Vegatables

Deathly Scalloped Potato Pizza

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It’s barely spring and the apartment isn’t even warm yet, but these days every root vegetables in my kitchen seems to be in a hurry to grow up.  There’s a pot that my cleaning lady set by the window with green stalks surging so high that I almost thought she was bribing me back (aww, you shouldn’t have…).  No, the bottom lies the shallots I bought a few weeks back.  And there’s those deceiving heads of garlic cloves each hiding inside its white jacket, only to be exposed when smashed open that they were secretly stretching out mini antennas to listen in on my conversations with my doughs (puff now, my little one… hush hush).  Then there’re these baby potatoes.  Oh my potato-babies… how it hurts me that they are in such hurry to grow up and leave my loving nest.

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turkish kofta platter

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I fancy myself as a divine dinner party hostess.  I fancy myself as someone who embodies the total coolitude of Guarnaschelli’s professional kitchen-wizardry, set on Martha’s pristine estate filled with ponies, and accompanied with Beyonce’s crowd.  Someone who could present a seemingly-casual-and-approachable but truthfully-intended-to-shock-and-stun dinner display with nothing but an elegant breeze in and out of the kitchen, in a spotless oh-so-nothing white dress that belongs in Diane Kruger’s closet.  I fancy.

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Tofu and Warm Mushroom Salad

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So. It only took me 10 months and an extra 5 pounds to finally squeeze a salad into this blog.  Not too shabby if I may say so myself.  But the truth is, every month I shout: “Who THE HELL’S GUT is this!?” for like 50 times, followed by: “It definitely ISN’T mine but it’s telling me to go on a diet” for about 30 times, followed by: “I SWEAR on whoever’s gut this is that I’m going on a diet!!” for another 20 times.  And I TOTALLY SWEAR 99% of the time I actually mean it which leaves me just as lost as you are of why only 0.1% of the time it actually happens.  This thing called “self-control”… it has a life of its own.

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Improved Smoked Cheese Risotto

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I have a severe case of post-vacation depression. NOT that I don’t miss my kids achingly on each and every trip, and want to tell’em about places where they could potentially live in the next life where they’d be allowed into every eateries (woof!) and crumbs shops PATISERIES (woof! woooof!). But for reasons beyond me, they instead insist on residing in a city that I loathe full-heartedly. Not an uncommon problem among modern parents I guess. So every time I return home, my kitchen becomes a laboratory for recreating things that I crave from each trip to ease the symptoms (which, if left untreated, could develop into doomsday-scale meltdowns). The shwarma sandwich from Paris. The laksa from Malaysia. Bonci’s pizza bianca from Rome. Oh, right. Rome. Well, about that… I haven’t told you everything yet.

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Lonely-Carrots Carrot Cake

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I don’t mean to expose myself as someone who discusses about appliances as IF I have no real life (…) but am I the only one who suspects that her refrigerator suffers from seasonal bipolar disorder going from Fall to Winter?  I’m saying around October and towards the end of every year, (for the sake of easy referencing and NOT because I am totally juvenile and pathetic, let’s call it…) Skinny Box behaves like a healthy female who is gladly stocked with seasonal fruits and vegetables, meats and dairies, readily equipped for all kinds of culinary wonders.  But as the weather slides quite abruptly into January to February, her mood-swing takes a deep dive into anorexic tendency taking only the basic necessity for life such as caffeinated drinks and probiotic capsules.  And can you believe that she has the guts to blame me for it?!  Argh.

