Ladybug Gift Decor

I got my friend a little gift for her "BIG THREE-OH". The store clerk put a ribbon on the box, but it just looked so plain. So I added a ladybug sitting on a leaf to the ribbon. I made it out of felt and added the line and spots on it with black embroidery floss. I'm quite proud of the antennae I added to the head. That's also made of the embroidery floss.

Quail Eggs

I went home during the Labor Day weekend and guess what I had? Yup, quail eggs. My family has an aviary with parakeets and four little Button Quails that my brother got my sister for her birthday. One male quail with three females. My sister named them Hugh Heffner, Holly, Bridget, and Kendra. Cute, huh? So, when I went home, I checked on Hugh and his girls. Hee hee! I love saying that. I took a photo of two of the girls. Anyways, we don't know which ones are laying the eggs, but they've been laying these really cute speckled brown and blue eggs. My mom boiled them and I had a few. Just tasted like regular eggs.

Stirred Egg Soup

I made another Amy Kaneko recipe. The Stirred Egg Soup. I only skimmed the recipe and made a mistake of over-stirring the egg in the bowl and then stirring again in the pot. I knew I did it wrong immediately because it came out in clumps. The egg should have come in long thin strands. My mom makes a similar soup and she makes it in those long thin strands. Ooops. Well, the soup was still yummy. It's just chicken stock, salt to taste, a touch of sake, a lightly stirred egg, and chopped green onion. You can add sesame oil to it as well, but since I'm not to eat anything greasy or spicy this whole week, I didn't add it.

I'm doing okay since the food poisoning except when I eat. My body has rejected everything I've eaten so far. But I'm so hungry and need nutrition in me that I thought I would try this soup.

I fear that it was not successful... I can feel the pain and gurgling in my stomach... Wahh!! :(

Pain in My Tummy

That's me in the emergency room.

These little succulent morsels are probably what got me there. But we will never know for sure.

This is what I taught my hubby to make for me today. Okayu (rice porridge usually served when you're sick) with umeboshi (pickled plum).

Let's see... Without going into the embarassing details... On Monday starting after lunch and up through bedtime, my stomach wasn't feeling that great. Earlier that evening, we decided to go to Luka's Taproom and Lounge. We've been there a few times for only cockails. Our friends told us that you can get one dollar oysters every Monday there. So we decided to go and try their entrees as well. The entrees weren't good. But the oysters were so good. We ordered a half dozen more, in fact. Our only complaint was that they were not all consistent sizes. There were puny ones that should have only been charged fifty cents!

Then, the next day on Tuesday, my husband and I headed out to the city to check out the cute stores on Hayes St. in Hayes Valley and then go to the Giant Robot store in Haight-Ashbury. When we were shopping on Hayes St., I spotted Patxi's Chicago Pizza. I was so excited because my friend told me about how it's supposed to be the rival of East Bay's Zachary's Chicago Pizza. So, I wanted to try it. We went there around 3pm and ordered a slice each of the spinach and mushroom deep-dish pizza. It was a lot less gloppier than Zachary's. And I was able to taste the flavor of the spinach. Overall, it was good, but I think I still crave for Zachary's. I don't know what it is. I think I'll have to go to Zachary's and try again. Hee hee!

Oops. Better stop with the food commentary. So anyhow, maybe around 5pm when we were in Haight-Ashbury, I had to go to the bathroom. Didn't feel too urgent, but I had this pain in my stomach like the squeezing pain you get when you have the stomach flu. So, right then, I thought that something's not right with me. As we finally headed home, we made a stop at the San Francisco Shopping Center to use the restroom before hopping onto BART to head back to Oakland. The squeezing pain kept occuring once in awhile, but it was nothing compared to the urgency of needing a restroom once I was waiting for BART. I was so miserable on BART and then the walk back to the apartment was excruciating! Once I got to the apartment, I ran for the bathroom. After that was all over, that squeezing pain just became worse. It was sharp and would stab me several times and then stop for awhile and start again. It was worse than the pain from the flu. It was so bad that I felt the saliva coming to the sides of my mouth so that I felt like vomiting. So then, Hubby took me to the emergency room.

