Happy NYE!

2009 has been an amazing year. I look forward to new year filled with many more blessings. Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday filled with good friends and family! See you next year!

Holiday Dinner Part 2

It was so great to return to LA and be immediately surrounded by all my family and tons of good food! My sisters and their respective family and boyfriend were in town and the atmosphere was lively bordering on boisterous. We also had some extended family over for the evening and it was good times to be had by all. My mother as usual outdid herself and single handedly prepared an amazing spread. If only I could throw a dinner party like she does. And as per usual, she sent J and I home with tons of leftovers so we wouldn't have to cook after our travels. Instead we could rest and rejuvenate ourselves for the upcoming year.

White Christmas

Christmas morning in Central Canada...

Christmas evening in Los Angeles!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful and warm holiday. The Husband and I are spending our last evening in Canada with the In-Laws, so we did presents early and had a big turkey and prime rib dinner. It was a wonderful visit and I know for sure we'll have a White Christmas tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing my family on Christmas Day for another round of presents and another hearty home cooked dinner. J and I are so lucky that our Mothers are both such good cooks. We learn a lot from them and often attempt to duplicate their recipes when we are at home, but during the holidays, we just sit back and let our Mothers do what they do best! Now let's just pray we get through this commute via O'Hare with no delays or cancellations!

Happy Birthday Baby!

Happy Birthday Hubby!! Here's to another fabulous and fruitful year! I love you!

Wontons Two Ways

My husband enjoys cooking and I especially love when he teaches me his mom's dishes. I know he misses his mom's homemade cooking, so I'm eager to learn her dishes and make them for him more often. So we were having friends over to watch the fights and we were pondering what we should make. We like theme dinners and we like to do something different each time. We already did a pizza night and a sausage night, so this time we thought we'd do an Asian finger food night. We decided to make fried wontons and spam musubis since they are easy to eat without being too messy. You can boil them, steam them or fry them. I made the filling and J was able to wrap about 200 wontons in an hour. He's a great helper.

Wonton Filling:

Ground pork (we used ground turkey)

Minced napa cabbage

Minced ginger

Salt and pepper to taste

Worchestershire sauce

One egg yellow

Little bit of corn starch

We seal the wontons with the egg white that is leftover. When cooked, serve with a dipping sauce made of soy sauce, rice vinegar and red pepper flakes. So easy, J was able to do it all unsupervised!

 

 

 

 

 

Brown Paper Packages Tied up with String

During the holidays, gifts are often wrapped in the standard bright reds and greens. The metallics are also very popular as are the cute Santa and chubby snowman prints. However, I have a lot of birthdays to wrap for during the holidays and frankly the traditional wrapping paper can get a little mundane. So I’ve been turning to the anti-holiday paper to wrap my other gifts: brown paper. There is nothing shiny or bright about it. Although brown paper may seem boring and unimaginative, it has the potential to be so sweet and chic. Tie it up with string, yarn or pastel ribbon and it sort of looks like something from a French market. When the outside is so sweet, you know the inside will be even better!

Anthropologie's Holiday Wrapping 2009 and 2008