12th Week of 2018

19th – 25th March 2018

Oh dear, I have been neglecting my blog. Let me try to recall everything as best as I can. Luckily there’s lots of photos that will help jog my memory.

One of the main reasons I’ve not blogged is because we started to exercise more frequently. We have slacked off so much in the last year that I have gained 10 pounds. Yes, that much! That is why it is time for us to get back in shape, and it has not been easy. I am so weak now that it takes me a day to recover after each exercise class that we attend at the YMCA.

Due to Larry’s work schedule, we can only exercise in the wee hours of the morning on Monday to Wednesday. I wish the YMCA outlets are also open early on weekends, but they are not. So far, we have only decided on a weekly swim and a weekly spin class. Maybe we can also have a day where we do something random each week. We also need to visit the other YMCA outlets because we have only sticked to one. I also need to try out the yoga classes.

Ok, so for that week, we ate out three times which is a lot for us. Eating out is seriously the easiest way to spend too much money! I had to keep telling myself that being tired from exercising is not an excuse to eat out. We had Japanese food at our favorite Japanese restaurant Hapa Japanese Cuisine. I will always be grateful that I can get fresh sashimi from them even though we kind of live in the middle of no where in Oklahoma.

It was also hard to resist eating wings when it’s half priced wings on Tuesdays at Buffalo Wild Wings. Again, I need to remind myself that there is no point exercising if I am just going to eat lots of fried food. Gosh, I hope I’m not boring you by being so contradicting.

We also went to an Indian buffet that weekend because Bon Appétit posted a flaky bread recipe on their Facebook page. It made me really crave for some paratha.

I wasn’t really creative with my home-cooked meals that week. The only two that kind of stand out were the Chinese stir-fried flat rice noodles and egg benedict. It was the first time I made hollandaise sauce, and I absolutely hated it. It was way too buttery and I didn’t like the brand of butter that we have. If anyone has a recommendation for butter, let me know! I’m still looking for one that I like. We recently bought Kerrygold pure Irish butter, and I think it’s the one I like the most so far.

My favorite moment for the week was our visit to the Gilcrease Museum. It had a great collection of American West art. It was a genre I am not familiar with, so I had lots of fun learning from the docent. I highly recommend that you go for the free guided tour that they have at 2pm on Tuesdays to Sundays. I will have to go back again to spend more time in the museum and also see the gardens in the summer.

Two of my favorite oil paintings were Charles Marion Russell’s Meat’s Not Meat ‘Till it’s in the Pan and Thomas Moran’s Shoshone Falls on the Snake River. I was going to put the photos of the art pieces below, but the images don’t look nice at all. They just look so much better in person. I will try to take more photos when I’m there next time!

I’ll try to catch up on all my posts this week, so stay tuned! Have a great week everyone.

11th Week of 2018

12 – 18th March 2018

Sorry for all the late updates! Been busy gardening. Our neighbor’s cat had been using our raised beds as litter box after I cleaned them up. Ugh!! I will just leave all my plants to overwinter in the raised beds and not clear them until the very last minute next year.

I have planted onions, carrots, potatoes and sweet pea flowers so far. Really need to get my lettuce, kale and cabbage seedlings out as soon as possible. I have been running late because my seedlings are still tiny. There’s not enough light for them to grow indoors, and I haven’t been hardening them off. They are super late to get in the dirt. Oh well, it’s my first time gardening in Spring.

Now onto my favorite meals of the week!

Brussels Sprouts
Pan fried brussels sprouts are so good! They taste so creamy when they are cooked right, and the outer layer stays crisp. Can you imagine that I’ve never had it until last year even though I like cabbage?

Avocado Toast
I like to mash up my avocado when I have my avocado toast. I tried spreading a bit of mayonaise to go with it. Hope it doesn’t sound gross to you. I don’t really like the taste of our butter, so I decided to try something new. I think it tastes alright. If you have any recommendations for butter, let me know!

