Sweet Pea Journey

Life Goes on

After the major move, my fig trees (or more appropriately, I should call them my parents’ fig trees, since now they are the ones mainly taking care of them) went through a really terrible phase of life. At one point I thought the move, the new environment, the lack of sun light due to large mature trees everywhere, the heavy rains and the drastic temperature drop for a couple of weeks killed these delicate trees.

But, the sun came back peeking through the leaves this past weekend, guess what I found? What a wonderful surprise? Life goes on, the rain, the cold, the new environment, the lack of sunlight may knock us down temporarily, but we can bounce back, always.

 

Halloween Fest

Maybe it’s me, this year, the festival isn’t as extravagant as the ones before. But it didn’t stop kids have fun!

Yep, there is a tiny little dog…Jade is holding…

Can you find the cute little faces?

Birthday Bowling

My baby girl turned 6! We went bowling, one of her new favs, with her besties! I couldn’t resist but getting her a fancy unicorn cake, which matches her fancy unicorn cup my dear super gifted friend Steph made her (my son got an amazing batman one too)

Bowling wise, kids team did amazing, adults, not so much.. go figure..

Cake time as usual, one of the most exciting time.

J has been crazy over these hatchamal thingie, she was hoping tooth fairy would get her some and wanted the giant egg for her birthday. I couldn’t say no to that.

Happy kids, happy parents!

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

Hunger Game time!

I went to one of the meet up groups this past weekend, and shot some compound bow. Weather was nice, cool, slightly breezy, may or may not helped my aim. Nice grouping, that’s what I was told by the organizer Jennifer. I will take that any day, considering I am still half handicapped with my left wrist, I am pretty proud of myself.

It felt great having some fun, making new friends. You should try it some time too.

Chicken Casserole Rice, Sort of

My daughter just had 3 teeth pulled. I made something soft, nutritious and tasty food that is least irritating to her gum.

So this is what I came up with – sort of a chicken casserole rice dish, whipped up on the whim.

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs, skin on, bone-in, that’s what I got, so don’t judge me. Feel free to use boneless skinless breast or thigh, all good.

1 medium onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 small head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 can of cream of chicken

salt to taste

1 tsp dried parsley

2 cups of rice

 

Method:

Fill a medium pot with water, boil chicken on high and turn heat to medium after boiling. Don’t worry if you had a lot of water, you will use this broth to make rice.

Prep all veggies, clean, peel, dice up.

In a large pot, add 2 tbsp oil, put on high heat. Add onions and stir till onions are softened. Then add broccoli and carrot. Sprinkle some salt to help veggies soften.

Add 2 cups of rice, stir for a minute or two to taste rice. Fish out chicken and put on a cutting board to cool. Dump all broth into rice pot. Add chicken bouillon cube, stir, cover and lower heat to medium. Boil rice for about 15 minutes. Make sure there is enough liquid, if not, add water to at least cover rice by 1 inch.

While the chicken is cooling, I was digging around in the pantry to see what I had on hand to thicken the rice a bit in the end, something that will make it a bit creamy. Since I didn’t want to add too much cheese into it – I know, I am Asian, didn’t grow up on cheese, sorry. I found a can of cream of chicken.

 

After I chopped up chicken, roughly 15 minutes into cooking rice, I added the cream of chicken into rice, and filled up the can with water twice, and dumped water into the pot too. Mix the cream of chicken into rice.

Add all chicken, I actually threw the bones and skin back into the rice for flavor. In the end I will fish these out and discard. Mix well, add dried parsley. Taste for salt and doneness of rice. I added about 1 more tsp of salt.

My rice was cooked through, but still got a bit of a bite to it. I want the rice to be quite soft so it is really easy for kids to eat, especially my daughter at the moment, until she feels better. So I killed the heat, put the lid on the pot and let the residual heat to keep cooking the rice and the rice will soak up more juices.

 

Fresh Peach Cobbler – The Best!

This is a quick and easy, super tasty dessert. If you have super ripe fresh peaches on hand, you are in luck!

I happened to have 3 different kinds of peaches on hand, quite ripe. I had 4 medium size southern peaches, 1 large white peach and 1 donut peach left (check these donut peaches out, if you haven’t tries these, super kid friendly!) They are all about to be overly ripe, so I decided to make this amazingly good fresh peach cobbler.

 

Ingredients:

about 6 peaches, peeled, cored and sliced

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar + 3/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

6 tbsp butter

2 tbsp cinnamon + 2 tbsp sugar, make cinnamon sugar mix

 

Method:

Prepare peaches, peeled, cored, sliced and dump into a medium sauce pan. Add 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 tsp salt, stir peaches on medium heat for a couple of minutes until sugar dissolves and peach releases juices. Set aside to cool.

Slice butter into a 9 x 13 pan, scatter butter patties and put pan into oven. Heat oven to 350F. Melt butter while oven heats up. In the mean time, combine flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt in a large mixing bowl. Add milk and mix till just combined.

Take baking dish with melted butter out of oven. Pour flour mixture into baking dish, spread around, roughly even out. Spoon peach over batter, evenly cover, pour juices over peaches. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar mix over peaches.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Cool slightly, serve warm alone, or, to kick it up a notch, add a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and insert a sprig of mint for garnish. Enjoy!

Pool League Recruit

I am not a professional pool player by any means, not a dark horse either, simply a newbie, trying to have some fun. From time to time, I can shoot an awesome combo, or a bank shot, which would surprise myself, but quite often, I will mess up the easiest shots, because my right arm is not steady enough yet.

Funny thing the other night, when I went with my pool league friends to have some fun watching the pros play, I played a couple of game prior to the league game started. The opponent team captain came to me and insisted to ask me to play with them because they were one player short.

If I said no, their team will forfeit and have 0 points recorded for the night. Reluctantly, I said yes, so a newbie like me had to play against my friends all night. The result? You can imagine, I lost all the way around, but, I made average 4, maybe 5 balls per game. I am still pretty darn proud of myself!

At the end of the night, the captain of the team I played for pushed really hard to recruit me to join her team permanently. I was so flattered. I declined their offer in the end, but I will keep practicing, you never know, I may become next Xiaoting Pan one day 🙂

Rice Festival

So many festivals lately, holiday atmosphere in the air!!

We went to the Rice Festival. Kids had a blast, so did the adults!

Unfortunately I only had pictures of one activity taken, since mom had her hands full the whole entire time. But we had so much fun! Live music, food stands, merchants, carnival… Kids loved carnival the most of course, from crazy spinning things, to ferris wheel, to police officer dunking, to ping-pong ball throwing to win bunnies, to baseball throwing… I still can’t stop smiling just thinking about how much fun we had today.

Wish they keep that smile on their faces their entire lives, genuinely happy and worry free.

Big Z’s Hair Cut, Big J’s Trim

It’s hair cut time again, especially for my big boy Z. I have been cutting his hair in the backyard the entire time, but this time, with all the moves, I can’t access the hair trimmer easily, I took him to a hair cut place. It’s officially his first time, even though he did go once when he was around 1, he did not really let the hair cut to complete, so that doesn’t count.

Big Z is my super happy, super sweet big boy, couldn’t stop giggling, because the hair trimmer was tickling his neck and ears.

Big sister had a regular hair trim. You guessed it, I normally do her hair trim as well, at home. But why not, I’d love her to have some professional service too.

Just in time for school pictures next week too! Can’t wait to see those pictures!