Minestrone
Summer is officially gone. I somehow had an urge to make minestrone for dinner one night.
Ingredients:
* 1 celery stalk, 1 small carrot, 1/2 onion, 3 strips of bacon: all chopped into small pieces.
* 3-4 sprigs of fresh thymes, 3-4 bay leaves: these are mandatory
* Chicken broth, 1TBSP tomato paste
* Salt, pepper, 1tsp fish sauce
* 1/2 C of any kind of tiny pasta, the kind to make soup with, and legume (optional)
Directions:
* In a heavy bottom sauce pan, add bacon bits and fry until golden and crispy.
* Remove bacons from pan. Remove all grease except about 1 TBSP left.
* Add all the veggie and stir until onions become translucent.
* Add pasta & legume, stir around a bit.
* Add chicken broth, tomato paste as well as thyme & bay leaves. Simmer until veggies, pasta & legume are tender. Add fish sauce and adjust to your own taste. Serve hot.
Prickly heat
Viết vô đây để sau này dễ kiếm. Prickly heat dịch ra tiếng Việt là rôm sảy,sảy càn, chẳng biết cách sao mà Brandon bị ngày càng nặng. Theo cách trị dân gian thì dùng khổ qua nghiền nát, chế vô tí nước rồi thấm vào chổ bị sẽ hết . Ngoài ra người ta còn dùng lá sài đất theo 2 cách: Mỗi ngày lấy 100 g sài đất giã với ít muối ăn, thêm 100 ml nước đun sôi để nguội, vắt lấy nước, chia làm 1 hay 2 lần uống trong ngày. Bã đắp lên nơi sưng đau.
Dùng khô: Mỗi ngày lấy 50 g sài đất, thêm nửa lít nước, sắc lên rồi cô đặc đến còn 200 ml, chia 1-2 lần uống trong ngày. Mới google ra được sài đất là Wedelia calendulacea Less, or Chinese wedelia.
Another way is to take shower with green tea. I guess I will not have enough money to buy green tea for him to take shower with. Just dabble the effect area with green tea probably will do the same.
Modern medicine is calling for lactacyd, gotta google what that is and see if it’s available in Canada or not.
Others to consider: cây chó đẻ, castor oil,
Apertizer: Tortilla chips and dips
250 gr Philadelphia cream cheese
1/2 C sour cream
1/4 C mayo
2 tomatoes, finely diced
2 stalks green onions, finely diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
shredded Tex-Mex cheese
Salsa
Mix cream cheese, sour cream & mayo using electric beater.
Arrange:
Spread the cream mixture at the bottom of the bowl, next comes salsa. Then comes a layer of green peppers, cheese. Add chopped onions and tomatoes. Serve with tortilla chips.
Pistachio Creme Brulee
Ordered this at Tony’s Town Square at Magic Kingdom on the last trip to Disneyworld and I’m hooked. Found the recipe at allears.net. I had to make pistachio paste by myself and it wasn’t that hard at all.
How to make pistachio paste
Buy de-shelved and skinned pistachio nuts, the unsalted ones. It will save a lot of times and headaches. Grind them in food processor, add a little of powder sugar and water a long the way. Continue grinding until it makes smooth paste, it smells devine!!! I found this works for me:
1 Cup of unsalted pistachio nuts
1/4 Cup of powder sugar
1 Table spoon of water
Here is what the paste looks like, smooth and shiny
How to make pistachio creme brulee
1 L 35% cream
pistachio paste made as shown above
6 egg yolks
5 oz sugar
Baking torch
Extra sugar for topping
Add cream and sugar into heavy bottom sauce pan. Slowly bring the liquid to almost boiling point, stir constantly to prevent burning at the bottom. As soon as bubles start forming around the edge, remove pan from heat and continue stirring. Whisk the egg yolks well with a whisker. Slowly drizzle the cream into the egg yolks, 1 tablespoon at a time. After the yolks have been tempered, add the remaining cream into them. Preheat oven to 325F. Transfer the mixture into ramklins and place them into baking dish. Add water into the dish and bake for 30 minutes or until set. Refrigerated about 4 hours prior to serving. Before serving, sprinkle sugar on top and burn it with baking torch, top with raspberry or sliced strawberry.
Disney World - Day 2: EPCOT - Part 3
Time to go to the World Showcase. Along the way there something caught my eyes. Thousands of pansy/viola/violet are planted en mass around the lake. The perfume scented the air. And of course I did not miss an opportunity to capture this on my camera.
We stopped at Mexico first and went inside to have a look. Whoever designed it had done a really good job. So good that for a while we completely take it all in, truly transported to a night market in Mexico, with street vendors and all.
