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This post is abit outdated, it's now March 2014, and I have been in USA for about 3 months plus...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

Frugal packing for Houston

We didn't get a container to ship our things from Malaysia to Houston. 

All of our belongings were in 4 large suitcases, 1 medium suitcase and 2 cabin luggage, 1 handbag and 1 carry-on camera bag. We checked-in 5 suitcases, even though there was a limit of 2 check-in luggage per person for flights to and fro USA. The fifth bag was paid for by my husband's company.

So, here's how I got all my suitcases; excluding my husband's existing large suitcase, and one of my cabin luggage, spending less than RM500 in a short span of 2 months.

My mom bought me a large lightweight suitcase during her recent trip to Shanghai; paid RM100 at one of the underground market stalls in Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

And I ordered through Groupon a set of lightweight luggage for RM389. Fortunately, when delivered, the largest luggage had a inverted corner with a small crack, and Groupon resend me another new large luggage few days before my flight. I'm not sure how long all these light weight luggage can last...

Sadly I couldn't use any of my RM5 Daiso luggage lock for this trip; TSA approved locks cost 10 times more expensive. Fortunately, Jusco had a sale, so we bought 4 brand new TSA locks for our trip, spent around RM100 plus.

I bought 3 vacuum packs in Daiso, for RM5 each. They are really useful for saving space, especially for packing those fluffy winter clothes in 1 large luggage.

I bought a lot of medicines from the pharmacy in Malaysia, because medicine/visiting a doctor in USA is exorbitantly expensive, and ready packed herbs for boiling soup, chrysanthemum tea, Maggi instant noodles, and curry paste. All this in 1 medium suitcase.

I had more of my clothes in 1 large suitcase, and hubby's clothes in 1 large suitcase. and 1 more luggage which was half filled with whatever we needed to bring like pictures, books, laptop, ipad, converter plug, toiletries, and etc.

I think that was pretty much it. I only started packing 3 weeks before my flight, and my husband only started packing few days before the flight. Packing was super easy for him, because for the whole year of 2013, he was already living out of a suitcase between Bangkok and KL.

And most important of all, bring passport, money, visa documents, and mobile phone, plus charger! 

Whatever you forgot, you can happily buy in USA =)

Getting hitched in Malaysia

If you have read my previous post about my H1B and H4 visa application, my husband (boyfriend then) and I had to get married before we could schedule the visa interview at the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

Time wasn't really on our side, especially when my husband (boyfriend then) was a Malaysian working in Thailand, and he was to start work in America as soon as possible.

We knew about our H1B approval one week before October 2013, so he flew back from Bangkok on an early Saturday morning so that we could apply to register our marriage at the National Registration Department (NRD) in Putrajaya before they close at noon.

There are 2 types of marriages in Malaysia. As we were non-muslim, my husband and I falls under the category of Civil marriages.

And there are a few ways of getting married in Malaysia,
1) In the Registrar of Marriage office, or
2) In a church or temple that has an Appointed Registrar, or
3) at a Hotel / Garden

No, we can't get married next week. We could only solemnize our marriage after 21 + 1 days from the date we submit our application form. And being Chinese, we had to choose an auspicious marriage date.

Here are the list of items to bring to Putrajaya:-
1) MyKad
2) 2 passport sized coloured photo of bride and groom
3) Money
4) Pen, to fill up the JPN.KC02 form. DO NOT SIGN the form yet.
5) Photocopy of MyKad for bride and groom

Now, for the interesting part, the address in my MyKad was Selangor, and the address on my husband's (boyfriend then) MyKad was Negeri Sembilan. The place of application is based on the address stated on the MyKad. Therefore, my husband had 2 options, change his MyKad address to Selangor, or drive back to Seremban to submit his application for our marriage as well.

We chose to drive to Seremban the next day, as the NRD office was open on a Sunday till noon.
If you choose to marry in a church or temple, all these nitty gritty part will be taken care by the church or temple.

We got married a month later on the 28th October 2013 at Putrajaya.

Here are the list of things to bring to Putrajaya for the solemnization of marriage ceremony:-
1) MyKad
2) Money
3) the application form collected from other state after 21 + 1 days  (for my husband's case it was Negeri Sembilan)
4) 2 witnesses and their MyKads
5) Poesy (flowers)
6) Wedding ring
7) Lots of smiles, hugs and kisses!!!

Does the US embassy recognize our marriage certificate? Well, they recognized mine.
Do I need to translate my marriage certificate? On our Malaysian marriage certificate, alongside the Malay words, there are English words too. So there is no need for translation. Phewww...one thing less to do!

For more information, refer to the link below
http://www.jpn.gov.my/en/servicesmarriageordivorce

Q: Are there aliens in USA?

A: Yes, they are everywhere, because - An alien is any person who is not a United States citizen.

Since young, I was never fond of being called 'Alien' as I got teased often, because my name, jumbled, makes the word alien - Look at where I am now, oh the irony...

Now, the burning question, do you want to be an alien? Do you want to immigrate to America? Yes? Do you want to do it legally? or illegally? 

Here are some ways:-
1. Relationship with a USA citizen/Permanent Resident/Skilled Profession
2. Skilled Profession
3. Green Card Lottery
4. or read this, http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/cross_border.htm  

My husband and I didn't come to America via Green Card Lottery, as we didn't win, but my husband came to USA via option 2 using a H1B visa, while I, using option 1, joined him with a H4 spouse visa. 

A H1B is a work visa that allows US employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations, and the process to get a H1B is painstakingly long. H4 is the visa issued to immediate family members of H1B visa holders, which gave me a lot of anxiety and grey hair. 

My husband (boyfriend then) received a job offer from Houston back in early 2013 by a US company. Subsequently, they submitted his H1B petition to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) by April 2013. Three week later, we received a receipt from USCIS, which meant his H1B was selected for further processing, which meant that we have to wait again for months for the H1B result. 
We received news of my husband's H1B approval one week before October 2013, Yay!

Then the next major anxiety kicked in, we had to register for our marriage, and schedule our final interview at the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. 

Getting married in Malaysia was not as easy as it seemed. I will share the steps of getting married in my upcoming post.

Here is the website to apply for a US visa interview in Malaysia.
http://www.ustraveldocs.com/my/my-niv-visaapply.asp

So my husband (fiance then) proposed on October 14th 2013, we got registered for our marriage on October 28th 2013, and went for our visa stamping interview on October 29th 2013.

The anticipation for my H4 interview was nerve wrecking, as we were legally married for less than 24 hours. However, no questions was asked, all I had to do was to present my marriage certificate. That's it.

My husband's H1B interview was a little tricky, but reading the website below somewhat made us better prepared. http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1-visa-interview-sample-questions-answers.html

Approved! And of course our life became dramatic when our records was not found/updated in the USCIS system, we were given a yellow slip to further wait for their system information to be up to date. The next day, everything was ay-okay!

I thank God for answering our year long prayers. Here I am today, with my husband, living the 'American Dream'! By the way, H4 visa holders are not allowed to work, and not eligible for SSN (Social Security Number).

Hello Houston!

I will always remember this conversation between me and a young chap named Ed sometime back in April 2013.
Ed : I'm going to a place much cooler than ALL the places you have ever been!
Me: Ok, that's great, where?
Ed: US of A!

Now, it's February 2014, and my husband and I have been living in Houston, USA since early December 2013. Sometimes, I can't believe we migrated 10,000++ miles from Malaysia to Houston, to live the 'American Dream'.
So, question is, what is so 'cool' about America, and what is the 'American dream'?