Chaotic

Life with kids and foodies

Sticky fingers, spilled juice on the floor and carpet, banging on the furniture with hard objects, pushing every button on the remote control “Hey I was watching that show”, going number 2 right after changing diaper or do #1 in bath tub full of water, high pitched screams in my ear caused temporary deafness, multiple finger prints on stainless steel fridge door which I just polished, losing patience with what seems like endless whining, sassy attitude, jumping on my stomach from couch let out painful moan and laugh from a child, so many no’s on food I prepared, saying too many no’s by tired baby sitter…. those are some of  not my favorite things inflicted by favorite grandchildren.

Having an another Foodie in the house is interesting yet tricky. My daughter and I have different food styles. She is more organic and comfort. I go for looks and adore pretty plates. I love seafood, she, not so much. In her college years, she made onion bread that has chunk of onion in it. I was very surprised in a negative way. She developed her cooking skills on her own and she is an excellent cook. One thing is certain, we both like slow food and take our time cooking and enjoy the pleasure of finding new restaurants to eat at.

We had a dinner at Kin Restaurant in Down Town Portland. We liked it!  Here are Chinese style pork belly buns.

Korean style pancake and kimchee on the side

Sautéed long beans with shrimp

Kobe beef

Pork two way

We ordered every dessert on the menu.

Can you tell? We liked them all.

We had great weather on 4th of July.

Having friends over for Sunday dinner is a blessing.

My daughter made a Momofuku Milk grasshopper pie for dessert.

Home made gyoza last night…should make more.

Smores for desserts.

 

Smell of freshly shampooed hair, wrapping them with towels that are bigger than them, bed time kisses and hugs, saying I love you and hearing them repeating same precious words, tucking them in, sleeping sounds and making myself a cup of hot chocolate then flumping on the couch are some of my favorite things.

Visit Oregon Zoo-Hot day…many animal were taking nap.

Lovely flowers everywhere on the zoo ground.

San Francisco Treat

Finding gems in a lovely city

Me and other 300 food bloggers are probably posting recapture of the FoodBuzz convention last weekend. It was way fun for me too and I have lots to talk about. I forgot that learning is exciting and interacting with other food lovers is delightful plus having good food is always a key ingredient to having a joyful experience. I called my husband 2nd day to announce that I love San Francisco and I would love to live here. He said without skipping a beat “Let’s move, go find a job for me”. Yeah right, I wish life is that easy.

I notice that there are not too many bloggers over 50. I could be a mother to any of them. Wait, my real daughter was with me. She guided me through a sea of food bloggers and whispered in my ear their names or blog names. I am so impressed with her incredible memory. I was very excited to see Marc of norecipe.com. I don’t want to brag but he left a kind comment on my very first blog post 11 months ago. And Ben of youfedababychilli? He is ‘Is this guy for real?” kind of super nice, gentle and very tall fellow. Angie of rice & wheat is so sweet and I liked her the instant I met her. Marla of Family fresh cooking.com has a hilarious personality, I laughed so hard just listening to her talk. Julie of Willow Bird Baking sat with us at the first dinner table and at the farewell breakfast, she was so fun and cute. Sabrina from the tomato tart had a great class, I just love her wit. A young lady from Houston, Ann Liu of Running with chopstix is lovely. I wish she was my 2nd daughter. Then there is Jen from Tiny urban kitchen at Boston- the 2010 project food blog winner. She is really charming and generous, she donated her winning sum of 10,000 dollars to a homeless shelter!

Note; Photos are not very good so I made them small.

My daughter-The Little Foodie

Marc


Ann

Sabrina, Julie and me

My daughter, her friend from college who lives in San Francisco, Ben, Stella Parks of bravetart.com and I went to an ice cream crawl. We had tasty ice cream at three creameries and my favorite is black sesame ice cream. Stella speaks fluent Japanese and her blog is gorgeous. I’m so glad to get to know her
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Stella and Ben

With Ben and Angie’s recommendation, my daughter and I dined at Cotogna and Zuni Cafe. Both are excellent. I think because I was wearing black and white outfit, a French gentleman mistook for me a waitress at Zuni. He apologized in French and the only word that I could come up was merci, どこが？
Rabbit dish at Zuni cafe
Gateau Victoire  with whipped cream (Translation; flourless chocolate cake)
Zeppole napoletane with Meyer lemon and lime curd (Translation; donuts )

While walking market street we discovered Minamoto Kitchoan ( 源吉兆庵）the authentic Japanese pastry shop. We were still full of Tasting Pavilion yet we bought a few pretty sweets.

I met so many other nice bloggers. Some of the bloggers are lawyers, doctors, scientists, etc. It reminded me of a book I read in Japan called ’Smart women cook well’. I would nod in agreement. although there are always some exception.

Thank you FoodBuzz staff for your hard work. I’m grateful for the incredible opportunity.

Thank you Beth. You’re awesome!