Taking Care of Some Stuff

Hello all…

Nothing much today either actually. As usual I started off my morning with a workout. This time I only did 12 minute workout as prescribed as I wasn’t really in a mood of a longer workout.

I had the usual post workout snack: 1/2 baked sweet potato.

And I’m not afraid to admit that I had one slice of my homemade whole wheat cranberry bread. Hm..soo good, especially toasted.

Then I made Braised Coconut Shredded Chicken and One Pot Baked Mixed Vegetables (combo this time was cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, and zucchini seasoned with celery salt) for our lunch.

And I went to my dentist for my usual teeth cleaning (gotta use up the insurance coverage before I am out of it after this month!) Did I tell you that I hate going to a dentist (no offense). I just never enjoy having my teeth being scrapped by the tool. And the noise…UGH!

We stopped by at my in law’s house to pick up some mails. My MIL (mother-in-law) was so kind that she offered us some bread that she got from her friend who owns a Chinese bakery. Reluctantly, I accepted some. She got 3 bags FULL OF bread! Although we can’t really communicate well (she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese), at least I could understand her telling me to just take my time to look for a job. It’s always like this in the US. How could I refuse her for giving me the bread? She did that out of her kindness. Well I might have a bite here and there but poor Hubby K will be the only one who’s eating them. Ah!

Our dinner was a mix match of leftover from yesterday and this afternoon.

And I made another tray of Baked Yucca Root Fries

Just remember to steam the yucca root before baking them! After steaming, sprinkle some salt and drizzle some oil, bake in 400°F for about 20-25 minutes. YUM!

Btw, I’d like to thank you for all the supportive and encouraging email, twitter etc (you know who you are ) and I also want to apologize that I haven’t got a chance to comment back on your blogs. I’ll try to get around them as soon as I can. Again, thank you

Have a great night, everyone!

 

Give and Take

After I hit publish on my trip post, Hubby K and I went out straight to grocery store and Trader Joe’s to replenish our fridge. After coming back home and put the grocery away, I did my workout that I missed yesterday.

After that, I chugged down 1/2 baked sweet potato as my post workout snack and worked in the kitchen preparing the upcoming week meal. Technically speaking, I didn’t actually cook much stuff. Instead I just marinated a bunch of meat so I could cook them over the week. I did, however, cooked the rotisserie chicken which I marinated 2 days ago so at least I got some decent protein as part of my dinner, plus my failed attempt to make fritata with the remaining cooked ground beef (it ended up became scrambled egg with ground beef instead).

I’ll be honest here, don’t be fooled by the look of the chicken in this picture. I strategically took the picture from its best angle. The fact is, the other side of the chicken was totally burned, probably due to the marinate that I used or the temperature setting was a bit high in the beginning. Not to mention the chicken was still a bit red in the middle. But no worries, a 5 minute microwave zap fixed it.

So here’s my dinner (and also will be my lunch tomorrow)

But wait, where was the lunch????
I’m telling you, I didn’t have any proper meal since last night. Pretty much after my late “breakfast”, I only munched on banana chips, some macadamia nuts and my “hacked Larabar” as my meal for the entire day. That explained my crankiness before dinner. My body seriously craved proper meal (meat and veggies!). Don’t ask me how I survived my intense workout today. Truth to be told, I almost collapsed after I was done.

I feel like I couldn’t get anything done because I “lost” one of my weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed our time a lot yesterday: going out, travel and just relaxing. But at the same time, our usual weekend chores got neglected. Is it worth it? I’d say so, although I felt a bit cranky earlier.

I even told Hubby K that I just want to cook Primal meal enough for myself. He didn’t mind and actually he encouraged me to not worrying about him and Brother A (my little brother). He even offered to cook some food for him and Brother A so I don’t have to work too hard. Aaarggh, how nice of him! Sometimes I feel sorry for him having a whiny wife like me. C’mon, I only need to cook to feed 3 adults (me including) and I’m already feeling stressed out. To top it off both Hubby K and Brother A are not picky eaters either. Whatever I make, either good or not too good, they never utter a single complain about it. Should I say I’m lucky?
I’m so amazed with those who have kids for putting up with their needs. Seriously, how do you guys do it? Maybe that’s why I am not a parent or that child will hate me so much for neglecting him/her.

Anyway, enough rambling here! Have a great night!

