Austin Day Trip

This was an impromptu trip to Austin back in March 2014. No research done whatsoever.
We were supposed to visit my husband's friend who came from Malaysia for business trip. "Sadly", his friend 'ffk' us for shopping in outlet-mall and strip club. Oh yeah...thanks to his "ffk" friend, I get to visit Austin!

We started our visit to the infamous 6th Street, a "must see street" in Austin. I seriously didn't know what to expect.

Perhaps we came at the wrong time, it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, coincidentally the last week of the SXSW, I think everyone must be sleeping still from the heavy partying.

We stopped for lunch at Iron Cactus, last minute decision for some Tex-Mex food. 

                           

From the restaurant, we walked to the Texas State Capitol. Till today, I always forget that Austin is the capital of Texas. 

Sixth String - Doesn't this remind you of Hard Rock Cafe?

The Woman who saved Austin - Angelina Beverly.

Tada! Texas State Capitol. Does this remind you of the United States Capitol at Washington DC?

Exterior of the Texas State Capitol

Interior of the Texas State Capitol. Beautiful!

I mean look at the design, even the door hinges are gorgeous! Admission is free.

   

20 minutes away from Austin downtown, we headed to Covert Park at Mount Bonnell. 

After some 50 steps uphill, voila, breath-taking view! Imagine waking up everyday to awesome views, wouldn't it be nice to own a house by the lake?

Beautiful scenic drive along beautiful houses and lake.

Then we drove another 20 minutes to Oasis on Lake Travis for panoramic Tex-Mex sunset. 

We were still stuffed from our heavy lunch, so, we just went for the view :) breathtaking right? 

Lastly, we visited Whole Food's flagship store at Austin, because hubby loves everything about Whole Foods!

My first American Meal

This post is abit outdated, it's now March 2014, and I have been in USA for about 3 months plus...
But can you guess what was my first meal when I arrived in America? It was The Cheesecake Factory!!
I've always wanted to try/eat the cheesecake here after learning about this delicious food chain from the drama sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory', and from numerous friends who said their cheesecakes were to die for...

Finally, my dreams came true....I finally tried it! I ordered the recommended Toasted Marshmallow S'mores Galore, and had my dessert first. It was so sweet, rich, and that felt really fattening.

After a few bites, I was feeling full and had little room in my stomach for mains, Shrimp with Angel Hair and Warm Asparagus Salad.

While stuffing myself silly with cake, I realized, American food are big in taste, meaning their food are rich in taste, meaning if I ate something that is sweet, it has got to be 10 times sweeter than what I would averagely eat. That supports my theory too, because whenever I bake a cake following an American recipe, I have to cut down the sugar.
So can you imagine how their appetizer/mains were? Super Tasty! Delicious! Explosion of taste buds! I'm not sure if that's good for health.

Their price are ok, not too expensive....It's definitely a treat to come eat at The Cheesecake Factory, so if I have visitors, this is definitely a to-go-to place :)

By the way, talking about tasty, do you think they use ajinomoto?

St Paddy Day Spring Clean for GRRH

To past my time in Houston as a housewife, I've been volunteering for Golden Retriever Rescue of Houston since January 2014. Lately, my volunteer work has picked up more workload as I'm helping a lady in the vet coordination duties. It's interesting to see the rescue's dedication to saving a stray's life, no matter the cost or effort. I've come across a few cases of stray golden retriever that have lumps on their body, and it may be cancerous, but the rescue are willing pay/do whatever it takes to keep them alive and well, and finding their forever home. Ensuring the dogs are spayed or neutered is one of my core duties. 

In a week, we get around 1 or 2 stray dogs in, and I will schedule a basic health exam for them. That's really a lot of money, so much so, I feel that the donation money that GRRH has is less than all the vet expenses.

So, recently there was a fundraiser event held to raise some money for the GRRH, and I volunteered to provide cupcakes for the party. The event was themed St Patrick's Day Spring Clean, it was a dog wash with an after party. I was suppose to also wash the dogs, but had to call off last minute because I was having some dizzy spells. Nevertheless, I must deliver all my hardwork, thanks to my Hubby for driving me to the event! 

