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Mar

When I Turn 18…

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“Time for dinner!” I shouted out to the kids.

Kids came running down the stairs, and plopped down to their chairs.

After a couple of gulps of milk, they busied themselves with piling food onto their plates.

“Hey! My cousin just moved out of her parents’ house last weekend!” I said.

The kids nodded.

“It is about time! She is 28 already.” me.

“Well, she did just finish graduate school.” me.

Kids ate rather quietly.

“I did encourage her to move out. Young people must establish their independence, and learn to live on their own.” me.

Kids chewing.

“I love you kids, but when you grow up, you must learn to be independent.” me.

Every now and then, I found myself conducting a conversation all by myself at the dinner table, so their silence wasn’t unusual. (In case you were worried about me.)

“Your mom and dad can not take care of you forever, so you must learn to live on your own, and do it well.” me.

“Just like those cute lion and cheetah cubs you saw in South Africa, those cute little things will need to master the skills to kill and hunt on their own someday to survive.” me.

“It is actually not much different for us humans…” me.

“Mom.” 14 year-old interrupted.

I looked up at my teen.

“When I turn 18…” 14 year-old paused for dramatic effect.

It worked, all eyes were on her.

“You guys are moving out.” 14 year-old.

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Category: Humor, Kids, Parents 2 Comments

Feb

Cupcakes and Churros

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“Mom, can we invite my friends over for a playdate?” 11 year-old.

“Sure.” I said without giving a thought.

“Can we have cupcakes for the playdate?” 11 year-old.

“Sure.” me.

Again, I replied too quickly, and without thinking. I am a hopeless pleaser to my kids.

Cupcakes are easier said than done these days. My baby has Celiac disease. I would have to drive a great distance to buy the gluten free versions, and dough out a huge amount of money.

Why not make them myself? Great idea! I decided to make them from scratch.

Though I am an inexperienced baker, my first batch of gluten free cupcakes came out of the oven looking beautiful, and smelling like cupcake heaven.

Homemade gluten free cupcakes

Do you know what’s the difference between homemade cupcakes and store bought ones? Well, it is the icing on the cake!

Instead of smearing icing on top of the cupcakes with a knife, I bought this icing bag.

Icing bag

I carefully piped the icing on top of the cupcakes, and showered them with colorful sprinkles.

My cupcakes were a huge hit.

Cupcakes + icing

As I was cleaning the icing bag, a new inspiration popped into my brain. The opening part of the bag looked like a churro shape. I should make churros with this!

Churros were a favorite food of my 11 year-old, and she could no longer eat it since being diagnosed with Celiac a year ago.

How hard can it be to fry some dough, and toss it in some sugar and cinnamon…

Next day, I went about to make churros.

I got a batch of gluten free dough, I put the dense dough into my icing bag, with the biggest star shape tip.

Churro dough in icing bag

I piped a 4 inch length dough straight into the hot oil frying pot, and within a few minutes, they turned nicely golden.

frying the churros

I coated them in my sugar and cinnamon mixture.

freshly fried churros tossed in the sugar and cinnamon mixture

I proudly present my first batch of delicious (and gluten free!) churros.

My gluten free churros

Category: Parents One Comment

Feb

My Un-Valentine

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On Valentine’s day, I got a card from my 14 year-old with this nasty note written all over the envelope.

Un-Valentine message

I may have done something to deserve this wrath…

Earlier that day.

“Hey kids! You got Valentine’s day cards from Nai Nai.” I shouted out, as I drop the mail on the kitchen island.

14 year-old promptly walked over and tore open her card. A ten dollar bill fell to the floor.

“Ha! MONEY!!!” 14 year-old.

That got my 11 year-old’s attention. The baby dropped the book she was reading, and ran over excitedly.

My two children are always money hungry these days.

I eyed the baby, and said, “Just because Nai Nai give Thee ten dollars, doesn’t mean you will have ten dollars in your card too.”

The baby crossed her arms, and gave me that don’t be silly look.

14 year-old ran upstairs with her money.

11 year-old opened her card, and sure enough, she waved a ten dollar bill at me.

That’s when my head grew a pair of horns…

I took a clean twenty dollar bill out of my wallet, and swapped it with the baby’s ten dollar bill.

“Go upstairs, and wave this twenty dollar bill in one hand, and your card on the other hand at your sister.” I whispered.

A big mischievous smile appeared across the baby’s face. We were in cahoots.

Soon enough, the expected growling and gleaming voices were heard upstairs. The baby is good at acting!

I ran upstairs, pretending to investigate their little crisis.

“What’s going on?” me.

The baby showed me her twenty.

I took the bill into my hands, and gave it a good look.

“I thought you said you got a ten?” I said to my 14 year-old.

