Recent Shenanigans

I love how I said at the end of my last post I would write about our Christmas, and then I dropped off the face of the planet. Well, that's how my journal looks like. I've been so busy I don't know what to do with myself! Well, let's get caught up, shall we?

Christmas happened. It was awesome. You can see pics from the last post. I ate a lot. And relaxed a lot. It was wonderful. I laid by the fire. I read a book. I got to spend time with Caleb. Caleb got to relax from school. Christmas is great as always.

We spent New Year's Eve back home in Michigan. Our neighbors invited us over for fondue. This was the first time I had ever had cheese and chocolate fondue in a home setting. It was mind-blowingly awesome.

the best decision I ever made

Caleb is by far the best choice I ever made. I am grateful to be married to him. He is the perfect person for me. Pretty sure I've said that a billion times. maybe two billion. :) You can learn more about him on my Bio page. Anyway, we celebrated his birthday the day I got back from my trip. We kept it pretty chill. I invited friends to the park for a game of ultimate frisbee and birthday cake (but not really cake, because Caleb doesn't like cake). I only took one picture of him on his birthday, here it is:

Those are his hands. :) I wish I took a picture of the fruit tart before we started cutting it. This was my first time making it. It was pretty easy. If you want to impress people, just make one of these and arrange the fruit nicely. I won't share this recipe though because I want to find a better one. But anyway, this is really called a fruit pizza, but I put it in a shallow pie dish so then it became a fruit tart.  Fruit tart sounds way more sophisticated than fruit pizza, don't you think? If you're thinking that I was smart for making that change, well, hate to bust your bubble but I'm not that smart. haha. Even though I wasn't a big fan of the crust, everyone told me it was very good. 

Here's a pic I took of Caleb the day after his birthday:

He got this t-shirt as a birthday gift from Josh and Shannon. If you can't read it, it says, "Never trust an atom, they make up everything." Pretty sure I made a valentine for Caleb that said the same thing. Doesn't he look great?

So you all must be wondering what I gave Caleb for his birthday. Well, I thought long, and I mean very very long, about a gift. I had some ideas, but I kept going back to this one gift idea that well, made me hesitant, and yet I knew he would have so much fun with it. In the end, I bought it for him, even though it goes against my very nature. I bought him a computer game. hahaha! I really don't like anything to do with video games or computer games because I feel like the majority of them are time-wasters. However, I do understand that people need to have some gaming fun once in a while. It just gets problematic when they spend too much time...I'm sure you have seen how easy it can be to get sucked into a video game. However, the game I bought for him is somewhat educational and you need to use physics to do well in the game. HOW NERDY CAN I GET? Well, I guess I'm not the real nerd here. The game I bought him is called Kerbal Space Program. It was created in collaboration with NASA. You basically need to design and launch a spaceship into orbit and plan your trajectories to ensure you will fall into the right gravity wells (what's a gravity well? dunno, that's just what Caleb told me) so that you can explore whatever asteroid/moon you need to reach, get data, and take it back to earth. You still with me? I'm not. Pretty nerdy stuff in my opinion. You're basically planning space missions. And I was right, Caleb is totally loving the game right now. He is definitely sucked in. At least I can feel somewhat good about it since he has to use his brain. :)

Overall, I think he really enjoyed his birthday. His parents took him golfing and to a Michigan football game at the Big House a couple days earlier. So he definitely had some fun, and our neighbors even had him over and sang him happy birthday!

Fall is here! I think Caleb's birthday was officially the first day of fall. We are blessed to have a beautiful maple across the street from our house. I love the changing colors.  

Happy Fall!