 

Dashing through the Rain, Kitchen Adventures, Simple Gift, and an Upcoming Facelift

It’s ALMOST Christmas and we’ve got LOTS OF RAIN here in Los Angeles!

Los Angeles sky has been like this since Friday!

Been raining NON STOP since Saturday! Weather forecast said it’ll be like this until this coming Wednesday.

I don’t mind rain, actually but just hate it when I have to go out and drive! I’ve seen accidents and road closures.

Parents just left last night (changed of plan from Thursday because my brother suddenly felt nausea (I called this Nausea Breakdown Syndrome).

He had been having nausea on and off before (digestion problem) and it might occur again because he’s been on a lot of TB meds for the past 6 months. Good news is the doctor finally reduced the meds from 4 to 2. 4 more months of treatment and hopefully he’ll be FULLY recovered.

I gave my parents a little Christmas gift: Wrote a Christmas card telling how I appreciated their help all this time here and also our differences in the beginning since I have been independent for the past 10 years. Plus a small Godiva Dark Chocolate truffles and our pictures with them while they were here.

Simple gift yet full of thoughts. I wrote a lot in the card. Hopefully they like it.

My co worker gave me and my fellow colleagues a box of cookies!

These are SINFULLY good! Not too sweet, yet crunchy and sort of melt in your mouth cookies! I only had ONE. These cookies are not from here btw. They travelled all the way from Hongkong homemade bakery according to her.

I’ve been a little adventurous in the kitchen lately.

Like this Cauliflower “Fried Rice”.

3 Ingredients:
1/2 of cauliflower (pick the most white and big looking one!)
3 garlic cloves – minced
3 stalks of green onions-chopped (separate the green and white part)
Salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
1 Tbsp olive oil/butter/lard/coconut oil or whatever oil you like!
Optional: curry powder for a little kick, paprika etc the choice is ENDLESS!

Steps:
1. Chopped the cauliflower and ground them in your blender/food processor until they look like this

2. Minced the garlic and green onions (reserve the green parts for later use)

3. Heat up the non stick skillet with 1 Tbsp oil (I used olive oil)

4. Saute the garlic and the white part of the green onions until fragrant

5. Mix in the ground cauliflower

6. Seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

7. Mix in the green part of the green onions

8. Ready to devour!

Cauliflower Fried Rice!

It's healthy, grain free and nutritious!

Finally, after reading so many raw/vegan cookies on the blogsphere, I decided to try making them my own:

Raw Almond Cookies!
(vegan and gluten free)

Ingredients (I didn’t measure everything exactly)
1/4 cup raw almonds
1/4 cup raw walnuts
1/2 cup golden roasted flaxseeds
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 cups of raw almond butter (I used my homemade almond butter- super easy!)
2 pitted medjool dates

Directions:
1. Lightly toast the almonds and walnuts in your oven for about 4 minutes

2. Put all ingredients in your blender/food processor and grind until the nuts are coarse (not too much or it’ll become nut butter)

coarsely grounded

3, Mixed the grounded ingredients with the almond butter

4. Shape into whatever you like! I didn’t have any cookie cutters so I just shaped them into flat cookie.

5. Chill them in the fridge so they’ll harden a bit

Optional: Bake the cookies for 15 minutes (I might want to give this a try)

These cookies are VERY RICH, so be mindful of the portion size.

Oh not to forget I also made Vegan Tofu Eggplant Stir Fry.

In the mix: tofu, eggplant, bell peppers and button mushrooms

Super easy and healthy! You can always customize this and turn it into a different kind of stir fry! I LOVE STIR FRY!

On another note, I have a BIG plan for this blog and it might take me quite sometime to actually put together. A little hint, I might merge my other blog content into this one. We’ll see how things go.

Last but not least, I really want to win this iHerb Giveaway!

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!! Be safe and be merry!

Question:
What’s your latest cooking adventure?

 

Birthday and BBQ galore!

Heey everyone, hope you all had a great week and weekend! Mine was filled with birthdays and BBQs.

Started with my dad’s birthday last Tuesday.

I got Orange Blossoms - small size - enough for all 5 of us

Cakes are too common and dad is not a sweet tooth guy (neither do I) so Edible Arrangements came in rescue! I bought this using Groupon ($20 for $40)! Originally this would cost $48 but with Groupon, I only paid $28! SCORE! Besides everyone LOVED the fruits. We finished everything!