“I did get a ten!!” 14 year-old, looking slighted.

“But this is a TWENTY!” I said incredulously.

“Nai Nai gave you a ten, gave your sister a TWENTY?!!” sounding even more incredulously.

14 year-old nodding her head up and down, looking all sad.

“This can’t be right. I don’t believe this. You must have looked wrong. Nai Nai must have given you a twenty too.” me.

14 year-old ran back into her room, and came back with her ten dollar bill to show me.

“Wow, wow…” me.

The baby was conducting her happy dance all around us, waving the twenty.

“Well, Nai Nai is getting old, she must of made a mistake. I am sure she meant to gave you each a ten or each a twenty. I am sure she didn’t mean to give your sister twice more than you.” I tried not to laugh.

“I thought Nai Nai is my homie, but she is not…” 14 year-old pouted sullenly.

“Nai Nai likes me more than you.” 11 year-old was piling it on.

14 year-old looked even more crushed.

“Well, maybe because your sister has Celiac, and Nai Nai knows that her gluten free snacks cost twice as much as your snacks. So, she gets more money than you.” I offered a new theory.

14 year-old shook her head. She rejected my words of comfort.

After torturing my teen for a good 10 minutes, I had to come clean. I wouldn’t want Nai Nai to get into unearned trouble.

I took the ten dollar bill out of my pocket, and swapped it with the baby’s twenty.

“We got you!” I said, as my baby and I melted onto the floor laughing.

“THAT’S RUDE!!”, protested the teen.

Later that night, she handed me a Valentine’s card, it came with a nasty message all over the card envelope. Inside the card, under each word “LOVE”, she written “Bacon” under it. She was professing her love for bacon on my Valentine’s day card!

LOVE Bacon

That little pig.

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Category: Humor, Kids, Parents One Comment

Feb

Get in Shape, Squid!

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The crispy rings and tentacles known as calamari starts its life looking like this beast.

Squid

Ever since my baby was diagnosed with Celiac Disease a year ago, we found that the poor child is unable to eat most of her favorite foods in the restaurants. Old favorites such as French fries, onion rings, and Calamari are totally off limits. Very few restaurants offer gluten free fried food, and even if the ingredients happened to be gluten free, even fewer restaurants have dedicated gluten free fryers.

I will just make these restaurant foods at home. How hard can that be?

Gluten free onion rings

So, on most Sunday afternoons, I pair myself with a glass of my homemade Sangria, cook up a storm, and make the house take on the aroma of a restaurant.

calamari in marinate

I have never prepared calamari before. So, I found this helpful Youtube video on how to clean and prepare it.

I quickly gutted and peeled off the outer layer of thin skin like the video taught me. It wasn’t hard, though it wasn’t a pretty process.

Gutted and cleaned

Cooking Method:

1) I cut up the cleaned calamari into rings and tentacles, and treated them with salt and pepper, a dash of lime, and some cooking alcohol.

salt, pepper, and seafood seasoning

2) For the dry mixture, I used about half a cup of cornmeal, a half cup of gluten free flour (you can use your regular flour), about a teaspoon of baking powder, and a splash of pepper.

GF dry mixture

3) I threw the calamari pieces into the flour/cornmeal mixture, and gave it a good toss.

Ready for the fryer

4) I heated up cooking oil in a fryer. I used a small pot to minimize oil usage.

5) I dropped a few pieces into the hot oil one at a time.

6) Each piece is only in the fryer for 1 to 2 minutes, no longer!

7) I served it with the appeal of a restaurant dish. A couple wedges of lime, basil, and a gluten free Chipotle Mayo sauce. (Store bought!)

GF Calamari is served!

Very easy indeed.

Category: Parents 2 Comments

Feb

A Rendezvous with Gluten Free

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Move over photography, we need to make room for the arrival of my newest obsession.

Our Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Breadmaker

Meet our bread maker. It arrived just last week.

Now, why would a self respecting Chinese woman need a bread maker?! Rice is not filling enough these days?

Well, this bread maker’s key beneficiary is my baby’s American stomach.

Our baby loves bread!

This bundle of cuteness loves bread!!

My 11 year-old was diagnosed with Celiac Disease about a year ago, just 3 months after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

Celiac and Type 1 diabetes are both auto immune diseases. So Celiac disease is more prevalent among Type 1 diabetics than the general population, and this double whammy fell into our lot.

There is no cure for Celiac disease, and the only treatment is to follow a very strict gluten free diet. This is not easy. Gluten is EVERYWHERE!!

Gluten is a protein from wheat, barley, and rye. If my baby ingests even a trace amount of gluten, her over active immune system will attack the heck out of it, wreaking havoc on her small intestine, damage the villi on her small intestine, and render her unable to absorb nutrients into her body. This helped to explain why she didn’t grow even an inch in about a year.

