My Personal Chef

I’m one lucky girl. DH is on a roll making delicious healthy meals for me and friends. He’s just so creative.

4.5.09 - leek & radish salad with steak and rice

DH is hungry

4.4.09 - grilled chicken drumsticks with kale and purple cabbage

soba noodles

Bee & Ben got to try out some soba noodles

Organic Vegetables

Just had a physical done few months ago. Cholesterol testing was one of the screening tests I had to do and found out I had high LDL-C or ”bad” cholesterol. I was a little shocked, but guess I’m not too shocked. We eat bigger portions of meat than vegetables normally, and my Dr. highly recommended eating more vegetables and get some exercise. So now I feel super guilty whenever we go out for my favorite chicken wings at 99 Chicken.

Disorders of Lipid Metabolism: Trans Fat Facts

Couple of coworkers told me about this trend of ordering boxed vegetables from a local farmer. There are so many of them around the Bay Area, and it doesn’t cost much more or maybe the same as purchasing from the farmer’s market. They will either deliver directly to your door steps or you can pick it up at a location nearby. There is an option to include flowers or fruits with your vegetables.

We chose Two Small Farms located in Watsonville and Hollister, only about an hour from us. They deliver to a family’s house nearby us, so I can pick up the vegetables on my way home. We also ordered some flowers during the trial period. The also include a newsletter with receipes and description of special vegetable of the week. It’s been a great learning experience so far and everything tastes great. Now we plan meals around the vegetable instead of the meat. And DH loves experimenting with all the different vegetables.

1st week vegetables

1st week flowers

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2009 is the year of Ox. Oxen possess such character traits as dependability, strength and determination. Oxen are tolerant individuals who believe that the road to success involves hard work and scrupulous behavior; they don’t believe in taking shortcuts. They characterize those who don’t work hard as lazy individuals not worthy of respect. Oxen are capable of trusting others and will listen to their opinions with an open mind. However, Oxen prefer making decisions that are based on their own research. Oxen favor strong, life-long alliances to casual acquaintances.

Chinese New Year is similar to the American Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone goes to their parents’ home and eat a lot. All my aunts and uncles are together right now, eating every day and night. On Chinese New Year day, all the little kids receive gifts in the form of a red envelope filled with money.

This is a very exciting year, because both my mom and uncle John will turn 60.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to go to China next year for Chinese New Year. The year of the dragon.

Happy New Year!

Wow, can’t believe 2008 is over. It’s already 12 days into 2009. Time is flying by way too fast.

We stayed home this Christmas and New Years and got to visit with lots of family and friends. DH had two weeks off and did a lot of cooking.

Christmas eve we had dinner at aunt Diane’s home. She cooked a delicious tortilla soup. Uncle Mark found a great book that explains where the Christmas traditions really came from.  Then everyone got to sing some Christmas carols.  After dinner we went midnight mass at Grace Cathedral in SF. It was beautiful scene. There were probably over a thousand people all dressed up. The children’s choir was awesome. Definitely looking forward to this again next year. Even though we arrived at 10pm, there were only 2 seats left in the very last row.

There were lots of presents under the tree. We got a set of snowshoes, which we used right away in Tahoe by Fallen Leaf Lake. The sceneary was beautiful, but the trail or lack of trail became more difficult as we got closer to the south east side because it was mostly private property. Next time, we’ll probably try and stay to the upper east and west side of the lake.

2008 for us was very memorable. The wedding was an incredible experience. However, the last three months of 2008 has been very somber with all the lay-offs and many businesses closing. We’ve been lucky that are jobs are currently stable. Hopefully, with the new president in office and a new year starting, many things will change for the better.

30th Birthday

I’m 30! Ahhh… I cried when DH surprised me with an experience to fly my own plane for my 30th birthday.

Not because it was the scariest thing in the world, but because he listened when I told him about my childhood dream of always wanting to fly. In high school, I did science report on jets. Ever since that report, I thought flying would be the coolest thing in the world, but my mom always told me I was too short.

DH got me a bomber jacket to go along with my flying lesson. He also surprised me with a dim sum lunch with all our family and friends.

The day I took my flying lesson was one of the clearest and warmest day for a while.  Our pilot was only 21 years old, but he already has thousands of flying hours under his belt. I flew a Cessna plane. It fit 3 people. Dan sat in the back. The flight took about an hour. We flew from San Jose up to San Francisco along 101, and on the way back we flew along ocean and Rt. 1.

