Last week…

It was my birthday last week and there was a lot of eating.

We ate at an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. I wasn’t sure if I could eat that much meat. And if it was worth it for the kids (who paid 50% of the adult price) but in the end we did pretty good. The 6yo probably ate enough prawns to cover his tab 😂

The husband took me out to lunch (yes, no kids!) and we ate at Ramen Izakaya in Mountain View which seems to usually have a long line of people on weekends but on this Thursday, we could walk right in and get a table. I had tsukemen which is ramen but with the broth on the side to dip in. The broth was especially delicious!

 

 

Currently…

 

Reading:

 

 

 

Watching:

Stranger Things

 

Eating:

More leftover birthday cake

Drinking:

Lots of water – it’s a very rich cake!

 

Making:

More amigurumi

 

Last week:

I read:

The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
Pie in the Sky – Remy Lai
Vox – Christina Dalcher
The Great Unexpected – Dan Mooney
Idaho – Emily Ruskovich

I posted:

#WeekendCooking Black Sesame Ice-cream recipe

South Pole Station by #BookBeginnings #Friday56

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Library Loot (July 10 to 16)

Books read in June

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Monday!

I’m sending the kids off to a Rocks and Minerals camp this week. Hope they learn all kinds of fun things!

Meanwhile here are some things we did last week:

Ate at a French bistro in Yountville – I had tomato soup and as my main course, rabbit

 

Bought pastries from Bouchon Bakery (it’s part of the Thomas Keller group). Lovely lemon meringue tart, fruit tart, chocolate eclair and what’s called “Oh Ohs” that wrapped chocolate cake at the back.

Made bread with the tangzhong method.

 

Food Truck Friday complete with kids play area (mini golf, table tennis etc). Tried arepas for the first time.

 

Lots of park and playground days as that’s what summer is all about!

 

Currently…

 

Reading:

The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon

(I’ll probably be done with this by the time this post is up tomorrow though!)

 

 

Watching:

Stranger Things Season 3

Listening:

Consider the Lobster and other essays by David Foster Wallace

 

Latest crochet project:

Eating:

Homemade raisin scone for breakfast

Drinking:

Yorkshire Gold with milk

Cooking:

I’m about to make some pizza rolls for the kids for their lunches this week – just homemade pizza dough, some ham and cheese and tomato paste.

Last week:

I read:

A Fire Story – Brian Fies
Spider-Gwen Vol 1: Greater Power – Jason LaTour, Robbi Rodriguez
Spider-Gwen Vol 2: Weapon of Choice – Jason LaTour, Robbi Rodriguez
Black Widow Vol 1: SHIELD’s Most Wanted – Mark Waid, Chris Samnee
Record of a Spaceborn Few – Becky Chambers
Beijing comrades – Bei Tong

I posted:

#WeekendCooking Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie

Library Loot (July 3 to 10)

Sadie by Courtney Summers

 

 

We were down in LA last week, returned on Tuesday afternoon, and as a result, I didn’t post my usual Monday update!

We had a great time in LA. On our previous trips down to SoCal (San Diego, Palm Springs), we just did a quick stop in LA for the day, so it’s been a while since we’ve actually stayed there.

The boys were excited about going to Universal Studios. We’ve been to the one in Singapore before but Singapore doesn’t have Wizarding World! The boys have listened to the audiobooks of the whole series, and watched the first two movies, so they were happy to be in Harry Potter land.

And it is really very impressive to enter first Hogsmeade – I love that the rooftops are all covered in ‘snow’. There’s Honeydukes and the Three Broomsticks and Ollivander’s. And then there is Hogwarts. And you get to walk into Hogwarts and take a fun ride called The Forbidden Journey. Well except if you’re not tall enough (48 inches min), like my 6yo…. But you still can walk through the castle. He instead rode the Flight of the Hippogriff which is a small rollercoaster and quite fun.

Also, the park is rather clever as you can buy interactive wands that allow you to cast spells around Hogsmeade, for instance, that makes the box open to reveal a chocolate frog, or lights up the lamps, or makes the big gate unlock. The non-interactive wands are just a few dollars cheaper but really, what’s the point of that?