I was tested and asked questions by the nurses and the doctor. Basically he found nothing wrong with me. He said that it's one of those things where we will never know what it is that caused this. He said that it may be food poisoning even though Hubby ate everything I did. He said that it's normal to have a thousand people eating the same contaminated food and half the people would be fine and the other half get sick. So, I got 2 cold bags of fluids put in me since I was so dehydrated. He said that that would relieve the pain in my stomach since it was so empty. I feel a lot better today. I still get the squeezing pain once in awhile, but it's a lot tolerable. The funny thing is, my mother-in-law called yesterday before we headed out to the city to ask if we were feeling fine; she knew we had eaten oysters. She had heard that oysters were recalled in Washington so she was concerned for us. At the time she called, I was fine. Oh! Another funny thing is that while we were at ER, there was a 3.2 earthquake! The epicenter was right there in Oakland.

I emailed the friends who recommended Luka's Monday $1 Oysters and Patxi's pizza the photos of me in ER. Hee hee. Giving them a hard time for their recommendations. *wink wink* So, I think out of all the things we've had, it had to be the oysters. I don't think I'll have $1 oysters anymore. I'll only eat it if maybe I fish it out of clear waters myself during peak safe and yummy season. And no dolphin better have pee-ed on it!

My hubby just told me a funny thing. He said that he was worried for me because if anything were to happen to me last night, I wouldn't have finished "Harry Potter". Hahahahaha! Yes, he is so right!

Ici Ice Cream

I've passed by this ice cream store several times on my way to a pet bird store on the same street. It's very cute and I always check to see what flavors they have. It's by a Chez Panisse protege named Mary Canales. They have sorbets and ice creams with adventurous flavors like habenero or raspberry lemon and verbena. She uses fresh, in season ingredients so it's constantly changing. It's a bit pricey but the sign says that the ice cream is made there on site. There's always a customer in there getting ice cream. This time, my husband and I couldn't ignore it. We saw many people walking around with ice cream in their hands and the line was going out the door. And it was such a beautiful warm day - perfect ice cream weather. So, when we passed by it a second time, we stood in line. Maybe it's because I will finally start working soon that splurging on fancy handmade ice cream didn't seem like a bad idea. I only later remembered to take a photo of the ice cream. That's why the ice cream is half eaten. I got green tea flavor. Not an original flavor but my test was to see if she gets it right. It didn't have the typical matcha color but the flavor and texture was spot on. Yum!! And I got mine on a cone. The cone had a surprise for me. There was chocolate at the end of it. Hubby got candied lime and orange ice cream. I had a taste and it was too tart for me, but he liked it. I'll definitely try other flavors again especially since it didn't give me a stomachache. *Wink* Check out the review and photos of the beautiful ice cream creations on Yelp.com. Just type in "Ici" and it's located in Berkeley.

Gyoza, Potstickers, Dumplings, Whatever... They're just yummy!

Hello. I'm back. The gyoza came out good. Normally, I don't make it for lunch. I had the stuffing all ready for dinner but when I opened my package of gyoza skin, it had gone bad. Oops! So I bought a pack yesterday and made it just earlier today for lunch. I always like to make extra and freeze it so I can have it as my lunch or dinner or those days when you have unexpectant friends over and want to entertain them. I learned how to make gyoza from my mom. So the basic ingredients and procedure is my mom's way, but I like to experiment with the recipe sometimes especially when I find gyoza recipes in other places. For today's gyoza recipe, approximately...