The experience was incredible. Not as scary as I thought. Definitely difficult with all the instruments and lingo. I want to go again! Thanks DH!

Camping @ Humboldt

It felt so great to go camping. The autumn temperature was perfect. We left San Jose late Friday afternoon. Bad idea, because we hit all the traffic along 880, 80, and 101. By the time we got there, it was pitch dark. The exit sign wasnt’ very helpful. After you take the exit, there are no signs telling you to turn left or right for Humboldt park. After many circles, we finally found it.

The darkness didn’t stop us from firing up and making some huge ribs.

Trip Pictures

Yellow Mountain

Day 1 Arrival in Shanghai

Day 2 Shanghai

Day 3 Shanghai and the Orient Express

Day 4 The Yellow Mountains

Day 5 The Yellow Mountains, West Lake, and Silk Markets

Day 6 Quanzhou

Our big fat Chinese wedding

The idea of getting married in another country all the way across the world sounds crazy. Especially with a guest list of 500 locals and 26 from U.S. who have never experienced a Chinese wedding banquet. But we pulled it off with only less than a week of planning.

From the beginning we knew the location and the date, Quanzhou Hotel on 8.8.08. It’s the best hotel in town and also located in the best part of the town. When we first told my parents we wanted to reserve the hotel, my parents had no problems at all. My mom said no one reserves for wedding locations until 3 months before the wedding. It freaked me out of course since that’s not how it’s done in U.S., and I questioned if it was true considering our date is a very auspicious date.  We ended up reserving well in advance even though the hotel confirmed we didn’t need to do so that early.

With the date and location set, we started to plan a 2 week vacation in China around the wedding with the wedding in the middle. Why in the middle? I don’t remember how it worked out. But it definitely had to do with the Olympics.  The 2 week vacation took over a year to plan with lots of phone calls and emails to and from our travel agent. Dan and I sat down and picked 8 cities that would give everyone a feel of China’s great wonders: a big modern city with 200 years of history - Shanghai, a beautiful mountain where all the artists and poets go for inspiration – Yellow Mountain, a beautiful city known for being as beautiful as heaven – Hangzhou, a small developing city where no tourist would ever think of visiting but it’s one of my favorite places to visit – Quanzhou, one of the world’s best tea plantation – Anxi, a unique architecture experience – Yongding, another small city with hardly any foreign tourists best known for one of the greenest cities in China – Xiamen, and another big city with over 600 years of history and hosting the 2008 Olympics – Beijing.

My parents were our only source of help. But even with them there, we couldn’t do much in terms of wedding planning. In Quanzhou, the hotel does not start planning for the wedding until two weeks before the wedding. Luckily we arrived exactly two weeks before the wedding. My parents had hand delivered 500 invitations a month before we arrived, each invitation is delivered along with a box of “xi tang” or happiness candy.

Our first experience of wedding planning was regarding lunch. We sat down for dinner with my family, and all of a sudden my uncle asked how many people we’re having and started to talk to a hotel staff about the menu. It took us completely by surprise. First of all, I don’t know why he was asking since we wanted to plan it ourselves. When he started to talk about the menu, we didn’t even know the location or plans. It turned out my dad asked my uncle for help regarding location, but they started planning without Dan and I involved. When we saw the venue, we were so disappointed that we didn’t know how to explain and didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I had to call my aunt and uncle and made sure they understood we didn’t want another banquet for lunch, instead we wanted a traditional cultural experience for our guests. Then off they went and started going through all their connections again. In one day, they found another place and started making plans without us. We had no idea what we were going to see the next time.

The first day of official wedding planning was crazy. We went to the hotel and sat down with all the hotel management, my parents, and my uncle. The reason why my uncle was there was because of his connections “guan xi”. It’s very important to have connections in China, that’s just how things done. We started off with the menu, which we couldn’t read. The hotel staff was talking to my uncle and dad in Hokkien, then they translated it to me in Mandarin, then I translated to Dan in English. This was one of the most stressful and difficult things to do. But we manage to get everything communicated eventually.

After the menu, we reviewed the guest list that are staying at the hotel. At first, they said they don’t see any of guests registered at the hotel. That freaked me out. Then they said they found the list, but it was for a different day. Finally we figured out that we were talking to the wrong department in the hotel, and the hotel does not release the final names of guests until the day they check-in. After confirming and reconfirming with our travel agent, everything was finally clear.

