What is a satisfying life?

I felt that I wrote about food and eating too much, so I must add a new non-food related posting on the top of my blog. This is just a rhetorical question.

Emotionally and intellectually fulfilled

Around good friends and lover

Eating and entertaining well

Continue to explore the unknown

Grow emotionally

Maintain good health and a flexible, pain-free body

Be productive and creative

Yummy Kung Pao Chicken

I made kung pao chicken last night, and it was the best ever. Here are some tricks I found.

My version of Kung Pao has a lot of vegetables - why not take advantage of cooking at home and put all of our favorite things in one dish?

Cube the following veggies:

1 green pepper,

1 red pepper,

1 jalapeno,

some celeries,

some mushrooms,

1 onion,

mince garlic (as always),

Cube some chicken, making sure to trim the fat.

Cooking steps:

1. (Trick #1) Stir-fried the vegetables with peanut oil, but don't cook them too well. Place the cooked vegetables in a bowl, then clean the wok.
2. (Trick #2) Stir-fried the chicken meat, making sure the chicken is well done.
3. Mix the vegetables and chicken together and spice with salt, pepper, kung pao sauce (Lee Kum Kee brand), and spicy sauce to taste.
4. (Trick #3) Heat some hot oil in a small frying pan in medium heat, then add some chilly flakes and a handful of peanuts to the frying pan. Cook the peanuts for 5 seconds.
5. Mix the peanuts with the chicken.

The good thing about cooking this way is, the vegetable is not over cook, and adding the spiced peanuts would add extra spice to the dish. Also, don't cook the garlic for too long, add it in on step 3.

Since Jack helped on the peanuts and he enjoyed the food a lot, he insisted it was our kung pao. I think it is good for him to have a sense of ownership to this dish.

Jake's 2nd birthday

Yesterday it was sunny, and we took the opportunity to take the doggies out for a walk at 3rd even though the temperature was in the 40's. It was Jake's 2nd birthday, so we bought a double cheeseburger for Jake and a cheeseburger for Amy from Burger King. The doggies enjoyed the burgers at the parking lot. I let Amy lick the mustard off my fingers, but she wasn't interested. After the burgers, we all went to the north end where we launched the kites. They were so happy, because they didn't go there for a long time.

Jake was bouncing around on the path, jumping up and down trying to get his favorite orange ball from Jack. Amy swam which was her favorite. Sometimes she quietly swam after the ducks, and when she crept up to them, they smartly flew away a few feet just to tease her. When we got to the north end, we let the doggies ran and swam to their hearts content. It was my favorite to watch the doggies having fun.

The pups slept in the car on the way back home. Jake put his head on Amy's back, and he took up most of the back seat. We gave them each a piece of dog bone when we got home, and they were very quiet the rest of the evening.

This morning we heard sirens from Highway 1, and we heard Jake howling at the patio. I sneaked out to the kitchen and saw Jake standing in the patio doing his howling thing. Instead of howling at the moon, he was howling at the ambulance. Even though he was doing this adult and masculine thing, he still looked very cute like a puppy. I still remember a 6 pound fuzzy puppy who wiggles and kicks around when I tickle him on the belly, who nip me with his pointy puppy teeth and slept for hours afterwards.

How to make tasty beef

After many trial and error, disappointment, and research, I finally stumbled upon a recipe that makes a tasty beef. From none other than the Essential Asian Cookbook, under the Chinese food section.

• To make tasty beef, you have to buy good quality and fresh beef.

Good beef doesn't have to be expensive, an if you cook it well and eat it when it's fresh, it's well worth the money, right? I buy beef for stir-fried in Asian markets, e.g. Ranch 99, for around $4 - $5 per lb. The important thing is cook the meat when it's still fresh - within 5 days if you refrigerate it! The color of the beef should be reddish pink; it should not have any foul smell, and when you hold it, it should not be sticky or greasy.

• Also make sure to allocate at least 1 hour to marinate the meat.
  

• Ingredients for marinating 1 lb of beef:

1. 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
2. 1/2 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
3. 1/2 tablespoon hoisin sause (this will give sweet taste to the meat, if you don't like your food too sweet, put less, or counter it with more soy sause)
4. 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
5. 1/2 tablespoon peanut oil
6. 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
   

• Cutting beef

Trim the meat of any excess fat. Slice it across the grain (this is very important), into thin slices, let's said 2 inches long and 1/4 inch thick.

• Combine the marinate and the beef in a bowl, stir to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.

• Cooking

1. First stir-fried half of an onion with 2 cloves of crushed garlic until the onion is soft and golden. Remove the onion and put it aside.
2. Clean the wok!
3. Put some peanut oil in a hot wok, cook the meat in batches over high heat until browned but not cooked through. Return all the meat to the wok and add onion.
4. Add soy sauce and sherry (or Chinese cooking wine). If the dish looks too watery, mix some cornstarch in water and slowly add the mixture into the wok in high heat until it is thickened.
5. (Optional) Add threaded green onion at last to add color and freshness to the dish.
   

Hong Kong Style Milk Tea

One of the irresistible pleasures to me is to go to the Hong Kong bistro to have a cup of Hong Kong style milk tea.

You mix strong black tea with milk and sugar to taste. At bistros, you can get it with sweetened condensed milk, and it is very smooth, sweet and yummy. The bistros use a special kind of black tea powder, which makes the tea very dark and strong. A cup of that during lunch would wake you up for the rest of the afternoon.

My mom makes her variation of HK style milk tea. She uses Lipton black tea, 1 tea bag per cup; some warmed up evaporated milk, and some sugar. It is very tasty too, and is perfect for afternoon tea with some biscuits.