~Jessie~

kimchi jigae

When I was a little girl, I remember my dad putting a bunch of nappa cabbage in a brine. I asked him about it, and he told me he was making kimchi. I didn't want to try it because of the strong smell. Little did I know that I would fall in love with kimchi in my twenties. Kimchi is a fermented spicy cabbage that plays a huge part in Korean cuisine. Its a perfect combination of spicy, salty, and sour. And I guess I feel okay eating exorbitant amounts of it since its a vegetable. But anyway, back to the point. Caleb and I hadn't had Korean food in a while, so we went to a Korean grocery store in Ann Arbor to get the goods. We really needed two main things: kimchi and red pepper paste. We decided to make a kimchi stew called "kimchi jigae." It was to die for. Caleb and I almost finished the whole pot. We ate it with white rice. 

Caleb looked up several different recipes online to get an idea of what we were supposed to do. Here's what we did:

1. Saute several cloves of minced garlic and one finely chopped medium onion in oil. 
2. Add 1-2 pounds of sliced pork. Saute until pork is fully cooked.
3. Add two cups chopped kimchi
4. Add water until ingredients are covered
5. Add 1 tablespoon of red pepper paste. If you like it really spicy, add a little more.
6. We put in small white stringy japanese mushrooms. not sure what it's called. 
7. We then added sliced up andouille smoked sausage. This is not Korean whatsoever, but it really added a nice flavor. Caleb's idea. 
8. Bring to a boil, then cover and let simmer for 25-30 minutes.  
9. Add cubed tofu and let simmer for 5 minutes. 
10. Turn off the stove. Add in sliced green onions. Serve over rice. 

If you're not a huge fan of kimchi, you may still like this dish because the strong flavor of the kimchi is watered down and mixed with other ingredients. Caleb prefers this dish over straight kimchi. If you're not a fan of spicy flavors, I'd try some other Korean dish like beef kalbi or bimbimbap. 

Happy Cooking!

Jessie

we're getting ready for summatime!

Wow, sorry it's been so long since my last post. I've been too busy with other projects. 

Caleb has finished his second semester at Michigan. Woohoo! I am so proud of him! It was a lot of hard work, but he managed to pull through with some stellar grades. He will be doing research all summer and resume classes in the fall. Yesterday we talked about some of the research he is doing and I was actually able to understand some of it! Research is hard work. I commend anybody who decides to go into it.

I got busy with church right after my trip to Hong Kong. I now help in the young womens program. They are ages twelve to eighteen, but I'm specifically over the twelve and thirteen-year-olds. They are so cute! I am also helping with their girls camp preparations, and we only have about a month left before camp. So I'm being kept super busy with that. 

Now that the weather has turned warm, everything has begun to bloom. It is sooooo purty. I've been enjoying the plants and seeing what surprises our garden beds have for us. There are a bunch of perennials on this property, and it's been fun to see them return. I have a lifetime supply of hostas. I think those are my favorite out of all the plants I have. My mother-in-law found some bleeding hearts in one of the beds. They're so unique.

My mother-in-law came for a day and helped me with splitting plants and transplanting. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it. She has taught me so much about plants and gardening. I don't know what I would have done without her. In our front yard we extended the beds further out away from the house and transplanted daylilies.

Before of one of the beds

After

 I just ordered some limelight hydrangeas that I will be planting behind the daylilies. It will be a while before they get tall, but I have time. We'll be here at least five years anyway...

We also started a garden! I have a picture here of the seedlings before I planted them:

I couldn't plant them all because our plot was not big enough, so I gave some away to family and friends. Starting seeds is so much fun. It's fun to see them grow and get big. We've planted tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, lettuce, radishes, onions, broccoli, basil, and some other herbs like sage and culantro or something like that. I think we were a little ambitious for our first garden, but since we have the space and a gazillion seeds to try, we might as well, right? 

Another thing about summatime....grilling. Caleb and I knew we wanted to buy a grill. We have this amazing backyard deck; it would be a shame not to have a grill. So Caleb went on craigslist immediately and found one for forty bucks. What a steal! It's a really nice charbroil charcoal grill and smoker. Caleb said its priced over $200 retail. Could I say no? I guess not... The seller also gave us his leftover charcoal and smoking chips. Man we're lucky. We grilled some wings while my mother-in-law was here. They were sooo good. 

