In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

MOLTEN-CHOCO BANANA BREAD

“CHOCO RIVER… WIDER THAN A MILE”

Today is the third day of the week-long CNY holiday in China, a festive time when binge-eating isn’t only allowed, but mandatory. Implementing any calorie restriction and self-control during this high festivity, implies unlikable things about one person – uptight, fun-less, possibly anorexic and most of all, non-cool. So to celebrate such excess in order to demonstrate that I’m a spirited team-player who’s got some very down-to-earth thighs to prove it, I was going to show my A-game compliance. Only until I realized that it’s a little tricky to come up with things to eat…

When I’m under some sorta house arrest.

02.03.2014

In All recipes, Got Nothing But Time, Meat

CARAMEL SOY SAUCE STICKY RIBS

“Well I guess… I just have to KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE RIB”

It’s Chinese new year’s eve today and I. Have. Got. Nothing. To eat.

This is no doubt starting to become an alarming pattern over the last couple years… especially when this year, another major national event from the West is clashing head to head with CNY, clouding my already impaired judgement when it comes to curating content. It’s CNY (looking right)… it’s Superbowl (looking left)… Oh but it’s CNY (looking right)… Woah but wait it’s Superbowl (looking left)!… Oh shit I’m so confused!

Well I guess to be extremely ~~lazy~~ thoughtful and considerate, I just have to kill two birds with one rib.

01.30.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

EMERGENCY SKILLET COOKIE

“Sometimes a moment wasted
IN COOKIE-DELIVERY…
IS LIFE AND DEATH”

Anxiety… do you know about anxiety?

The type that feels like there’s an expanding hot water balloon pressing against my soft parts. The type that pumps up the pressure on every cubic-inch of air in the space that I gaspingly occupy. A clinching cast-iron ranch over my lungs that tightens, and then tightens… efforts to breathe muzzled by the air-pressure that squeezes, and just squeezes… neglecting the urgency of a piping hot water balloon in my chest that is screeeeeeching desperately to expand, and EXPAND…

… until, as we all know what happens when you force a ballon, that it just “BAP!”. Fluids of boiling emotions mixed with bloody lumps of raw angst, splattering so violently against the four white walls of my confinement. Even the maddeningly slow motion in which they dribble down, by contrast, fuels my raging urge to scream.

All of which, is playing out silently and discreetly behind an expression-less front of a woman, typing calmly in front of her computer.

Anxiety.

I mean I need a cookie like right now.

01.27.2014

In All recipes, Condiments, Meat, Quick Meals, Snacks

WOODLAND FIRE SICHUAN-HUMMUS

“Tonight… LET’S SET THE WORLD
ON FIRE”

I guess… it really isn’t a secret what unnecessary gimmicks I’ve been occupying myself with in the last couple days. Hello, my name is Mandy and I’m a theme-aholic. In fact, I’m a theme-aholic who also happens to be, tech-intolerant. Like an alcoholic who’s allergic to alcohol, an UV-addict who lives in Seattle, a real human being married to Gwyneth Paltrow…

Well, you get the point. It’s all been very dysfunctional around here.

01.23.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks, Sweets

BA-DA ‘BINGS’

There’s a Chinese saying that goes “A loser in love, a winner in casinos.” It simply means that the good fortune you lack in one aspect in life will be compensated in others.

Well… it’s total bullshit. Just like all Chinese superstitions are.

But having said that, it would leave my current streak of grand slams over an age-old kitchen nemesis – at a time when my every other single happiness in life seems to be throwing themselves under a train – completely unexplained. I mean, lay… layers? Is that you? Have you come back to see me? A predicted failure in my first attempt to replicate an iconic staple in northern China, came not as anticipated but instead, a smashing, success.

Ladies and gents, may I introduce you, the explosively layered… bing.

01.19.2014

In All recipes, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Poultry, Soup, Top Posts In 90 Days

FAULTY HEARTS REMEDY

You know… this blog really wasn’t, even indirectly, meant to be depressing at all. Angry? Yes. It’s kinda funny. Depressing? Is just depressing. But what now?

I found myself murmuring these thoughts through the indifference of the keyboard, while I watched my dog sunken within a pile of blanket like a flaccid lump of meat, the very life in him crippled by the exhaustion of every hard-earned heartbeat. His heart murmurs, the doctor said. Why does it sounds like an expression you can put on a Mother’s Day card for God’s sake… And what about an overgrown, sensitive big heart? Fuck, could’ve gotten someone laid on a Thursday night even without game. To shit with these expressions…

In reality, you can actually die of a broken heart.

