Wonders of Baking Soda

Get the cheapest baking soda you can find, since generic baking soda is also sodium bicarbonate. 

I've been exploring the use of baking soda for all my kitchen cleaning needs and i have to say it's really good stuff. So useful, in fact, that i sacrificed one of my precious Ikea spice jars to be used as a baking soda sprinkler. I use this little jar much more often than you'd expect:

1. Range-top cleaning. Sprinkle on some baking soda, spritz with water. Wait a little bit. Wipe off with sponge. For heavy burned on food, use more and keep it wet, let it sit longer then wipe.

2. Oven-cleaning. Don't need to use caustic oven cleaners. May need to let it sit longer and make sure to keep it damp to loosen up burned on food. Some people leave it overnight. Worked for me and my oven which i haven't used in 4 years since i thought it would be too hard to clean.

3. Rescuing a scorched stainless steel pot where i boiled off all the water. I thought i would have to throw it away and get a new one, but i gave it a shot and it worked great! Doesn't look brand new but still pretty good and no scorched odor.

How does it work? I hear it's because most burned things are acidic in nature. Baking soda, being a weak base, chemically neutralizes the acid, weakening the bonds in the burned mass. When the baking soda is dry, it acts as a mild abrasive, so it will lightly scratch highly polishes surfaces if you just use it completely dry. I like to sprinkle it on a damp sponge, or sprinkle it on a surface and spritz with water not so much that i completely dissolves. This way you get some abrasion and some chemical cleaning.

absorbs moisture, preventing odor-causing fungi/bacteria from growing.

The other major benefit is that baking soda is very safe, non-toxic cleaner. For you and for the environment. Not to mention sprinkling some in your garbage disposal grinder and trashcan absorbs odors. I make small cloth packets of it and leave them in my shoes to dry them out and absorb foot odors.

Japanese Egg Molds!

Pay no attention to the retarded looking bear in the upper right corner ;)

 So I got these egg molds from a Japanese store of household wares in Houston, Texas.  Since the instructions on the packaging were in Japanese, i had no idea how to use them, or if it were for eggs!  I was actually thinking for sushi.  But recently I thought, just ask the internets! and behold Fun with Japanese egg molds popped up.  Google knows everything. =)     These are pretty sweet, and they're so easy to make, but as evidenced in the picture they don't always turn out perfect hahaha!  Gonna try using them for sushi next!  How about maybe shaped mochii?    Any other ideas?  Comments welcome!

New Invention: The Sushi Bun!

I have created the world's first Sushi in a Bun!   What madness led to this!?

spam, egg, cucumber, imitation crab sushi with eel sauce

Well, I've been practicing making red-bean paste buns, and had run out of red-bean paste with one more dough skin left to spare.  "What shall I fill this bun with?" i asked.  Having just consumed a sushi dinner (also made by yours truly) my friend cried out, "SUSHI!"  

Looking good & ready for steaming!

One of these buns doesn't look like the others!

ah! suspicion was correct!  yum!

Would i do it again?
probably not except for the surprise factor, which is hilarious. It would be better if it didn't have any rice, since it's repetitive with the bread of the bun. So just a seaweed wrap of the meat and veggies in a bun would be great.

A fricken' sweet cookie, literally.

While we're at it, reminds me of another food-in-food i saw posted recently Living in a Gamers Paradise from PAX East.  In this case, the cookie-in-cookie works because the crunchy texture of the oreo is different than the soft, chewy cookie around it, so it adds to the composition.  And inside the oreo is sweet cream.  My sushi-in-bun doesn't work as well because the rice texture is too similar to the bread.

Hmm i think this food-in-food idea will have to be explored further, can you think if any interesting combinations?   Comments welcome!
 

Why a cooking blog?

I'd like to say I spend the most time outside of work practicing martial arts, gaming, or inventing stuff, but the reality is most of my time is spent in the kitchen.  Why?  Well I have to eat, and since i don't have a car or a lot of money, that means i have to cook.  And after cooking practically daily or every other day you get pretty good at it and you get a lot of new ideas. 

But hey, this isn't just another cooking blog sharing recipes and whatnot!  I say, Nay!  This is cooking from an engineer's perspective!  Engineers like to make stuff, and what better way is there to be an engineer than to make tasty edible stuff in the kitchen!   I've frequently found a link between engineering peeps who also like to cook.  But also, this would be cooking from a scientific perspective; understanding the how and why of cooking and spices help you cook better and come up with your own meals instead of blindly following recipes.  (Also, I keep a scientific log book of my cooking experiments)

I hope you will enjoy my adventures in cooking, kitchen hacks, experimental recipes and results!  And check out my older food-related posts on my other hobby blog,  I've got some pretty good stuff there like How many strawberries in a box of cereal?
See all TastyMonkeyBrains food-related posts.