The books I read in 2020

I've been in a bit of a reading rut and have been asking friends to help me get unstuck. Christine responded by asking me what has worked for me lately to give her a launching point for her suggestions, so I plan on enumerating that below in this post.

(PSA: If you don't want to fall into a reading rut, do not read Cara Wall's The Dearly Beloved. I repeat, do not read this beautiful book by Cara Wall. Everything you read after will just not live up to the beautiful prose and striking descriptions of humans in relationship to others and their faiths. If, after this warning, you choose not to heed my advice, then maybe just follow it up with Vanishing Half, if you haven't read it already, but I'm sure you have, and so I'm sorry.)

(Thankfully, my friend Sharon is here to save us all from book rut despair. When I asked my personal Modern Mrs. Darcy what to call the genre I cannot get enough of, this is what she had to say: "I've been trying to figure this out for myself, and my working category is quiet literary fiction/character studies and family sagas (though there are some family sagas I dislike, like the super dysfunctional ones of which I have read far too many). By quiet I mean that there's very little action that happens, haha, and when I describe it to someone else I feel like a crazy person because there's so little plot progress." YES, YES EXACTLY! She then pointed me to Anne Bogel's recent post for more great books to enjoy. You're welcome.)

Okay, returning back from parathetical land.

Paradoxically, in the midst of this book desert I've been drowning in (sorry for the morbid mixed metaphor), Julia Cameron (of morning pages fame), whose course The Artist's Way I've started working through, instructs in the chapter I'm currently on to take a week of reading deprivation. (Yes, you read that right. No reading anything for a week. I think it's supposed to propel you to create your own work instead of consuming other people's work.) 

I'm not sure I can stand to not read for a whole week, but I have not read for the past 8 hours (big whoop, I know) since I read that assignment. The self-imposed inability to not turn to a book to pass time has already created a vacuum for other stuff, such as facing this blog. 

Today I will use my extra time to tell you about what I read in 2020. 

I've been tracking my reading for two years now. I made a fun bullet journal spread in 2019 and then used Goodreads more in 2020. (Goodreads = great tool, but geez they did not need to be so rude about me not meeting my reading goal last year. "Better luck in 2021" -- really?!)

Here's a pictograph (?) of my 2019 reading:

One thing I'm really proud of is reading more fiction in 2020, increasing my measly 6 in 2019 to 24 in 2020. 

Before I get to my a complete list of my 2020 reads at the end of the post, here are a few highlights.

Favorite fiction:

- The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Imma blame Tolstoy for me not meeting my Goodreads goal)

- The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Favorite narrative non-fiction:

- Educated by Tara Westover

Favorite non-fiction:

- Burnout by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski

- Untamed by Glennon Doyle

- The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary (helpful and challenging enough to me that I'm re-reading this again this year)

Favorite (albeit only) Illustrated Memoir

- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

I actually listened to an audiobook and enjoyed it:

- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

And here's the list in its entirety, in roughly chronological order as I read throughout the year:

Still Life by Louise Penny
Atomic Habits by James Clear

Educated by Tara Westover

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Shrill by Lindy West

A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua

Dear Girls by Ali Wong

Slammed by Colleen Hoover

Pride by Ibi Zoboi

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself in the World by Isabel Gillies

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Cider House Rules by John Irving

Little Gods by Meng Jin

Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

Re Jane by Patricia Park

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Anna K by Jenny Lee

There, There by Tommy Orange

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg

The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

The Rule of One by Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders

Please feel free to send me recommendations for my next read and/or wish me "better luck in 2021"!

Also, raise your hand if you, like me (and Stephie and Chris*), slow down when a book is so good, because you don't want it to end, ya weirdo.

_______________

*Maria, feel free to let Chris know his first blog shout-out happened today, although I suppose he doesn't really need to read the post since he already uses your Goodreads account to stalk your friends for book recs.

Even easier

I've been dragging my feet with regards to posting these days, but I think I have a good excuse.



It's finally (finally!!!!!!!) summer!

I have had big plans to tell you about rediscovering one of my favorite Chinese cookbook authors, and about The Glory That Is Laundry Day, and of course, we are more than overdue on a Theo update.

But the days are getting brighter, longer, and lazier, and so all I have to offer you today is these.

After finding some winter refuge at the computer, I feel the tug to spend more of my time unplugged and outside. We have too many popsicles to eat and too few days.

