Christmas 2015 Recap - Ribs and Dim Sum

The holidays are great because I get days off work and so does everyone else so we can get together more often. There's always good food involved.

Appetizers with cheeses, sweet potato chips, seasoned nuts, oatmeal cookies, and lots of sparkling ciders.

I mean, look at this prime rib.

And these garlic prawns.

And this whole spread.

If you're Asian, there is often dim sum the morning following a big holiday dinner. I don't know why, but it just is. We went to Koi Palace for some yummy eats.

Their main dining area has such a great ceiling art piece

Shrimp rolls

Chicken feet, plain bun, soup dumplings, and sauteed pea shoots

Xiao Long Bao always!

Waited until after Christmas to finally take the kid for a tree photo at Santana Row. Best decision ever. No parking hassle, no lines, no crowd.

My friend made us a very legit lasagna dinner at her place and we got to check out her floor to ceiling Christmas decorations. Ah #homedecorgoals

She still kept some arts and crafts projects that I made for her when we were in 8th grade. It was so long ago, I can't believe I made these! and I'm so touched she kept them.

I cross stitched these Precious Moments characters from a pattern book onto blank cross stitch fabric. I think I had to really count the squares and map it out because this is not a pre-printed pattern. Then I stitched everyone's names, added a decorative border, measured out the fabric to make a book cover, sewed the cross stitch onto the book cover, and then finished wrapping the book. It's a lot of work for a middle schooler.

Another year, I was still in a cross stitching phase and I bought these polar bear ornaments. I think this was a pre-made pattern so I just stitched by colors according to directions.

I'm most proud of this gift I gave her. It's an egg that I poked a hole in at the top and bottom then blew out the egg contents. Then I glued ribbon and flowers on and tied a little bow. So simple but so elegant. Each of my friends at the time got one in a different color. There were only a handful of these in existence and I'm glad she kept hers!

Balsam Hill Tree Lot Christmas Event - Burlingame

This year is a year of brand new things for the blog as I begin to branch out to topics other than food. Among those things is how I gear up for my favorite holiday of the year, Christmas. I recently attended an exclusive blogger event by Balsam Hill Tree Lot in Burlingame for the opening of their show room. Balsam Hill makes high end artificial trees and they look so real! It was a fun filled and family oriented event. I brought my friend Tran along since I knew she loves home decor and she would appreciate all the things we would see.

We both signed up for the wreath decorating contest. We spent the first half of the event munching on snacks, drinking wine, and feasting our eyes on all the Christmas galore of the show room gathering inspiration.

These trees are so much lovelier than the $7 clearance tree I bought from Target one year and decided never to decorate my house again.

Ornament lane was filled with even more trees of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. They were decorated with even more options in colored lights and ornaments. Nothing gets me in the Christmas spirit more than lights. Before the wreath decorating contest started, there was a raffle drawn where I won this cute white table top tree.

After gathering inspiration around the show room, we were given a quick demo by Brad Schmidt, an award winning decorator. He whipped this elegant wreath up in less than 30 minutes.

These were a few of the ornaments at our disposal to decorate the California Baby Redwood wreath.

Then it was Ready, Set, Decorate for 45 minutes!

Photos from Balsam Hill

Before the judges revealed the winning wreath, the children presented their own small wreaths. It was so cute!

I didn't win but I was still very proud of my wreath. Here it is!

Photos by Balsam Hill

My inspiration for the wreath was the color scheme of my house and what's trendy. The theme in my house is brown and blues against all our stark white walls. I thought the ornaments went well with the theme. The gold ribbons added a variety of texture to the wreath and a pop of color. Following the demonstration from Brad Schmidt, I made one big bow on top and two smaller ones at the bottom to balance. The silver leaves were sprinkled in to fill out the wreath. When it's plugged in with the white lights, the whole wreath just looks amazing in my house.

You can view more about this event on Balsam Hill's blog. Thanks again to Balsam Hills for this wonderful opportunity. It's a great brand with quality products and the tree lot has a family oriented environment. I also love that it's as close as Burlingame. Had a blast, hope to be invited back next year too!

Thanksgiving 2015 Recap - Three dinners and a Turkey Trot

Did everyone have a great Thanksgiving? It's a great time for food with family and friends even though many have come to view Thanksgiving as a pre-Christmas. Our life with baby now means Thanksgiving is slightly different than last year. Less Black Friday shopping and more time relaxing at home. Or in our cases, recovering from colds. We did brave the actual weather cold and ran the 10K Silicon Valley Turkey Trot this year. Our times were slow of course. Everyone is out of shape but this was more running than I had done in a while so I'm still proud.

The wee one came out as a reindeer.

Dinner with the In-Laws

Not pictured. No one took any pictures before we ate. Trust me, it happened and it was delicious.

Friendsgiving

I was very impressed with the food at Friendsgiving. It's hard to believe that it was prepared by mostly males. *clap clap*

Juicy steak

Pesto pasta with sausages

Alfredo pasta with chicken

Ribs, yum

Guacamole made fresh

Potato casserole. It's like scalloped potatoes but with mashed potatoes underneath

Kale chips

I brought some Blue Isle spread that I recently received. Review to come in a later post.

Thanksgiving dinner with my family

I made a rib roast with my own spice rub.

I thought it came out a perfect medium rare but my mom thought otherwise. She cut it up into very small thin slices and then microwaved it. (insert side eyes emoji here) sigh...

Green beans and garlic

Salad

Vietnamese goi salad with pickled carrots, cucumbers, and pork belly

Thanksgiving 2013 + New Video up on the Youtube Channel

 Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break. It's okay to let the memories of heart warming food shared with family and friends linger a bit as we dip our toes back into reality. Here are my memories.

Brussells Sprouts with Pancetta

Turkey

I made cranberry sauce from scratch for the first time without having ever tasted cranberry sauce from scratch made by anyone else anywhere else. It was tart.

 I mixed in a can of that high fructose corn syrup processed cranberry sauce that we all know and love. It helped a little. Cranberry sauce from scratch is probably one thing I don't need to deal with again next Thanksgiving.

Ngockers' plate

Make way for the diva

 A little game called Hallway Bowling.

A family friend caught a striped bass while fishing and gave it to my parents which my dad turned into this monstrous thing crusted with peanuts, stuffed with woodear mushrooms and glass noodles, roasted on a tray with shredded jicama.The things my dad makes are so far outside the box, the box is just a dot to him. And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Did anyone see my version of the Croque Madame I posted on Instagram? It's embarrassing. Why am I from this lineage?

The fish meat gets put into a spring roll and then its quite wonderful.

Cornish game hen lookin like a quadruple of hoes twerkin

 I made roasted cornish game hen for the first time without ever having eaten cornish game hen anywhere. Obviously did not learn my lesson from the cranberry sauce. It's basted with a soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, and butter mixture. They just taste like chicken.

 Cornish game hen stuffing tastes like regular turkey stuffing

---

I spent my summer in a very creative way, preparing for the launch of my Youtube channel. I was intent on not vlogging and not showing myself eating food. I'm not sure what I'm going to put on my channel, so far it's been stuff like this. This footage of Santana Row was filmed before the Campbell Farmers Market, The Weekend shoe video, and the IKEA video.