Japanese dinner

I have been wandering around a few asian markets and got more obsess with Asian ceramic dinnerware. I seriously enjoys collecting kitchen items and figured it's time to starts with Korean and Japanese dinnerware.  I've got a few so far and I love it... just a little problem is that our place is quite small for so much stuffs!!!! So my Husband was generous enough to share his tea room so I can put them up as display and storage as well! (That means I have more room to shop now lol)

So today I made Japanese food... My husband was never really a fan of Japanese food, more on the "I rather eat a loaf of bread instead" kind of attitude because being a vegetarian, there's not much of a choice and the items that are available at restaurants are simply just veggie tempura.  But today was a surprised exception, he said it's really good and would definitely want to eat again.  He pretty much ate EVERYTHING I made today! He even asked if I would make it again so he can invite his friends over for dinner!!!! I almost flipped! LOL

Vegetarian California Rolls 

Vegetarian Salmon Teriyaki

Cucumber and Seaweed Salad

Of course RICE! 

Miso Soup

Soy Sauce dispenser

We ended our dinner with Grean Tea and Green Tea Mochi. Yum~~~

Want to know what inspired me into cooking?

A Korean movie! LOL a little lame I know but whatever ...

Have you ever seen The Naked Kitchen?

I LOVE the scenes at the beginning of the movie where she made those beautiful food!!! And the scenes of the house! It's everything I love! I'm not so thrilled about the synopsis but I just think that it has beautiful pictures! 

You can watch it here! 

http://www.mysoju.com/korean-movie/the-naked-kitchen/the-movie/

Korean Food!

Tried out Korean food yesterday and it didn't disappoint! =) 

I've always ordered Japchae and always thought it was hard to make since it's so delicious! Now I know that it's not hard to make ...more like "EASY" and scallion pancakes was also great! 

I got the recipe here! 

Japchae

 http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/japchae

Onion Pancake

http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/pajeon

Much easier than you thought right? 

I bought other small side dishes: Kimchi, kimchi cucumber, seaweed, and squid!  

I also made veggi bibimbap - stone rice bowl for my vegetarian husband! =) 

Thai Veggi Hot Pot - Lau Thai Lan Chay

15 mins. meal =0) Thai Hot Pot! 

Ingredients: 

Thai Tom Yum soup base

Yes I know this jar saids "Shrimp paste" but the far I used was vegetarian that look exactly like this one...just can't seem to find it now ... urg... sometimes I just can't find things around here right after I'm done okay! lol

Some of these veggie "seafood" it comes in an assorted bag =0) 

A bag of noodles like this one serves two! 

And some veggies for dipping ... we only have "ong choy" or "tong choy" in our fridge so I used that! 

Instructions for soup...

1.  Follow instructions from your bag of noodles and cook them first since it takes longer than anything else! 

2. Use 4 cups of water boils add about 4 tbl. spoon of soup base (depending on your taste, add sugar if you want it more sweet, add more soup base if you want it more sour) I added dried red pepper because we like it HOT! =oP

Once your noodle and soup base are done then it's time to eat!!! 15 min. is all that it'd take! =0) 

I'm super lazy and tired lately to go any fancier than this but nontheless it serves it purpose on providing us a tasty meal with almost no work hehehe. 

I like these tiers trays because it saves us a lot of table space especially when you go all out with our choices of meats or veggies! I highly recommended!!! Tonight meal was much like any other day there's just us two so nothing too fancy! <3 

Best deals for those who likes to eat hot pot but don't want to do all that work, just buy the soup base! It's amazing! Plus get those prepacked assorted seafood bag and just throw them all in with your veggies! I'm sure you'd amaze everyone who eats it! Happy cooking and eating y'all!  

Getting ready for Tet!!!

Tet / Vietnamese New Year is one of the best time of the year for us.  Especially my Husband, who goes all out with the decor especially RED!!! "The more RED the better" that's his motto for Tet! Here are a few things we got so far!  