Ever since I saw Molly Orangette write about these I have been dreaming about making them. For some reason I thought they were more complicated than they really are. But in fact they are really easy, like boozy pudding (something else I need to tell you about later*) but even easier.

(*ehhh, if you're new around here, I've talked about it plenty on the old food blog with Stephie. You're welcome. So embarrassing.)

Anyway, without further ado, and so that I can get back to laying out on the deck, here are the fudgsicles you need in your life today.

Fudgsicles
adapted from Orangette

If you're fancy, you should definitely read up on Molly's recipe to get all the details about chocolate, because she's obviously thought it through. I've tried to keep it simple and easy here, and it's more for my reference to make it again. She also called for heavy cream and milk; I had lots of half and half so I've simplified it here. Obviously, you can use your brain and do things differently.

8 oz chocolate chips (preferably mixed in with some bittersweet, but don't go all dark)
2 1/2 cups half and half
2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
2 t vanilla extract, or (spiced) rum since vanilla extract costs a million dollars these days

Heat up half and half on the stove with cocoa powder, whisking to dissolve. Remove pan from heat, and after a minute, dump chocolate chips into the pan, whisking until it's all incorporated. Add in vanilla extract and then pour into popsicle molds. Freeze until hard.

P.S. Comment below with a caption for the second picture in this post. The winner gets a fudgsicle!

Thin slices of joy

If you may recall from my can-it-just-be-spring-already? goals list, one of the things I committed to do was to keep track of moments of joy in every day. My friend Stephanie commented on that post and left a link to an article about a Google engineer who has taught people to use the tools of mindfulness to find "thin slices of joy" in their days. I thought that was helpful language, and even the image of that (i.e., those "thin slices") gives me joy.

After publishing that post, I had the idea to use the monthly view on my (paper) calendar to keep track of the moment (or moments) of joy in each square. There was something satisfying about using a calendar as a to-done list more than a to-do, and incidentally it makes it easy to report here on my blog what my thin slices of joy were for the remainder of April since writing that post.

19 | the sweetest puppies ever befriended me, Theo, and Emilyn at the park
20 | good and open conversation; going antiquing downtown (we had randomly decided to go that day, and discovered when we got there that they were suppose to close by the time we arrived, but there happened to be a special event that day that meant they were open later than usual!)

The universe sent me a message at the antique store.

21 | a crazy sunny day which led to a picnic and basketball game with extended family
22 | a neighbor walking across the street to introduce herself when I was out on a walk because she's seen me walking for years

Also from April 22: the color of Thai banana contrasted against chia seed pudding. (Should I just title this post thin slices of yellow/sunshine/happiness?)

23 | working on a blog post that made me excited; cooking ginger chicken and a new Viet soup that I knew Kathy would really enjoy
24 | sunshine (again!); getting to bring dinner over to a neighbor's and eat together
25 | the coconut popsicles from my postscript were really delicious
26 | thrifting and finding awesome books I actually wanted; great dinner/conversation with a friend; listening to a very good podcast
27 | sunshine (yet again!)
28 | playing outside with the kids with my new Bluetooth speakers (why didn't I get these earlier?!) projecting Renee & Jeremy (but alas, also the day I felt dumb trying to figure out Stories on Instagram, thank you slai for trying to make me feel better); providing a recipe and all the ingredients for my sis-in-law to make dinner at her home, which her family ended up loving*

(*If you haven't made sheet pan chicken yet, you are really missing out. Seriously, unless you're a vegetarian or you're allergic to delicious food, you should not be living one more day without this in your life. Sorry to be so bossy. I really need to stop over-selling it and risk you being disappointed. Like, maybe I should change the title of the post to "It's just rice and chicken, nbd.")

29 | conversation with a friend
30 | surprising a friend with a chai at church without even knowing she had forgotten to make her tea that morning (!); going to the Indian buffet by myself (Butter Chicken for President!)

The weird (but perhaps not really that weird) thing is that after I decided to do this whole thin slices of joy thing, my days actually did get better. Even the weather got (incrementally) better. Yes, three sunny days out of 12 is not that great, but I noticed - and savored - those brighter days.

The real trick will be whether this will work in the dead of winter... so friends, if I feel crummy in the winter of 2017/2018, please ask me if I'm doing this still, and remind me to go visit my in-laws to get a break. (I can just go back to the mountain top, right, Marla?)