1/2 head of small cabbage, chopped fine to medium
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
4 stalks of green onion, chopped
1 tsp. butter
1/2 pound ground pork, the fatty kind from the Asian market
1/2 pound ground chicken
1 Tbsp. grated ginger
1 Tbsp. grated garlic
1 egg
1 Tbsp. oyster sauce
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. chili-garlic sauce
salt and pepper
2 packets of Japanese brand gyoza wrappers

In a wok or frying pan, I sautee the onion in butter and then add the cabbage and green onion. I then add the salt and pepper to taste. I move it away from the hot burner and let it cool down. While it's cooling, I mix together the ground meats, ginger, garlic, egg, oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce and the chili-garlic sauce. You can add more salt or pepper if you want. But with the soy sauce and the oyster sauce, it should be enough. And even if the gyoza filling is not as flavorful as you would have liked, it's alright because you normally dip the dumpling in a sauce anyways. After you make your meaty filling, add the cooled veggie filling to it. If you still really care about how the filling tastes, just boil some water and drop a ball of the filling in it to cook, then eat it to see if you like it.

Now, filling the wrapper... Get a little bowl with some water in it. Using a regular spoon, put a dollop of the filling in the middle of the wrapper. Then, with your finger, wet your finger with that bowl of water and run it all the way along the edge of the wrapper. Now, fold up one half of the wrapper so that it looks like a taco. Pleat one end of the .... Forget it... Just get the plastic gyoza wrapping tool. It's too difficult to explain. Note: I use the Japanese brand gyoza wrappers because that's what I grew up with and the thick wrappers I find to be too doughy for my taste. It's funny, when I was little, I hated the gyoza wrapper, I would peel it off and dip the filling in the sauce and eat it.

Now, the cooking part. I butter the frying pan on high heat, put as many as I can on there, and listen for the sizzle. The bottom should brown a little bit. I then pour about a third cup of water and bring the heat to medium. I then cover it and listen for the sizzle sound again. That's when a lot of the water has cooked off. I take off the cover and put it back on high heat and watch the rest of the water cook off and the gyoza bottom to brown a bit more and become crunchy. Mmmm!!! And when you serve the gyoza, it should be crunchy side up so that it stays that way.

For the sauce, I just mix together grated ginger, lemon juice (or rice vinegar), ichimi tongarashi, ra-yu (chili oil), sesame oil, and soy sauce. All to taste. My mom normally has the ingredients for the sauce out on the dinner table and we each make our own sauce in our dipping bowl the way we like it. A cultural difference I noticed... My family usually has salad or sesame flavored spinach on the side with a bowl of rice... But my husband, being Chinese American, is getting used to the Japanese way of having a bowl of rice with those dumplings. I guess my husband eats those dumplings by itself.

So that's how I make them. Yum!

Mmm... Pork Chops... Arglll...

Last weekend, we had a dinner and board game night at our place. I made this whole Italian dinner. I made chicken parmesan that came out juicy as usual, fiery lemon angel hair pasta, balsamic glazed chicken wings, basil pesto and sundried tomato pesto for smearing onto bread, salad with salami and red onion, and zuppa toscana with toasted garlic naan seasoned with dried thyme, butter, olive oil, and sea salt. Most of these recipes are from Food Network's Giada De Laurentiis. The chicken parm is not quite Giada's anymore. It's a smorgasbord of different recipes. Oh! And the zuppa toscana is from my brother. He found it online where they have recipe copies of restaurant dishes. So this is the one you can find at Olive Garden. It's super easy. And it was one of people's favorites at the dinner and game night. ... I can't believe I didn't take a photo!! ARG!!

But I did take a photo of the pork chops I made two nights ago. It finally came out just right! It's my mom's dishes that is one my favorites. All you do is get thin-cut or regular cut pork chops with the bone in it. You sprinkle both sides of of the chop with garlic salt. Then broil it until the top side looks cooked. I don't know for how long. I just turn on the oven light and look in. Then I flip it over and drizzle a little sake (1 tsp.) and soy sauce (1 Tbsp.) on each chop. I broil it a little more until it's not pink anymore and then add chopped green onions on each one and another drizzle of soy sauce. Cook a bit more until it looks fully cooked. Then eat.

Well, I'm off to make gyoza for lunch. I'll post that soon.