I made no plans for Thanks Giving this year, a couple friends invited me over but I thought I would just laid back and relax, but at the last minute I decided to cook anyway since all the holiday special ingredients were for sale at the store and looked so tempting.  Every year I like to do something a little different, this year I tried to make a butter herb mix to coat and stuff the turkey, the aroma turned out quite lovely.

I don't use anything like onion or wine to prepare the turkey because I wanted to share the left overs with my pups, it would be a shame to make something so delicious and then just to have the doggies stare at it.  They knew it was some sort of a special occasion too, eagerly waited by the kitchen to see what comes of all the cooking.

I'm a rather slow cook and to make a complete Thanks Giving meal takes me about four hours, from prepping and roasting the turkey to making cranberry sauce, stuffing and gravy, but after a few years of practice a lot of the dishes became quite easy.  The pups really benefited from the turkey this year, I gave them a few pieces with each meal and they seem to love it! 

One of the dish I've made without fail every year is the cranberry sauce.  It's an easy enough dish and homemade ones always seem to taste better than the store bought type so I always make it.  If I visit friends then they look forward for me to bring it.  I like to present the sauce in lovely antique sauce tureen and this year I used my blue and white sauce tureen to make a prettier presentation.

So much to be thankful for when I put things in perspective.  For one I am not sitting in movie theaters during holidays like I often did in my 20s staving off hunger on pop corn.  There is immense happiness being able to sip coffee, play an old movie and cook delicious food in my own kitchen.  I also have lovely pups and my health to be thankful for, and it's good to be reminded of things we often take for granted!

This week was legitimately difficult for me, I had worked so much that when I finally got to bed I felt so sick and thought I was getting some bad virus infection and probably would never have the energy to get up in the morning, but I did and the sun came out so all was good that the world didn't collapse with my energy level.

Since I was away so much I really missed my doggies during the day, and crazy things happened too while I was away.  Apparently my back door somehow got open and that triggered my alarm and the police came, all the drama escaped me because, well, I just wasn't there.  I only found out because my back door was wide open and there was note from the cops in my mail box.  Since there was absolutely nothing of value in my house I didn't even bother to check, I counted the dogs and just assumed nothing was missing and went on my day.

After eating junk food all week I really felt like cooking so I picked up a ribeye steak from the store and bought a bottle of wine.  I have a pretty reliable steak recipe that I've been using for years and I'd like to share it here.

I learned this recipe in college while I was renting a room from a landlady in North Hollywood.  For about a year I was desperate to find a cheap place that's close enough to my campus so I didn't have to commute three hours a day.  Finally I saw some ad posted at the bulletin board at my music department.  Room for rent, $450 a month.  So I teared a strip of phone number off the bottom of the ad.  Turned out it was a huge Spanish house in North Hollywood owned by a Austrian lady.  She was also a piano teacher, and in her beautiful sprawling house she had a grand music room with two Steinway pianos and chandeliers.  it was a house furnished with a lot of European antique.  My room was a small bedroom in the back with my own full bath complete with antique bed and dresser and a beautiful bathroom with antique fixtures.

My landlady lived with her younger son, who at that time was in his late 20s and quite a looker and a stud.  The three of us became pretty good friends and since we were all music nerd, we had quite a bit in common.  My housemate actually taught me how to cook steak and it was one of the few recipes that he knew how to do because it helped him to "impress girls."  He certainly wasn't trying to impress me but rather thought I was more pitiful than him not having any cooking skills at all. So here are the instructions.

This recipe basically involves cooking steak with a quarter size of olive oil, or as I like to do, about two oz of butter, I also like to add cumin to the sizzling butter for add some extra kick to the flavor, season the steak with salt and pepper, and then cook on medium high heat for about five minutes on each side.  The trick is not to flip the steak except once.  The meat will stick to the pan, but once it's cooked enough it will release itself from the pan and that's when you flip it to the other side.

When the steak is done, I liked to serve with a light salad or boiled green beens and a glass of red wine, and for under 15 minutes you have a delicious dinner for very little.

I also liked to use the smallest pan that I could find, so it's the perfect size to cook for one person. There's something very comforting about preparing dinner and enjoying the wonderful sizzle and smell while cooking.  So now that the food is done, enjoy it under the candle light or a mini chandelier.  Bon Appetite!

