hmm

So, mom is on the airplane now. Achi is at the airport, killing his time.

Me, cleaned most of the house (not completed :-p), noticed no flowers to decorate. Oh well, they are my family :-D I don't have much foods in refrige, but I bet they would enjoy shopping at American grocery stores.

Since mom will arrive about 11am and Achi is coming almost 8pm, we have too much time to kill. I'm thinking of taking her to Korean grocery stores near airport to get some foods (she loves Korean foods too), maybe cafe to have some coffee/tea, but I don't know what else to do.

I know it sounds cruel, but I can't let her sleep while we're waiting. She came to visit me when I was in college, and she had bad jet lag, very BAD one. She started cooking at 2am, actually made a whole meal, and woke me and my roommate up and made us eat. Man, I can't let her sleep during day time, doesn't matter how sleepy she would be. I want her to sleep at night!

Preparing :-)

I'm so excited for my mom & brother coming to visit us, we are fixin', cleanin', and decoratin' the house for this weekend. I saw the weather forecast said it will be a thunderstorm on the market time, so I cancelled it. It's not raining yet... oh well :-( I hope I didn't miss another great sales day.

Our dishwasher had a week power (doesn't make any dish clean), doesn't dry plastic products (I don't know why), and color was wrong. All other kitchen appliances are white, somehow they put a black dishwasher when they built this house.

Well, couple weeks ago, its handle was broken and some plastic pieces came off. Oops. It was still manageable to open/close, but it was pretty annoying. John called the company, and we figured out the parts cost like $60 and including maintenance it will be over $100. It was a good enough call for us to think about getting rid of this one and get a new one.

I started searching how much a new dishwasher cost, but soon I went back my daily routine, checking craigslist. Several days ago, I found a nice&white dishwasher for sale, and it was a pretty good deal. I contacted the seller, and we went to pick it up.

Neither of us had ever exchanged/installed dishwashers before, but since my family is coming soon, I didn't want the dishwasher sitting in my living room. I searched "how to install a dishwasher" online, watched a video, and John started working on it.

removing old one.

installing a new one

Cutting elect cord. Thank goodness he wasn't zapped.

(we turned the elect off before he started working)

Doin' something.

Connecting a drain pipe.

Tada-

Yay! A new dishwasher!! I ran it last night, seems like working quite well. We will try couple more times to see if there are any leaks, and he will screw it to the counter. My husband is so handy! ;-)

Who's in charge...?

This happens when blood type O was in charge for organizing.

 This is when blood type A is in charge.

For you who don't know much about Japanese culture, we strongly believe into blood type characters, maybe stronger than holoscope. Oh, according to its diagnose, blood type A and O are good match :-)

Excited!

So, my mom & brother are coming soon! I'm so excited!

It's been a while to see them. I'm thinking what I will do with them, where I can take them to, etc. It's so fun.

Record!

Yay! It was my best record sales for the market!!!

John knew an average amount I make usually, and he set the goal a lot higher. I told him it's impossible, but I made it! WOW So amazing!

We need to celebrate :-)

Oh, by the way, Achi and my mom might come to visit us soon. That would be fun :-D

Homemade rain barrel

We made a rain barrel!  I've been trying to find a reasonably priced & useful featured rain barrel, and got tired of expensive prices. We had an trash can which we don't use anymore, so why not, I bought some parts from Lowes and John helped me to assemble it.

Ok, I might need to trim the mosquito net little bit more, but hey, doesn't it look good? It wasn't so hard to make it.

Spigot on the bottom. This metal parts was the most expensive, but still like $5 or so. I bought some O-rings and rubber rings, $2 the most. I was not sure if any of them would work, but we left the container full of water but it's not leaking so I guess it's working!

Inside view of water going out parts. Doesn't it look good? I'm so proud! I can't wait to set this on our garden, then I will be so happy for rainy days :-)

Today's Sheepy-Poo

Pie 2

No, I'm not talking about math. I baked another pie.

Since I thought about math, instead of making circles, I should have write "π" on the top. Oh well.

Random things

1. It's fun to have market friends. I got 2 exchanges from last week: bread & eggs.

2. I made a small appreciation presents for who gives donation. Thank goodness I'm crafty, I have enough tools to make process go easy (roller cutter, cutting mat, and ruler from quilting, and hand carved stamp & ink). I hope people like it.