I really love my cupcake box =) It's stack-able, and fits 12 medium sized cupcake in each box. I only paid USD 15 for this =)

I made 48 pieces of vanilla cupcakes. I spent alot of effort and time to design/print/cut those little flags =) I kind of regretted not adding some sprinkles on the top of cupcake to make it look pretty. To be honest, I am a newbie in frosting, so clearly it looks kinda fail....and I'm not really a fan of frosting because I'm not so much a sweet tooth.

One of my friend Lin who also volunteers for GRRH threw me a great idea to make doggy treats as well. So I made Bacon and Peanut Butter treats. I'm glad the dogs ate them, as you know dogs are very honest about food. So I guess I passed the treats test, even though it was my first time =)

My friend threw me the idea of organizing an event for GRRH to raise funds in the near future, I'm still contemplating, any ideas?

Happy Farm - Scallions

After reading an interesting post about regrowing your vegetables forever, I decided to start a little garden with scallions. The progress of re-growing scallions was very fast and very motivating, and I don't need even need a garden; just a cup, water, sugar and sunlight.

I was able to harvest my scallions after 2 weeks with some occasional sugar water change. 

I don't think I need to say much as the pictures below says it all. 

Scallions are common in Chinese cooking as garnish because they are fragrant, and lends a nice color to a dish. 

I'm so happy with my harvest =) Are you going to try this with me? =)

Sui Kow (water dog) dumpling

I love dumplings, period.
I think my husband and I can eat dumplings everyday.

Sui Kow or translated from Cantonese is called 'water dog'. Not sure the history to the name, but it's delicious. It is a type of meat dumpling, and this is my favorite of all dumplings, especially when boiled. I hope by sharing this, you would love it too.


Sui Kow Recipe

Ingredients (makes around 40)

• 150g pork / minced pork
• 200g prawns, shell removed, deveined and rinsed
• 5 pieces of water chestnut 
• 2 pieces of dried fungus
• 1 carrot

Seasoning

• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• a dash of pepper

Wrapping Ingredients

• mix 1 teaspoon of cornflour with some water
• flour
• 40 pieces of sui kow skin wrappers

Soup Seasoning

• 6 bowls of water (for making the soup)
• 1 tablespoon of salt to taste
• 1 tablespoon of powdered chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 3 stalks of spring onion (for garnishing)
• A bunch of vegetable
• 8 shitake mushrooms (optional)

Preparation, (prep time : 30 minutes, cooking time : 15 minutes)

1. Cut the pork to cubes and mince them in a food chopper (If u have minced meat, you may skip this step). Set aside.
2. Mince the prawns in a food chopper
3. In a bowl, season and mix the pork from step 1 and prawns from step 2 with the above seasoning ingredients. *Tip, according to my mom n hubby, you need to taste your mixture to know whether it is well marinated, then spit it out of course....I didn't follow this tip.
4. Meanwhile, take 2 dried fungus and soak it in water until soft
5. Chop the water chestnuts in the food chopper, then mix them together with the meat and prawn from Step 3.
6. Chop the carrots and mix them together with the meat, prawns, water chestnuts from Step 5.
7. Once dried fungus are soft, ideally, slice the fungus thinly....but I just chopped it and add it to the meat, prawns, water chestnuts, carrots from Step 6. That's all to the filling

Now, for the fun part, let's wrap!

1. Prepare the wrapping ingredients as it's gonna get a little messy; cornflour mixed with water, fillings, sui kow skin and some flour.
2. Take a sui kow skin and place on a non dominant hand
3. Place a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the sui kow skin
4. It's hard to see the next step, but what I did was moisten the edges of sui kow skin with my finger dipped with cornstarch mixed with water
5. Next I tucked in my filling and did a simple fold of the wrapper into a half circle. Then press to seal. If you like prettier dumpling, you can do pleats around the edges of the wrapper.
6. Tada! I made 40 sui kows! and I dust some flour to the dumplings to prevent them from sticking.

That's a wrap! Now for the fast and easy part, cooking the dumplings and making the soup.

