tom yum noodle with shrimp. it’s kind of like instant noodle that we can buy in supermarket. i’m not sure if we have this at vancouver. probably at richmond? a while ago…this is my favourite lunch. i know there’s thai food at 41st street at kerrisdale, something similar like this. i like it more becos my maid cook this for me. she knows how spicy i want it, how many portion of soup, what kinds of veggie i like with tom yum noodle, how hard the noodles are. it might look a bowl of ordinary noodle to other people. but it’s special for me. it’s filled with love that she have take care of me for 18 years! i’m proud of her.

chicken ramen that i like to go eat myself, every week after school, since 2 years ago. for japanese noodles, we shuld eat it with sound when we eat the noodle. for japanese people, this means that their noodles are delicious. i go there when i do not want to hang out with anyone…wanted to spend some time with myself after a busy tiring day. well, i think know how to spend time with ourselves alone are kind of important. instead of hanging around for no reason, or just becos we’re feeling lonely with ourselves. then i prefer spending some time thinking, and do some reflection of the day however. i remember i brought a friend to that food court, sharing this bowl of noodle together. those are the days. good old days.

i wish i can have a bowl of congee or home made food. just makes it better when i’m busy with my school work…getting more pressure by the surroundings. why am i still having homesick for almost half a year? i don’t know! but i do admit that i miss home. i miss my parents, i miss my maid, i miss my dogs, anything at my home. i miss my bed. whatever. need something else apart from fries and burger.

it’s also kind of inconvenient becos we don’t have bowls and gases for us to cook, except microwave and a fridge that everyone will share with each other. so canteen food is my only choice. something that i can do, is that i brought a hot boiler earlier, so that i can make some tea and hot drink in my room. or cup noodles at night. at least it helps when i’m feeling cold at that day, with having a hot drink. wonder if u guys will have the same feeling like i do? :O or occasionally when i discover some of the chinese restaurant around, i’ll just eat as much as i can!  anyways, trying not to type too much but showing some pictures of what i like to eat when i’m at home:

some kind of roast pork with spring onion (like the green ones but not white ones)

steamed broccoli. it’ll be better if they’re cooked with garlic together.

green pepper with fishball. we need to pay attention if there’s any small bones in the fishball.

fish head and fish belly. for this one…they must be hot enough. or else there’ll be ‘fishy smell’

this one looks also kind of new to me. my maid learnt this in some cooking books…it’s beancurd pocket with potato salad. the beancurd pocket tastes salty and a little bit spicy when u dipp spicy sauce.

however, when i tried to eat the inner part of the salad, it tastes sweet becos of the salad sauce. i like it!

- below are some collection of chinese soup:

this is watercress soup. but usually i like to save some until the next day, so that i can reboil the soup and eat with macaroi together. they goes really well and tasty as the soup is more tasty after waiting for one day.

carrot and green turnip boiled with pork meat. like eating green turnip very much.

chinese yam soup. this soup helps if u’re having sore throat as well. good for dry weather.

wait until next year. if i’m sharing a flat with someone, or living by myself. then i shuld really learning cooking them myself!! in order to survive overseas for the next coming 3 years.

in a dim sum restaurant, usually there will be waiter holding a trolly, with many hot and fresh dim sum, yelling what dim sum they have on that day, and we’ll go to the waiter and pick up whatever dim sum we like. as i know, this is the most traditional way that works in a chinese restaurant. nowadays, some restaurants just order from menu. but personally i like the way that the waiter is walking ard and passing us dim sum. becos that’s more fresh. or u will know which dim sum looks more fresh on that day.

anyhow, something i don’t like about dim sum restaurant. let’s say there’s ard 10 people sitting on a table. and ordering one spring roll, there’s only 8 of them. everyone is hungry and people is just trying to pretend to be polite, and let everyone to have their dim sum. without eating themselves….so some people ended up don’t eat enough. haha. but when i’m a bit older, i’ve get used to the tradtion of going to dim sum restaurant every sunday with my grandma. now we do order more than we need…. so i’m super full. and pack away dim sum for afternoon tea…… i’m sure i’ll miss that in vancouver. although i think i can go eat dim sum there, but it’s not the same eating with family. and the atmosphere is not as boisterous as hong kong i guess. sigh.

rabbit candy – the dessert in dim sum restaurant that i like the most!!!!

so what’ve i done during the holiday? eat & eat & eat. eat as much as i can. well. maybe for many of you, this is a holiday for Vancouver Olympics or holiday for reading break. But for me, it’s CHINESE NEW YEAR! (i don’t mean olympics is not as important as chinese new year. but all tickets are sold out anyways) Well, didn’t expect to go home and enjoy my Chinese New Year holiday, but there’re 2 weeks of holiday. Also i’m living in campus….so it will be pretty inconvenient for me to travel or go shopping during the break. i mean….what’s better than going back home?

