Dinner June 27, 2007

Simple dinner tonight. Was meant to stir-fry Chinese green, "chai sin" with oyster sauce but decided against it at the last minute. When hubby walked in and saw the dinner, his comment was, "Why so pityful?"

The yam rice has chicken, dried shrimps and yam pieces. I cooked the soup with my homemade chicken stock, enoki mushroom, fresh winter melon strips and sliced tofu. Pityful meh?

My 1st Pair of Crocs!

Crocs was marketed by three men from Boulder, Colorado. So you can imagine crocs selling every where here. Not only that, people of all ages are wearing it every where. My first thought of this shining, bright color funny looking shoe was, "oh, are they ugly!" Then, we started to hear people bragging about how light and comfortable this shoe is and once they have this on, they don't want any other shoes. The list goes on.

Well, while shopping at REI few days ago, I saw this crocs again. Then I spotted this Mary Janes crocs and thought to myself, "This is actually not bad looking, very lady like, perhaps I should try it on." Once I tried it on, I was sold and I got to have it. I guess it's the same with every crocs owners. I picked this color because I don't want people to know I'm wearing crocs. Just want a shoe that is comfortable enough that I can bring my girls scrolling in the neighborhood and won't hurt my feet. My old slipper did that, ouch!

Go to crocs.com to see more designs and flip-flops.

BBQ Ribs

My experiment with oven BBQ ribs:

Cut the slab into half and rub it with spice rub. Put it in the disposable aluminum tin and let it marinate for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator, covered.

Then, bake in 300'F oven covered with foil for 3 hours. After that, take it out and spread it with your favorite BBQ sauce and bake uncovered for an additional 1 hour. When done, broil in 500'F oven for 5 minutes. Spread the top of the ribs with additional BBQ sauce or dripping from the pan before serving.

Verdict: Surprisingly tender and moist, but not fall off the bone soft.

Butter Cream Crab Legs

We used to eat Butter Cream Lobster at a Chinese restaurant here and it was delicious. However, because of lack of customers the owner moved to California and away with the only authentic Chinese restaurant here. Now, we have to drive to Denver in order to eat dim sum or any authentic Chinese dishes. It's an hour drive away and thus can't have authentic Chinese dishes as frequent as we like. :(

Okay, back to my butter cream crab legs. Since butter cream went so well with lobster, I was thinking why not try it with crab legs? Away from the norm such as Chili Crabs, Black Pepper Crabs or even Ginger Scallion Crabs, why not try something different for a change? And tada....this dish was created.
The verdict: Yummy! It's definitely more fattening than the other version, but hey it's okay once in a while. :)

Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake

As you can tell, I am loving cream cheese pound cake! I adapted this recipe from lemon pound cake. I don't have any orange at home and thus the use of extract. But it would certainly fragrant packed with added orange zest. Not that this is not fragrant, but I like the burst of flavor when I bite into the zest. ;)



Another look of the cake.

Nyonya Changs for Dumpling Festival

My first Nyonya Chang, recipe courtesy of LeeLee.


So greedy with my filling that I think I overstuffed every one of them. :P

This is my changs for the Dumpling Festival this year. :) Instead of my usual Hokkein bak chang, I decided to try LeeLee's Nyonya chang. I love Nyonya chang but I always thought it called for coconut milk. But when LeeLee posted her recipe, I saw that there was no coconut milk involved and I have all the ingredients at home. So, why not give this a try. I ended out with too much filling, greedy as always and afraid that it won't be enough. Thus, I still have some leftover filling in my freezer ready for the next batch (I'm out of the bamboo leaves at the moment).

Even though this was my first attempt, I am very happy with the result. The sweetness and saltiness are just nice and I am glad that I get to eat rice dumpling this year! Thanks LeeLee for sharing! :D

One thing about this chang though is a lot of cutting work since every ingredient needs to be cut into small pieces. I think I stood in my kitchen for more than an hour just cutting the ingredients.