I never really liked the milk tea I made, because it was either not strong enough or not rich enough.

Today after lunch, Jack was comfortably seating in his reading sofa reading his favorite Bourne book. When I cleared the tables, I asked him what I could get for him to drink. He said: "something hot, maybe I'll have what you have."

I just made myself a milk tea with sweetened condensed milk, and it was seating at the kitchen counter waiting for me. OK, I thought to myself, I would just make him a cup.

I put 1 Lipton tea bag in 1 cup of boiling water, I took care not to put too much water as I usually do for making regular hot tea, because it would dilute the black tea too much. I then added 1 tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk to the tea. I took the tea bag out, stirred the milk so it dissolved, and gave it to Jack. He loved it and asked for a second cup.

So that's the Jack-approved Hong Kong style milk tea for you.

Enjoy!

End of the year, new goal

I've been thinking a lot of Yoga the last few months, since I had this new Yoga teacher for the Thursday night Yoga. I like her classes.

Every time after the class, I feel so relieved and refreshed. I became more aware of me, and my presence. It brought me joy.

My instructor is also a Yoga teacher's instructor, so she told us about the certification program she was teaching, which ran from beginning of August through the end of the year . I took a flyer with me. She also hosts retreats to Mexico next year. Everything seem so beautiful and refreshing. I wanted to join too. I took a flyer with me and put them on my bulletin board.

I have been thinking about getting certified. But I held myself back, because I didn't want to jump into something that I didn't have time or energy to do, when my full time job was already keeping me busy.

My motivation of getting certified was not because I thought I was a better teacher than others, or that I wanted to change a career to do something easier. I wanted to get certified so that I could teach Chinese Yoga. See, my mom and other relatives in her age had been in pain a lot in their old ages. They weren't exercising regularly, so they couldn't keep a strong body to fight the pain. So I had been searching for some Yoga classes for Chinese, but I haven't had any luck. So I thought I had to be the person to do it.

My plan is this. I would have to start practicing Yoga on my own, build my own sequences with the help of books and online materials. Then I will read more about Yoga and the philosophy. I could then start introducing my mom to Yoga. So today, I built 2 sequences. One Easy Yoga for elders, another one was Yoga for back pain, for me.

I bought a pair of Yoga sticky gloves from Target, and I used it today to practice the Easy Yoga, they were awesome. I will do my back pain sequence tomorrow morning. I will try to make it a routine. So I don't have to commit to getting certified, which is $2500 and over a few months of part-time study; or going on a retreat, which is $1500 for 7 days.

See how long this hobby will last for me.

Christmas Shopping 2010

Christmas is always stressful for me, I guess this is nothing out of the ordinary for Americans.

Over the years, Jack has this open secret about shopping, which for some unfathomable reason, I never adapted myself to. He shopped online and I didn't. OK ... there were many reasons why I didn't like to shop online: I enjoyed the perks of shopping at malls, namely, seeing and touching what I would buy, socializing with friends, people watching; I had bad experiences shopping online; I believed shipping and handling were way too overpriced and weren't worth it.

Jack on the other hand, hated going to shopping malls, because standing and walking around hurt his back. Jack shopped online. Fedex and UPS were his friends. He was probably the first few who shop online many years back when the internet was still some kind of unknown to the general public. He even created an online shop for the pizzeria at the Student Union, so that it was more convenient for him to order food during his office hours, and maybe get himself some free pizza.

The last few years, my traditional ways of shopping didn't work out quite well. Since I became so super busy all year round, I didn't have time to squeeze in for finding thoughtful gifts for my love ones. So I ended up stressing myself even more every year toward the Christmas Season.

This year, I found myself in similar situation. Last Sunday, Jack and I were talking about Christmas gifts while we were driving home. He already done some shopping, and was pleased. I told him I haven't started yet, and I said, "maybe I could get you some plugs and cables for the home media player project you are putting together." I smiled when I thought it was such a brilliant idea.

I tried to wing it every year. After all, I didn't grow up with Christmas and gift giving, so it was hard to get me excited about spending a paycheck over a holiday.

Jack said, "if you got me plugs and cables for Christmas, I will divorce you."

OK, I could hear the joking tone in his voice, but it was severe enough for me to take it more seriously.

"Ha ha ha, that's good to know. So underwear and socks are out of the question, then?" I continued my joke, and tried to get myself out of the corner.

The pressure was on. I spent the next 4 hours scrambling to find the catalogs from National Geographic Store, Wind & Weather and Brookstone, etc, which would normally end up in the recycle pile, looking for fun toys for my new husband. I also bit the bullet to make the orders online. 4 hours and a few hundred $$$ later, most of my shopping was done. It wasn't that bad after all. The good thing, I used Jack's Amazon prime account to get free 2nd day shipping. For non Amazon orders, I managed to find free shipping deals and additional discounts.

This morning, the door bell rang at around 10, while both of us were working hard at the computer. We both stayed super quiet pretending we weren't home, thinking it was my church "friends" - I didn't read the Bible, the part explaining why God allowed wickedness (which Jack mistaken to be "Why God allowed wikileaks" and jumped to his feet), my church "friends" were going to discuss it "next time". After shower, we headed out to walk the dogs. I found a Fedex box at the door addressed to me. Ah, the Christmas present. While we were opening the box - I had to, cause it was labelled "open immediately" - a second Fedex delivery came to me.

As we open our Christmas presents - to save the efforts to wrap them - I started to feel the joy of online shopping!

How I've gone to the dark side.