And I got myself a super early b’day gift..haha.. A NEW DIGITAL CAMERA! FREE case, SD card AND shipping! With an additional promo code, I even covered the sales tax! YAY ME!

SD1400 - 14 MP, I could even shoot 720p HD video.

This coming Thursday, my parents will go back to Indonesia as my brother has finally feeling a lot better and could do stuff on his own. Originally, they didn’t intend to stay this long (almost 6 months?) but apparently my brother’s case was a bit different from typical people who had TB infection.

So we all went out for Korean BBQ lunch on Saturday. My parents rarely eat out as they dislike the greasiness of restaurant’s food. But at least I want them to try Korean BBQ.

And also I got an excuse to give my new camera a try! Tee hee..!

fresh spring mix salad lightly dressed in peanut sauce - yummy! Most of us ate this, even got a second serving!

Daikon (radish) pickles (left) and rice paper wrap (right)

Typical Korean banchan (side dishes) - kimchee, potato salad, mung bean jello, dried anchovies etc

We ordered Korean seafood pancake. I didn't have any tho, only a small bite. We packed this one home

BBQ beef -first round

my plate x 3 more- mostly veggies and some chicken (unpictured)

pork belly (ew, should've asked them to substitute it with something else) and shrimps

steamed eggs

Apparently, the BBQ didn’t stop there. In the evening our house was infested with lots of BBQ smoke from our neighbor!! Who’d knew they’d be BBQing in this time of the year? And stupid me forgot to close our room windows as they were bbqing RIGHT there! Geez, our house was full of smoke for a good 15 minutes, plus the smell!

And it happened TWICE!

On Sunday, we went to the in-laws for more birthday- my brother-in law’s! And it was the actual day!

Little nephew got to decorate the gingerbread man with his future aunt (my bro in law’s fiance).

tada! Gingerbread man ready for action!

CHOMP!

More cake!

nibbled around the frosting and cream

Lastly, I found out that I won Lynn at The Actor’s Diet Oh Nuts! giveaway (thanks Lynn!).

Questions:
1. Are you a food adventurous?
I’d say both K and I usually stay on the safe side. Usually we only go to Asian restaurants (Vietnamese, chinese, japanese, Korean, Thai) more than Caucasians. Oh and I also like Mediterranean food!

2. Have you used Groupon before?
The Edible Arrangement was my first time trying the Groupon. At first I was a bit skeptical about it as it sounds too good to be true. But after I tried it and it worked, I planned to keep an eye on any Groupon deals.

3. Free food, yay or nay?
A couple months ago fast food chains were having free meal giveaway (El Pollo Loco, KFC, etc). I only went for the El Pollo Loco and OMG, the line was crazy and I decided that would be my first and last time getting free food. I like free stuff because I’m cheap (haha) but for something like this, I rather pay than have to wait in the line for one hour just for a small piece of chicken meal.

 

Birthdays and Adapting

Hey all, how’s your weekend? Thank you so much for your nice comments on my last post. Seriously it took me at least a day to totally forget that incident. Tomorrow will be the time I’ll find out how much will it cost me to repair that bumper – *finger crossed*

Anyway let’s move on to something fun!

Folks at Kashi are so generous to send me this sample and coupons too!

Sunday was our nephew’s 4th birthday and my mother in-law’s birthday – wow double birthday celebrations on one day!

We all went to Chuck E Cheese! - er this only for nephew's b'day

lots of pizzas! - didn't have any

but I scavenged the veggie platter the most

Plus some chicken wings and the celery - minus the ranch dipping

Lawrence is a big fan of Lightning McQueen from Cars so sis in law chose Cars as this year's b'day theme - from the goodie bags

to the cake!

my portion - so light and fluffy and not too sweet - kudos to Asian bakery cake

homemade cupcakes from one of the parent, didn't have any, but surely they look well decorated

Our gift to the nephew. In Chinese tradition, usually we give red envelope for any celebrations - birthdays, weddings, graduation etc – can’t go wrong with those! Who doesn’t like cash gift? In this case, the cash gift will go to sis in law.

Who wanna play the arcade? I played the racing car and was on the 3rd place haha...didn't know I could do that. K played first and he didn't even finish the race...I should've took the pic.

Stopped by Whole Paycheck which located right behind Chuck E Cheese. Saw lots of goodies that I’ve seen or heard from the foodie bloggers. From the hot bar, vegenaise, tofurky and bunch other stuffs.