Then we met with the host/MC for the wedding to go through which wedding style we wanted to use. He showed us a few videos, which he is very proud of, but we couldn’t help but laugh at how cheesy they all seem. They thought we wanted what all Chinese couples wanted, which was a western style wedding. They were shocked to find out we wanted a traditional themed Chinese wedding. The host/MC walked us through the series of things we had to do and what we had to say, then it was all set.

Next day we met with the wedding planning service. We looked through all their photos and videos of decorations to decide what we wanted. Dan did an awesome job putting it all together. I was frantic and stressed out. So the whole decor was Dan’s idea. My parents received lots of complements for the way the entire room turned out.

For hair and makeup, we walked into 2 wedding shops that specializes in wedding packages (photography, makeup, hair, clothing, etc.) We liked Paris instead of the one everyone raves up, Milan. The manager at Paris said he would have his makeup artist call me and setup a trial run to see if I like the makeup. What ended up happening was that he called his makeup artist friend from Milan and asked her to visit me privately. The makeup artist came over to my parents’ house and talked to me for about 30 minutes, looked at my dress, and told me the price. She didn’t put any makeup on me, so I had no idea if I would actually like what she’s going to do. But I really had no other plans, so I just decided to go with her.

We thought most of the planning were done, but we received many phone calls regarding flowers, center piece display, cars, pictures, etc. But it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Overall the planning was pretty easy. On the very last day before we started our tour of China with our friends, we got to visit the location my uncle picked out for our traditional cultural experience. This was 10 times better than what we had expected. It’s a new theatre built in a traditional Quanzhou style building. Only politicians and very special people get to come and watch the performances by local artists singing southern Chinese opera, playing traditional Chinese instruments and watching puppet shows. These artists perform half a year in China and half a year abroad. You can’t buy tickets to these events. But my uncle some how managed to get us a private performance, serving traditional Quanzhou tea and snacks. We were very happy to start our tour of China with our family and friends knowing all the details for our wedding day has been set, or so we thought. 

We got back to Quanzhou the day before the wedding. My parents planned a half day tour of Quanzhou for our guests. One of them included a special surprise from the local tv station, who came to interview us while we were sightseeing. Shortly after, we found out they were going to follow us for the entire day of our wedding. With all these things happening the day before the wedding, we only spent about 30 minutes or less for rehearsal.

Starting at 7am on 8.8.08, makeup artist arrived at the house and started doing my makeup. Without much talking, she started to work on my face. Before I knew it, I had fake eyelashes, glitter all over, and enough flowers in my hair to make my head tilt one way. It wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. In fact, it was kind of fun.

Matt came over around 7:30am and started taking pictures. Around 8am, the first camera person came. My room was very small, so Matt and the videographer had to take turns squeezing into the little space to take pictures.

By 9am, the entire house was full of relatives wanting to take pictures of me and with me plus more videographers. It was exhausting and hot. I was worried my 2 hour makeup session were going to all melt away.

Dan and his brothers came over around 9:30am to “pick up the bride” and were stopped at the door to play “the door games”. We had purposely came up with 5 tricky questions for Dan so that he couldn’t possibly get them right. If he answered them wrong, his brothers all have to wear big colorful granny panties. I couldn’t see what was happening, but it sounded fun because there were lots of laughter. Finally, Dan knocked on my room door and came in to give me a bouquet of roses on one knee. It was the first time he’s ever seen me so done up with makeup, flowers in my hair, and wearing a traditional Chinese wedding dress “qi pao”. Dan was wearing a custom made modernized version of the traditional Chinese wedding clothes. He designed it himself while we were in Shanghai. Within 15 minutes or so, we were rushed into the living room to pray to my ancestors, eat boiled eggs with dates, and leave the house with a red umbrella over my head.

We arrived at the theatre around 10am to watch the traditional cultural performances. We were shocked to see the place full of video cameras and reporters. Felt as if we just walked in to the Oscars or something. People just started pointing the cameras and microphones at us and asked away.