I know these aren't the greatest food pictures, but man....they were amazing. The first picture was of our hot wings. The second what just without the hot sauce. Caleb is getting pretty good at grilling. 

Well, now that the thunderstorm is passed, I think I'll go out and work on my yard. Hope you all are having a good week!

<3 Jessie

hong kong variety

Hello Everyone! I've been in Hong Kong for seven days now and it's been great! We've been taking it easy, eating whatever we want and going wherever we want. One thing I absolutely LOVE about Hong Kong is the variety of foods you can get. And the key word here is variety. At the street markets, grocery stores, and malls, you will find varieties in cuisines, crackers, candy, fruits, vegetables, everything. Here are pictures of foods I've eaten. They may not all look as appetizing to you as they do for me, but believe me it was heaven. 

ja leung, deep fried bread wrapped in rice noodle. This was our very first meal in HK. It's one of our favorites.

The rest of the meal. Specialty rice congee with different meats in it, as well as a jung, which is the triangular-shaped sticky rice. It is filled with meats as well. 

dauh fu fa. basically really silky smooth tofu. the bag of orange stuff is cane sugar. This is one of my Dad's all-time favorites.  

ngauh leih sou. a sweet deep fried bread. My first mission companion in HK loved this with warm soymilk. 

Noodles with cow entrails. My dad ordered this one day. I'm not a huge fan, but I'm sure it was still pretty tasty. 

jin houh behng. pan-fried oyster pancake. oh my gosh this one was amazing. That was my first time having it.

Three egg spinach dish. The three eggs include regular chicken eggs, salty duck eggs, and thousand year old eggs. And of course the spinach was really good too. 

chinese vegetables, chinese mushroom, and deep fried tofu

garlic and black bean bitter melon with white fish fillet

typical noodle shop meal. I had beef and my dad had pork. The drink is Horlicks. 

My mom ordered this one. It was a Sichuan style noodle bowl with potato noodles, dumplings, and fishballs. 

Sigh....no words can express how much I love egg tarts. I ate this one for Caleb. 

Other bakery treats. One of them is a coconut tart. 

While on our way to a store, we had to find a place to eat for lunch, and found this little Shan Dong restaurant. Shan Dong is a province in China I believe. They had homemade dumplings. I wish I had taken a picture, but there were ladies making them right in front of us. Everything made from scratch. 

mushroom with waih saan, some sort of white crunchy vegetable, similar to daikon.

jellyfish salad. I'm going to try and make this when I get back. 

That's it for now! I'm coming back in a couple days so I'll post again after I get back.

Tootles,

Jessie 

kale and catfish stir fry

This is a little late in coming, but remember when we bought that discounted catfish? Well the day after I made this:

Kale has become one of my favorite vegetables to buy here in Michigan.

Cajun Seafood Eggplant Casserole

So one Sunday a couple weeks ago, Caleb decided to cook dinner. It's always an adventure when he cooks. I love it. We bought these discounted catfish fillets the day before and needed to use them fast. This is what he came up with:

thai style creamy tomato linguine

Okay so I've probably said this before many times, Caleb and I like to experiment. There are several reasons we do this: 1) we're too cheap/lazy to buy all of the ingredients, 2) there is something awfully exciting about creating something different, and 3) we both are adventurous in trying new foods.

Say hello to my thai style creamy tomato linguine:

Prep time: 10 min | Cook time: 20-25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients:

1 pkg of a noodle pasta

2 TB olive oil

minced 3-4 cloves garlic

1 can diced tomatoes

a pinch of hot chile flakes

a pinch of brown sugar

1 can coconut milk

handful of raw shrimp (each chopped in half)

2 TB parmesan cheese

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

salt and pepper (to taste)

1. Boil pasta to al dente.
2. Heat up the the olive oil in a large sauce pan to medium heat. Saute the minced garlic for several minutes until it gets fragrant. 
3. Add the diced tomatoes, chile flakes, and brown sugar. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes. 
4. Stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil then turn down heat to medium low.
5. Add raw shrimp, parmesan cheese, and cilantro. Let cook for five minutes then bring down to a simmer. 
6. Add salt and pepper to taste. Throw in the cooked pasta, let it cook in the sauce for a couple minutes. 

