical meat and vegetables to grill ourselves, but the best part, of course, was dessert.

To end the meal, we had vanilla ice cream topped with caramel and kinako powder. Kinako is soybean flour made by grinding roasted soybeans. I know when you think soybeans you're probably thinking tofu, but this powder is actually used on a lot of Japanese desserts and it is yummy!

So that brings my Japan trip to a close. My next big trip is to Hawaii in July so look forward to some spam musubi and shaved ice!

Now that you've seen some fun, classically American foods in Japan, I thought I'd show you some of the other things I tried over there. As much as I'd love to, I didn't eat just pizza and hamburgers.

Sakura (cherry blossom) flavored manju. Manju is a popular Japanese dessert made of a flour, rice powder, and buckwheat outside with a red bean paste filling. A lot of Japanese foods are sakura-flavored during the much anticipated blooming of the cherry blossom trees.

For dinner on my first night, we went to a place called Namjatown, which I think translates to Cat Town. The closest American equivalent might be Chuck E. Cheese's, but really it's not even close. It's sort of like an indoor theme park with carnival games, a haunted house, and costumed characters. Our only stops were Gyoza Town and Ice Cream Stadium. (You can buy discounted tickets if you only plan on eating). Both of these places are kind of like a food court where you can buy foods at different stalls. Of course you can only get gyoza and ice cream respectively. One of the most notable gyoza we tried were these piggy shaped ones.

Also, since I wanted to try things that I couldn't get here in America, we got these gyoza topped with cheese, mayonnaisse and fish eggs. It was interesting to say the least.

After we had our fill of gyoza, it was off to Ice Cream Stadium. Since I love ice cream, this place was heavenly. Here we got two aptly decorated desserts. My friend's was blueberry, and mine was black sesame and mango. If you didn't think those flavors were unique enough, they also have an ice cream museum where you can find any flavor imaginable, including cream cheese, brandy, and crab.

It might sound disgusting, but I was actually a little disappointed that my ice cream didn't taste more like crab. My friend claims that the flavor was strong, but it only tasted midly crabby to me.

Here's a common Japanese sweet bread called melonpan. It's a lightly melon-flavored bread with a crusty sweet shell. Perfect for an easy snack when you're running through the train station.

We also had to get some yummy ramen. There are some pretty good places around here, but this was absolutely delicious. They even had whole cloves of garlic and a garlic press so you can add some flavor yourself.

What's a trip to Japan without sushi? Even though you can get pre-packaged sushi at the grocery store or 7-11, most sushi will cost you a pretty penny over there. They also don't have the specialty rolls that we do here. It is common though for a more do-it-yourself approach. At one of the restaurants we went to, we got this dish with seaweed papers, rice, and fresh fish, and we made some hand rolls ourselves.

Waffles are huge over there right now. Every train station has at least one waffle shop, and most had lines. Here we grabbed strawberry and green tea flavored ones for breakfast. They would even be great as an afternoon snack or dessert.

Well that's enough for now. More to come on Thursday!

Well no, I'm actually Chinese, but while I was in Japan, I loved seeing their version of things that came from America. What could be more American than McDonald's? Especially when they're doing a series of "Big America" burgers. When I saw that they're serving the "Beverly Hills Burger," of course I had to try it.

The "Beverly Hills Burger" had avocado and an egg. Sounds pretty good right? And actually pretty Los Angeles in my book, except that I noticed they put eggs on all of their burgers. And not a fried egg like you might think. It's more like an Egg McMuffin egg...I felt like I was eating breakfast. I also, can't really say what their version of avocado was. I think it might be avocado plus mayonnaise. They like to put a lot of mayonnaisse on everything over there. You can even buy it in convenient squeeze bottles at 7-11. Even though the burger was interesting, the fries were as delicious as ever!

Next must-try on the list was Domino's Pizza. You can actually get four different toppings on one pizza, which I think is a genius idea. Plus I got to try four of their specialty pizzas. I don't remember what they were called, but I can give you a description of what was on them. First (on the left) is like their supreme pizza. Not as many toppings packed on like over here, but still pretty typical. Then (moving clockwise) was shrimp and avocado with more of that weird avocado dressing. This was our least favorite. After that was potato, not our favorite, but not bad. Finally was pesto and bacon which was pretty good!

Finally, here's a Japanese version of the All-American hamburger. It's from a place called Mos Burger, a large chain that I might compare to In-N-Out here. Don't hate me, but this burger was amazing, and I'd choose it over In-N-Out anyday.

Here's a cheeseburger with their special sauce. It's some sort of amazing tomato and onion sauce. Top it off with a hefty slice of tomato, and that is one tasty burger. Wish I could have one now!