Around 10:30am, the rest of the family and friends arrived. The tea ceremony started right away. They brought us onto the stage for the tea ceremony, where Dan and I served tea to our parents and called them mom and dad for the very first time. In exchange for the tea, Dan’s parents give me a gift in gold, and my parents give Dan and big fat red envelope. All the cameras followed us onto the stage blocking the view, so I don’t think our family and friends saw anything. Performances started right after the tea ceremony, there was a lady introducing all the perfomances in Chinese and my cousin Hong Hong was the translator. This was the first time for everyone to see these type of performances, including my family in China. So it was a real treat for everyone. The biggest hit was the puppet show. While we were watching, everyone was munching on the traditional snacks and drinking the local tea. My new brother Rob even figured out how to pour tea the way the locals do.

There was a 4-5 hour break in between the performance and evening banquet. But that break went by really fast, because right when 5pm came around the madness started again. My makeup artist arrived early to change the flowers in my hair and touch up my makeup. She started by putting a huge leaf dipped in gold glitter on my forehead. It freaked me out, and I said no right away. Then she wanted to put a big glittery crown on my head. I turned to look at Matt wanting to make sure I wasn’t crazy for feeling that it looks ridiculous, and he told me to go with my gut. My gut told me me no to this as well. She was upset with me that I didn’t want as much glitter as people normally do for weddings in Quanzhou. We finally compromised on the flowers in my hair. All my clothes were still at my parents’ house, so my mom had to call my other cousins to bring them over. It took 4 cousins to bring everything over. Hong Hong was running around with me, bring things back and forth, translating, and helping me answer the phone, which felt like it was going off every 2 minutes. She was so calm considering this is her first time being a maid of honor or being part of the wedding party.

We started greeting guests in the lobby around 6:30pm. When we got to the lobby, we were shocked to see the 7 feet tall by 10 feet wide portrait of us.  We speificially said we didn’t want it. But somehow it ended up there anyways. I think my uncle had something to do with this. Then I realized I lost my bouquet. Someone went out to buy another one, someone else found the original one, and a guest brought one too. So I ended up with 3 bouquets. With all these things happening, guests started to arrive. I thought people wouldn’t come since it’s the Olympics opening ceremony. But the room quickly filled up with close to 500 people.

At 7:30pm, the host came down to tell us we need to get started immediately. We ran upstairs but couldn’t find my dad, who was suppose to walk me down the aisle. He finally showed up 2 minutes before we got started. Suzanne was shocked by all the decorations and floral displays when she exited the elevator. To be honest, so were we. Even though we had planned everything and picked out all the details, we had no idea how grand everything was going to look. While I was standing there waiting for my dad, a reporter kept wanting to interview me. I got kind of irritated and told her I was trying to get married at that specific minute.

Once we got started, everything flowed really well, exactly as we rehearsed. A few minor things took us by surprise. When the host welcomed the parents on to the stage, the song playing was the Star Wars sound track. We knew there would be fireworks, but had no idea it was going to be right in our face. Both Dan and I got hit by the flames and many people thought the banner above us was going to catch on fire. Poor Suzanne and Matt were the closest to the stage, and I think they might have been blown away a little, literally. Due to so many unexpected photographers and videographers, Suzanne and Matt, the photographers we paid to take our photos, had to to fight with them to take our photos.

The most memorable parts were hearing Dan say “marry me” in Chinese, walking down the aisle with Dan, seeing the entire 500 people in front of us, the host introduced Kevin as the youngest and most handsome brother, uncle John came on the stage and give a speech in Chinese, and the fireworks going off right in front of our faces.

At exactly 8pm, we were off the stage and the Olympic opening ceremony started playing on the two large screens. Food started to come out. Just when I started to eat, the same reporter that wanted to interview me earlier asked to interview me again. Knowing I had only 2 dishes to eat before I’m rushed off to change, I told the reporter to go away. Literally we sat down for about 5-10 minutes and someone told me I had to go get changed. Hong Hong helped me get out of the wedding gown and back into the qi pao. Once we got back, we went around to all the tables to toast everyone. This was the moment we’ve all been waiting for, to get completely wasted on bai jiu, Chinese white wine. But the waiter had another bottle of water next to the bai jiu that he kept pouring us. So we ended up being completely sober and full of water. But I guess that was a good thing, otherwise we would be puking in the corner, because bai jiu is awful.

Around 10pm or so, we ate a few more dishes, then we had to stand outside to greet the guests that were leaving. After all the guests left, we went back to our rooms to finish watching the opening ceremony.