 

We also had tons of eating done. Not just at the theme park (more on that in a proper post), but we had such great Thai food, Korean food in LA! I still dream of that handmade cold soba – it’s hard to find a place specializing in soba here! We are surrounded by ramen shops. I’m not a big fan of ramen, it’s fine once in a while but it tends to be rich and salty. I like the cleaner taste of soba. You can see my post on what we ate in LA here

Currently…

 

Reading:

 

Still taking my time with this one

 

 

Watching:

I’ve started watching Stranger Things. Very behind I know!

Listening:

Nothing at the moment

 

Eating:

Homemade baguette with butter.

Drinking:

Yorkshire Gold tea with milk for breakfast

 

Last week:

I read:

The Siren Depths – Martha Wells

I posted:

 

Eating LA #weekendcooking

 

 

 

 

The last official school day is Wednesday and hooray no more school lunch to pack! No more driving back and forth several times a day! The kindergartener will finally be going to full-day school in August (kindergarten here is half-day so he only goes from 1140-3pm, and to complicate things, every first Wednesday is morning session). Of course that means next school year, I’ll have to pack two school lunches. Oh joy. Luckily the kids are ok eating sandwiches some days…

Meanwhile, we have some of our summer planned out – the kids are attending a couple of science-related summer camps. So hopefully they will have fun and learn something. I’ll also take them swimming more often. And it might sound Tiger Mom-ish of me, but I also want to make sure they’re both prepared for 3rd and 1st grade! The two of them are in a Mandarin immersion program, and we don’t really speak much Mandarin at home so we are going to have to work on that, especially since it’s a big jump from K to 1st. And when we visited the 3rd grade class at Open House, I marveled at all the projects that were on display, some poetry, some research projects, some stories written, book reviews, some in Chinese, some in English. Definitely more challenging written work than in 2nd!

 

Things eaten last week:

I brought the in-laws out to eat dim sum. My father-in-law loves century egg porridge. Also one of my favourite things is the shengjianbao or a panfried bun with pork and vegetables.

I discovered that kimchi in a burger is an amazing combination. We ate at a fancy food court at the fancy mall so we had good burgers from Super Duper and my in-laws had rice bowls from KoJa and I took the kimchi and added that to my burger. Yummy

We made sushi for dinner and also had sashimi

More eating out – xiaolongbao

 

Hot pot on a hot Sunday.

 

 

Currently…

 

Reading:

 

 

 

Watching:

We watched Ocean’s 8 and boy was I disappointed. It was an awesome cast – Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling etc- but completely disappointing. Blanchett in particular was so underused. It wasn’t very clever and it strangely lacked tension – all the issues that cropped up were very easily solved. For eg, they needed a part, and tada one of the members just happened to have a genius sister who can engineer such a device. If this was the very first Ocean’s movie, it may have been ok. But how could this follow the first three? I mean, sure, it barely has anything to do with the original except that Bullock is Danny Ocean’s sister (and two original cast members appear) but with three exciting and relatively smart movies preceding it, this was such an utter letdown.

Eating:

Hot pot for dinner

Drinking:

Yuzu sake

Cooking:

To be honest I’m just excited that I don’t have to pack lunch on Thursday and Friday and haven’t a bloody clue what I’m cooking this week. I did however pick up some hamachi Kama (yellowtail cheek) from the Asian supermarket (6 big pieces for about $35) and will be grilling some. Just not today as I’m not turning on my oven in this heatwave!

Last week:

I read:

The totally awesome Hulk. Vol. 1, Cho time – Greg Pak
Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword – Henry Lien
Save Me the Plums – Ruth Reichl
Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal
I posted:

Homemade chocolate ice-cream #WeekendCooking

Moon Rush: The new Space Race by Leonard David #TLCBookTours

Library Loot (June 5 to 11)

Top Books From My Favorite Genre #toptentuesday

 

 

 

 

It’s the last full week of school! The second grade teachers have the week planned out. The first two days seem to be board game days. One of the days, the kids are supposed to bring their favourite books and they will be doing some outdoors reading and they can bring toys and wear pyjamas. The kindergarteners are having a field trip to Happy Hollow and that’s going to be a full day event (kindergarten is half-day here).