We walked up to a restaurant. The settings was totally awesome. Gilles was arguing that it was really an outdoor setting until I reminded him that it was actually 4PM outside. We were kind of hurry to go from one country to another because it was getting dark and cold and hungry. I wanted to try a restaurant Le Cellier at France Pavilion but didn’t want to risk a chance of get no table at 9PM. Having heard that Tutto Italio restaurant was good but scored no reservation, we decided to walk in trying our luck. Turned out they can sit us within 5 minutes. The restaurant was crowded. It seemed like the entire staff are Italian - at least all the managers, receptionists, waiters and waitresses are. They spoke English with this cute Italian accent and charming smiles. The food was so good that we went back a few days later. I didn’t care for desserts but Gilles was a happy camper.
I generally did not like ravioli but this lobster ravioli dish was Dilicious!!!! I wanted to duplicate this dish very soon
Didn’t like the olive oil dipping much, their pepper pickle is really good.
Gilles’ plate. He loved every bit of it.
The kid got spaghetti and pizza. The verdict was thumbs up.
By this time batteries in my camera went dead. It was so windy and so cold that we had to seek for shelter in Canada Pavilion and later on take refuge in the shop around the lake. Finally I found a spot behind a closed kiosh next to the firework station. 9:00PM came and IllumiNations was on. This was the highlight of today. Too bad I didn’t have a way to keep a memory of it.
Disney World - Day 2: EPCOT - Part 2
Everyone except me liked the Mission:SPACE ride so much that they wanted to do it again but I’d had enough of disorientation and nausea that I just flat out refused. I told them to go without me but “it’s not fun with out mama”. Usually I fall for that but this time I was really hated it. We went to try out Test Track. This ride was really really fun, according to the kids, because they got to “drive car on a road, really really fast”, giving them a sense of being adult and being car racer. According to Gilles, it was boring. To me, all I remembered was the smell of rubber in an indoor space, which made my nausea level inched way up. We then walked over to The Seas with Nemo & Friend’s Pavilion. The wind subsided a little by this time and it was warm in the sun. I, as always, searched for shade but soon learnt that it was freezing cold if I stay there. We spent a sometimes outside of the building and taking pictures of the kids with cute Nemo and his friends (I have no idea what their names are). In there, Tyler was really interested in seeing colorful fish and other creatures live in water. He could just stand there very still, arms folded, chin on his arms, leaned against the glass for a long time and just watch a crab inches back and forth. He asked a lot of questions, pulled me here an there and expected me to be able to answer all of his questions. This reminded me another occasion earlier this year. We were at Natural Museum in Washington DC seeing dinosaurs and the likes. He wondered from place to place, paid just enough attention to all the show cases. When he came upon the lab there was a lab technician working near the window, trying to clean a dinosaur’s bone - I assumed, Tyler was just glued on that spot, really observed the guy working. He did not want to go anywhere but stayed on that spot and watched. He later on declared that he wants to work like that man. Here, I had to drag him out of there so that we could see other things. Otherwise, he would just stand there counting how many little crabs or camouflage/hidden creatures he would discover.
We decided to go back to see Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Here, we discovered what a real 3D show was really about. When the light went out and screams started waving up from the front line, we were kind of puzzled and the anticipating was agony. Tyler was already scared of the huge machine pointing at him earlier, he now squeezed on my arm and hid his face under his arm. The scream got closer and closer to us and then there were sounds of movement on the floor, in the dark. Suddenly, it felt like hundred of mice crawling up on my legs. We all startled and screamed and laughed. Tyler did not find any thing amusing in that. He actually wanted to cry and didn’t want to look at the screen anymore.
Disney World - Day 2: EPCOT - Part 1
Did you know what EPCOT stands for? It is Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Yeah, we might live in those environments later in our life time. We started our second day at Disney World at EPCOT. It was soooo cold and windy that I thought we’ve never left Canada. I printed the schedule from touringguide website but we couldn’t follow what were outlined. So, instead of running to get the FastPass for Soarin’, we ended up riding SpaceShip Earth first, just because it was right in front of us and the waiting time was only 5 minutes. In addition, it was such a good idea to get away from the whirling wind. A few minutes into the ride, it suddenly stopped and then started again. A few minutes later, it stopped again but this time we were in the dark. Then came the announcement, “…technical difficulty….” I thought it was a joke, a part of the ride. However, after it inched forward a couple feet, the same technical problem occurred. This time I was praying silently that we wouldn’t have to have twists and turns like those of roller coaster for I wouldn’t want this “technical problem” happen while we hung suspended in the air. The most fun part was to design our own future and saw what future can bring us. At the exit, we saw our pictures in funny spacesuits. The amazing thing was that the computer somehow can recognize us and show our pictures instead of others’. I think it has something to do with pupil reading that I watched on TV a while ago. We were lost again after get out of the building. I intended heading straight to SOARIN’ but ended up in one of the two Innovation Building. The STORM 3D movie was our first 3D experience at Disney and it was really neat. We were amazed by the special effects such as getting water mist, wind blown in the face, and branches smashed doors and windows. The kids wandered around to see more but I insisted on getting to SOARIN’ before there was no more FastPasses. As we were busy locating our location on the map, a older Cast Member walked up and offered to help, with a smile. We were totally in shock to see this kind of gesture.
