I have time to cook again!

I feel sort of bad because I had these food pics for a long time but never got to creating a blog post to do them justice.  D:

But I will now, so here it is!!!

I created these within the last month now that my class is over and I have so much more time to get creative in the kitchen.

The first dish I made was this pasta cheese bake and a bruschetta appetizer that was inspired by my favorite beauty guru, Bubzbeauty! (^o^)  I liked her cooking video so much that I decided to attempt her dish.  Here's the video for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0NFgCYlnGA

The pasta bake is extremely delicious right out of the oven when the cheese is still nice and crispy.  It lasts a very long time in the fridge too as long as you keep it in an airtight container.  Somehow my sister really enjoyed this dish; She had no idea that there were mushrooms in it and if I told her about the mushrooms, she probably would have been too closed minded to try it!  xP

I'll post the pics of the bruschetta soon.  Sorry but I have it on a different camera that I have to find...
[BRUSCHETTA, WILL POST SOON!]

The next creation is japchae.  It's a Korean noodle dish that is so yummy and I could eat it all day.

I've made this before and I'm still trying to perfect it.  I tried marinating the meat this time with soy sauce and sugar overnight but it got a bit too salty for my taste.  My family didn't see any problem with it though. :/

Perhaps the next time I make this, I'll add some ginger and more sugar and water to the soy sauce.

I used maangchi's recipe and it's cool because her cooking video hints for you to season it as you wish with however much sauce or oil that you feel necessary.
Japchae video/recipe: http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/japchae

Last but not least, I wanted to try making my kakigori again with shaved ice but as I've gotten bored with the same old ice in a bowl, I tried putting the ice in a parfait cup (inspired by the maid cafe's desserts) and layering it with ice cream and sweet red beans.  I prepared some milk tea extract in advance with a milk tea packet.

I just used a bit less than half the amount of water so the mixture was more concentrated.  Then I put it in the fridge to be ready the next day.  Milk tea flavored ice is super yummy and has a much lighter flavor than ice syrups you get from the store.  It's also much more creamy, similar to sweetened condensed milk but lighter.  ^^

I now realize that I should have put the red beans on the bottom and the ice cream on the top.  The red beans are really sweet so I think it was too overwhelming to have a huge scoop of it at the top of the parfait, lol.  I did it this way because I've seen pictures of kakigori in Japan where there's a big scoop of sweet red beans on the top.

Since I'm talking about food, I'll add in one last dish although the credit goes to my mom.  She attempted to make dragon roll sushi and after looking at this picture, you'll see how much effort is put into it.  No wonder the stuff is so expensive!

It's such a labor intensive dish and takes a ton of prepping!

The finished product.  It was really yummy!  Others might think it a bit bland (without the sauce) because my mom decided not to season the rice but I personally like my food more on the bland side anyway.  xD

That's all the foodpics I have for now.  Hope if gives all of you some inspiration to do some summer cooking!