Meanwhile, here’s what we did last week.

We went cherry picking at Brentwood. It’s about an hour drive away from us so we set off at 8 and got there at 9, when most of the farms open. A friend had recommended to us the farm directly opposite Nunn Better Farms, which is one of the more well-known farms in the area. I still have no idea what the name of the smaller farm opposite was, but their cherries were big and sweet! Apparently this is a good year for California cherries – we had a colder than usual winter and lots of rain, so the cherry season may be longer this year.

We had fun picking the cherries (and eating them!). My father-in-law picked the most cherries, and he was satisfied only when his bucket was full. We ended up with about 24 pounds of cherries. At $3.50 a pound, compared to $5 a pound at the farmers’ market.

 

 

Also, we went to see Detective Pikachu! The boys were very excited.

 

 

 I made chocolate ice-cream!

 

Homegrown radishes!

The weather was just nice for a Sunday BBQ.

Currently…

 

Reading:

Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal

 

I Did Not Kill My Husband – Liu Zhenyun

 

Watching:

On Saturday night, the husband and I watched Always Be My Maybe! It was such a great show, sweet and funny. I kinda wished we could have had more scenes with the younger actors!

Listening:

 

Save Me the Plums – Ruth Reichl

Eating:

Homemade walnut bread

Drinking:

Yorkshire Gold with milk

 

Last week:

I read:

Ayesha at Last – Uzma Jalaluddin
Edinburgh – Alexander Chee
Machines Like Me – Ian McEwan

I posted:

 

#AsianLitBingo 2019 Wrap-up!

Gula Melaka coconut ice cream #weekendcooking

Emergency Contact by Mary H K Choi #AsianLitBingo

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee #AsianLitBingo

Library Loot May 29 to June 4

 

 

 

 

 

 Last week…

We bought a Kitchenaid ice-cream mixer attachment. The original price listed was $70.99 and the Husband happened to check the Target app and for some reason it was listed there at $44.99 so we ordered it and picked it up after we watched Avengers: Endgame.

We’d been considering getting an ice-cream maker for a while. I didn’t want a big one like those with compressors (benefit: you don’t have to freeze the bowl first!) as it would take up too much space that I don’t have. And since my Kitchenaid mixer sits on my counter all the time anyway (I use it quite a lot, also it’s too heavy to move), an attachment seemed like the best thing to get.

Of course that meant we had to freeze the bowl for at least 15 hours!

But I also made the ice-cream custard (I used this lovely vanilla ice-cream recipe from David Leibovitz) and had it sitting in the fridge, ready to be poured into the mixer.

It did already taste great after 20 minutes or so of mixing. But it was already near dinnertime anyway so we put it in the freezer and took it out for dessert. Homemade vanilla ice cream is so delicious. It was luscious and creamy and had a big vanilla taste from the vanilla pod and extract.

 

 

Other things this week, lots of summer fruits at the farmers market – cherries, nectarines and peaches. I love nectarines. Peaches not so much.

Made japchae and a slow cooker honey-braised pork sirloin roast. The pork roast was so good!

Bookmarking it here myself so I’ll remember where I found the recipe.

 

 

 

Currently…

 

Reading:

 

 

Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal

 

Machines Like Me – Ian McEwan

 

If You Leave Me – Crystal Hana Kim

 

Watching:

The husband and I finally got to see Avengers: Endgame and don’t worry, I won’t reveal any spoilers or anything. So I will just say that I really enjoyed it, except for one part.

 

 

Eating:

Homemade vanilla ice-cream (I’m writing this Sunday night)

Drinking:

 Lots of water

 

Last week:

I read:

Ayesha At Last – Uzma Jalaluddin

Edinburgh – Alexander Chee

I posted:

River of Stars by Vanessa Hua #AsianLitBingo

Library Loot (May 22 to 28)

Not Your Sidekick by CB Lee #AsianLitBingo