After wondering around for about 30 mins, I decided to give these a try. Spent about $8 for only these 3 stuff. Guess the whole paycheck name suits well – if you’re not careful enough, you’ll be spending your ENTIRE paycheck for one week grocery..haha.

I was a bit hungry so I snacked the Two Moms in the RAW Berry Chia Bar.

This was my first time trying raw and gluten free bar. My first impression? It tasted like a dirt…LOL – but I don’t hate it either. It might be a bit dry to my taste and somewhat chewy/hard to bite. I was expecting it to be crunchy. The upside part was there was no added sugar which is pretty rare in most snack bars that I’ve seen. I could taste a hint of banana and the tanginess of the cranberries. I’m a tangy girl so a little tangy taste is always a plus for me..hehe. Not so much on sweets though.

Ingredient list was awesome too! All natural and pronounceable (no chemical names, artificial stuff etc)

I was hoping to try the Cacao nibs ones but WF was out (or at least I didn’t see it on the shelf). I wish to try more of Two Moms in the Raw products, but apparently WF is the only California retailer that carries them and there aren’t any WF nearby my neighborhood area.

Then we had a good dinner at in-laws to celebrate mom-in law’s birthday. Not sure when was her exact birthday since they use Chinese calendar system but the main point was a family get together.

The highlight of the dish was the dungeness crabs. $2.99/lbs – can’t go lower than that! WF carried it for $7.99/lbs and weren’t fresh either!

Lotsa foods!!

Love this dish just a bit greasy. Bell pepper stuffed with fishcake (ground fish)

Another homemade noodles from scratch - father-in-law made these- it's fish noodles - was yummy and again kinda greasy for my taste

Good food, good weekend, good time

Questions:
1. Are you a celebrating type of person?
For me only for wedding anniversaries (5 year, 10 year etc) but not so much for birthdays. Having a birthday party with cakes, gifts might be fun for kids, but as we grow up, even having cakes become unnecessary. Besides after so many years, it’ll get more challenging to give gift to that particular person.

2, Do you usually give gifts to someone in special occassions (birthdays, graduations, Christmas etc)?
I only do if I KNOW EXACTLY what that person wants or likes, otherwise no. For our nephew’s case, we just gave cash gifts to sister because she spent quite amount for arranging this birthday party. It’s almost like we’re paying for our lunch meal at Chuck E Cheese..haha.

3. How do you serve dishes at home? Family style or individual style?
For us mostly are family style, as seen from the dinner at in-law’s place. Even at home we usually have a family style dinner. The upside is we got to share everything but on the downside, sometimes it’s hard to control the portion hehe.

4. How do you adapt to other people’s eating style?
Let me explain this a bit. On my husband’s family side, EVERYONE uses his/her own chopsticks to get the food from the serving dishes – EVEN AFTER he/she eats using that chopsticks. My family side DOESN’T do that. For us it’s kinda gross to get the food from a dish which everyone has dig in their saliva slathered chopsticks. My family doesn’t eat using chopsticks (we use spoons and forks) but even though we use chopsticks, we still use serving spoons to get the food.

First time I had a meal at my hubby (bf that time) place, I was grossed out and almost didn’t wanna touch anything for second round.
There’s no way I can make my hubby to tell his parents not to do those (that’ll be rude), especially they’ve been cooking and working hard in the kitchen preparing the food for us. Solutions? I load up my plate with a bit of everything from each dishes or any dishes that I’d want to eat and not getting a second round. I just eat slowly so I won’t ended up finishing my stuff first before everyone else. So far this strategy works fine for me

 

Asian style Thanksgiving

Knock, knock, knock,  anyone here?

I know it’s been a week since Thanksgiving and I haven’t had a chance to post about my Thanksgiving *boo*
We were totally having an Asian style Thanksgiving – no stuffing, no bread, no sweet desserts, no mashed potatoes.

Anyway I’ll just use pics to tell the stories.

Thanksgiving lunch with my family

Overall view of the lunch

Vegan mixed stir fry veggies - ear mushrooms, carrots, celery and tofu...yummm!

Vegetarian stir fry noodles (my aunt's homemade noodles from scratch) stir fried with some of the vegan stir fry veggies

Minced green beans with scrambled eggs...I LOVE this thing!

