i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
This week has been… less than pleasant so I decided to make something I’ve been craving ever since I saw it on the Netflix show Street Food Asia—a Vietnamese Pate Bahn Mi. Created during the French colonization of Vietnam, both baguette and pate were introduced …
The garden portion of my plan will actually be done in October, when I can get clearance fruit tree as from my local plant nurseries. First thing is that the ground needs to be turned over and then the holes have to be dug. I …
I’ve been pretty much confined to a bed for almost 10 days now with COVID. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, we know how we got it (husband came into contact with someone and brought it home.) Yeah, it was literally right after we got the first round of the Pfizer vaccine so the whole situation is super dumb. I got hit harder than my other half did, coughing up my lungs, dizziness, fever, nausea, intense smell and taste and then losing that, and basically being weak-sauce. I don’t think I had super healthy lungs to begin with (having been hospitalized 4 times as a child for pneumonia), but doing nothing and not knowing exactly when my situation might improve has been basically torture. I’m not someone who can stay still, doing nothing, even recuperating so this has taken a bit of a toll on my mood.
But this did give me some time to work on what I can control, namely, the bed and breakfast. I spent most of my time calculating costs and figuring out what the bare minimum break even price point is, which is admittedly a lot more math than I have ever really enjoyed doing, but that’s an important part of any business plan. I also have to periodically check the local prices, to understand how it changes seasonally, as well as to get a feel of the market competition.
More than that, this period of recovering gave me a lot of time to think about the value added services that I could provide, which I jot down in a document that has been opened and closed more times that I could count. What exactly would be my “draw”, what activities would be available through the seasons, what would those activities need from me, etc.
I am still in the process of figuring out how I want to theme each unit into one cohesive idea which will then be what I use to guide the interior design. Should I do it based on Hogwart Houses, Howl’s Moving Castle (4 Locations—Market Chipping, the Castle, Kingsbury, Porthaven), Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter, Ocean/Forest/Mountain/Sky, Color coded (Red/Yellow/Blue/Green), major countries (US, South America, Europe, East Asia), Ghibli (Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Ponyo), Architectural era (Victorian, Gothic, Modern), or fantasy genre (Steampunk, Fairy Tale, Tolkien, Horror), etc. I still have no idea and my thoughts keep going round and round with this. Some of these may have issues with copyright so I’d have to examine it more closely. Anyway, it’s a bit difficult to really decide until I sit down and look at what’s feasible and the amount of work that will be put into it.
As far as activities go, seasonally, I have this:
I’ll be filling this post out with more details as my understanding of what will be involved improves but here is a little bit of the kinds of things I have been preparing and considering.
It’s only recently that I’ve really begun working on this project seriously and decided to blog my journey of turning a very special building into a bed and breakfast, which has been my long time dream. What triggered this is a few things—several of my …
As my garden wakes up this spring, I thought about how it will be the last season I’ll be able to enjoy it (hello ramps, good morning asparagus!) Having fed my family for years from painstakingly building it from a sandy, sterile lawn using purely …
I LOVE tabbouleh (and so does my husband) which is one of the few dishes that truly showcases the flavor profile of parsley, but when the craving hits, I often don’t have cracked bulgar wheat on hand. I originally intended to make this dish the traditional way (with bulgar and mint) when my Misfits Markets box came with a big bunch of parsley, some cucumber and tomatoes, but time got away from me and by the time I could get to it, I didn’t have time to go pick up bulgar or mint.
Being too lazy to go to the supermarket, I decided to make do with what I had on hand, and this rice tabbouleh recipe really hit the spot. My trusty salt preserved lemon puree helped make this a breeze to put together. I served it with crumbled goat cheese which is what I had on hand, but I imagine feta or tzatziki would be glorious as well.
Warning: This post contains information on raising quail for meat. If that bothers you, please skip it. First, if you’re interested in raising easy to keep Japanese Coturnix quail for meat or eggs, please check out my guide. The quail that did not go into …
Warning: This post talks about using poultry I have raised as food. If that makes you uncomfortable, please skip this post. First, if you’re interested in raising quail for yourself or your family, whether for eggs or for meat, check out my quail raising guide! …
I have been getting cabbages in my produce box lately, and while I do like cabbage in other applications (like crispy tasty fried kaki-age), here is a really simply way to use up cabbage. The winter cabbage is naturally sweet and crispy, perfect for breakfast every day!
Korean street toast is a popular snack in Korea, consisting basically of a vegetable omelette, sugar (yes, sugar!), ketchup, butter, and bread. I always take it a step further so here I added ham and cheese, Kewpie mayo, on home made Hokkaido milk bread/shokupan. You can use regular white bread but I have been baking milk bread a lot lately (made easier with my bread machine) so that’s what I’ve been using. If you’re uncertain about the sugar, a lot of asian countries enjoy sweetened egg omelettes (like tamagoyaki) but it’s optional.
Of course, I have been experimenting (as I tend to do) with the types of sauces and can, in my humble opinion, say that barbecue sauce, mustard, hot sauce (like Sriracha), or tonkatsu sauce also works wonderfully.
If you find yourself with an abundance of leftover, semi-stale shokupan and wondering what to do with it, I highly recommend an Italian bread salad. This east meets west fusion recipe is a perfect breakfast if you crack an egg over it, or for a …