So, we have been that “trendy” gluten free band wagon family the media has complained about so much recently. Except this band wagon is no joy ride in a shiny BMW, this band wagon is one endless bumpy ride, driven by an old donkey!

Foods we have taken for granted such as bread was a major challenge. We were able to quickly identify Udi’s Gluten Free bread as our favorite. However, it is almost always kept in the freezer section of the grocery stores, and the baby only liked two types of their GF bread. The only way to eat fresh baked bread was to drive over an hour away to a dedicated GF bakery, called Mariposa’s.

I have decided to liberate the baby from her frozen and boring breads misery. I am going to make her fresh GF bread myself!

“But you don’t know how to bake!!” my husband.

This is true. So I bought a bread maker with a gluten free setting on it.

Gluten Free baking setting

I also decided to start with the simplest GF bread recipe.

The recipe

I went out and bought a list of unfamiliar ingredients, and I met a couple of them for the first time.

GF ingredients for bread making

I was determined to follow the recipe to the letter. Rather than simply measure each of the ingredients with the various cup sizes, I weighed each of the key ingredients down to the exact grams on my kitchen scale.

Carefully weighing the GF flours

My 11 year-old got all excited and joined me in the kitchen. She happily poured 3 tablespoons of honey into the batter mixture, and felt certain that this bread was destined to be delicious.

Adding honey to the mixture

I put the batter mixture into the bread maker, pushed a few buttons.

Loading the batter mixture into the bread maker

A little over two hours later….

Our bread is done!

Oh! Beautiful, further enhanced by the heavenly smell of the freshly baked bread filling the entire house.

A big 2 lb loaf

Our first loaf of gluten free bread did not play victim to any of the typical gluten free pitfalls, such as too dense or too crumbly or too off tasting.

Slice and serve

The four of us enjoyed our first loaf of gluten free bread for dinner. My baby was so grateful to finally be eating fresh, warm, fluffy, and delicious bread.

It was a huge success. I am in love with our bread maker.

I plan to bake a loaf of bread every week. My unhinged ambition and impatience will have me attemping a much more complicated bread recipe this coming Sunday. I can’t wait!

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Category: Kids, Parents 2 Comments

Jan

Darkness Exposed!

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Behold….

SF Golden Gate

Last weekend was fun.

Instead of idling away a Saturday in my usual comfortable but predictable fashion, my husband sent me away on an all day on location photography class in San Francisco. What a sweet man!

I spent the day with a fun group of photography hobbyists, two professional instructors, and we snapped away with our cameras from morning until night.

The class

I learned many new tricks with my camera.

See this picture.

Not a clear day

The day was barely sunny, the clouds were grayish, and the bridge was hazy. I had no idea that in my camera bag, there sat a polarizing filter lens. I never knew what it was for!

I learned to simply fit it over my camera lens, and by turning it, I could manipulate the sunlight to give my image a more colorful look, and even turn the sky into nicer shade of blue!

The Golden Gate

“WOW! I don’t have to photo shop anymore! You just saved me lots of time” I shouted happily to Alley, one of the two instructors with us that day.

Ha, ha, Alley walked away laughing.

Oh, I especially love this picture.

The dark room at Fort Point

This used to be an impossible picture for me to take.

You would not be able to tell, but this image was taken from an incredibly dark space. In fact, so dark, I could barely make out the barrel sitting in the corner. I learned to control the shutter speed to allow in a great deal of light to take this picture. (No flash, no bringing in extra light). Some of the shots actually turned out too bright!

Hooray for shutter speed control!

Here are additional long exposure shoots I took that day.

Fort Point

Fort Point Hallway

The beach

Beach near night time

The Golden Gate at night

I came home from the class late at night.

“How was the class?” hubby asked.

“It was awesome. Loved every minute of it.” me.

“What did you learn?” hubby.

“I learned that I need to take more classes, and I need a better camera.” me.

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Jan

Act Your Age!

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This is an odd toy taking up space in our house.

Frozen Ball Pit

Santa had dropped off this brand new Ball Pit in front of my 14 year-old’s bedroom door on Christmas Eve.

Ha, Santa must have made a mistake!

No! My 14 year-old could not be more thrilled with this gift on the morning of Christmas day. This is exactly what she prayed for.

Our 14 year-old was greatly burdened by the demands of her new High School curriculum, and longed for the carefree days of her toddlerhood. She saw pictures of herself playing happily in her old ball pit, and dreamed of getting this toy again, to turn her fantasy of spending idle and mindless time sitting in a ball pit a reality.

When the 14 year-old was four...