SOARIN’ was the first place I learned to use FastPass and discovered it was very straight forward. You insert your Disney card in the machine, it dispenses a ticket telling you the time frame you can use and that was it. While waiting to come back to use our FastPass tickets, we went to see the Circle of Life show. It was just an ok music show, nothing fancy. Then we decided to grab something to eat before heading toward SOARIN’. We had lunch at Sunshine Seasons. The food was ok, nothing much to rave about like others have said. SOARIN’ is a fantastic attraction and it was a hoot to use FastPass. I grinned from ear to ear to see that we kept on walking to almost to the loading zone. It was so fun that we got FastPass to ride it again. While waiting to use FP for SOARIN’, Gilles insisted on trying boat ride at Living with the Land even though I had no desire to do so. Turned out it was very interesting ride which I later thank my husband for pushing me to try it out. The ride bored me to death at the beginning but once it came out of the building and into this gigantic greenhouse with real plants, I couldn’t stop turning my head from side to side and shooting my camera non-stop. They grow some of amazing vegetables there.
Riding SOARIN’ the second time around wasn’t as good as the first time as we know what to expect, but it was fun nonetheless. We headed toward Journey to Imagination building to see “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience”; however, I misunderstood the show time as waiting time so we headed back to see Mission: SPACE. On the way there, we saw Chip&Dale came out to have picture taken and of course we did not pass this opportunity. While Gilles and the kids got in line I ran off to get FastPass. When I got back they were still in the progress of waiting to take picture. Here I learnt that Chip is the one with black nose and Dale has pink one.
Mission:SPACE has two lines, one for less intense training and the other is, obviously, more intense. At every step of the way, there was announcement warning the light hearted people to get out. I should figure it out by the time I heard it for more than couple times means they really mean what they said. Anyway, the cabin was extremely confined that I had hard time to breath. I also ignored the not looking side-way caution and reached over to help Tyler. When I raised my hand to press a button for Tyler – he was panic because he couldn’t reach the control panel and yelled for help when he saw the button lit up, he thought the spaceship was going to crash if we didn’t act fast enough – there was an invisible force that pushes my hand down. Soon I felt I felt a huge pressure pressed against my chest, so much that I coughed uncontrollably and felt so dizzy when I got out of the ride. The kids and Gilles; on the other hand, love every minutes of it. They were walking and yapping how cool, how wonderful it was while I stumbled from left to right trying to hold my balance.
Disney World - Day 1 - Part 3
We are food lovers therefore eating canteen burgers for lunches and dinners for the whole 8 days at Disney World was not an option. We loved to sit down for nice meal once a day, preferably in the evening to unwind. And at Disney, it is highly recommended to reserve your time slot at restaurant in advance. After reading thousands of thread on Disney forum, I frantically searched for high rated restaurants, looked at their menus, and made reservations. Gilles, on the other hand, wanted to go with the flow - “We’ll stop and eat wherever we want to”. Yes, it makes sense but Hello, this is Disney World where there are thousands of people in the park and lunch and dinner times are very very crowded. Anyway, I was able to pull up several bookings before we went.
After saturating ourselves with high decibel games we took a bus to Boma Buffet - an African restaurant - at Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was so cold and windy that night that even we were prepared for this kind of weather we were still somewhat in shock to see how cold Florida can get. We were given a buzzer which buzzed off when our table was ready. Soon enough, the buzzer went off and we were bused to our table. We like most of the food except those with curry flavor. Steak was the best of all, literately melted in my mouth. The kids were in heaven for they can eat all the deserts and drink any kind of soft drink, after all we were on vacation. I finally had my hands on those beautiful deserts that I’ve been drooling over for months before that but then reality hit, they tasted way too sweet to my taste. Gilles, however, let his sweet tooth took over. He was not only eat all on his dish but also finish all of mine.
