What a weekend! It was so cold everywhere. My brother who's in Virgina got snowed in and had to cancel all his saturday plans and in Texas, it's a shivering 30 degrees and of course here in Jersey, we're getting some biting cold weather. I went for a stroll in the morning and by the time I got back, the warm house was welcome. So what do we do when the weather is cold? We eat hot, comforting foods and think of warm places. Of course, these nice-eties are better with friends and can only be topped with more friends.
HOT POT WITH THE YUNGS
The Yungs are always so generous in welcoming us over and invited us again so we went over and shared a hot pot with them at their place. We used lots of fresh veggies, meat, homemade broth that Amy made and some pseudo meat. I say pseudo meat because we had fish balls, shrimp balls and this square tofu thing that I absolutely loved! The warm soup was so welcome and we were so thankful that we were in the place to be able to eat until we're full and have leftovers, be withour friends and especially in this weather, stay warm. KUMBAYA.
Happy as a clam.
3-DOG-ORANGE POWDER DRINK
And a revisit to the 3-dog-orange powder drink, otherwise known as Samgyetang. Anna and I cooked Samgyetang for our husbands on saturday afternoon. It was freezing that day so it made for perfect timing. It was Anna's first time making Samgyetang and we got our hands into it right away...it being the chicken.
This was not Anna's favorite part, but what a trooper! We put two in a pot, each with a big and a small one and when it was time, we scooped them into smaller pots for serving because we have no big bowls at our house.
Tastes better that way anyways. :)
An hour and a half later, this is her perfect first chicken.
Mitch had his own idea of "samgyetang". He was enjoying the soup like all of us, but after we were all done eating, we peered into his pot and he had shreds of chicken and rice...no bones! He took them all out first and his chicken soup looked delicious .
TLC BBQ CHICKEN
More chicken! but this time, it was for dinner this week which turned out successful on the husband approval scale. It was a slow cooked bbq chicken which was simmered in Coors Light from 11 am till when Kee came home which left the meat was falling off the bones and so tender. The beer acts as a tenderizer and burns off by the time it's eaten. Coors Light, Bar B Q sauce from Texas (Saltlick), a few veggies and some other goodness to spice it up, and you got yourself a happy camper who has three servings! When things are made with some TLC, you can never go wrong. This bad boy was served up with some jasmine rice, chipotle spiced kidney beans and homemade slaw. :)
CABO CAKE
and of course, we want to wish a very happy birthday to Janet Paik! We had some excellent Indian Food in hackensack and went to her house. Anna, Mitch, Kee and I worked on whisking some whipped cream by hand together earlier in the day and iced the cake with some homemade whipped cream, the cream of janet's choice. :) In the last posting, Janet and Jason were off in Cabo so the cake was Cabo-themed to draw out their vacation a little longer. So in honor of that, we had crashing waves, a sandy beach and a sunset. The original idea was to write "Happy Birthday Janet" in the sand like someone would with their finger, but it wouldn't hold, so we used the whipped cream to write, and of course a tropical vacation is not complete without the sunset! So for the cake inside, it was swirled with sunset colors, so when it was cut, WALLAH!...sunset.
Coming up next, we're going out to Flushing,NY this saturday with some friends to a place called Nan Xiang which is known for soup dumplings. This place was featured on Anthony Bourdain and these things are supposed to be better than Joe's Shanghai. I hear that these will get ranked higher than my husband on a list of most importants like this:
1. Jesus.
2. Nan Xiang
3. husband
but I don't know, my husband is pretty up there. Stay tuned!
Bon Appetite!
FY
