Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Author: Sweet Pea

Home Sweet Home

Home is Where Your Heart is

Been thinking about this a lot for the past year, quite literally.

A roof over the head is a house, not home. It can be a giant mansion, with 50 rooms and 40 bathrooms (not that I have one), it can feel like an empty box that drains every last bit of breath out of you.

A home is a shelter, a harbor, where your heart belongs, where your mind and soul can be at ease without agitation, relax without stress, trust without doubt, can heal without fear.  A home is where you can be yourself without being judged, cheated, criticized. A home is where your heart longs to go.

To many, I am in a very bad place in my life, rock bottom perhaps. To me, I am in a much better place than past few years. I am so much happier, learning to trust, learning to give my all again, learning to let go, even though I have to peel the scars to remember the wound more frequently than I’d like to. But I laugh from my heart now, mostly cry happy tears, I feel much stronger, much safer. I mean, seriously, I got a metal plate and 8 screws in my wrist to reinforce it now!

Sure, the definition of a home is different from a man and a woman. Don’t judge me for not having an ambitious dream, I am an independent woman, but a home for me is where I can feel safe, feel happy, I have strong shoulders to lean on when I feel weak, I have a light house in the storm without having a trace of doubt in my mind.

I can’t wait to have kids, strong shoulders and all the 4-legged goofballs all together and finally have my forever home.

 

 

 

Life and random things

Bye Bye Giant Splint, Hello Physical Therapy!

Freedom! My left elbow screams; Ahhhh… that’s me, finally able to scratch my left forearm. :p

Bulky splint off, I took a good look at the damage. Still bruised, still swollen, stitches are about 3 inches long, gauze had a giant blood stain covering my palm and wrist. I guess I should have expected that with that big of an incision.

My arm and hand was all orange from the iodine and I am sure I will end up shedding a couple of layers of skin. My skin feels funny when I touched it, felt like there is a plastic layer on top of my real skin, my elbow was so fixed in a small range of angle, it hurt a lot trying to straighten out, and I was subconsciously holding my elbow in the same angle range.

But, this is a new step for me, recovery is well on the way! After this new splint specially molded for me by the physical therapist Mary (super super nice lady, by the way), I was ready to take on the challenge to get my full motion and strength back!

Went to see my PA for post operation visit. To my surprise, I actually have 8 screws and a plate in my wrist, instead of 6. I only counted 6 from the x-ray pictures from the surgery. This time, from a different angle, I realized my left wrist is indeed a pin cushion :p It’s amazing how many screws a hand / wrist surgeon can fit onto a small piece of bone!

For everyone out there, if you never broke a bone, try your best not to. This isn’t fun, it hurts, it’s inconvenient, I felt like a burden to people around me and it’s frustrating that simple daily tasks became almost impossible. Enjoy healthy days, be grateful with what you have!

If you have suffered from any sort of injury, or if you are going through one, like me, please do realize, people who are helping you, even with the smallest things, they don’t really have to. Be thankful, be grateful, and most importantly, realize, it will get better, you will be stronger. Hey, you never know what trick you can figure out making things work with your difficulty.

It’s quite inspiring the other day, I found a young lady on YouTube who lost her entire left arm, showing others how she achieve daily tasks with one arm. It made me feel really bad for her, but really proud of her at the same time. I injured my left wrist, she has no left arm. She is able to do a lot herself, showing others who may have similar difficulties her tricks and experiences how to make life easier. I nearly cried at the end of the video, I thought, whenever we think we have it hard, there are always others who have it harder out there and making it work, without complaints. Hats off to those truly strong people, who have positive attitude towards life and any obstacles in life.

Let’s all conquer whatever life throws at us, one step at a time, one day at a time!

 

Life and random things

Parrot Friend

Who knows! Took a stroll in the park and made a new friend – a double yellow headed amazon parrot, an endangered parrot. This little guy is 14 months old, and can live up to 80 years! It’s amazing to know he will out live me.

An older couple have this parrot and his girl friend as pets. They also are fostering a giant but very sick German Shepard. She is recovering from heart worm, and her original owner has Alzheimer, and forgot her in the backyard before she got heart worms. She is skin and bone but very sweet.

Yes, this world is still full of good people.

Cooking

Yellow Curry Chicken and Vegetables

Finally, I tackled yellow curry – one of the favorite Thai food. It’s amazingly easy to make and tasty, you should try this at home too. Because I chose the cheat version, using store bought yellow curry paste, it’s actually a very easy one pot dish to make, and clean up is a breeze.

Ingredients:

3 skinless bone in chicken thighs, cut off most meat from bone, cut into bite size pieces, save bones to add flavor. I did not do anything for this step, only because I still don’t trust my left hand enough to handle cutting meats into smaller pieces.