It was pass 9:00PM - or even almost 10:00PM that we finally stood up and headed toward concierge to inquire about buses. To our dismay there was absolutely no bus running between resorts. We had to take a bus downtown and then take another bus from downtown to our resort. This whole thing would take more than an hour while we live about 10 minutes away. We rushed out to catch the bus and here I irritated all other bus riders. From about 30 ft to the bus, I heard a woman said to the bus driver “Go, go ahead” and I thought she told the bus driver to take off. Without thinking it was Downtown Disney bus stop means all the people there were waiting to get on the same bus as I did, I rushed over, wiggled between people, passed the first person in line and hopped on the bus, just right after the people on the bus got off. Just right there and then, I realized what I’ve done. Worst than that, Gilles and the kids cut the line too and got on before everyone else in line. As soon as I sit down, people started to get on and throw dirty looks at our direction. They were smirking and saying nasty things about us, I was sure. I would do the same. Anyhow, an hour and a half later, we had to carry the kids off the bus to our room since they were so tired and felt asleep most of the ride.
Disney World - Day 1 - Part 2
We anxiously got out of the airplane and search for the Mickey Transportation sign. We used their yellow baggage stickers so we didn’t have to fetch the luggages. Between the written directions and the map in the booklet that Disney sent me, we were completely lost. With a help from a guy in the gift shop, we hopped on the shuttle to get transfer to the main terminal. It was pretty neat to sit in the train and absorbed in the Florida atmosphere. Then we were in confusion again at the Disney receiving stations. At last we were all ready to board on the bus. By this time we were so hungry because we got nothing to eat on the airplanes. Luckily, I packed all the left over pizza from dinner the day before with us. Cold pizza was never that good, according to Brandon and Tyler and myself. Gilles rather being fainted than eating cold, left over food, especially cold pizza.
The synchronization system that Disney employs through out Disney parks and properties starts here at the very first location that visitors set their feet out of the plane. People were directed into labeled lines, systematically get on buses. While standing in line waiting for our turn, I saw buses keep pulling in and out. A quick google turns up about 230 buses running around Disney 20 hrs/day. It took about 20-30 minutes to reach Caribbean Beach Resort. Check-in was kinda long because they couldn’t locate a package for me. Turned out it was tickets for Universal Orlando delivered for me the day before. We got room 1450, which located on the second floor in Barbados village, a really short walk from the Custom House. The weather was calling for raining so we headed out to Downtown Disney, couldn’t bring the ponchos with us because they were all in the check-in luggage. The weather was nice and chilly because of the wind. The resort was neat and clean. Our room was facing court yard. As soon as we got in, I checked out the size of the fridge to see if it can accommodate 1/2 gallon of milk and several bottles of water. All was good. We even had a nice little puppy made out of towel waiting on the bed.
After coming up to our room, we put stuff in the safe and headed down to the bus stop.
Bus stop
A little while later, a bus pulled up. I asked if it was heading downtown, the driver advised me to wait for the one with the sign “DOWNTOWN DISNEY”.
First time bus rider
Flower next to the bus stop, I'm such a sucker when it comes to flower
I’ve spent a lot of hours researching what to do and what to eat at Disney before we went so I had some ideas as for where to eat. We headed toward Wofgang Puck Cafe to get a bite. The first encounter with ordering from Disney dinning plan was very confusing, didn’t matter how much preparation you’ve made. After much time of scanning the menu we decided to order the food. I was reading to have the famous creme brulee but the person before me took the last one. The food were pretty good, not wow but good enough.
We headed out to explore, checked to see what pin trader was and other interesting stuff. Then it rained, frizzle at first and hard pour later. The kids were very excited to run from store to store, touched, felt and tried things on. Things at Disney stores were expensive but they were sure very beautiful. Lego store was a big hit for Brandon and Tyler. Huge statuses were made of little pieces of lego. The kids got to design and build their own cars and put their works on a race. Tyler came in second. Woohooo!!! Next stop was T-Rex, an amazing decorated restaurant-store combination. Dinosaurs, octopuses, sea creatures, mammoths came alive with motions and sounds. We walked into Harley Davidson store so that the kids can touch the bike and sit on it.
The sky was still cloudy and threatened to dump water on us anytime. Mercury level was getting lower and lower as day pass. On top of it, wind was whirling left and right. A good side of all this was that we practically had the park for all ourselves. We wondered over the West side and got into Disney Quest, where all you can play the arcade games - for free! Well, technically we paid for it with the Water Park option. Three story-high full of machines to play ranging from poor video of Pack-Man game to current technology lazer shooting machine. The kids got loose and were so excited. They ran from machine to machine but racing car/bike were the best of all. Gilles and I also engaged ourselves and really had fun. The only problem I had with Disney Quest was the loudness. I am pretty sure my ear drums got thinner after several trips there.
Candy for your eyes
I stumbled upon this website while searching for recipes. Her pictures look amazingly beautiful.
Nordljus website
I wish I wish I wish I can have her talents
I wish I wish I wish Hidemi Sugino’s cookbook translated into English
I wish I wish and still wishing
One of these days I will be able to bake and take pictures like she does.