Anyway, I'm definitely keeping up in May and I invite you to join along!

And now here's this week's menu:

Chicken curry. Do it. 

YOU GUYS. Posting this menu was my TENTH TIME doing a weekly menu plan and sharing it. Can I just pat myself on the back here? I am so darn proud of myself.

P.S. Let it be known that when I left my computer and came back, David had changed my notes to: thin slices of joy pork belly

P.P.S. My friend Kayla texted me this article about self-care vs. "resourcing" and of course I loved it because the author talks about the function and efficacy of word choice, and while neither Kayla nor I personally resonated with her specific choice of "resourcing," I did enjoy the resourcefulness of her choosing a word that helped her focus on self-care more easily. (This is all in reference to my preferring to think about what I'm "thankful" for vs. what I'm "grateful" for.)

Freedom + discipline = being an adult

tu: Lo shee fun is the Malaysian dish that inspired last week's post, and was good enough that Kathy requested it again this week / f: corned beef and cabbage for St. Patty's / sa: I can't share my grandmother's recipe for Hainanese Chicken Rice or I'd have to kill you, but here's a pretty good internet recipe, 

We had a busy weekend so I'm just barely getting to this post now on Tuesday. I also had to scramble to come up with a menu for this week but the blog is keeping me accountable.

Besides choosing to post here as a method of staying on top of meal planning, I've been using Trello, which Slai had suggested to me in a comment five months ago. I've come around to using it almost two months ago, when I mentioned The Menu-Planning Reboot of 2017, and I'm loving it. I really wanted to make sure my new system was sticking before I wrote about it here.

Honestly, it's been great to have a menu plan. I mean, the worse thing that can happen is, like:

Lisa to self: Really, we're going to eat __________ again today?
Self: Well, do you have any better ideas?
Lisa: Uhhh...
Self: That's what I thought.

So, the way I'm starting to see it, menu planning is just one part of #adulting. One more place where freedom and discipline do a good little dance.

If you're curious for the nitty gritty (nerdy dirty?) on how I use Trello, read on.

I only have two lists on my menu board: a list for this week's meals, and then a list for previous meals.

When I start planning for the next week, I archive the items from this week into previous, so they automatically get pushed to the bottom.

When I'm planning the current week I get ideas from our past favorites. Here's this week's menu.

I only use Trello for the initial pull, and then when I put it up on the kitchen chalkboard, I think about the best order for the week. 

I only spend a few minutes doing this, so it's relatively painless. Like I said, once it's decided, I can either go along with it and be grateful to my grown-a** self that I did this, or I can be like, "Oh, let's have _____ instead" and then run with that new idea. It's no biggie.

Also, one last CRITICAL step to this whole system working is that I then write up the shopping list and my lovely David helps me with all the shopping. SO WONDERFUL. <3

Let me know, as always, if you have any other menu planning tips, meal ideas, questions or anything you need help with!

P.S. Slai, we need this in our life, right??

P.P.S. Happy Pi Day!

Falling for wintery foods

(First of all, what?! Okay, that said...

...) I'm often disappointed with traditional beef stews, finding them too acidic or even tinny tasting, and not beefy enough to boot.

But there is one version that never fails, and that is Ree Drummond's Sunday Night Stew.

Her pictures are way more gorgeous, her sauce more deeply mahogany, probably because I use chicken stock where she uses beef.

My favorite part of this recipe is the turnips - different, but oh so good, a wonderful contrast texturally to the beef.

It also doesn't hurt that Ree serves the stew on top of mashed potatoes that have been whipped with a stick of butter and a carton of cream cheese.

I highly recommend that you allow your rule-following (at least when it comes to recipes) spouse to make the mashed potatoes so that he can use the full amount of fat and you don't have to see how much goes into it to make it so luscious and heavenly.

(And this is why we all willingly fork over our hard-earned paychecks to cafes and bakeries, so we don't have to see all the good bad stuff that goes into everything that tastes amazing.)

Bonus: Pro tip from my friend Kayla is to freeze spoonfuls of tomato paste (because you NEVER need a whole can and it ALWAYS goes to waste) on a sheet pan, par-freeze it, then transfer to a ziplock in the freezer so you always have little dollops of paste when needed. You're welcome.

---

Another meal we tried this week was Winter Albondigas Soup:

And finally...

