cinderella doesn't do well in straw

i was totally awed when i came across this. it's pretty exciting.

of course i had to put up mulan. she's one of the cooler ones. i liked pocahontas and sleeping beauty too. the other ones are pretty cool though i think that the little mermaid got the short end of the stick. hers is the least detailed or interesting. beauty and the beast is a little bit plain too but i like the glower that she has. and cinderella doesn't do well in straw.

i personally feel like all of you are tough enough to handle this, but as a forewarning anyway, barbara got freaked out looking at these.

check it out!

simply hazelnut crepes

i dub this. crepe tsunami!

i made more crepes for lunch. and then i decided i'd make extra for dinner. and then i was like. heck. i'll make some for lunch tomorrow. i have to bring lunch anyway. and so. i have 13 crepes on the counter right now. and two in my tummy :P

i'd say three is enough for a meal right? that means i get one more. i thought i'd make it a dessert one. but i don't really know what to put in it. the bananas are for annie's breakfast... and i have chopped hazelnut spread. but the fuji apple is too delicious on it's own to waste for this. and the peaches are again annie's.

i guess i'll be having simply hazelnut crepes. (:

p.s. it's so much more fun to cook with music blaring :P granted-- it's disney. leave me alone (:

bunny tomatoes

first Buddha- shaped fruit and now bunny tomatoes!

good cookies

i went shopping with greg yesterday. i t was fun. tresemme was giving free make overs. serious. hair, face, make up. it was pretty amazing. but. i didn't do it. it would have taken way too long and i wanted to spend the day with greg. well, as got some nice shampoo samples.

i bought myself a pastry blender from william sonoma. (: i'm pretty excited about it.

i made a friend at godiva. actually, i've been friends with her for a while. i see her every month (i know- it's sorta pathetic that i go every month-- but i want my free truffle!) and she went to california the last week of august, so i talked about california with her.

i also got a random free walnut chocolate chip cookie from double tree hotel. they were just giving them out near tresemme.

i think i'll make nestle tollhouse cookies like jesca suggested. (: happy 21st girl! i hope you have/had good cookies too!

Only Once

I find this to be very strange and unexpected, but this morning, I am thinking about my grandpa. I miss him a lot. Not quite in the sense that I miss his presence (though I do), but I feel like I never quite told him enough times that I love him and am so very grateful that he and grandma came to visit every summer and that he loved us too.

Granted, I had a mother who always urged us kids to go hold grandpa's hand, or kiss him when it's time to wake him up from napping for dinner. I always did it automatically, and I never not wanted to do any of it. But still, I don't think my grandpa deserved those robotic gestures of love. When it was time for them to go back to Taiwan, my mother always lectured us to tell grandma and grandpa that we loved them and that they had to come back next year and that we would miss them so much. As a kid, those were just some words that I was trained to say. I never quite had any freedom in expressing myself to my grandparents, I simply had to recite phrases. Don't get me wrong, I really did love them, but I didn't say it as sincerely as I wished I did. I was merely completing a task that my mother wanted me to do. Even as I got older, I learned these coined phrases and would say them without my mother's instigation, but still really without caring as much as I do now.

I do remember though, this one time that I did say it and meant it, really bad. I had just had a huge fight with "The Favorite One". This is the male cousin who is a real douchebag and mistreats his family, which included a girl cousin I grew quite fond of. I screamed at him and told him off (I actually don't remember what I said) and he said that I had no right to yell at him because he was older than me (and I told him that was dumb and that I didn't have any respect for him).

Right after the whole debacle, I instantly grew very very frightened. I just yelled at "The Favorite One", the One could tell grandma anything, and I could be disowned. Now is sounds really dramatic, but I was seriously quite scared, especially with everything my mother says about the One. I didn't know what I would do without my grandparents. I loved them. So I did what any little girl does when she is scared. I cried. I went directly to my grandpa, who was resting in bed, and I flopped onto the bed and cried into the bedcovers next to him telling him I loved him. (It is really all I could say with my limited Taiwanese, I couldn't exactly speak volumes.) I really didn't know how to say an apology in Taiwanese either, so I said I was sorry (to my grandparents, mind you, not the douchebag!) in English. I wanted my grandpa to know I loved him and I didn't want him out of my life.