3. Today's Sheepy-Poo. Watering his plants.

$20 off?

Kohl's, are you crazy?

I got 2 of $10off coupons from Kohl's. One by e-mail, one by mail. Neither of them have special regulations, like "you have to purchase $50 or more" or "regular price item only". I just need to find something more than $10, and they will take $10off. Why not, I will go to redeem these wonderful chance for sure!

Again...

Another big earthquake in Japan.

According to the news, 3 whole prefectures (including my parent's area) has no power. Ahh, when are people able to relax?

I should have bought them a hand spin energy radio.

Little bit busy

I'm sorry that I don't update blog much often. We've been busy these days, and I don't have enough time.

I'm trying to get ready for Karaage, teriyaki fried chicken, for the market. I hope it starts for this weekend. I'm hiring :-D my friend from church to help me. I can't handle everything all by myself, especially since John is not helping me anymore. I'm excited to be able to start the new menu, and hopefully it won't make me crazily busy but brings a great success $$ ;-)

Grilled Chicken

It was so beautiful outside, so John grilled chicken legs for us. Marinating sauce was made by John too. 

He doesn't like cooking at all, so he's not happy to do this job. I hope he enjoys cooking (at least grilling... it's man's job in US, isn't it?)

Tada-. Looks yummy, eh? Well, one of them were burned so bad :-D Well, we're still learning. I made soup with carrot, red bell pepper, and celery, all cooked well and used blender to make puree.  

Market 2011

Oh how fun it is. I really love doing the market. It's so fun to talk to people, recognizing regular customers, vendor friends, meeting new people, chit-chat with them, fun&fun. Thankfully it was ok-sunny day, but it was little windy. I might need to set some weight for the canopy tent so that it won't blow away easily.

To be ashamed, I didn't have any baked goods. Even though it's Blue Forest BAKERY! Shame me. My baking skill/schedule managing wasn't back yet, so I failed to bake. I only had curry&rice to sell, so I temporary changed the name to Blue Forest Ba-curry. People like curry though. I'm so happy to be able to introduce my culture thru foods. 

karaage?

I have a recipe for everybody's favorite, teriyaki fried chicken, called Karaage. Me and John are trying to figure out how to sell those in the market. John's idea is put chicken bits on skewers and sell like $1.50-$2.50/ stick.

Followings are what I need to start it:

    


If we'd like to start it from next weekend, I should order them ASAP. Hmm. Any investors? :-D

Thank you!!

It was a great event! Almost 100 people showed up, and John organized wonderfully.

(you can click the photos to make it bigger)

I recognized lot of people (John's; friends, coworkers, business friends, etc). They all said John did a great job and enjoyed the opportunity he made for people. At the end of all thanks, he asked how people liked the food and they gave me claps. It tickled. 

See? Isn't he cool? :-p He made a good speech at the beginning to thank everybody who helped for this event. It was so wonderful to see my husband was talking in front of 100 people. I couldn't take too much pictures (because I was serving people behind the food counter), but I could see the space was full.

I got a helper from Japanese Table. She helped me alot! I'm so glad she came. I told her she can stay at least about an hour (the most busiest time) and she can leave after that, but ended up she stayed til the end and helped for clean up too! Thank you, Marina!

I should mark this down for next chance, I cooked too much. Both me and John was so nervous that we might not have enough food for 100 people (and John strongly believed that :-D and said we might need to order pizza to cover up the less amount), it ended up TOO MUCH food!! My goodness, I got more than half of the amount I brought as left over!! Easy math, that means I cooked for over 200 people! (Now, just to make sure the reason I got that much left over was not people hated my food, people LOVED it; I got a lot of thankyous and comes back for 2nd or 3rd refill. Some people asked me for business cards to know my business name, or strongly recommended to start the business :-) )

  

2 more days

So, it's 70+ people for John's event now. How exciting! Am I gonna make it? I sure hope so! Please pray for both of us!

Garden day

It was little bit chilly but not rain today. I reserved a small tiller for our garden since this is the last Saturday I can use for whole day (Farmer's market will start from next weekend). John helped me to till our weedy garden.

Before

After

Nira (garlic chive) is prennial and it comes back every year. We harvest it by cutting about 2 inch from ground and leave their roots (not pull a whole thing), and it will come back again in couple weeks. Good for stir fry, omelet, or pancake.  