She shamelessly dropped all sorts of hints of desiring this big silly toy.

Ball pit on the Christmas wish list ball

Santa delivered.

WHAT?! She made it to Santa’s nice list!!?

I find myself staring at this big toy, and wondering when I can give it away to a real toddler.

“No! I plan to take it to my college dorm someday.” said the 14 year-old.

I wondered where I must’ve made an error as a mother.

Then it occurred to me that if my teen had to misidentify with her age group, it is preferable for her to act like a big baby, than paint her face with powerful makeup, wear tiny skin-tight clothes, high heels, and pretend to be a 21 year-old.

The Ball Pit can stay.

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Category: Kids Leave a Comment

Dec

The Backyard Struggle

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Our backyard

Yes, this is the sad state of our backyard…

The ground cover

Agreed. Our backyard could use a comb over.

Why is our yard in such a curious state?

We have this great big hill as our backyard. The top of the hill can look over our roof. We decided wisely that we needed a ground cover that is low maintenance. No one would enjoy mowing a lawn on such a slope.

We found the perfect ground cover known as the Red Apple (Aptenia cordifolia). In addition to being green year round, the red apple has these pretty little red flowers.

Pretty tiny red flowers

We quickly discovered a problem. These pretty flowers attracted bees in the summer. These bees put everyone on edge during our summer BBQs. We decided to take the red apple ground cover out.

We didn’t immediately take up rakes and shovels to get them out. Our laziness convinced us to just turn off the water and let the great California drought to take our plant out very slowly.

Our patience was paying off. Sort of.

The left side of our yard has rid itself of the plant completely, but the red apple on the right side of our yard has survived its ordeal. It is rapidly making a comeback, aided by the start of our raining season.

I stared at my backyard often and shook my head in puzzlement.

The mystery was solved on a Sunday morning.

A loud sounding of gardening work woke me up on Sunday morning. I was annoyed at whichever inconsiderate neighbor. I peeked out the window, and saw that we were that inconsiderate neighbor. It was our gardeners making all that raucous mowing the lawn and blowing the leaves. Our gardener rarely showed up on the weekends, they usually do their yard work unseen on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

I decided to go down and get some coffee.

I looked out the kitchen window, and saw the boss gardener standing steady on our hill and spraying generous amounts of some liquid all over the condemned ground cover in a very systematic manner.

I ran out into the yard, and asked, “What are you doing?”

My gardener turned, and replied, “Fertilizer!”, then announced with a big smile,”Your plant was dying. I saved it for you!”

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Category: Humor, Parents One Comment

Dec

1st Diaversary

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1st Diaversary dessert and candle

What is this diaversary, you ask.

Well, it is the first anniversary of my baby’s diagnosis with Type 1 Diabetes.

WHY would anyone want to celebrate a disease!! You ask.

Well, no one asked if we wanted this disease, but no one said that we had to be sad about it either!

December 4th, 2013 was a date that my family will never ever forget. The diagnosis was earth shattering, emotionally traumatic, and mixed with sky high anxiety. Life was never the same again, and it took us a long time to find our new norm. But we learned to be comfortable, and even happy again with our new norm.

When December 4th, 2014 loomed close, I knew it was to be an important date that we can’t just pretend to forget. I have told my children that if they get to chose between being sad or being happy, always choose happy! So, we celebrate.

We went out and splurged on a fancy dinner at our favorite Steak House. We didn’t stop here either.

The following Sunday, we invited the baby’s close friends over for a Christmas party in honor of her 1st Diaversary.

Sweets!

The healthier table

The kids played games, painted each other’s faces, rode skateboards out in front of the house, then they made sugar cookies, cut them into Christmas shapes, baked, and painted them with icing.

Home made Christmas cookies

As I watched these kids all giggling and smiling, I looked toward the future. I pictured my child away in some college campus, and on a perhaps cold December day, she would hold a hot drink in her special cup, and will look back on her memorable Dec 4th date, and find something to smile about.

Cup with engraved diaversary date

Category: Parents One Comment

Nov

Got Teens?

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When the kids were little, my first born had always served as a shining role model for my younger child.

Not anymore!!

My first born is now a sassy teen, and totally insane.

A couple of nights ago, I was putting dishes away, and heard the teen polluting my baby’s young mind again with this advice…

Teen, “You want to be popular at school? I know how you can get everyone to like you at school.”

My 11-year-old stared back at the teen beast all wide eyed.

Teen, “You take a picture of your butt, and post it on Instagram.”

My 11-year-old frowned back at the former role model.

Undeterred, the teen continued, “Everybody will like you, because everybody loves butts! That is why the people love Kim Kardashian!!!!!”

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Category: Humor, Kids Leave a Comment

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