Sometimes Cooking is a Family Affair

This weekend my entire family got into a crazy cooking spree. It started with salsa. Two types of salsa, the tomatillo green salsa I've blogged about in the past from Viva Vegan!, and a red salsa (from a mix). We had to buy seven pounds of tomatoes.

My mother, hard at work boiling tomatoes and tomatillos.

J, chopping massive amounts of cilantro.

My brother, checking out the onions (a very serious duty).

A sampling of the finished product. The salsa was a bit salty, but had a mildly spicy taste from the banana peppers we added.

The green tomatillo salsa was really spicy this time, especially on Saturday. I remembered too late that I had seeded the jalapenos when I made this salsa before. It mellowed a little by today, however, and the flavor evened out to resemble the deliciousness I remembered last time. Here it is, in my cat-shaped shoyu bowl.

Another big project this weekend was making peanut butter mochi. I found the recipe here, from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin website. Last time I went to Hawaii, I had the most delicious peanut butter mochi, and wanted to try making my own ever since. I was a little apprehensive because I'd only made one variety of mochi before, a butter mochi that contained large amounts of (you guessed it) butter and was molded into a cake pan. But with a lot of family assistance (my Mom and brother basically assembled these on their own while J and I were making dinner), we produced a bounty of peanut butter mochi. We used Peanut Butter & Co's white chocolate peanut butter for the filling instead of plain peanut butter, and it turned out to be a wise choice. This is beyond amazing. You must, must, must, try this recipe.

A close-up of the mochi.

And since this post is so photo-crazy, who not add a few more? Here's one of our happy kitties.

And here's one of J and I, taking a break after an intense Strip District shopping marathon.