Pork in Hoisin Sauce

I had this dish in one of the authentic Chinese restaurant in Memphis 10+ years ago.  They prepared it without the carrot, just the pork and fresh scallion and it was simply divine.  I tried to recreate it here and it was not bad too.  Except my girls won't eat the fresh scallion as predicted.  I knew they won't eat it so I added the carrots, well at least they will have a little vegetable in their diet.  Of course I cooked another veggie dish to go with this.  In my house, there will always be a veggie dish, in fact, I prefer more veggie in a meal.  My veggie dish will only be veggie but my meat/seafood dish will be paired with veggie as well. 

Try this easy dish for yourself.  Just a few ingredients with sauce you have at home.  Preparing dinner doesn't have to be difficult and a delicious and healthy meal will be your reward.  I am someone who will prefer Chinese food (no butter, heavy cream, and cheeses) over American food because it scream healthier to me. I guess it still fall on what you order on your plate.  Even in Chinese food, if you order crabs, lobsters, prawns, squids, coconut laden curry or dessert, fried food, beef and pork dishes all the times, you will end out with high cholesterol too.  I know in Chinese culture, when you eat out, you are obligated to order a variety of seafood and expensive items, as it to show your social status or whatever.  But I think we should eat for our health first and indulge only on Chinese New Year or special occasions.  Order healthier food actually cost less on your wallet too.
 

Edda's Drawings and Show Piece

I asked her what is this picture about?  She told me, on the right side is we are going out and on the left side is we are coming home.  Mmmmm.....

She said this is a picture of her sister, but the fat version.  Okay, it does look like a person with long hair.

But what about this?  She said this is a drawing about we are going out but didn't know where to go.  Great imagination huh?

She built this and asked me to take picture.

Then, she got excited and said she can make two and asked me to take picture.

Then, she kept building more so I asked her to be in the picture too.  I thought this was pretty good considering she made it closed together without it falling down.  Edda is three years and seven months old.  I would love to see her drawing before she goes to kindergarten.  Her abstract drawing now is too hard to understand.  Look at Evy's drawing before she turned three here.  I have one who draw properly from the very beginning (I'm serious ever since she started drawing, it was always proper drawing), one who draws abstract drawings only she can understand.  Why the huge contrast? 

My Mother's Day Cards from Evy

Front of card 1 (kindergarten, 6 years old, May 9, 2010)

(I saw mothers showing their mother's day card/ gift/ gesture made by their kids and I want to share mine too.  So that it will be documented here for my memory.)

 Inside of card 1

Her poem to me.  I asked her what did you mean by when you are gone?  She said it meant when she is at school and not with me.

Fish in Creamy Sauce

We know how important seafood is in our diet.  Among all the seafood, fish is considered the best choice for me as it is affordable, lower in cholesterol compared with the rest of the seafood except scallop & sea cucumber and nutritious.  I love to cook fish twice a week, alternating Salmon and Tilapia.

I used Tilapia in this and to get rid of the fishy smell, I marinated the fish with salt, ShaoXing wine and white pepper.  Of course in my cooking, I got to throw in colorful mixed vegetable for extra fiber.  I added one secret ingredient in this dish, evaporated milk for extra creaminess and fragrant.  Just don't over stir the fish to prevent it from broken out.

Another one of my easy dishes with minimal ingredients.  If you don't have evaporated milk, feel free to substitute it with cream or milk.

Spontaneous Las Vegas Trip over the Weekends

As spontaneous as it can be.  My hubby came home on Thursday and announced that let's go to Vegas tonight.  I was like how could that be possible since they (hubby and Evy) had to go watch Iron Man 2 at 7:30pm and what about his sleep since he had to drive 12-13 hours to Vegas.  Nevertheless, since the last time we had been to Vegas was 9 years ago, what the heck.  We reserved the hotel room at Circus Circus that night and took off in the morning at 4am.  My girls at one of the gas stops for branch.  Still chilly on the way there.  The last stop at Colorado before we moved on to Utah.

And where did we go when we arrived at Vegas?  China Town baby!  Got to have early dinner and shopped at Ranch 99 for drinks and snacks.  To my surprise, Vegas China Town is getting huge, it used to be a small area and now it occupied the whole street (Spring Mountain).  Any kind of Asian cuisine you can find it there, and it's authentic not Americanize.  One thing I did notice, lots of Koreans settled in Vegas, many Korean BBQ restaurants and supermarkets can be found there as well, not just Chinese and Vietnamese anymore.  One disadvantage about these restaurants, many accept cash only, so if you planned to dine in China Town, remember to bring lots of cash.  For your information, the Penang Malaysian restaurant there only accept cash.

The next day, we walked around a little bit under the scorching sun.  It was hot around 89'F and at time windy but very dry.  As you know, with little girls we couldn't walk very far and they were not interested at the buildings except M&M store.  Vegas has changed a lot too, old casinos were knocked down for the new, it was different from 9 years ago.  The traffic jam was bad, really bad, there was always a traffic jam on the Vegas strip.  We didn't have to wait long but there's always a jam.  Many people were there walking and shopping as well, pretty crowded.

This was one place they wanted to go.  We went in and they each got a bag of M&M to munch on.  Not forgetting to take a picture with yellow and red too.

Spicy and Sour Instant Noodle Soup

I borrowed Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's Knockout Chinese cookbook from the library and couldn't keep my hands off it.  I love the simple recipes with step-by-step pictures and mouth-watering end result to drool on.  This book also introduced me to two new pastes, one is Doubanjiang (Sichuan soy bean paste) and the other is Tianmianjiang (sweet noodle sauce).  He used these two pastes often in the cookbook especially Doubanjiang.  I just bought a bottle of Doubanjiang and couldn't wait to try his recipes.  I am eager to find out how Doubanjiang tastes like, with the new paste, I guess I will have new recipes to share in the future.

For this spicy and sour instant noodle soup, I used his premix sauce (A) but omitted egg and added mini sausages and bean sprouts.  I just wanted to taste the instant noodle the way he had when he was a kid.  It is an easy way to kick the instant noodle up a notch.