During this festival, Chinese New Year, also called Lunar New Year holiday, people love eating dumplings, niangao, turnip cake and many other kinds of  sweets. (see the pictures below). It’s not just about eating and celebrating another new year. For me, this holiday is special that my other relatives and i will meet each other, even some other relatives that we usually do not see each other for some time. Also, we usually buy some accessories like fai chun (red papers with greetings on it), and red packets!!! Under such happy and warm atmosphere, most of the Chinese New Year do have a lot of fun meet ups with my family.

Hmmm….one thing about Chinese New Year- another brand new start of the year. so my goal of the year: better at handling my priorty settings. such as…be more dedicated to church and read the bible everyday, pray to God everyday. In school work, i’ll hav to read faster!!!! to catch some of the main points throughout the reading. Besides, to keep in touch with my good friends. so… 3 main things i hope to achieve throughout the year!!!  and of course, share some of the photos that i took recently:

this is my favourite turnip cake!!! i think i ate almost a cake size of turnip cake within 2 weeks!!! by the way i like to eat in fried, not steam.

this is the niangao that i was mentioning earlier. usually a proper niangao don’t have 2 kinds of taste in it… anyways, my mum brought a whole bunch this niangao…… better finish it b4 i go back to vancouver…..

see! this is the stock of turnip acke and niangao that’s occupying my fridge…….

a closed version of a candy box that chinese people like using it during CNY.

sorry for any inconvenience of bad translation… don’t really know their english names…. the middle one is red seeds, sweet sliced coconut, sweet lotus roots and others are also with coconut taste candy….

another version of the candy box that i saw in a restaurant, so the middle one sweet mandarin, and the back there’re some pistachio.

 this is deep fried candy ring, made of flour egg and sugar.

that’s all for today   to be continued……

nothing very special for my adventurous food collection this week. instead, had fun making chocoaltes with norma, and kelly tmr. to share a little story that i heard about valentine’s day in my culture. – the cowherd & the weaver girl. a simpler version that i know, is that the cowheard was working hard on farm work all year, and the weaver girl’s job is to make clothes. however, they’re seperated all years, except valentine’s day, also called “the night of sevens” to meet at the bridge of  magpies. so they can only meet once a year for a single day. also, if there’s rain on “night of seven” day, they’ll not be able to meet each other… in my memory, this is probably the first time that i heard sth abt Valentine’s Day when i’m small.

hmmm. better make them earlier, or else…no time to study for my mid-term and not concentrate with my exams..sigh. so what is valentine’s day? to show ur love to ur partner by sending gifts? propose to someone and show ur love?  or making cupcakes, chocolate and stuff to cheer up a good frd?

so, for this year, before i decided to make chocoalates, did think of some options for valentine’s day… such as buying a present or etc, but  hand made presents are more precious & personal? the only bad thing is that chocoalte will not last. well. that’s alright. after i brought all the materials for making chocoaltes, janice has talked about Valentine’s Day as a commercialize kind of festival… oops. well doesn’t matter, i guess we don’t have to be too rational all the time. enjoy!!

writing a buying list: – chocolate molds, milk/dark/white chocolate, a box, …wrapping paper for chocolates.

 these are the materials that i buy from different supermarkets. by the way, that chocolate box might be a bit small to fit in all chocolates…i’ll see. other stuff like chocolate wrapping paper & decoration stuff. on the right hand side, they’re all chocolates that i have. not sure like which chocolate works best. i’ll say the pink one looks the most suitable for valentine’s day. white chocolate mixes best with milk & dark chocolate. and dark chocolate is the easiest to work well for beginners……

 yay!!!! let’s get started!!! pretty excited. just melt a bulk of chocolate, by cutting it into small pieces. and heat it up on a bowl. norma just reminded me, that we shuldn’t melt chocoalte directly by putting into the bowl. after it’s all melt, cool it up for a while, and pour them into the chocolate mold nicely!

        this is probably the easiest one to make, due to bigger surface area of the mold.