He, of course, loved me too. And he took my side. (as he often does. He didn't like The Favorite One either.) Still, I cried and cried while he went off on how spoiled and incompetent the One is. My grandpa really loved me a lot.

I was only told about a week before his funeral was held that he passed. By then, it had been over a month. They had waited for Annie and me to finish school. I was so upset. Before school ended, I went to buy him Frango mints because he loved chocolate so much, and Frango mints were his favorite. I had been looking forward to seeing him and telling him I loved him and hopefully helping him gain his health back.

My sister's boyfriend, Martin, even came to Taiwan with us to support us. He took extensive photos of the event. I'm fairly certain I'm crying waterfalls in all of them, so I don't want to look at them at all. I'm still sorry that I only told him once just how much I love him.

lumpy

i made fried rice for the first time!

i totally winged it. and i made a sort of non-scrambled scrambled egg. so it was all in one piece. i don't know what you call it. i then tried to stir fry the rice. but it was so stuck together. so my fried rice came out lumpy. i put a little soy sauce and actually added a tiny bit of sugar. and hondashi (: so i was hesitant to put any other flavorants. yup. then came the veggies, onions, peas and carrots and corn. and then i totally forgot the chicken. whoops. oh well. the chicken was flavored a totally different way so it wouldn't have fit in anyway.

i was pretty proud of myself. too bad i didn't have that much rice. and it was so lumpy.

still amusing

i had a really interesting dream the other night that i had a pet boa constrictor. it was a she and she was super nice and loving and had a personality. in fact, she was pregnant and totally excited about it. it was cool how in the dream she would twine around me (as if to hug me) and i would feed her whole frozen fish.

one of the funny, totally impossible parts, was that i would put her in the freezer when i went to bed because my mother didn't want a boa constrictor running around the house without me to watch it. and in the morning, i would pull her out to defrost, but would totally misjudge the thaw time and she'd be gone by the time i went back to her.

there was also a part where alan came to visit me, but i was preoccupied with something else and i was late to coming out to meet him. he actually had to leave because my pet boa constrictor scared him. i felt bad. but it was still amusing. (:

i'm so nervous

why don't i start. by giving you guys some photos i neglected to add last time. here is my first attempt at chicken pot pie. it was delicious. it was perfect. and yet. the next two times i made it, it was horrible. sigh. beginner's luck. phooey.


i made crepes this morning. ham, cheese and corn. the first two were delicious. and then i got sick of them by the third one. oh well. at least my sister had a nice hot breakfast to eat. this picture actually is of my first attempt at crepes with greg. not the ones i had this morning. but they look similar enough.

now i am attempting my apple tart.

four hours later---

it doesn't look too bad!



although the bottom part of the pie crust was drenched with apple juice. i don't really know why =\ oh well. i tried to have my sister have some fun by helping roll out the dough. but she was too forceful and it cracked the dough in quite a few places. so that might be why.

i've been trying to run every night for the last three nights. so it would be awesome if i could keep it up. well off to clean up my room and start reading for the school year. i'm so nervous.

processed dough

i'm nervous about school starting again. for one. my sleep schedule is extremely messed up, and i'm not sure how i'll fix it in time. wait. no. i'm certain i won't fix it in time.

i've been trying to distract myself (code word: procrastinate) by looking up different recipes to try and to figure out how to make an apple tart. i have the pie crust and the apple. now i just gotta do it during the day time so i don't wake up my sister in the middle of the night with my chopping and noises.

i was bored and i have some not-so-tasty-by-themselves strawberries so i made some crepe batter to use tomorrow.

i think i'd like to try to make some cookies from scratch. i love cookies too much and i'd like to try real chocolate chip cookies, instead of store bought cookie dough. then depending on how nasty they are, i might convert back to processed dough.

croissants?

i am pretty excited

i made crepes twice in the last week. i made mainly savory crepes with greg, cheese and ham, chicken and scrambled eggs, and onions. and then i made sweet crepes for barbara, monisha, mike, alex, zach and michael. that was fun. my world market hazelnut spread was decimated after that though.