• Reading 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam. It's surprisingly provocative for me personally, enough so that I might need to do a book report (aka another post) on this. As a teaser, know that I have woken up at 5 a.m. (!) for the last two days and gone walking! (I took advantage of Daylights Savings Time to make this shift.)
• Enjoyed this post on 7 Steps to Internet Sanity
• Appreciated this follow-up article from Stephie to my question about cookbook club.
• Love this quote by Cyril Connolly: "Better to write for yourself and have no public than write for the public and have no self."

Get ready for a bunch of randoms.

Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes is seriously the bomb. No deep frying, no sub-recipes (i.e., recipes whose ingredient lists are themselves things you need to prepare). Irreverent, bold, nerdy, lazy, pan-Asian. Basically everything I am. I was already sold, and then it came out and used the word "subparenthetically" in the middle of a parenthetical! What the what?! I need.

David and I both finished Scary Close and loved it. (Eunice, I'm sorry I'm so late to the e-book game. For the life of me I could not figure it out two years ago when you gave me a free copy!)

I have also been bawling my eyes out over Lost and Found, the episode on the Liturgists where Science Mike and Michael Gungor tell their stories of their losing their faith. (It's taken me a week and I'm still in part 1 because of all the crying breaks.) This was the first time I've heard the term "deconversion." I resonated with almost everything they are talking about, and it's so validating to have intelligent people articulate some very complex and nuanced and vulnerable things. I also chortled when they talked about Donald Miller and Rob Bell being "dangerous" authors to a Southern Baptist.

Speaking of Bell, listening to Velvet Elvis and enjoying it so far. (The audiobook is actually read by the author, who is, in this case, a great reader. But David listened to Scary Close and the reader - not Don Miller - was not a good match for the book. Alas.)

Annoyed by The Couple Next Door. Shame on me, but I skipped the middle section and read the end. I never do that kind of thing. Oh well.

Also enjoyed The Power of Habit and the perhaps controversial Love Warrior.

Absolutely slayed by my Enneathought a couple of days ago:

Today, explore the issue of boundaries. As a Six, are your boundaries too rigid? Can you trust people to get close to you? Can you share more of your feelings and ideas?

(Yes, Kayla, that was what inspired my notebook entry. ;p)

Invented this dish of steamed tilapia over silken tofu cubes with black bean sauce. We loved the layered textures. (It felt analogous to the Asian carb-on-carb-ness of potatoes and rice as well as reminiscent of Fuschia Dunlop's avocado over silken tofu appetizer.)

Had a super eggplant week with Persian-style eggplant dip and miso-crusted eggplant (both from Liana Krisoff's Vegetarian*), and then yu-xiang eggplant with grass-fed ground beef (amazing!). *Kind of trying to do a cook/book club with this. Slai, can you please give me more details on how you guys did yours?

Finally, gearing up for Thanksgiving season. What are some creative ways you guys are thinking of celebrating Thanksgiving this year?

Without overthinking

Well, after simply identifying the problem last week, I was able to bite the bullet and meal plan without overthinking. It was really nice to have a fridge full of stuff to cook, and it was super therapeutic - as it almost always is - to actually do the cooking, once I had decided what to make and had the ingredients to do so.

Roasting a pan of vegetables is always a good idea, especially when you have kabocha from your CSA.

A bag of dried garbanzo beans prepared in the crock pot was turned into four different things: hummus, radish greens pesto chickpea salad, pumpkin soup with harissa, and saag with chickpeas.

Speaking of the crock pot, it worked wonders for us this weekend, allowing us to eat well but not be too weighed down by time in the kitchen when we had lots of housework to do, like cutting down our maple tree (sad day, but now there's more of a view of the other trees...and the freeway)...

... and picking up a quarter cow from a nearby farm.

The best meal was a pot roast made in the church-lady-potluck tradition: cream of mushroom soup and a packet of onion soup mix. Don't worry, I didn't do this with our grass-fed cow from the farm. But still, this is seriously the best way to make a roast if you're going to do it in the crock pot the ultra lazy way without even searing it. And the leftovers made awesome sandwiches with mayo and red onion.

(I am now writing a post in my head about my love for sandwiches, which I have recently discovered in my adult life, but which white people have always known about. So to really talk about it might be the Asian analog of whitesplaining (thank you, Slai) the beauty of drinking hot water.)