Shrimp & Scallop Linguine Alla Vodka
We tried Carrabba’s Italian Grill for the first time, and it did not disappoint. I really enjoyed my shrimp and scallop linguine alla vodka. I really like the tomato vodka cream sauce because it’s the best of both tomato and cream sauce! I usually like seafood for my pasta when I’m eating out because we are less likely to cook that at home. Scallops are pretty tricky to cook.

Fajitas
We went crazy with fajitas at Lopez Grill in Wagoner, OK on Saturday. It was a drive away but we went over because my friend was giving me five of her peony plants that were not doing great in her shaded front yard. Peonies are my favorite flowers, so I can’t say no to that! I love hanging out with her and her significant anyway. Their Lopez Grill fajitas had everything – shrimp, chicken, beef, chorizo and a pork chop! It was quite a steal for costing less than $15 if I remember correctly.

Here’s a short video I took during our drive. Love the trees with white blooms!

 

We had guests on Sunday. Larry grilled pork ribs. Unfortunately we bought the wrong cut of spareribs! We usually get St Louis spareribs, and we didn’t know baby spareribs are different. Pretty sure one of our guests who rarely eats ribs was not pleased to see the chewy cartilage. I think we will just stick to burgers or chicken when we have guests over. They are just more friendly dishes that everyone can enjoy. Sorry if I sound salty, but I do not want to go through all the effort to cook and also clean up the house if they don’t enjoy the food. I also specifically asked if there’s anything they want to eat…

Meat is tricky and so are vegetables. Everyone needs to be less picky with their food! Haha, is that what all bad cooks say? I will just have to up my cooking game. Have a great day everyone!

10th Week of 2018

5 – 11 March 2018

Oops, a late recap! Been busy starting seeds and planning activities for the next few months.

I tried watching Michael Pollan’s Cooked series after watching In Defense of Food, but I ended up falling asleep. Spent the rest of the week watching Ugly Delicious instead. I guess I was in the mood for lighter content although Ugly Delicious wasn’t all about food too. Anyway, I highly recommend you watching it if you enjoy learning about food culture like I do. David Chang explores a different food type every episode and how the different food cultures prepare their dishes.

I tried making curry (top left in picture) from scratch on Tuesday, and it just tasted weird. I thought I had curry powder but I didn’t. A chef on Ugly Delicious mentioned that there’s no such as curry powder in India too, so I’m going to do more research on the spices that are commonly found in curry!

I had stir fried tomato egg, baby bok choy and luncheon meat with rice on Wednesday. Baby bok choy is my all time favorite vegetables. I have not gotten tired of it even though I have it every week for at least a year. I can’t say the same for Yu Choy (pictured in the second row).

On Friday, my gardening friends and I had Cajun for lunch. The fourth episode of Ugly Delicious was about Shrimp and Crawfish, so I was so excited to order crawfish that day. I ordered two pounds of it because I didn’t know how much it would actually be! My friends were laughing when the waitress served me the huge tray of crawfish. It was great to be able to share the crawfish with everyone though. I also concluded that in general I prefer Cajun food at Flavors of Louisiana over Cajun Ed’s.

I then made fried rice for dinner on Friday. Can’t quite remember what we did for the rest of the weekend since I didn’t take many photos. Larry was on call for his work though, so we were mostly cooped up at home. We also dropped by his office for a while, so I finally saw how it looks like. They work in the basement, and it felt like I was in the set of Criminal Minds since the huge room was dark and filled with so many monitor screens. They had like 2 or 3 monitors each.

I am going to end this post to tell you I’m beyond excited about the start of gardening season!! I have started so many seeds indoor that I need to get more containers and trays. My goal for gardening this year is to try as many varieties of everything because I want to learn as much as I can.

P.S. all my images are done on my phone using Adobe’s Spark Post app. It is so fun and easy to use! Go try it.

9th week of 2018

26 Feb – 4 Mar 2018

Isn’t it crazy it’s March already? Time seems to fly by as you get older. I feel like I’m not doing much in my life because I’m just a homemaker. Should I only be defined by my occupation? Anyway, I thought I will share my meal prep last week.