today was very exciting. last night i made pie crust dough, and today i made chicken pot pie in my little ramekins. they're too small though ): annie had one and a half. i definitely overfilled them. i don't know how to affix the pie crust to the ramekin though, because even though i made a venting hole, the chicken gravy overflowed a lot over the sides, and my crusts were like pot lids that rattle when the water is boiling. but the crusts were definitely nice and flaky, even though i used margarine instead of butter or shortening. i was very very pleased.

the next thing i would love to try is making almond croissants. my family loves them, but it is sorta annoying to have to drive so far (porto's or la vie en france in costa mesa) to get some good filled croissants. once i get that down, then we can tweak the recipe to not be so sweet, and to have just the right amount of filling. i'll be so excited!

five minutes cooling time are long over

i made baked macaroni and cheese. i am so proud of myself. i improvised half the ingredients. but it looks so pretty. (at least to the maker's eyes) i took a picture.

yup. i'm aware it doesn't look too yummy. but i was too happy to care. :P


i've been trying so hard to make good rice. and i think i've finally got it down. i made my second batch of perfect rice. no burning on the bottom. thanks for helping me out there jesca (:

greg and i saw 500 days of summer today. we were kinda late and the movie started at 5:05 and we were running out of my apartment at 5:06. heh. we sorta ran there and i got to the register and wheezed "5:05" "summer" and the girl looked at me and asked "one?" uh. no.. my boyfriend is actually wheezing here right next to me. so greg replied "two" and i've got to say that was the most efficient movie ticket purchase i have ever made.

the movie was such a downer, i felt. greg liked it though. actually throughout most of the movie... all i could think was. wow. this guy is so much like justin... down to the way he walks... so i found that amusing.

at the end of the movie. the four other ppl filed out so quickly. greg and i decided to be silly and we danced and fooled around in the empty movie theater. and then all of a sudden. a janitor appeared. it was rather surprising actually. and then we ran out embarassed. heh.

anyway, time to eat some of my half-improvised mac and cheese. five minutes cooling time are long over.

with toddlers falling in love instead of teenagers

well actually. i ended up trying to make porridge out of my failed rice. and it sorta worked.

but hey! we finished watching paris je t'aime.

i wish they could have developed the stories a bit more like love actually; but nope, each director had five minutes to give their take on love in paris. some of the stories were really sad, but most of them were heartwarming and intriguing.

i think my favorite scenes were when this bilingual boy was hitting on this american boy in french. heh. and the natalie portman scene with the really hot blind guy.

on that note. i'd really like to see ponyo. but i stupidly ruined it for myself by reading the imdb summary, which basically told me the ending. eh. so stupid. i read it all and then i was like -- oh wait. shoot! i wanted to watch it. oh well. i guess i'll wait for it to come out in video. for the most part-- it sounds a bit like the little mermaid. japanese style. and with toddlers falling in love instead of teenagers.

i think we're going out to dinner now

so everything for dinner seemed to fail today. well not everything. just key components.

i was going to make chicken and pasta and then make rice to go with some leftover chinese take out. unfortunately, my chicken was expired. and then my rice cooker decided to go kapoot.

thankfully (or maybe not...) i remembered that jesca always made rice on the stove! so i was like brilliant! i'll just switch it over and let it stew for a while.

sigh... unfortunately, there are too many different recipes online for how to cook rice. and i didn't know which one to follow. and this was further compounded by the fact that i always make a cup of white rice mixed with a cup of brown rice. and i only looked at white rice recipes. anyway! i left the top on, (and all the water measurements the same as the rice cooker water measurements) and then it was like-- over boiled. and then i took the top off, because it looked like there was too much water.

anyway. we let it boil with the top off for a longish period of time until the water seemed to go away, and then we realized the bottom was sticking. ):

i figured the rice was way overcooked. but then upon tasting it. ):

the brown rice was still pretty hard.

end result: no pasta and chicken, failed rice, and a hungry couple. i think we're going out to dinner now.

i would rather eat cookies

so greg had this chronic cough that never wanted to go away. and he thought it was due to him living in the frat house and everyone in the frat house smoking weed every night. yuck.


anyway. it turned out to be more than a smoke inhalation induced cough. and i eventually caught it too. and now we're both coughing up phlegm. yup. gross. sorry.

greg however, has decided that eating honey would coat his throat and help reduce the phlegm and coughing. considering all the calories and sugar in one spoonful of honey that greg takes maybe two to three times a day--- i would rather eat cookies.