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Doomsday Roasted Eggplants

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On Nov 28th at exactly 7:20pm, I got fed up.  I’ve had my 5th servings of chronic-crashing on my chrome in 1 day and my whipped iTune seemed to be super-unnaturally allergic to my iPad because it decided to kill itself everytime at the sync of it.  So in the attempt to steer my PC into the shinning new-era and deliver it to the promised land of salvation, I upgraded it to – Windows 8 (plug your best Angel music here).  …The reported beacon of hope had turned out more to be the beacon of NOPE, and I was punished for it.  Because then came as I previously mentioned here – the ultimate internet doomsday which led to my double emotional-meltdowns on the kitchen floor.  You didn’t think I was gonna spare you that story, did you?  Neeu…

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Chasing Kogi Truck

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I could never live in LA…  What can I say?  I’m a city person.  LA is NOT a city.  It’s a glorified suburb if anything, run by GYM-hugging, yogurt-dipping and smoothie-drinking fitness-zombies who cares more for over-sized sunglasses than foods.  And I’m afraid we can’t be friend if you told me you want to give up culture in exchange for a place with no seasons…  Yeah that’s snow.  It’s called winter.  But let’s just say in an alternate universe where I fell in love with a cellulite-free buttocks over butter, and a car engine over my vintage bikes, and decided that I COULD actually live in LA… what would I be doing there everyday on my carbon-emitting vehicle?

I would be gladly chasing the Kogi truck.

(Jason: “dude… you live in Beijing…”)

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My-Dog’s-No-Shepherd’s Pie

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It bothers me that my own blog being called “lady and pups” and all – while the presence of an opinionated “lady” is regretfully prominent – very little was mentioned about the “pups” except briefly right here.  So when the other day the perfect moment came for me to host my imperfect pups’ belated debut, I took it.  Given I had briefly illustrated how the tail of summer can seamlessly disappear around the corner here, I thought I’d mention slightly on how Fall comes to pass as well.  There are generally 2 weeks time in between the seasons when the temperature’s just right, thus the generally un-breathable air could seem miraculously tolerable (No AC or heater = No burning coals).  The leaves have started to yellow but cling persistently onto their mothership until one day, departed by a ferocious gust of wind that blows them off into the openness, and they’d dance like twirling little pedals on the grass.  That was the day.  The day when the grass was still green, the sky was blue and the only day out of the entire year that Beijing looked remotely picturesque, before all of which quickly dissipated and the weather slipped into the bone-freezing winter of Northern China .

That day I thought I’d take some pictures.

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Fried Rice Go Green

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OMG… did anybody see Tony’s Rio episode?  WHAT the hell happened to…  OK, better and wiser human beings once said that if you got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.  So I’m just going to subtly leave with – I’m post-traumatically frozen… ambushed then shocked and awed… still stumbling to pick up my jaw from the floor and maybe a few teeth… then thank Lordy that this episode was strategically aired AAAFTER his roast… and of course now totally understand why he had to leave the show because there’s a bigger crisis to attend to (I get it now, Tony).

Was that too much?  That’s all I’m gonna say…

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Do Right By Stuffed Peppers

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If you’ve had Spanish stuffed pepper or Mediterranean stuffed pepper or God-forbid-American stuffed pepper or whatever-other-western-culture-style who together shares the innate calling to fill a vegetable with a hollow center, and you think – stuffed pepper is the champion (wait for it…) of the good-in-theory-but-COMPLETELY-FORGETTABLE-in-reality category – I’m totally with you.  In all the culinary-ideas out there that the world all seems to agree on and share, the west unmistakably dominates on a few things…I’ll give’em that.  They do better with a-lot-of-things-fermented like cheese, bread, cured meats and basically all-things-alcoholic.  Great.  I won’t argue with that.

But leave stuffed peppers alone.

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Belly Full Pumpkin

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(Chinese versions coming soon)

I’m staring and thinking about what I’m gonna say and… drawing blank.  I wish I have personal, wild stories to share about my Halloweens but the truth is, it is scarce.  Has my life been this pathetic (don’t answer that)?  So I did a psycho-analysis on my entire pathetic peculiar life so far on how I could possibly missed Halloween and drew this conclusion. First of all, Halloween is… not very happening in Taiwan, which was unfortunately where I wasted my prime-time-Halloween-peak-ages from 2 to 10 years old.  Then I moved to Vancouver when I was 12, an awkward age where I JUST missed the boat on getting away with dressing-up-and-asking-for-candy-is-cute.  And then came the teenage years which I consider to be the dark ages of Halloween because a dinosaur costume would be adorable retarded, but a slutty-anything costume would just be… sexy let’s just say raising concerns.

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