These are the glorious vegetables I bought from the Asian supermarket on Tuesday.

• Red bell peppers (They were on sale. 3 for $1)
• Ginger
• Bean sprouts
• Spinach
• Yam leaves
• Leek
• Yu Choy
• Small Bok Choy

I’m on a mission to eat more vegetables especially after watching In Defense of Food on Netflix. We usually have stir-fry for most of our meals anyway, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Stir-fries are easy to prepare and are pretty healthy.

The steps to cook stir-fries are pretty much the same. You heat up your cooking oil and fry some garlic/onion/shallots/ginger. Then you add whatever you are cooking according to how long they take to be cooked. The final step would be to add the herbs and seasoning to your dish.

Some of the dishes I made are:

• Pan fried catfish with fried ginger slices, stir-fried bean sprouts and carrot with steamed white rice
• Basil beef, and Stir-fried leeks with steamed white rice
• Slow-cooked pork shoulder, stir-fried yam leaves and fried eggs with scallions on top of steamed white rice
• Stir-fried flat white noodles with chicken and bok choy

Have you tried adding fried ginger slices to your fish? Ginger is such a great garnish.

Ingredients for Basil Beef
Minced garlic, ground beef, basil, cayenne pepper, black pepper and soy sauce (or salt). I added the red bell peppers this time since I had more.

Try adding scallions to your fried eggs! They add another dimension of taste.

You should check out this video from Chef Norman Musa if you want to cook your own flat noodles. For his recipe, I used chicken instead of seafood. I also took the easy route of using jarred peppers instead frying up my own like his recipe.

Other than cooking, I’m also starting up my seeds for gardening. I cannot wait to eat my own garden harvests later this year! I’m trying to grow a lot more vegetables and flowers this year, so wish me luck! Had to spend quite a fortune on soil and grow pots.

I’m going to end my post with these irises that are popping up in my front yard! Haha, a non-gardener would probably think it’s such an ugly photo, but it’s AMAZING for a gardener! New growth signifies the start of the gardening which is fun times for gardening.

8th week of 2018

19 – 25 February 2018

It rained a lot last week, so I spent a lot of time indoors. Did more cleaning and baking than usual. Only exercised twice because laziness got the better of me as usual. My bulldog is my spirit animal. Things I learned?

Make sure your soup is boiling before you put your watercress in. Watercress has to be fully cooked in high heat or it will be super bitter.

I have made watercress soup multiple times, and it was the first time it was so bitter! I thought I shouldn’t overcook it since Larry would only be home in a few hours. That was such a mistake because the soup was inedible.

I also baked pineapple tarts again because my first batch didn’t turn out great. They are a popular Chinese New Year snack in Singapore, so I wanted to have some decent ones just for the sake of it. Thankfully the second batch is decent enough I’m going to mail some to my friend in Los Angeles. Hope she’ll enjoy them because I don’t think she made any this year.

Has anyone eaten Shen Choy (red spinach) before? I’m not sure how I have ignored it for the last two years, and now we cook it every other week. Stir fries are just so easy to cook, and they are healthy and delicious enough to cook often.

Do the windowpane test when you knead your bread dough

I also baked my first bread ever! Yes, it took me 30 years. I naively thought it was great until I realize it was uncooked in the middle. No idea what went wrong, but I definitely need to make sure to do the windowpane test if I do bake again. Now I need to find a bread pudding recipe to use up all the bread. The next thing I’ll try to bake is probably luncheon meat buns.

I fell in love with this Gucci coat from their 2018 Fall Winter runway when I saw it on Diet Prada’s Instagram Stories! It also cracked me up when Eva Chen got everyone to recreate the severed human head look from the Gucci runway.

Last but not the least, I need to remind myself to stop buying coffee from Starbucks. I am always sucked in by the convenience and their lovely marketing. The whole point of having our own espresso machine is to save money and make our own coffee. It will also always taste good since we bought coffee beans from our favorite coffee shop.

7th week of 2018

12 – 19 Feb 2018

What did I do last week? I can barely remember.