And then on Sunday morning, because lunch after church is pretty much the most chaotic/hangry point of the week, I tried out my friend Valinda's suggestion and we did chicken tacos in the crockpot. I just added salt, taco seasoning, and about one cup of chicken broth. On high for ~3 hours (when you're at church) and it was perfect. Easy peasy and delish.

Also, per Christine's awesome post on welcoming fall, we lit candles for dinner to start our Sabbath, which we experimented doing from 5pm-5pm Sat-Sun this past weekend.

Now I've got to plan for this week ahead. Do you guys have any no-fail favorite crockpot meals?

Ooh, also, I've completely forgotten about linking this awesome article my friend Kayla sent me about a month ago on crappy dinner parties, and which we've been participating in ever since. It's been the best thing ever.

P.S. Some follow-ups to last week's randoms:

1) Wearing shoes from the time I wake up until after dinner definitely made me more productive, and on the days I did it, I hit my 10,000 steps goal without even trying.
2) All things pickled FTW. We finished the watermelon radish, peppers, and red onions so fast. So good for anything that needs a little extra somethin'. Or just straight out of the jar because vinegar is my love language.
3) In the middle of the Liturgists episode on Spiral Dynamics. So confused.
4) David and I watched the first ep of This is Us through NBC.com and loved it!

P.P.S. Since drafting this post, I read and made this in the crockpot tonight. It was amazing! And, in the words of one vegetarian who took some home for her daughters, "I think I eat meat now."

Dear future self,

Here are some tips for parties you are going to host in the future because you love to host parties but hate how sometimes doing stuff you love stresses you out:

1. You are creative, so be creative. You don't have to follow all the rules to have a great event, and who wants to go to a party where the rules are the same as always?

2. Make lists of whatever is on your mind and don't be afraid to re-write those lists as the formulation and envisionment of your plans change, or as the days go by and the items are crossed out and it's closer to game time and you need your list to look very different.

3. Don't be afraid to start just because you have no idea how the heck these lists need to look for you to "feel" organized. Ignore the voice that tells you, "You've planned so many parties and you still don't know how to frame your plan?!"

4. Delegate as much as you can, especially the stuff you don't like to do. There are people out there who would love to do decorations, or plan a game.

5. Even better, cut out the stupid stuff. It's okay to have a party without favors. And it's okay for there not to be a gift-opening time at a baby shower where everyone has to sit and watch the mom-to-be seem surprised while opening everything she already saw was purchased on her registry, and which she put on there in the first place. Plus, she will really like the way you allocated time for the guests to give her their gifts and sneak in some one-on-one time.

6. Even though you dislike excess, plan one or two special touches that you are really excited about, like that blueberry lemon mint infused water. It's so beautiful!

7. If you're hosting at an off-site location, count on having to schlep all your stuff. There are tools that make your job (or the way you like to do your job) easier, and yes, it's annoying to have to bring them with you. But do it anyway. Empty out laundry baskets in advance for this cause. You'll be glad when you can use your stainless steel mini tongs for serving and your tent cards for labeling the dishes.

8. Do, do, do. As much as you love/hate the planning and the analyzing part, you also have to actually do stuff. Break things up into really small bite-sized pieces. Don't be embarrassed about writing down those baby steps on your aforementioned lists. You're a mom, and sometimes to get anything done you have to do it one teensy tiny bite at a time. Do as many of those baby steps as you can in advance. (But don't mix cut strawberries with sliced lemons for your other infused water ahead of time; the strawberries will bleed and you will be sad.)

9. Before/during the party, empower people to jump in and help; they don't need to ask questions of you. Give people enough information about the big pictures and let them know that they can do whatever they see needs to get done in order to have the event run smoothly. They can refill drinks when they see them getting low, refill serving platters, or clear plates. They don't need your permission. (And don't forget to send these people home with all the leftovers, so they can eat on them for a week.)

10, Finally, bring these napkins, but not to the baby shower, duh.

In which I tell you to read Francis Lam

Last week I acquired a box of "seconds" at the produce stand which included a ton of onions, chayote, and tomatoes, all for $3. I made the kids' favorite Vietnamese soup with the chayote and one onion but it still left me with a bunch of onions. Somehow my mind remembered koshary and I looked up the amazing Francis Lam's recipe and got to work. 

With all due respect because he is awesome at everything he does (his ratatouille is the best, and he's introduced the world to a Cantonese classic, ginger scallion sauce), I'm a little surprised that he tells you to use only two onions, and even then only if you love onions. I think that for this recipe three is a minimum, because if you're going to do the work of caramelizing them you may as well do a lot at once.

