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

More Jars!

More jars in my bathroom! One for my soaps and one for all my beauty samples. I've somehow accumulated so many that they were spilling from every corner of my bathroom (they are great for travel). Now they are all neatly contained and what's even better is that they are now visible so I can actually use them. I love how it looks!

A Little Something Extra

During the holidays, gift cards are often exchanged. Although they aren't the most thought out or personal of gifts, sometimes they are the easiest option. Especially for the picky person on your list or the person that you don't know very well, etc. Regardless of the stigma, everyone loves receiving a gift card because you have the freedom to get what you want and not worry about the hassle involved with returning or exchanging gifts.

I just participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange with some girlfriends and sure enough the person that I chose, my dearest friend IY, only had gift cards on her wish list. As much as I wanted to give her something more fun and thought out, I knew that the gift card was exactly what she wanted. Plus I don't think I've ever seen her use or wear a single gift that I've given her, and I've known her for 10 years people!! (Don't worry IY, I'm not offended and I still love you!) So that is why this year I got her exactly what she wanted and to make it just a tad more personal, I baked her chocolate chip cookies too! I made an envelope out of holiday wrapping paper to put the card in and tied it all together with some festive ribbon. Easy, cute and more thoughtful than handing over a piece of plastic.

J's Pasta Mish Mash

The other night I left work feeling exhausted and emotionally drained. I called my Husband on the way home and immediately began whining about my day. He is an amazing listener and knows just what to say to validate me. He then said that tonight he would cook for me so I could take a load off and decompress. He used to cook for me all the time before we were married, but lately since I have more time, I almost always cook for him. I was thrilled when he offered, because making dinner was the last thing that I wanted to do at that moment, but I was a little worried, because we didn't have much in the fridge to work with. He said he would figure something out, so I decided to put my control issues on the back burner for that night and just let him take care of it.

Dinner turned out to be amazing!! He grilled some chicken and garlic in olive oil and then threw in some asparagus when the chicken was cooked through. He added that to some pasta and topped it with fresh chopped tomatoes. Such a simple recipe and one that was thrown together so quickly. He's good at making dishes just using what we have, whereas I'm always running to the market. The chicken was well seasoned, the asparagus was crunchy and the pasta was perfectly al dente. It was delicious and more importantly, made with love.

Cauliflower Soup

The other night I had a ton of veggies in my fridge, but no ideas for what to make. J and I both had a late lunch that day and so we weren't that hungry and we weren't really craving anything. A recipe for cheesy shells with broccoli and cauliflower came to mind, but it was just too heavy for our little appetites that night. However, I was determined to cook with the cauliflower because it was beginning to get a little brown. Then I remembered one of my favorite items at BreadBar here in LA. The cauliflower soup! It was perfect, because it's been a bit chillier here in LA and my Husband and I LOVE soups! I scoured the internet and found a great recipe by Ree Drumond, The Pioneer Woman. Be warned, I did not attempt to be healthy in any way while making this. It is very creamy, buttery and milky. Oh and hearty and delicious! Serve it with some crusty bread!

Read more for the recipe

Candy Jars

I really love the look of old apothecaries and confectioneries. It's not just because I like things that are vintage looking, but I realized that there is something about glass jars that makes whatever they are holding appear so much more appealing. So lately I've been shopping for a lot of glass hurricanes, apothecary jars, fish bowls, crocks and canisters to hold the usual household items, with the hopes that it will make them look more fun and less ordinary. I put things like nail polish, pretty soaps, paper clips and flowers in them and they look great! Above is a picture of one of my Husbands and my favorite snacks: sour gummy watermelons. We buy them in bulk, throw them into a glass jar and include a cute little scoop. The result is a look of an old general store!