Brunch for a crowd

I had invited a few east side coworkers over for brunch. I've been cooking up a storm the day before. Two kinds of strata, chard/Gruyere and mushroom/onion/Monterey Jack. Pan roasted red potatoes with thyme. Pan seared pork and chicken sausages. And of course, my famous cinnamon cardamom buns with cream cheese icing.

Gerard is taking a huge bite of the cinnamon bun.

First real snow in Portland

The big storm that swept the entire Northwest is finally over and we're back to the constant drizzle and gray sky.
On the night of my birthday last week, we looked out of the window and saw a familiar scene on the street. Everything was covered in a fluffy white coat and glistening in the light of street lamps. It brought me nostalgia of the windy city.

But because this is Portland, everything turned slushy the next morning as the temperature rose. That didn't stop me from attacking Jose with a couple wet snowballs when he was shoveling in front of the house. I felt like a little kid again (though it's not a rare occurrence).

Happy 2012!!!

For the first blog of the new year, I decided to recap some of the yummy homemade stuff we've eaten in the last week of 2011. There was oven fried calamari, minestrone with shredded chicken, potato stuffed pastry top with an egg, tender duck legs, cinnamon buns, dark chocolate haystack bars and wait for it... pumpkin cheesecake.

Oh, yeah, we said we were going on a diet coming back from India to recover from the rich food we ate there. Oh well... Happy 2012, everyone!!!

Trip to India

We try to do a big trip once a year to somewhere exotic and far away. This year we were invited to a friend's family wedding in New Delhi, India. I don't know about you. But on our list of exotic places to go, India is way up there. I had always been intimidated by traveling to India. This would have been the best time to go since we'd have friends guide us around and the rare opportunity to attend a traditional India wedding.

We spent less than 10 days there, but it was everything we had pictured and much much more. Can you imagine a 5-day wedding, where two families from different parts of India came together and combined all the rituals into one 5-day celebration? Everyday it was bursting with vibrant colors from decoration to saree to food.

And the food was every bit as delicious as we wished for. We got to sample cuisines from various parts of India as well, because the hosts wanted to cater to guests traveling from all over the country. The daily, or more accurately 3 times a day, chai ritual embodies the spirit of calm and peace. Though we couldn't get used to having housemaid serve us food and drinks all the time. We found ourselves constantly thanking and nodding to the servants.

And then there's the famous Taj Mahal and other tombs and forts built by various kings and emperors of the past. They are impressive to look at from a distance, but even more breath-taking at close-up. Every single piece of decorative pattern was hand-made and manually embedded in the walls, each with intricate detail. There were no plain flat surfaces anywhere except for the ground. Every wall is covered with patterns that were either carved out or embedded in.

I thought the most interesting side of India was what you see out on the streets, outside of well-groomed heritage sites and outside of homes of upper-middle class. In the western media you only hear about the double-digit growth of countries like India and China and about how the cream of the crop lives and spends. You don't hear or see this other side of India where people still live in vast poverty. It makes us feel so lucky and grateful for what we have.

To see more photos of India, go here, here and here.

Moon-sized Calzone

We had some home-made pizza dough left in our fridge after a pizza party. Jose's been hinting at me that calzones would make him very happy. So I looked through the fridge for things to fill the calzone with, left over chicken sausage, half tub of ricotta cheese, a bunch of rainbow chard and some mushrooms.

Once the veggies been sauted separately, just roll out the dough and start layer things on half of the dough.

Fold the other half of the dough over and seal along the edges, brush the outside with egg wash and cut a few slits for venting.

Pop it in the oven at 350 for 30min or so and voilà, you have yourself a fulfilling dinner.

First time hosting friends at our new house

Sorry for not posting for a while. Lots has happened in the last two or three months. First and foremost, we have just moved to a new house a week ago. We've spent last week unpacking and putting things away.

Ceci brought a couple friends from Germany over for dinner. This is the first time we put our new dinning space to use for entertaining. Not much to write about the food. But we had a great time chatting with this couple who've been traveling around north America for the past few months and who will continue their year-long trip after a few days in Portland. Their stories are very inspiring.

Fishing on Columbia River

Three of us went on a guided fishing trip, originally purchased for four people.

The toughest parts were
(1) getting up at 2:30am to prep for the trip to make sure we get to the river by 6am
(2) hold the pee for 8 hours straight while we were on the river
(3) letting go 7 fish (2 wild coho salmon, 4 chinook salmon and 1 taken by a sea lion, no joke).

The best part was taking home three 20-lb coho salmon and having the freshest steamed fish heads for dinner that night. Yes, fish heads, arguably the best part of a fish. You ought not to make faces until you've tried it. =)

For photos of the entire trip on Picasa, click here.