My three onions cooked down to fit into this Corelle cereal bowl.

I had many more onions that needed to be used up and could have done more but when I looked at my pile I thought, eh, that's enough. It wasn't. Trust me: don't lose heart as you're chopping. You're going to want more than two. The onions are the thesis to the dish.

I won't write much more about the recipe here because he does a much better job at it.

Once again, I'm writing about a not very photogenic dish. But this is why you need to read his recipe. Francis Lam's writing > picture of koshary. 

If, after reading the recipe, you still need some convincing to try the recipe, I invite you to study this lovely picture of pasta that has been fried a bit until it's crusty and chewy. #cornerpieceloversunite

With that, I commend this peasant-y dish to you. I also recommend pairing it with a cold, crisp green salad with a garlicky vinaigrette.

The recipe link one more time, for the lazy.

And now for a little update on the littles. 

Emilyn

• turns 19 weeks today.
• rolled over for the first time yesterday! I hadn't been pushing it at all (I think with second children you don't want them to go anywhere too quickly ;)). But after some recent pressure from some people (not naming anyone), I gave her some practice on Monday and then on Tuesday - like a ninja - she just did it without any fanfare. She's my lovely girl.
• is solidly down to three naps. I bit the bullet and I'm glad we did. We've also had three nights this week where she fell asleep for bedtime before 9pm. Hallelujah! Here's to the end of witching hour and to finally getting David through season 1 of FNL! (Stephie, you can do it!)

Theo

• is 123 weeks old. Oh, you're one of those people who doesn't like when people tell you how old their kids are in months once they are past the first year because it's so hard to divide by 12? Yeah, he's 28 months, or 2 years and 4 months old. 
• says the funniest things. If Netflix is taking a while on the Kindle fire, he'll quickly ask, "iPad work?" He corrects my naming of large construction machinery. Mama that's a "backhoe loader," not just any old excavator.
• loves his sister. He calls her "Emi baby" and almost every day goes up to her and snuggles next to her and says "Oppa, oppa!" I won't be surprised if that becomes her first word. :D

Did just that

A couple of weeks ago Chelsey had Theo and me over for noodle soup with dumplings and vegetables. I commented on how delicious it was and she said that they have it often, as an easy lunch - maybe every weekend. So I suggested that we should have a dumpling party sometime. And last Friday, we did just that.

I had made dumplings before and found it to be relatively easy, moving along quickly especially when you have friends to help. But because our friend Kelli was sick and not able to make it, our ratio of only two moms to three kids had the effective impact of being more difficult than trying to make dumplings by oneself, without any kids.

I should grant that we had one very good helper:

I think she helped make more than she ate ;)

Despite the kids running around us, it was super fun, and my only regret was not preparing the whole 5 pounds of meat I had purchased, and only mixing up filling with 4 pounds. (We might have as well done more work while we were at it, especially now that we have a deep freezer. More on that to come.)

On the other hand, this one definitely ate more than he helped produce.

Also, funny enough, the day before the party my mother-in-law called to tell me she was mailing me six bags of freshly made kimichi. She asked if I would be home in the morning to receive the package. Why, yes! 

As you can tell, we ate while we worked. As David always says, "Do not muzzle an ox..."

My dear mother-in-law included frozen oxtails in the package, "to keep the kimchi cold." Uh-mazing! We definitely started the oxtails in the slow cooker that night and drank soup/pho all day long on Saturday.

Well friends, you can tell we are having way too much fun around here. BUT, I need your suggestions on what other kind of "food preparation party" I could have with other (mom) friends. Leave a comment and let me know your ideas!



P.S. Stephie, this reminded me of "Shanghai, take a bao." You're so clever.

P.P.S. Sharon, I'm trying to figure out how to work you into this. Really, I am.

P.P.S. Barta, this reminded me of Din Tai Fung, Josh, and "delivering a consistent product."

Not supposed to

I've always loved eating "strange" food. I was that child who willingly ate - sometimes even requested - ginger, pig's feet, bitter melon, intestines. Even with stuff I wasn't sure about at first, like cilantro, I would keep eating it, because if it was something my mom liked - and she has great taste - I wanted to like it too.

(Fortunately for me, I married someone whose favorite bowl of pho contains ONLY TENDON.)