The frost was so pretty on Monday morning that I ran out in the cold to take photos. I wish the quality of panorama photos on the iphone are not so bad though. May have to try other apps like Cardboard Camera. Hopefully I will find something good because stitching photos manually is too time consuming, and I don’t want to pay the monthly fees for Adobe Photoshop. This reminds me that I have yet to finish blogging about my vacation last November!! That will be in my to do list this week.

We didn’t do much for Valentine’s Day because I just don’t fancy paying for overpriced food and gifts. Take me to the Target clearance sale after Valentine’s Day instead! I think Larry’s colleagues are all very surprised and jealous that he doesn’t have to do anything. Haha, I would prefer to have lots of seeds to grow my own seasonal and perennial flowers. Actually, if I could have things my way, he would be paying for a landscaper to do up our whole yard. See, he’s actually in bigger trouble than all of them.

As for our home-cooked meal on Valentine’s Day? Good old pork chops with caramelized onions. Side of zucchini, squash and steamed white rice. Super easy and yummy. I usually just coat my pork chop with salt, pepper, cayenne and onion powder. I cannot wait to start eating my own vegetables once gardening season starts! Food just taste so much better when you grow it yourself.

Also, I don’t think I have ever had zucchini and squash until I moved to US! Can you imagine how long I have been missing out? They are such staples here.

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This year’s Chinese New Year decoration. Didn’t buy anything new. Thankfully my SUPER sweet cousin @quekie sent me the high res images of what he created for CNY, so that I can print and put them around the house. ❤️❤️❤️ #blessed #chinesenewyear #happy #home #homedecor #cnydecor #cnydeco #yearofthedog #tulsa #oklahoma

A post shared by Eileen (@leng_) on Feb 18, 2018 at 11:57am PST

I got the house decked out in some Chinese New Year decorations since it starts on 16 February. Did not organize a cookout this year because I didn’t want to stress myself out. It’s crazy difficult to cater to everyone’s taste buds since not everyone is familiar with Chinese cuisine. it was probably everyone’s first time having duck last year. I wish I know a group of people who enjoy cooking and food in general in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so we can all take turns cooking for each other every week. That would be so much fun.

Alternatively, and more realistically, I can just cook for Larry’s nephews. They wolf down almost anything I make, and they enjoy spicy food. They are an easy crowd to please but it will add up a lot of expenses to cook for three boys all the time. If only we have more spare cash!

So, my first meal for Chinese New Year is a plate of waffles with fruits at the nearby casino. It was late at night, and we ran out of groceries. That’s probably a few superstitious taboos right there, but hey, I can think of a good one! Eating something sweet to signify a new year of sweetness! 甜甜蜜蜜. Actually, here’s another one! Since the waffles and bananas are round. It also symbolizes 团团圆圆 (圆满) which means togetherness and harmony.

We also finally watched The Greatest Showman which we really enjoyed. I’m so glad that the theaters are still showing it. Definitely a lot better than the last musical film we watched Les Misérables in 2012. I was actually surprised Larry didn’t mind watching it. Apparently it reminds him of a TV series he’s watching: American Horror Story. Worked out well for both of us.

Here’s the rest of what I ate. Avocado toast because we bought way too many avocados. I think I have decided I like my avocado mashed up on my toast. Somehow it just taste better. I also prefer a scrambled egg over a hard boiled egg on my avocado toast. Scrambled eggs just bring out the taste of Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel Seasoning when I put them together.

Also had Chile Rellenos from Chuy’s last weekend. I think it may be my top three favorite Tex-Mex dishes now. I just love peppers, and my super sweet gardening friends are going to give me a few poblano pepper seeds to grow this year. I love how we try to grow everything we love to eat. Larry said he wouldn’t mind making them at home too! Let’s hope I get some decent harvest later this year.

Last but not the least, we found pork shoulder on sale at Sprouts. We got a huge bone-in slab for 99 cents per pound. Cut up half of it to slow cook with onions as well as tomatoes and peppers from my garden that I have froze late last year.