This dish was actually for the dinner gathering at my aunt’s place. It’s called “tekwan” (pronounced: ték-wun), an Indonesian dish from a small town called Palembang (pronounced: puh-lam-bung”). Basically it’s a shrimp, fishballs and shredded jicama soup. It’s a simple dish but lots of work. Maybe in the future I might post the recipe here

Tekwan (pronounced tek-wun) - an Indonesian dish that my mom made...pretty much shrimp soup with fishballs

The soup

Fishballs made from fishcake (ground fish)

chili sauce to go with it

I ordered a Chinese style turkey from 99 Ranch market which had to be ordered 1-2 weeks before. It tasted pretty good, just a little bit on the salty side. Totally different from American style turkey. Just imagine those Chinese roasted duck and you’ll get the idea how Chinese turkey taste like

Cut it into pieces and brought some to my in-laws for dinner

Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws.
Can’t you believe my father-in-law cooked all of these? He’s amazing.

Only got one overall shot because we were late and I didn't want to make everyone waiting for me taking individual picture of each dish

Sticky rice dish

Went home with these organic fruits!

Persimmons! Fresh from K

Lemons! From my K's brother's fiance's parents' backyard

BLACK FRIDAY – I had to go to work but K had a day off. So he gave me a ride to work and later we had lunch together at Furaibo.

Miso soup and salad - part of the lunch specials.

My fun way eating the cold salad - mixed them into the warm miso soup..Yumm!

My dish - Originally I asked for New York steak dish but they ran out..BOO! So I asked for the broiled fish instead with more salad to sub the rice

K's dish - Korean BBQ dish

While I was working, K went to his parents’ place to chill. Better than walking around in a crowded stores or circling around the parking lot.

On our way back home, we stopped by Albertson’s to pick up some stuff. Gotta use that gift card

I ran out of Almond milk and too lazy to make them and wanna try Greek yogurt for the first time and I LOVE IT!

My mom got a chiffon cake recipe from my aunt when they were having Thanksgiving gathering so we made Chocolate Mocha Chiffon Cake during the weekend. I’ll do a separate post for this since this one has gotten quite long. But for now just enjoy the pic

Chocolate Moccha Chiffon Cake

Questions:
What’s your favorite holiday foods?
I don’t have any particular favorite food because I am not a picky eater (as long it’s not overly salty/sweet/greasy). But for sure I like the stir fry veggies that I made on T-day.

What type of persimmons do you like? Do you like persimmons?
There are 2 types of persimmons: Fuyu (the ones that I have in the pic) and Hachiya (more oval shape).

I personally like Fuyu ones because they don’t get mushy when ripe (unless overripe). Hachiya ones on the other hand have to be really ripe to consume, otherwise you’ll get this nasty chalky taste in your mouth (I had that before..eww). I don’t like mushy fruits so Fuyu persimmons for me.

How different are you with your significant other?
K and I have lots of similarities in terms of food and lifestyle but we still have differences on some other parts.

Fashion: Believe it or not K has twice or three times more clothing than I do. LOL, very rare I know. It’s usually the other way around. He even occupies my walk in closet and another closet and still has some boxes of clothes in the garage. Heck, I’m even wearing one of his sweater because it’s a little too small for him. Seriously I need to shop more clothing.

Books/Stories: K likes the Twilight Sagas while I don’t even bother. On the other hand, K doesn’t get Harry Potter as I do as well.

Are you a Black Friday shopper?
Since I started working at my current place, I can’t take a day off on Black Friday because that’s our busiest time (retail business). The only time I lined up early morning for Black Friday was 4-5 years ago in front of Best Buy. However, now I don’t even bother to go shop during the Thanksgiving weekend. It was waaay too crowded and I hate being in a crowd. It gives me headache. And I don’t have the patience to search for that particular clothing and go back and forth the fitting room to try it on. That explains why I don’t have much clothing..LOL.

 

From Summer November to Insomnia

Hey everyone, how are you?? Did you enjoy your extra hour of sleep (for those in the US). As for me, I did but for some reason I couldn’t sleep now thus I decided to update this blog! I know it’s Sunday night and I even planned to get up early tomorrow and work out but don’t think it’ll happen.

Sometimes I do have this insomnia when I can’t just fall asleep because of my snoring hubby. Anyway let’s recap a bit, shall we?

candies from Halloween - untouched! No trick or treaters came by to our house

So we had all these candies lying around since nobody came on Halloween day. I didn’t have any of these, but my hubby, mom and brother been nibbling on those a lot. Good thing I didn’t have much sweet tooth.