Sometime around late elementary or early middle school, our family went to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Sunnyvale, CA. We ordered menudo, and at that time, I don't think that my parents explained that we were eating tripe. Or it could have been that I didn't know what tripe was, anyway.

Either way, I distinctly remember having this feeling that I am enjoying something I am not supposed to like.

After recently sharing a bowl of birria (goat stew) with a friend at a tortilleria that also serves menudo, I was inspired to try making it myself.

I had trouble finding a recipe that looked solid at first glance. After all, most abuelitas aren't sitting around blogging; they are making tamales. So I had to read a variety of sites, gleaning the best aspects of each and trying to figure out the overall concept of what makes menudo menudo.

Fortunately for us, it turned out well. Piping hot, spicy, and flavorful, we enjoyed bowl after bowl with fresh corn tortillas from the tortilleria where I originally had the birria. As we scooped minced onion and cilantro into our bowls and squeezed in limes, we laughed and called it Mexican pho.

(Now you have make this, right?)

So, if you are so bold, I heartily recommend this to you.


Menudo, or "Mexican pho"
loosely adapted from The Domestic Man

Using a pressure cooker is a great way to make this happen faster, but of course if you don't have one, just use a regular pot or dutch oven, and plan for it to take a whole afternoon. Better yet, make it the night before and let the flavors marry.

3-4 lbs beef marrow bones (some recipes combine beef bones with pork neckbones)
1 lb honeycomb tripe, cut into 1" pieces (you can definitely use a lot more, but it is surprisingly expensive considering they are innards!)
4-5 dried guajillo peppers*
1 1/2 white onion, divided (one chopped into large pieces; half diced for garnish)
4 cloves garlic
1-2 cans white hominy, drained
1 T oregano, Mexican preferred, plus more for serving
cilantro, minced, for garnish
lime, for garnish

Bring beef bones to a boil in a large pot. Let boil for about 10 minutes, skimming off any fat and scum that rises to the surface. Then cover and simmer for 2-3 hours, or 45 minutes if using a pressure cooker.

Add tripe and cook for another hour or two (less with a pressure cooker).

While the meat is cooking, destem the peppers and cover with about half a cup of boiling water. Let stand for 30 minutes to soften. Then blend with the chopped onion and garlic.

Add chile sauce and oregano and continue to simmer. (You can also add the cilantro stems, but be sure to fish them out before serving.) About an hour before serving, add drained hominy and simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with warmed corn tortillas, cilantro, onion, and lime.

We had some shredded cabbage from tacos so we threw it in the soup as well. Not as essential (like the cilantro/onion/lime is) but it helps bulk it up and add some greens. (Stephie, if you slice up your tortillas into "noodles", you will essentially have Mexican jjampong!)

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* I had previously been intimidated** about cooking authentic Mexican because of all the different kind of chiles, but I decided to be an adult and learn a little bit. I'm sure there's a million other sources for this kind of information, but after simply reading this one post, I felt quite a bit more sure of myself. Guajillos are fruity, and mild: in fact they were so mild, that I had to add more chiles - including a chipotle - to get more of that spicy flavor I was going for. I really think you could use any combination of chiles for a great flavor, but if you already know you want it mild, start with guajillos.

** Now that I know EVERYTHING ABOUT MEXICAN COOKING my family is going to be stuck eating it for a week straight.*** The last time I went crazy like this was after we visited Little Saigon in San Jose. For a week our house was filled with grilled meats, spring rolls, egg custard, pandan waffles... you get the drift. This time I think I'm going to try pozole, caldo de pollo and probably a lot of these recipes.

*** I already have all the Mexican cookbooks they carry at the library on hold. This train has left the station..

This is just to say

that I found my old iPod Mini circa 2005 and it still works!

It's in black and white*, yes, but it works.

At first, I thought the wheel was broken, but then after googling, I realized the orange "hold" button was on. #thestrugglewasreal

Okay, just had to share. I'm no longer on Facebook, so what else is a girl to do when she has something trivial to say?

On that note, right before I deactivated my account, FB wanted me to know that my friends would "no longer be able to keep in touch with [me]." Wow.

No, really, they said that.

Am I really sure I want to lose touch with all my friends FOREVER? Especially Professor Davinder Bartagupta? 

Wow. Just wow.

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* Whenever we want to introduce the kids to an "old" movie (think Matrix or Ocean's Eleven), Kenny always asks "Is it in color?"