1 white rose potato, this is highly recommended, just for the texture in the curry. You want the potato to thicken up the curry a bit but still want to be able to enjoy the potatoes, not mashed potatoes.

1 medium to large size red potato, totally optional but I like the color added to the dish

half of a large onion or a medium one, cut into chunks

half of a green bell pepper, only because I had a half in the fridge.

1 carrot, cut into bite size pieces

2 tbsp yellow curry paste, I used a store-bought canned paste.

1 can of coconut milk, not cream, not oil

2 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of fish sauce

salt to taste

 

Method:

Put a medium size sauce pan on high heat, pour in half a can of coconut milk, bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium and let coconut milk bubble away. If you are lucky, the coconut milk you bought may separate to have a layer of coconut oil on top. If it doesn’t no big deal, pretend you didn’t see this from me and move on.

When the coconut milk is reducing, cut all vegetables into bite size pieces except for potatoes, to prevent them from oxidizing. Add yellow curry paste into the pan, and use a spatula to stir constantly to let yellow curry paste get toasted and well combined with the reduced coconut milk.

Add chicken pieces into the pot, bone and all, and stir until chicken pieces are well coated with curry mixture. Pour in the rest of the coconut milk and bring it to a boil. Don’t throw away the can just yet. Reduce the heat to medium and cook chicken to tender. I also threw in a bay leaf. About 15 minutes. Use this time to cut up potatoes.

Once chicken is cooked till tender, add all vegetables and the can of water to the pot, as usual, I threw in a chicken bouillon cube. Or you can add chicken broth instead. Make sure you have enough liquid to cover everything in the pot. Once it comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium to medium low and let it cook for another 10-15 minutes, lid off. That way extra liquid can evaporate and you don’t end up with super watery curry.

Stir occasionally and make sure all potatoes are submerged. Use this time to wash cutting board, knife, clean up the kitchen, or drink some coffee.

Once the potatoes are tender but not melted away yet, kill the heat, taste for seasoning. This step is crucial, this will fundamentally transform your yellow curry. I added quite a bit salt, a couple of tsp of sugar an a couple of dashes of fish sauce to achieve the final amazing taste, please don’t be fooled by the whole house of exciting curry smell when you cook it.

Serve over steamed rice, with loads and loads of potatoes and juices, you will definitely come back for more, a couple of times!

Cooking

Best Sausage Arugula Shell Pasta

After a whole week of recovering from my arm surgery, I took baby steps easing myself back into simple tasks, such as opening tea bags and folding laundry. Today, I attempted making a simple yet hearty meal for lunch, also testing recipes for when my babies return. I haven’t seen them for a long time, miss them so very much.

I have to say, this meal is the highlight of my past few days, and I was super excited, and of course, I over ate for lunch, again.

 

Did I mention this is super easy, one pot healthy, tasty and kid friendly meal? Here is how I made it. My apologies first, my left hand / arm still have very limited mobility, so I was nowhere near as fast or detail oriented as I would like to be, so I took the shortcuts where I could and did not take any pictures till the very end.

 

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, or 1 small one, diced. The half onion left in the fridge since who knows when has been bugging me royally, so of course I seized the first available opportunity to use it. It took me a while to dice it carefully, simply because I don’t have the firm grip from my left hand yet, so, slowly and carefully, I tackled the onion.

2 cloves of garlic, minced. You guessed it, I didn’t bother mincing garlic, I used about 1 tsp of garlic powder.

8 oz bulk sweet Italian sausage, or 2 links of Italian sweet sausage, casing removed.

About 4 cups of stock, as usual, I swapped with water and bouillon combo. I used 1 chicken cube and 1 beef cube to test the flavor, it worked beautifully.

8 oz of baby arugula, I bought a bag of baby arugula salad, which came with a bag of surprised corn kernels, of course I threw that in the pasta

1 squash, it was also bugging me, sitting in the fridge for a while, withering away, I couldn’t stand wasting fresh vegetables..so I diced it up, quarter inch thick, half moon or quartered to achieve roughly same size. Of course, broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, leeks…any vegetables would be fantastic option!

1 generous cup of dried small shell pasta. You can use any bite size pasta in your pantry. I would recommend something that has some curves, holes, ridges of some sort to grab on the delicious sauces and sausage meat in each bite, you would be pleasantly surprised how amazing this meal is.

Optional: shavings of Parmesan cheese.

 

Method:

I heated up about 1 tsp vegetable oil in a high sided pan. The reason is simple, I will be cooking the pasta in this pot, I want the least amount of liquid added possible to achieve maximum taste. Throw diced onions into the pot and soften for a couple of minutes. Then add fresh garlic, or garlic powder and cook for another 30 seconds or so.