01.15.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

BLUEBERRY SLAB-MUFFIN FRENCH TOAST

Actually… I was saving this post for another time. Because first of all, something borderline “sweet” and similarly “French-toasty” had already taken the space next door. And secondly, it hasn’t exactly left yet. Yeah, so to avoid the suspicion of repetition, I was going to let this one ferment in my draft-box for a bit until you turn bubbly and matured for it.

However… shit happened.

01.11.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Meat, Snacks, Top Posts In 90 Days

A WRONG AND IRRESPONSIBLE SANDWICH

We’ve all heard about this growing up, that the adult life is all about responsibilities. “Pfff, whatever…” I said. I mean what does that even mean, really? As if kids don’t got no responsibility, like I hadn’t already been tying my own shoes, wearing my painful braises, and attending my designated school every morning where I dealt with mean kids on my own like any accountable, dutiful children since seven. Think I did all those for fun? I was doing good for my own greater good. Responsibility. You know? In fact, it seems that my whole life so far has been a reversed testimony for such statement.

As I am slowly coming to terms that my diligent, responsible life had took its last dying breath the moment… I became an adult.

01.05.2014

In All recipes, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Soup, Top Posts In 90 Days

SPICY MISO RAMEN-EXPRESS

I set out to take the first post of 2014 easy… I did. I thought perhaps a harmless little breakfast pancake can be nice, glistening syrup under the hopeful morning light that symbolizes a new start within me… Or, perhaps, a statement-recipe like a creme brûlée and ham french toasts-sandwich that’s simple, but flaunting and strange enough to revitalize this blog’s otherwise-subtle individuality in the year to come… Or better yet, perhaps a complete slacker-post on a summary of everything that could and has gone wrong in my kitchen in 2013… kinda hey~ here’s a fine collection of things you probably don’t wanna eat but don’t I sound really cute talking about it?

But instead, this came out… And believe me, although it may not look remotely that way, this is taking-it-easy, well… as far as Japanese ramen goes.

01.04.2014

In All recipes, Seafood

GREEN BUTTER GRILLED OYSTERS

Argh! Family holidays (Yes, mom, what!?)… the only kind that (wait, can’t you see that I”m… what?!) leaves you more stressed than rested (no, NO, for the last time I don’t want to eat with Uncle I-don’t-actually-know-you again!) afterwards…

As I’m still peddling through mine, I’ll quickly leaving you an awesome party appetizer idea that acts like a bread-dip that comes with its own serving-dish! One of the most fiercely beautiful and yummy thing I made before I began my Christmas stress-a-thon, when I could still take a piss without anxiety. So enjoy. It’s almost New Years Eve. Breath in… breath out…

12.28.2013

In All recipes, Poultry

ALL DOGS WANT FOR X’MAS IS… CHICKAPEA

Before I break this less amiable truth about myself amidst my holiday break with family, I first want to say that in spite of what I’m about to confess, please believe that I’m an otherwise OK human being deep, deep within. I stare at leaves and generate deep thoughts. I lovingly ignore children only because I’m afraid of what I might do to them. And when presented with uncertainty, I always choose the recyclable bin to throw my ambiguously categorized trash… just in case. Because I heart earth. But…

12.22.2013

In All recipes, Christmas Morning Series (overnight roast), Got Nothing But Time, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Poultry

X’MAS MORNING SERIES: STUFFED GOOSE BEAST

Every Who
Down in Who-ville
Liked Christmas goose a lot…

But the Grinch,
Who lived just behind the screen of Who-ville,
Did NOT!

The Grinch hated Christmas goose! The whole goose without season!
Now, please ask him why. For everyone quite guesses the reason.
It could be that the work looked a bit like fright.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his ego was two sizes too small.

12.18.2013

“CHOCO RIVER… WIDER THAN A MILE”

“Well I guess… I just have to KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE RIB”

“Sometimes a moment wasted IN COOKIE-DELIVERY… IS LIFE AND DEATH”

“Tonight… LET’S SET THE WORLD ON FIRE”

“Sometimes a moment wasted
IN COOKIE-DELIVERY…
IS LIFE AND DEATH”

“Tonight… LET’S SET THE WORLD
ON FIRE”