  I guess I'm calling this "thai style" because instead of cream I used coconut milk. It gives a nice sweet flavor found in thai dishes. I used this instead of cream because I didn't have any. You could probably do this with other meats like chicken or pork, but just make sure you cook it all the way through. Shrimp cooks very quickly, so you would probably have to cook other meats longer. I think the next time I make this, I will add a ton of spinach or kale just to make sure we are getting our greens. It's a really easy recipe where you can switch out ingredients for whatever you have. 

Enjoy!

Jessie

Iron Chef

So our home is very unique in the sense that it has been converted into a duplex. This means we can potentially rent out half our house, and that's exactly what we do. Our "neighbors" are some good friends of ours that we met back in Utah, and we were surprised when we discovered they were moving to Michigan as well. One thing led to another and BAM! we have awesome neighbors. Back in January we decided to have an Iron Chef competition. Having a home with two kitchens definitely has its perks. 

We didn't choose a secret ingredient, but instead we chose a theme. Basically we had to prepare two or three dishes that can complement white rice (we have a never-ending supply of white rice). Of course we did guys vs girls. So Caleb and Jon were a team, and Karissa and I were a team. We didn't have any restrictions on what foods could be used, and you could borrow from the other kitchen if you needed to. Our time limit was an hour and a half. 

All the dishes turned out delicious! We sent photos out to a few people to vote which dish had the best presentation. The Chicken Katsu and Bacon-wrapped Green Beans got the best reviews. I thought they all were restaurant-menu worthy. 

chicken katsu (Chef Jessica and Chef Karissa)

some sort of asian omelet, has shrimp, onions, green onions, soy sauce (Chef Jessica and Chef Karissa)

Mango Meatball stir fry (Chef Caleb and Chef Jon)

Bacon-wrapped green beans (Chef Caleb and Chef Jon)

Baked Potatoes and Onions with Smoked Paprika (Chef Caleb and Chef Jon)

So moral of the story is....if you have a home with two kitchens, have an iron chef competition. 

  

Happy Year of the Horse!

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!
恭喜發財！新年快樂！

Since being married in 2012, I've unfortunately been away from my parents during Chinese New Year. Celebrating Chinese New Year was an enormous part of my childhood. I mainly have memories of being in Chinese dance performances, going to our local Chinese New Year festival, eating scrumptious Chinese traditional dishes, and of course receiving red envelopes of money from our relatives.

   

My parents immigrated to this country many years ago. I don't know if they envisioned the rest of their lives in a foreign country, but I can tell you that they embraced it with very brave faces. My parents went on to adopt many American traditions. I feel very fortunate in that I was given the best of both worlds. I am most decidedly going to do all I can to teach my future family about our Chinese heritage in addition to their American roots.

So for this year I sent red envelopes of money to my two nephews, Deacon and Phoenix. It is tradition that once you are married, it is your turn to give red envelopes to family members who are of a younger generation, or if they are not married yet. I still have some red envelopes to send, so I'll get to that this week.

red envelopes I bought this year

Last year I decided that I was going to carry on these traditions and so I began learning how to make some of my favorite Chinese dishes. It doesn't taste quite like my mom's yet, but someday I'll get there. We invited our friends and the missionaries from our church to have dinner with us. When I signed up to feed the missionaries dinner, I didn't realize that exact date was Chinese New Year, so they were in for a surprise. 

  

west lake soup

chinese green vegetables

cha siu, chinese-style bbq pork

cha siu baau, buns with a bbq pork filling

potstickers

Everything turned out really well. I was relieved that everyone liked something on the table. It took a lot of work, but mainly because there was so much to make. However, it was completely worth all the effort because it helps me to improve my cooking skills. That is one of my goals this year. 