Cilantro!! I used to hate this stinky smell. John loves it and planted couple years ago. Pretty easy to grow and makes tons of seeds, and voluntarily comes back every year. I was pinching my nose to harvest and cook, but seems like I'm used to it now.

Garlic. They are not making bulbs yet. I'm not sure, but I might plant them back and let it grow to make bulbs. 

So, I dig cilantro (we got tons of them!) before John tilled them. I gave some for neighbor gardener and planted some in planters/pots on porch. I've heard they don't do well for re-planting, so it might not do well, but who knows. Even after giving-away and planting, I still got this (above) much cilantro left. What should I do?!

Well, there's no choice. I made a dinner using cilantro. 3 different kinds. Fresh spring rolls (cilantro, daikon, carrot, garlic chive, boiled pork fillet), steamed chicken with cilantro sauce, and chickpea soup with cilantro on top (yes it's a same dish from last night. John liked it alot and requested to make it again). Man, we ate like 3-4 bunches of cilantro tonight! (and as you know, we still have 5-6 bushes left)

Cod, tomato, and beans

Tonight's menu:

Cod with tomato cream sauce

Bacon wrapped tomato

Chickpea and soup with cilantro

The reason some ingredients are overlapping is, I don't have much vegies in refridge. I've gotta go shopping.

Aaahhh!

People suddenly showed up in my back porch. Ahhh!!! Who are you, how did you came up here, what's going ooooooonnnnnn???!!!

Oh, they start cleaning our door. Yeah, we received the notification that people will come to clean door/window. Man, it surprised me.

Wild Onion Cooking

So, here is the supper, made almost by wild onions. We set our handmade foldable table in porch to enjoy nice spring night.

Wild onion simmered with soy sauce and fish broth, with starch potato jelly 

Korean style pan cake with wild onion and carrot

Fresh wild onion bulbs, with miso paste

Boiled wild onion with miso&vinegar sauce

Like John said, most of them were little bit chewy, especially leaves and bigger bulbs were. Although, small&young bulbs were soft and yummy. After cooked, oniony-garlicy smell gets much weaker. Well, it was fun experience for sure :-)

Wild Onion

I was reading some Japanese nature articles online, and found a report of picking "nobiru". According to the author, it's a wild plants available in spring, looks like onion, and taste little spicy and so good. Nobiru was written in ancient Japanese books, Gods used it to cleanse evils. I've seen wild onions around the house and I think it's the same thing as nobiru, so I went for hunting them with a plastic bag and a fork (to dig).

There are wild onions everywhere!! Although, 6-10 inch tall ones are still young and small bulbs, it's not worth much to dig, I noticed. About 2 feet tall or taller would be big enough, and easier to dig & pull.

For about 30 minutes hunting, I gathered up this much wild onions (and a small blister on finger)

Once you know what/where to find and how to dig, it's not so hard to get bunch of them. Now, wash to remove dirt and outside skin, and cut roots off.

Washed & cleaned. Now what should I fix with them? Japanese recipes says:

-Eat fresh with sauce/dip
-Boil lightly and pour sauce
-Pickle bulbs in soy sauce
-Chop them up and marinate in miso paste

Hmmm. Hard to pick. How do American people eat them? (you eat them, right?)

Warning: there is a similar looking poison plants, called red spider lily. Easy way to figure out which or which is smell. Wild onion has strong onion-y smell but spider lily doesn't. So when you harvest it, make sure you sniff and it stinks.

Signs of spring

I found some "hints" of spring in town. 

 

Aren't they beautiful? I used to like falls for long time (maybe because I was born in fall), but I like spring now. I really enjoy recognizing what trees they are by finding flowers on them.

And here are some other pics about spring:

Yum~~~~!!!!! Hey, who said "Ah! Gross!"? Wrong reaction. You should have said "Oh, yummy!" 

This is Shad roe, a sign of spring in US (don't tell me "I don't know such stuff!" American people :-D). It's available only about a month in this season throughout the whole year. I heard it's good with Japanese style recipe too, so I cooked half of them with soy sauce broth with daikon radish. 

The store person said his favorite recipe is battered with flour and sautee in bacon grease.  That's sounds yummy too. I will try it for the other half.