Friday Treat

Haha, the happiest thing I experienced today is that I went to Boston's famous free market, and bought loooots of stuff with only 20 bucks!
So after going back to my car, my hand was full with cherries, grapes, oranges, mangos, mushrooms and a HUGE salmon slice!
And I couldn't wait to make a fried salmon for myself as dinner, and I have to say it's sooo fresh and juicy with even little seasoning!
OMG i felt so satisfied that I was smiling when cutting the rest into 4 slices and seeing them in the fridge! :P

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La-Ba Porridge

Sorry that I didn't update my blog last night, since I was struggling in the statistic courses...

Well, this is what I wanted to share with u, a kind of Chinese snack called "La-Ba Porridge".

In Lunar calendar, the dates are divided into 48 seasons with different names, and many customs and traditions are attached to them, so does "La-Ba Festival", the day to memorize the harvest of the year as well as memorize our ancestors. 

So the porridge contains 8 kinds of ingredients literally, since "ba" in Chinese means eight, showing that we've archived so much t from the whole year's hard working.

Since I don't have so many ingredients here, I just put everything sweet into the pot - red beans, dried coconut slices, black rice, almonds, peanuts, raisins, black eyed peas, red dates and brown sugar of course.

After half an hour's cooking, i enjoyed it when video chatting with my parents, and it's quite amazing that we can enjoy the same food in two totally different countries, haha!

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Memory of Chinese New Year Party

Well, i felt so exhausted after yesterday's lunch preparation, so I decided to make it simple by having vegetable salad and fresh fruits for lunch and dinner for weight balance. :P

But i do miss these delicious dishes containing lots of calories, especially these tasteful Chinese food!

So here's a picture of our Chinese New Year dinner, which we had in one of our friends' house, and each guest brought one dish to share at the party.

The smashed potato with chopped meat was made by Bob,the Coke chicken wings were made by Evelyn, who's the hostess of the party, the Kong-Pao chicken was made by Tim, the double-skin milk Jelly was made by Yutong, the hock feet with soybean was made by me of course, and the broiled pork was made by Kailai.

Besides sooo many dishes, we had hot pot too, so that night everyone went home with a stuffed stomach, haha~

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Green Tea Tiramisu & Broiled Beef Rib

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

To participate in this "universal holiday", I made myself a Tiramisu with my favorite bunny head pattern and green tea powder, which is quite different with traditional cocoa flavor.

Actually i find that some of the ingredients can be substituted, for example, i didn't use a coffee liqueur but i made by mixing  50ml Rum and instant coffee powder, and the taste turned out to be quite similar!

Also, to make my dinner special,  i made broiled beef rib with some fresh vegetables, so i can have Tiramisu as a dessert after having the main course.

But i have to admit that though the picture looks fine, the rib was not well done, so i wondered if i was biting some flesh since it was sooooo rare. :(

Anyway, i had great time in my kitchen this afternoon, and that's the only reason that i want to appreciate Valentine's Day, haha~

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Egg-white Omelette

Since i've absorbed soooo much fat yesterday, i decided to have something "healthy" today.
So i used the egg-white that was left from the ingredient that i needed for Tiramisu to make an omelette, with chopped broccolis, carrots and tiger lily buds inside.
I don't know how American do if they want the stuffing to be more tasteful, i just used some oyster sauce so that all the vegetables became delicious!
Well, u can wait for my tomorrow's update, which is Tiramisu for Valentine's Day. :P

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Cheesecake Lover

Well, i don't know why, but almost all the girls love desserts.

Since the last time I had a piece of cream cake, maybe half a month ago when i celebrated birthday for my friend, i've been dreaming of having another one.
So today my friend and i went to Cheesecake Factory and waited for almost 2 hours excluding the parking slot seeking time, and then we began to enjoy the fabulous food, yay!
My roomy is a pizza fan, so she chose the everything as her favorite, and i ordered godiva chocolate cheesecake that we can share as the dessert. In addition, we had cream chicken soup and crab cakes as appetizers, which were both tasteful.
I felt that i'd gain 2 lbs or so after having this, but i really felt satisfied with these nice dishes... lol!

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Hock Feet Soup

I don't know how American guys will cook hock feet, but in China, we'd always use them to make soup with soy beans.

I thought that C Mart in Chinatown is the only place that I can get these ingredients, but recently I found that BJ's is also offering them with really low prices! The only problem i had to deal with is i don't know how to cut them into smaller pieces, so I used the scissors instead of taking the risk to cut my finger using the huge chopper.:P

Anyway, I put these cut pieces into boiling water with cooking wine and some ginger to remove the awful smell, and then fried the seasoning like fennel, cinnamon and ginger before putting the broiled hock feet and the soaked soy beans. 

After that, I kept on adding hot water to cover all the feet, and made the flame in low-heat for the whole afternoon, so when this soup was served for the dinner, everyone was so surprised that it was so soft that when they ate that, the meat was almost melted, not mentioning the amazing taste of the soup itself!

So I'm really proud that I can make this dish for my parents when coming back to China, and I'm sure that they'll like it!

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Banana Rum Cakes

I love to have sweet things with coffee for breakfast, so i'll always make myself some cookies and cakes so i can make a choice every morning.

Last night, I baked these cakes using some ripe bananas and dried raisins dipped with rum. 

I did all the preparation steps late at night after coming back home after class, and i had to wait for another 1 hour before taking them out of the oven...But it worths waiting since they taste AWESOME! 

I sent almost every friend one for trial, and they really loved it, lol!

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