 

Unless it involves Loacker Dark Chocolate! I can hardly resist these!

I admit that I ate majority of this dark chocolate covered wafers!

And I finally tried to strain my yogurt like Tra did so it became creamier! No more watery yogurt for me!
Thanks Tra for the tip!

strain strain- getting rid of the excess water

mixed in some Kashi cereal..hmm hmm hmm....creamy and crunchy!

I don’t have Tofu Press as many other bloggers who like the tofu to be nice and firm. Heck, just prepared a big dish and put something extra heavy on top of the tofu, you get your DIY Tofu Press!

filled in a pyrex container with water and put extra other stuff on top of it. See the water from the tofu?? It got the job done!

Why spend extra $$ just to strain your tofu? In fact the DIY one can do more than 1 tofu! This is the second pressing. The first one had lots more water which I had to throw away or it'd spill out

For a little change of my usual toasted wheat bread with PB, oats or cereal, I ate purple yam for b-fast instead.

one for me, one for hubby. Who says a man/woman only can live with bread/cereal/oats for b-fast?

I don’t usually spend $$ for b-fast but I’ve been having this Subway coupon for a while and it’s getting closer to the expiration date. I got the Egg white Wheat muffin breakfast sandwich.

$1.49 for breakfast sandwich. After tax it was $1.62. Not bad. Usually it costs around $2.00.

The combo was only some steak meat and lettuce. No mayo or cheese as I dislike them all. No tomatoes b/c I don't like to be messy eating at my work desk.

My impression? I’m glad I always make my own b-fast The sandwich just tasted meh for me. It was pretty bland without the addition of mayo or cheese. The steak meat was kinda salty and so did the egg white. The wheat muffin was a bit chewy prolly because I ate it 20 mins later after I got to the office.

Our SoCal weather has been really weird! I call it Summer in November. It was 80-90°F in November and this is in the US!

bright, hot, sunny and very dry! Much like summer! Weird weather. Is 2012 movie coming true?

But I will miss this daylight home commute after the time change though.

sunsets over the hills.

While shopping our grocery this weekend, I saw this lopsided apple and thought it was cute.

I know we just got 4 kitchen rugs last week, but after seeing these we couldn’t resist to get it. It’s more durable, bigger and not to mention it’s easier to clean! Just wipe with damp cloth and be done with it! Dirts won’t stuck on it as much and it’s made of rubber/PVC.

color matches better with the dark wood floor. They're $20 each.so total we spent $60 by getting 3 of these. Oh well.

It was my mom’s birthday today (technically it should be on the 8 but it’s already Nov 8 in Asia. Since she was born in Asia, we use Asian time) so I decided to take her out for a little shoe shopping. But instead getting the shoes, she found some winter clothing. There weren’t much shoes that she liked.

Got all of these at Ross. I offered to pay for all of these and said they'll be for her b'day gift. I know it wasn't much, but at least they'll be useful for her. My mom is afraid of cold weather a lot so she needs more warm clothing

Got this Chocolate cake. 7 candles - Happy birthday MOM!

perfect cake. Everyone got 1 slice and 1 slice left for whoever wants to eat it for b-fast tomorrow morning. this cake taste really light and not sweet at all. Kudos to Asian Bakery!

And while driving earlier, I notice the weather might be cooler again. I heard rain is coming.

Questions of the day:
1. What do you do when you can’t sleep?
You know what I do..haha!

2. Does your significant other or whoever share the same room with you snore? What do you do?
Mine does! Usually the remedy is I go to sleep first. There are times when I’m tired enough I still be able to go to sleep even though he’s kinda snoring.

 

Working like a machine, how to greet your elders

Usually Monday is not the busiest day for me but today I felt like I’m working non-stop. Part of it because I took off a bit early on Friday to take my bro to the clinic for the injection.
So Cal weather finally starts indicating that Fall season is here. I drove in the drizzle and cloud this morning.
The best part of my commute is I don’t have to take freeway to get stuck in the daily traffic. LA is the worst traffic freeway, I tell ya.

The best part of my commute is to pass this hill daily and enjoying the view of the luxury houses on the hills

Some food pics – not all from today but mostly are.