1. Boil some water and cook the dumpling by gently dropping them into the pot. Cooked dumplings will float to the top and skin color change to translucent after 3 minutes.
2. In a separate pot, boil the 6 bowls of water, then prepare the soup by adding the soup seasoning, followed by the mushroom, vegetable and spring onion. Ideally, we should use a green vegetable to our dish, but we ran out and therefore ended up using iceberg lettuce!
3. My husband and I ate 32 dumplings for dinner!

So out of the 40 dumpling I made, I was hoping to keep at least half for out other days.
I ended up only having 8 dumplings remaining....It was too good...
Anyway, we froze it and cooked it with Miso soup base on another day =) nice and easy!

Looking for a new home?

Few weeks prior our departure to Houston, my husband and I were on and off busy googling for a place to rent. Lucky for all of us, we live in the era of the Internet; we used various websites to shortlist and find our new home, thousands of miles away.

First of all, we shortlisted the area, that was convenient and closest to my husband's office.

Next, we shortlisted another goal, it had to be small and cheap, 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. 

We had to scrap the idea of cheap apartments after reading numerous horror stories online about certain certain apartments. When I mean horror, I don't mean anything ghostly, I meant like break-in and vandalism. Imagine having a one year contract with the apartment and regretting your decision for one whole year......We changed our goal to affordable.

When we arrived in Houston, we were staying in a hotel for 2 weeks. During the first weekend, we drove around visiting our shortlisted apartment. We had to take note of the apartment open and close hours. We didn't engage any agent to help us find our place, we did it all by ourselves.

I fell in love with the first apartment we visited, which was the most expensive one of the list. Subsequent apartments couldn't live up to my benchmark.

This was my benchmark when choosing an apartment,

1. Security, such as entering the premise requires access cards

2. Solid doors, so that an intruder can't kick my door down

3. Dryer and Washer, cos I don't want to use a common launderette

4. Gym, so that my husband and I can stay fit and healthy

5. Location, walk-able distance to mall or supermarket 

The next day, we paid deposit, and chose an auspicious day to move in.

To make up for our 'affordable' rent, we cut the luxuries of using the heater during some cold winter nights by wearing more clothing, or not using the aircond by wearing less clothes, and we didn't subscribe for cable TV, and we are using a 2MB Internet, which we are doing ok, except for the frustratingly slow internet....

Watercress Soup

Eating out everyday in Houston can be expensive, so I cook pretty often at home.

We can save quite a lot of money, maybe a few hundred dollars a month.

Furthermore, grocery shopping in Houston is so nice and affordable. And USA is like a big supermarket, it has everything!! That makes cooking so fun! 

Besides that, cooking keeps me somewhat busy as a housewife.

The disadvantages of cooking at home are cleaning, and cleaning and more cleaning.

You may say, most household in USA has a dishwater, so why not use that? Dishwater uses up a lot of water, and it uses heater too...we try not to waste water and energy, since it's just the 2 of us.

I was happy to find watercress in the Asian grocery market. I love watercress! It's one of my favorite vegetables. It's pack with lots of vitamins and minerals that are good for you and me. 

We can eat watercress raw, as a juice, stir fried or as a soup. What's your favorite way of eating watercress?

Watercress soup recipe

Ingredients, serves 3.

• 400 g spare ribs
• 2 bundle fresh watercress
• 7 red dates
• 6 bowls of water
• Handful dried scallop (dried scallops are expensive in USA, so I use them sparingly)
• Handful goji berries
• salt to taste

Preparation, (prep time : 20 minutes, cooking time : 1 hour)

1. Soak and wash watercress.
2. Drain and chop watercress into 4-inch sections
3. In a small pot, boil some water. When boiling, scald spare ribs for 3 minutes, or until spare ribs change color. Drain. This step is to remove the porky pork smell.
4. Meanwhile, soak the goji berry and dates in hot water, then mixed with cold water for 1 minute. Drain. This step will make your goji berry still firm and bouncy even after cooking.
5. Meanwhile, in a soup pot, bring the 6 bowls of water to boil. Add red dates, goji berry, and scallop.
6. Then add the spare ribs from step 3.
7. Add watercress when water has been brought to boil, this is to prevent watercress from turning bitter. Reduce heat to low and continue simmering for an hour with lid on. Season soup with salt to taste.
8. Serve hot and enjoy