Here's a link that defines Tet.  Although I knew what Tet is but it's still very interesting to read! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BA%BFt

Since Hoa Mai - Ochna integerrima (in the central and southern parts of Vietnam) is not available here in Chicago, we substitute that with Forsythia instead.  For Forsythia has that same yellow color and blooms right around the Tet holiday! So we settled for that! 

Like the Christmas Tree... it is usually adorns with charms... and most often New Year cards in Vietnam  (we only adorn ours with charms here)! <3 

To pick up that New Year spirit... we had friends and family over ... of course for food first lol and then a few rounds of Bingo! Vietnamese usually plays Lô tô (Lotto) which is the same as Bingo except that they sings when the #s are called instead of just saying the Collum Letter and number like we would call in Bingo! We are not that talented so we just plays regular Bingo. But non-the-less it was an awesome and FUN time! I almost lost my voice screaming the whole night! lol

L'Occitane FREE gift with purchase of $25!!!

Because the hand cream works wonder for me so I went back to get 2 more bottles for my Mom and Auntie! To my luck they've send me a coupon for free gifts with a purchase of $25 as a welcome to L'Occitane since I've registered at the store with my last purchase! At first I thought why not? because it's free and expected it to be like those mini tester that the cosmetic companies usually gives you which are TEENY TINY ... but NOPE!! they really surprised me because it's a lot bigger than that! You can tell from the picture! 

So I URGE you to go to their website and register and once they email it to you, just print and go in with your purchase to get them! 

The lotion I got was only $20 so I bought a tube of hand cream for another $10 so I qualified for it! Best part is that since I need two bottles of lotion so I bought two tubes of hand cream and separate them for purchase and got 2 free gifts sets instead of one (but that's because I used my mom's email for the second purchase)! Want to see what's in the gift set? 

I haven't tried these out yet because I'm just so excited to share this! A small bottle of shampoo, Shower oil ...the girl at the store told me that it creates a foam like texture that moisturize and great for shaving as well! A bottle of whitening face cleanser (although not many of us wants to whiten our face!), and a bar of soap! Pretty awesome as free stuff don't you think? <3  

For $30 you can get all this! 

I've asked the sales person and she said you could just sign up through their website to get the email with the coupon attached! One thing to keep in mind is that it's one gift per customer and they look up your email account to ring up the free gift! So if you want to get the other gift make sure you register that other email as well!

Dreaming of Lavender!

For the longest time I've heard that Lavender helps you sleep and finally putting it to the test! What could I really loose right? Especially when it smells so lovely in my room! 

Found this links that talks about how Lavender helps you sleep... check it out if you're bored out of your mind ...like me!lol

 http://www.goodsleephygiene.com/Does-Lavender-Help-You-Sleep.html

I passed by the L'Occitane store in the summer and they were displaying Lavender bunches at the door but I never got around to stopping by to pick them up until now and I'm so glad I did.  It smells lovely! I also got Lavender hand lotion and I swear it's the best thing I've put on my hands! It makes my super dried skin feels like SILK! 

I had never purchase anything from L'Occitane before and I think they had won me over! Because I had never paid $15 for a dead bunch of flowers and $20 for small hand lotion bottle! It's not that I couldn't afford it but it just doesn't make sense to me before!  Because lotions are abundant here in America and it's cheap, plus I couldn't tell the difference in quality until now! It's worth every penny and more! <3 I was super hyped about L'Occitane that I went to their website to look and found this lovely video of where they got their Lavender from. Makes me appreciate it a bit more! LOL 

http://usa.loccitane.com/FO/lavender.htm#

If only I could convince my little brother to use it on his hand then that would make my day everyday this winter (* AHEM! KEVIN HOANG!) ! Our skin gets super dry, flaking, cracks up and bleed in winter!  So every night we'd slap Vaseline on our hands and then put gloves on or socks if we lost our gloves ( which happens quite often!) before going to sleep to keep it from drying up and bleed! Although, we have been blessed with this lovely weather in Chicago this year but I am ready for some cold winter actions! 

Aside from everything else ...it completes my bedside table! 

I blame  the Lavender it's making me like this LOL