Nothing beats homemade whole wheat toast topped with natural strawberry jam and pair up with unpictured hot green tea

Lots of fruits. And I had an apple in addition to these

watermelon in this chilly weather? Well someone gotta finish that..it's super juicy and sweeeeeeeeeet!

More fruits!

So today I was working like a machine at work. What can I do when I have 30+ projects line up for this week. Pretty much after I finished with each project, I hit “send” and moved on to the next one and so on. Totally like a production machine, I tell ya. Not complaining. In some ways it helps to pass the time faster. Without me realizing, it was already lunch time, and mid break time and finally time to go home! All I need is a full concentration. Once my concentration disturbed, I’ll be dragging everything.

Question of the day: How do you usually greet your elder (be that your parents, aunts, grandparents, in-laws etc?

Sound like a weird question, but in Asian tradition when I come home or leaving the house I’m supposed to greet or say bye to the parents. Not just simply say “I’m leaving, bye” but you have to say “Mom/Dad, I’m leaving, bye, or “Hi Mom or Hi dad” when I get home. Same thing if aunts or uncles coming over to my place, I have to greet them like “Hi Uncle A/ Hi Aunt C” etc. And to my hubby’s parents (parents in law?) I can’t call their names, instead I call them “Mom” and “Dad” as well. The other options is to call them as “Mom-in law” or “Father-in law” (in Chinese of course since they don’t speak any English) but those words are too hard for me to pronounce so simply calling them “Mom” and “Dad” is way easier

It’s simply considered to be inappropriate if I didn’t call out their “name” (mom, dad, uncle, aunt etc) and just simply say hi or bye or just smile and nod.

So I’d like to know if this manner also applies to other cultures or only in Asians?

I’d love to hear all your opinions!

 

Friday night

It’s Friday night and here I am sitting in front of my laptop typing this short entry while waiting for my hair to dry. Yoga was great today, got lots of sweat, decent workout, not the best, but better than nothing.

Also my bowel has been pretty active ever since I got back home today, not sure was it because I consumed a bit too much veggies yesterday or because I had some greasy stuff at lunch at Vietnamese restaurant today. It’s been a looooooooooong time I haven’t had anything too greasy (deep fried particularly). I ordered a bowl of  rice vermicelli topped with some veggies (finished all of them), charbroiled pork sausages (didn’t have any), and deep fried shrimp patties (ate them all which was big mistake).

Source
That wasn’t the exact dish that I ordered (mine didn’t have egg rolls) and I didn’t take the actual pic because I didn’t want my co-worker looking at me as a weirdo.

I had hard time concentrating at work today (c’mon who wants to actually work on Friday??) partly because I had to make some phone calls to my bro’s doctor regarding his condition. He’s still having fever and seems getting weaker. Parents are getting sad and anxious and they are desperate for someone to give them a proper answer. “An answer will only lead to more questions” - a quote I like from “LOST”. I wish I can tell them some good news but sadly I’m not sure what to say either.

Oh well it’s Friday night and I don’t want to force my brain to think too hard. Just wanna wrap up this post and surfing the net while waiting for my hair to dry. Yes, I air dry my hair as much as possible. I don’t usually wash my hair in the evening but if I couldn’t get up early to do my workout, I have to do it after I got home.

Have a good weekend!

Question of the day: What do you usually do on Friday night?

Before my brother got sick, my hubby and I used to just sit in front of our own computer, doing our own stuff. Be it reading blogs, watching online movies/shows/anime/news/podcast, or we watch movie together. Ah, how I want those simple days back again. *sigh*

 

Big thank you, recipes and staying positive

First of all, I’d like to say a BIG THANK YOU for the great and supportive comments on my last post. I definitely felt better after reading those. It’s strange in some ways even though I don’t know the readers in person, sometimes I feel they could understand me a bit more than people who’ve known me in person. I know it sounds strange but maybe that’s why people blog, right?

It’s almost weekend and for those who live in the US, it’s Labor Day weekend! Woohoo!! Anyone has plans?

As my current situation, I don’t think we have any plans at all. Mainly just regular weekend stuff, got stretched over a bit..haha. But I do feel a bit envious of one of my friend, who’s going to celebrate her 1 year wedding anniversary for going out of town with her hubby. They mentioned Las Vegas but then she asked my suggestion and I suggested her to give Terranea Resort at Rancho Palos Verdes a look.

View of Terranea at Rancho Palos Verde

Hm, I wanna go there on our 5th year wedding anniversary. We are not big in celebrating stuff (anniversary, birthdays etc) but for 5 year or 10 year wedding anniversary, I think it’s worth it.