For this one, the alphabetical letters are too small, so that it’s not able to use a spoon to add on chocolate. so this method would work for small pieces of chocolates! and they work succcessfully!

- hands cannot be shaky and needs to be focused.

u might wonder why there’re only milk chocoalte & no other kinds of chocoalte that i brought.

because i’ll have to wait for the first round of the chocolate to be solid and make the second, third around tmr. but great!!!! these started ones looks prefectly fine! can’t wait to dig them up and eat some myself!!!

anyway, thank you so much for norma and ur kitchen! i’ll do more work tmr and mission success!

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although there’s no special food recommendation for this week, BUT still, i brought some macarcon for tea time today. usually the most typical macarcon looks like this:

(original from: http://sparklette.net/food/bakerzin-macaron/)

       but the one i saw today is kind of different…..

 they’re also called macaron. but with chocoalte dips on top, white x dark chocolate.

well, they look good but it’s kind of sweet, maybe it’s because of the egg-crusted mixed with sugary inside with chocolate at outside. don’t see them very often unless in some special bakery shops. i guess it’s difficult to control the technique and mostly the same size and appeal. unlike other cookies, there’s no way to make macaron with machine? the thing i like macaron is that it’s sweet like cake & also the harder surface on top. gives u a good experience of eating a sandwich cookie with 2 different layers. some macaron that i know will also have strawberry jam inside!

although i walked pass that shop for a few times, however, i’m always looking outside of the shop…BUT. with hanging out with kelly & norma, i bet they’ll like it as well. so we just shared a candy apple there’re other box chocolates & caramel apple flavour…but some of them look too colorful, can’t imagine if i’m going to eat all the colors into my tummy…that’s pretty bad. also, some of them look really heavy….imagine a apple is already full of chocolate at its surroundings, STILL adding all M&Ms top of the chocoalte….. oh dear. that apple is no longer healthy…….

anyways, i think the most interseting thing about these apples are not how they taste. as they’re just ordinary apples with sugary glaze on top. but the progess of making these candy apples. it looks easy but it actually takes time than expected? like the sugary thingy on top is hard to control & make it totally fits the apple. in case the sugary was not melted well enough & being sticky. just guessing, but timing for making them are important? oh and esp for the ones who looks even more fancy with M&M or toffee etc. don’t really remember how many different kinds of chocolate/sweet apple do they have….hmmm maybe around twenty? :O

Don’t they look attracting ???? well maybe i’ve never see chocoalte & sugary stuff would possibly mixed with apple as a chocoalte product.

 when i brought it…the apple actually looks a little bit bigger than the apple bits i’m holding. don’t really know how to start with eating the apple….so i’ve decided to ask the woman, like if she can cut it into pieces for me.

it actually tastes more sour than i thought. of course the candy on the apple skin was very sweet…but while eating with the candy & the apple together, it tastes more sour. just guessing…. but it might be a green apple? can’t really see the skin.

but i believe the red candy is color as well. since my mouth is getting more reddish after eating this candy. still. it tastes pretty good! or maybe i can try making something like that too.

still rmb when i was in high school, like grade 8… i like writing entries on the web too…but not like xanga/wordpress format …it’s @ hkflash. it’s like you can draw & write. at that time, writing entries is almost like my diary. for some reason, now i just get used to process everything in my head….insteading of sharing my life with others.

first of all, i’m a *food lover*! any kinds of food. basically i love enjoying food & i’ll let u guys know if there’s anything good..to give you my special recommendation =D hehehe.

& i’m new to vancouver. so any food here is new to me. just walking ard & making more footprints in different restaurant, shops, etc etc…..

btw, this is what i discovered today! – Pandan chiffon cake!!! @ Sasamat street

i think it’s some kind of singpore food? with leaf & fragrance smell.

it’s irresistible……..

ahhh. shuld’ve take a pic of the whole cake!! looks more attracting! really like the green colour of it …very nice, very nice.

- in progress – eating - 

so i  hav to finish my afternoon tea now! BYE! :D:D