Add sausages to onion mixture, use the spoon or spatula to break the sausages to smaller sizes, or to your liking. Lower the heat to medium, stir occasionally to brown the sausages well. The kitchen smells amazing at this point.

Once the sausages are browned, add the vegetables except for the arugula and half of the stock or water. I threw in the bouillon to let the cubes dissolve, raise the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Dump in the pasta and stir.

Lower heat to medium, stir occasionally to cook pasta gently. Add more liquid as needed, keep stirring, don’t walk away. After about 15 minutes, try pasta for doneness and seasoning. Mine was awesome, you can tell the shells grew in sizes and appear to be soft. Seasoning was spot on! After all, the sausages and bouillon are both quite salty. That’s why I never added any salt, can it be any easier?

Once pasta is done, kill the heat and fold in the arugula. It will look overwhelmingly much, but arugula will wilt to almost nothing, but add this subtle peppery yet sweet flavor to this dish. To me it is a must have ingredient.

Dish up, top with parm and enjoy!

Potential

Life and random things

Potential

It’s amazing how much human being can adapt to the environment. Granted, we get used to bigger houses, fancier cars, fatter wallets and name brands much quicker; but if needed, we can let go those luxuries and only focus in necessities.

For me, I am talking about adapting to not using my left hand for the past 5 days, and other things I needed to do to prevent my left hand getting too swollen. Today is my surgery day. I will have way more pain in the next few days, but I’m looking forward to remove this temporary cast all the way to above my elbow. Guess I will have at least another week that my left hand is no help.

But during these days, I see potential, things I would think I wouldn’t be able to do with one hand, I was able to find a way and do it. Not easy for sure, but there is always a way. Just like those unfortunate people losing arms or legs, they found a way to take care of themselves on a daily basis, I can too.

I want my kids to know, life is unpredictable, things can get difficult, sometimes even seem impossible, but we as human being, have tremendous potential, when there is a will, there is a way. We can get through anything, and come out the other side stronger.

Life and random things

One Handed Life

It’s been interesting few days since my left hand went out of commission.

The day of the accident and the day after were a big blur, combination of pain, exhaustion, not used to not able to use one hand, and not used to having to keep an area in front of my chest untouchable. It was a bit funny that I randomly go ouch…ahhhhh… and it seems the more I want to avoid touching my hurt hand, the more my good hand want to tease the hurt one.

Day 3 I learned to put my hair up in a bun with one hand, change clothing with one hand. Believe it or not, it’s not that easy when your elbow is fixed at 90 degrees and you want to try to avoid any contact between the t-shirt and the whole forearm. Here is another one, try put on a bra…haha, I did it, sort of, well, not correctly but no one would tell. I managed to blog with 1 hand, feeling funny because my fingers just doesn’t seem to be able to remotely keep up with my mind, and I have to take pauses and try to remember what I wanted to type.

Now I literally can’t do anything, and no need to worry about doing anything. I tried to look at the bright side and got excited about the “me time” and do some selfish things, just to make myself happy… First thing I thought about was to take some arts and crafts classes at Joanne’s… yeah right…ha ha, I forgot I kinda needed my left hand too!

Guess I can still take my time and do some household chores with one hand. At the end of the day, there are plenty calls I need to take and things I needed to sort out.

Going in for surgery tomorrow, then I will have metal inside of my wrist! Another first for me 🙂 smile on, things could be a lot worse, be grateful for what I have today 🙂

Life and random things

Crazy Two Weeks

Life has been pretty hectic for the past year. Things took another crazy turn in the past two weeks, I couldn’t help but wonder, what else should I be prepared for?

Mom has been in and out of different doctor’s offices, done all kinds of tests and exams, and finally ended up with a lung surgery and 3-day stay at the hospital. I stayed with her the whole time, watched her going through all kinds of pain that still makes me cringe just thinking about it. Dad was feeling just as helpless, tried to talk about random things to mom and get the pain off her mind. But nothing really worked. How could it work when you have over a foot long, half-inch diameter hard plastic tube through your skin into your chest for 48 hours, while have about 7 other lines hooked you to some sort of bags, containers or machines? That was 3 long days…doctors, nurses, physicians in and out of her room every 15 minutes or so, no rest, no break, needles, more x-rays, breathing tests…part of her lung was removed, lung cancer…she kept coughing blood, pressing on the tube, holding onto it when she needed to adjust how she was laying in bed, pain was all over her face.

Finally, she was discharged from the hospital. I was super excited. After past 3 weeks of craziness, I could finally see my little munchkins too! Even though it is only 24 hours, it felt like Christmas! Who knows, 10 minutes after I had them, I was involved in a car accident. A few hours after we spent 3 days in the hospital, I ended up riding EMS back to emergency room and had a temporary cast on my wrist for my broken arm. Just like that, my left hand is out of commission for about 3 months. After having the kids checked out by the nurse practitioner, I called their dad to keep them. Our short reunion became even shorter.