May the year of the Horse be a great one for you!

Healthy Muffins? Wha........?

So before Caleb and I were married, I flew out to Ohio with him to meet his family. While we were there, Caleb's mother made these really delicious muffins that were jam packed with good things. Super tasty AND super healthy, as far as muffins go. But really, they are pretty healthy, period. I asked for the recipe and she emailed it to me right away. This was back in April last year.

Ten Months Later...(the present)

I'm digging through all the recipes that I have saved and I found her recipe!! They are called Morning Glory Muffins. I don't know where "morning glory" comes from, but seriously, these muffins will give you all the "morning glory" you need to feel good about yourself and your diet.

You're probably thinking that I then pulled out this recipe and made it myself. WRONG. This was all Caleb. He is quite the little baker around here. I can only take credit for the pictures. Thank you Mom for the recipe!

Morning Glory Muffins

2 ½ cups wheat flour

1/3 cup sugar

3 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp/ baking soda

½ tsp. salt

3 eggs

¾ cup applesauce

1/3 cup oil

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups grated carrots

1 med apple, diced

8 oz. crushed pineapple, drained

½ cup coconut

½ cup raisins or craisins

½ cup chopped walnuts (opt.)

1 TBSP flax seed

Combine dry ingredients in one bowl. In another bowl mix

the eggs, applesauce oil, and vanilla. Stir in carrots, apple,

coconut, raisins and nuts. Stir just until mixed. Fill paper

cup lined muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 23 minutes.

As you can tell from the recipe, there are a lot of different ingredients, but it is totally worth it. 

恭喜發財！

Happy Chinese New Year!

Caleb and I celebrated Chinese New Year over the weekend by going to a coworker's party on Saturday, and then having our own family dinner on Sunday. At my coworker's party, we made traditional dumplings and also lit up paper lanterns. The paper lanterns were about three feet tall, and looked like this:

I didn't take any pictures at the party, but this picture was from Mid-Autumn Festival last year and we used the same exact paper lanterns. It was super fun. One of my coworker's friends bought about 100 of these and we lit them all up. It was lightly snowing at the time, but they still went up high into the air. You can imagine it looked a little bit like this:

(www.ecorazzi.com)

Well, maybe not THAT many; we really only had like maybe five or six up in the air at a time. Still, it was really fun.

On Sunday, we had all the cousins over from my side of the family. Since I was not able to be with my parents for Chinese New Year, I decided to take ownership of my own Chinese New Year festivities. Basically, that means I get to choose what kind of food I want to prepare. I'm so disappointed that I forgot to take pictures of our little get together, but at least I can provide internet pictures of what we ate. I'm so proud of the cuisine selection, it was all moi. Well I mainly planned the menu sinceI wanted to get together, and partly because my cousins either don't know what to cook for Chinese New Year, or they just don't know how to cook the food. So I thought it would be nice to have them over and cook homemade traditional Chinese food. Here are pictures of what we ate:

West Lake Soup (image from foodgawker.com)

Cha Siu Buns (image from biggestmenu.com)

Not too bad for our first time

Potstickers is a Must! (I got this image from somewhere, but I couldn't locate the source.  However, mine TOTALLY look like that. Ask Caleb)

Cantonese Pan Fried Noodle (image from rasamalaysia.com)

Deep Fried Milk (image from gbtimes.com)

Caleb made the fried milk, this is a pic of how it turned out. It was incredibly tasty!

And of course, tong yun. Glutinous rice balls with red bean filling, boiled in a sweet soup. 

The aftermath in the kitchen

I also had some of this on the table, a childhood favorite of mine:

White Rabbit Candy

I was so busy with the food planning that I didn't have time to make my own red envelopes!! But I will get to that soon. Technically, I need to give a red envelope to my nephew. I'm not rich, but at least I should give something. So I'll be working on that soon.

It is the year of the Snake! May it be a good one for you! Cheers!