Moving on, my throat been bothering me since yesterday afternoon. It was hurt and scratchy. Ugh!! So I took a quick action: Vitamin C overdose Infusing lots of Vitamin C to my body.

full cup of fresh squeezed grapefruit - drank this right after dinner

followed by a fresh squeezed lemon juice mixed w/ warm water and some honey

Went to bed quite early last night, sometime before 10pm? Had to help dad scan some stuff, took a while to install the software on the laptop, downloaded from the manufacturer’s website, found out I downloaded the wrong driver, tried again, wireless went down, had to restart the laptop, still not working, blah blah. Finally I had to turn on my desktop computer which hasn’t been on since ‘rents are here (they took over our computer room), then scanned that sucker. Phew. Originally I planned to sleep around 9pm but got dragged until 9:40pm. Oh well.

Woke up this morning, throat was really sore, especially when swallowing. Had a bit of phlegm (sorry TMI). I’ve been having cough drops and LOTS OF H20 to hydrate myself. A bit dizzy. Man, hopefully I didn’t catch a cold! Gotta exercise later after got home to sweat it all out!

Btw, last night I experimented making a gluten-free, vegan friendly banana muffins, inspired by Averie’s Vegan Banana Nut Muffins. This is a super easy. All you need is a measuring cup, a bowl and a spoon. No mixer, no blender!

Vegan friendly, gluten free banana muffins:
3 medium ripe bananas
1/2 cup ground flaxseeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oats (I used quick oats since that’s what I had in my pantry)
about 1 Tbsp brown sugar
a dash of salt
some dried cranberries

1. Mash all bananas until smooth then pour in the rest of the ingredients.
Mine looked like this:

2. Divide the mixture evenly into lined muffin pans. Mine perfectly filled 2 of 6 muffin tins.

3. Bake at 375°F for about 20 minutes. I had to bake one tin at a time cause they won’t fit into my convection oven.

4. Enjoy!

Done!

Texture wise it's not as fluffy and airy like typical muffins since there wasn't any gluten in there. But still good. Kinda chewy. My mom tried it and she said it was pretty good. Not overly sweet either. Most of the sweetness came from the ripe bananas.

I’m planning to add a bit of dark chocolate chips next time to mask the banana flavor, also put more seeds and coconut flakes to make it crunchier, and less oats.

Also sometime last week when bro was still hospitalized, he requested to have stir fried rice noodle. Mom didn’t quite know how to make those so asked me to do it. I said, okay and voila:

Stir Fried Rice Noodles
Ingredients:
1 package of dried rice noodles (make sure it’s rice noodles, not rice vermicelli- they’re different) – A must

You can always alter any of these ingredients (vegans/vegetarians just omit the animal products )
1 carrot -julienne
1 package of button mushrooms – chopped
1-2 green onions – julienne
2 -3 eggs – scrambled – vegans/vegetarians can omit this and use lightly fried sliced tofu instead
A dash of white pepper
1-2 Tbsp soy sauce (adjust for taste)
1-2 Tbsp oyster sauce (adjust for taste) – vegans/vegetarians can use mushroom sauce instead
Canola oil for stir fry
2 stalks of celery – julienne
1/2 pounds of peeled and deveined shrimps

Directions:
1. Soak the dried rice noodles in cold water until it’s soft – the longer you soak the softer it becomes. Don’t soak it too long. Drain the water, cover and set aside.
2. Scrambled the eggs until cooked, set aside.
3. Stir fry all the veggie and meat mixture until cooked – set aside
4. Stir fry the soaked rice noodles – might want to divide it into 2 steps. Too much rice noodles at once will be hard to stir.
5. Pour in half of the veggie mixture to the noodles, keep stirring with medium heat.
6. Mix in the soy sauce, oyster sauce, salt, pepper and adjust for taste.
7. First batch done. Repeat Step 4-6 for second batch.

Hopefully the direction won’t be too confusing..hehe. Anyway, bro, parents and hubby liked this!

Sometime last week I tried this Asian style burrito for breakfast. It was ok, but a bit greasy for my taste. I only ate the inside part and only half of the wrap.

Long weekend is coming and I strive to keep a positive attitude around my parents. Smile more, talk more to them and just be happy. And hopefully my sore throat will heal SOON!

Later!