I’m not here to complain about life or pain. All that has happened got me thinking life is unpredictable. Anything could happen. I wonder what was going through my mom’s mind when she gave me the strong squeeze on my hand as she was being pushed into operation room and I had to stay, she must be scared to death. I calmed the kids down and kept telling them everything is going to be ok, didn’t even realize my left wrist already deformed, until my daughter saw blood dripping off from my thumb. All I cared about was the kids being ok, until I was strapped down in the EMS. 3 more accidents on the same road, on my way to the ER. First time riding in EMS, don’t remember much of my pain, just worried about the kids.  I will have a plate inserted into my wrist in a couple of days. Anything could happen in a blink of the eye. What was the last memory you made with the loved ones? If life ends today, would you regret not telling them you love them, would you regret keep putting off that trip to the park, or making their favorite food they have been asking for? Would you regret having that meaningless argument, or not hugging them and squeeze them?

What else should I be prepared for isn’t the right question. The right question should be, would I regret not doing what I could have done for my loved ones, if life ends today?

 

Life and random things

Birthday Thoughts

Yes, I am one year older today. To me, it’s just another day.

Woke up to a wonderful birthday wish, put a big smile on my face. I carried on with fresh ingredients shopping for dinner deliveries tonight. Most dishes are slow cooked hearty options.

For some strange reason, I love ingredients shopping the day of. I know this could end up a disaster and doesn’t make sense cost wise. But I find it therapeutic. It’s my “happy hour”. Today, just like the past few days, I was humming my new favorite song in my head, picking out the best ingredients I could get my hands on, and feeling the weird satisfaction. I can’t stop my brain constantly thinking what I can make later, searching for inspirations. I never really put this much thoughts into my desk job before.

I am turning 38 today, it’s funny, because it’s such a large number that I almost forgot, had to think which year this is, and back calculate if I was 38 or 39. Guess there is no need to rush to next birthday! I have probably been through half of my life already. WOW! Looking back, a lot has happened, I am sure there are plenty more to go. I am very happy where I am at today. Things could be better a lot of the times, but everything had to happen in this way, in this order, for me to be where I am today, meet everyone I have met and keep in contact with everyone I do.

I keep reminding myself, especially when I go through a hard time about something, it has to happen this way. I try to focus on what’s my take away from it, and what could I do better next time to avoid being hurt, or hurting others. I have done a lot of thinking. For the past half of my life, have I been doing what I love, or did I settle in something everyone else does, or just because I needed to make a living? Was I too scared of losing the comfort and keep doing something I was OK with but not passionate about?

I am scared to take leaps, scared of changes, scared to say thank you but no to opportunities to possibly get back into the warm blanket of writing procedures and getting my pay checks. Certainly, there are other reasons why it would not be my option anyway. But I didn’t have to invest my time and effort taking this chance to dive into cooking. I knew I could cook, but I was always second doubting myself, yeah they tell me it’s good, probably because they want to be nice. I am so happy I did. I feel happy and appreciated, and it’s so rewarding when total strangers tell me they love my food and come back and want more. I am so happy little kids says my lamb is delicious! Everyday, these comments put a huge smile on my face.

I know a lot of people around me couldn’t believe that I earned my Master’s degree in Engineering, worked for over a decade in Oil and Gas as an engineer, this is what I am doing. I know it’s hard for the mind to change, I grew up in this culture too. If you don’t have a desk and a computer at work, you are a failure. But, should I live up to other’s people’s expectation and not to be excited about what I do everyday, or should I do what makes me happy and feeling great? I never really put any thoughts to this. I was so busy making ends meet and making others proud. A lot of us are living this life today. With all the extra time I have for thinking nowadays, I choose the latter.

This is my life, I need to find what makes me happy. I don’t want to look back in another 38 years, and say, I was never passionate about what I do.

Life and random things

Feeling Great!

Finally doing what I love – cooking.

Business took off, got crazy busy a few times. Learned tons. Right now, it’s 2 pm, smelling red wine braised oxtail bubbling away in the oven, I finally sat down since 7 am, shoved some leftover fried rice into my empty stomach. I literally haven’t eaten since yesterday morning. So weird, I don’t even feel hungry! But my fried rice from last night still tastes pretty darn good! I feel great!

It is hard work, no doubt about that, but the feeling of accomplishment and appreciation is priceless. I have got tons of feedback on how tasty my home cooked meal was, it brings a HUGE smile onto my face. What can I say, I don’t need a window seat, I don’t miss my desk job, when my cooking makes others happy, I am happy!