Around 11pm or midnight, we all went downstairs and hoped in a taxi to the local club called DJ Club. Few of us decided to take a pedicab and had a little old lady who probably weighed 80 lbs take 3 big American boys who probably weighed over 400 lbs all together. The pictures were hilarious. The dance floor was empty when we got started. But many locals joined us once they saw how many white people started dancing. I got to see my new brothers get down on the dance floor, and everyone looked like they were having a blast.

We got back to the hotel around 4am, and I woke up without a strand of hair out of place thanks to all the hairspray. We saw our wedding aired on the local tv station 3 times on August 9th. Our pictures were on the August 8th and 10th newspapers. A second tv station aired some more footage of the wedding on the 10th. Even though the reporters were a huge pain the behind on our wedding day, it’s great to see our wedding day over and over again all over Quanzhou.

This was just an amazing experience for us.

We’re Back and We’re Married!

This was one of the most exciting and memorable trips ever. We’re so happy to be back and have so many fun memories. 26 of our friends and family joined us on a 2 week tour of China and witnessed our big fat Chinese wedding in Quanzhou on 8.8.08.

Starting with Shanghai, we walked down Nanjing Lu with millions of other people trying to get down to the Bund. Nanjing Lu is always busy, but I’ve never seen it this packed. Saw the locals practice tai chi on our walk to the People’s Park. Visited the art district Mu Gang San Lu and the French Concession area. Some of us got to try Chinese foot massage for the very first time. It was painful, but felt great afterward. Celebrated Bryan’s 21st and Tom’s 25th birthday with 2 huge snakes. Bryan had the snake’s liver while Tom drank the snake’s blood. Then we visited some cool bars and finished the evening with karaoke. Yu Yuan Garden was also packed. Some wondered off and our poor tour guide Mary was nervous to lose people. But luckily everyone met up in the right place and on time. Then off we went to saw one of the best Shanghai arcobat performances.

We traveled to Yellow Mountain by an overnight train in the soft berth. 4 people to a room. It’s the way most people travel in China. This was the first time I’ve ever traveled in soft berth. It was clean and comfortable. It’s also the best way to travel to see the countryside. Once we got to Yellow Mountain, all of us took the gondola except for R.O.B. who hiked for 2-3 hours in the heat. We were all a little worried since we didn’t see or hear about him until 6-8 hours later. We all hiked couple of shorter trails on the top of the mountain. However, this is unlike any trail or mountain you will ever find in U.S. All the trails are paved with the perfect little steps built by hand, and all the materials used to built the trails and hotels were carried up the mountain by farmers looking to make more money. The steepness and narrowness of the trails scared those who were not afraid of heights. The sunrise was the so pretty, with the mountain peaks above the clouds and pine trees everywhere.

We only got to stop in Hangzhou for a short afternoon. But everyone got to see one of the most beautiful places in China, Xihu or West Lake.

I think everyone was as amazed with Quanzhou Hotel as we were the first time we saw it. It’s the biggest and best hotel in Quanzhou. Everyone told me they ate the best, slept the best, and had the best time in Quanzhou. Our wedding day was so extraordinary, it even surprised us. With only 3-4 days of planning, it’s hard to believe we actually pulled off a wedding with 500 guests. There were photographers, videographers, reporters following us all day and night. Poor Suzanne and Matt had to fight with all these people just to get our photos. Our phones kept going off every 2 minutes. Fireworks almost burnt off my eyelashes and Dan’s hair. What a crazy and memorable day!

Anxi tea plantation was interesting, however, it was probably one of the hottest day we had to deal with.

Yongding was small and interesting. We got there late in the evening. There were no one on the streets except for us and the vendors. Some of us got to play pool in the middle of the street. Everyone had beers in their hands while wondering around town. Ken hoped on the back of some guy’s bike and got a local tour. It was too late to eat dinner, so we all just had some grilled lamb on a skewer for snacks. Next day we got to visit some round earth houses, hakka houses, that were built to protect themselves from war. These homes are huge and people still live in them.

Xiamen was probably the cleanest city we visited. They have a no honking rule, the small island reduces pollution by preventing cars from being on the island. Only way there is to ride the ferry.

We got to see the history of Beijing by visiting the Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Great Wall, Ming Tombs, and hutongs. But we also got to experience the present by attending 2 games at the 2008 summer Olympics.

Engagement Photos

We just had our engagement photo shoot last Sunday at Stanford and Baker’s Beach. In 2 days, our photographers Matt & Suzanne posted all the photos. The pictures came out beautiful. Take a look http://www.mmayphotography.com/blog/.