One of my new year resolution is learning how to cook Chinese food.  I've made a couple of dishes so far and they turned out good!  Last night I made dumplings and braised pork belly, both came out pretty delicious!  Not a bad new year resolution to put on the list at all!  

From time to time when I cook dinner for my doggies, I will cook something for myself too on the other stove.  I threw some bacon bits, green beans and potato in the pan and boiled everything until the liquid evaporated and the veggie and potatoes were done, added a bit seasoning and soy sauce and dinner is ready.

My spur of the moment creation actually turned out pretty good, I think I will add this one to my own recipes from now on.

For the past several years, I almost always made homemade cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving.  It's so easy and the taste is amazing, even if I'm attending Thanksgiving party elsewhere I always offer to bring cranberry sauce.

There are a lot of good recipes on the internet so I make small adjustment from year to year, the leftovers last me quite a while.

This year I skipped the big cooking production and ate at a friends' house.  Non the less I made cranberry sauce and packed into a lunch box and brought it to the party.  It's more or less become a tradition.  For some people there is a lack of tradition in their life so a few years back I was determined to make my own.  Cranberry sauce is one of them, Christmas tree is another, I am really enjoying these little treasures in my life.

Another Thanksgiving holiday came and gone. At first I was pretty set on not cooking a whole big dinner since the dining crowd on my lot is quite meager, but when the night was approaching and the sizzle of holiday cheer started to boil over,  it just felt like I would miss out if I didn't cook myself a once a year turkey meal.  I wasn't able to find those all in one package precooked dinners, but Costco had some of the packaged items and I just had to cook the turkey. It was such a chaotic experience shopping for food on Thanksgiving eve, it felt like millions of shoppers with their giant shopping carts was flooding towards me, there was shopping cart jam in every aisle, making it out of there with food loaded in my car was quite a triumphant feat!

Since I came to the States as a teenager, I had no idea what Thanksgiving holiday was all about, my family never celebrated any American holidays and there's no day off from work for a Chinese holiday, so I never celebrated holidays of any sorts with my family at all.  Later in college I lived with a landlady in a hundred year old Spanish mansion, it was a cold large house filled with dark and gloomy antique furnitures. We often gathered in the kitchen late at night telling each other haunted stories over a cup of tea for fun. She was a struggling piano teacher trying to make ends meet to support herself and her house after her husband had left, non the less she always pulled out beautiful heirloom china from the cabinet and prepared a full on dinner with a few family and friends on holidays.  On one occasion out of having no place to go I went to a half empty theatre on a very empty stomach because it was one of the only places open during Thanksgiving, when I went back to my rental place their dinner was still going on, she was surprised to see me and insisted from then that I dine with her on holidays. It was such a heart warming experience and every now and then I still think about it.  

Now I was quite stupid for the first few years when I started cooking my own Thanksgiving meals. I insisted on cooking every dish from scratch, it not only cost an arm and leg to shop for all the ingredients but the cooking in itself took forever. Gradually I learned a few tricks and started to have a little bit of a system. Cranking out holiday meals became a bit less of a hassle as each year went by.  This year for instance, I picked an easy recipe and stuffed the bird in the oven the night before and had it cooking over night, albeit I overslept by a couple hours, it still turned out quite juicy and delicious.  I skipped aromatic ingredients such as onions so that my puppies could share the huge turkey with me.  I bought packaged gravy, sweet potato and mashed potato from Costco's and they were absolutely delicious, and I froze half of everything for next month's Christmas meal. For homemade dishes I made cornmeal stuffing, green beans and cranberry sauce from scratch. That was still quite a bit of cooking, but these are simple dishes I've done a few times before. These homemade dishes are so easy and delicious, there's really no need to buy them. 

So there goes the final product! Another delicious meal accounted for during this year's Thanksgiving, at my very own small but beautiful house with my wonderful puppies, now that's something to be thankful about!

It was raining lightly today, the first time I really felt like fall had finally arrived.  In a pleasant mood, I decided to whip up a fancy meal by myself.

It took me almost three hours to make Coq au Vin and French apple tart from scratch, but the result was so worth it. I was able to find free range chicken, cipollini onions and French fingerlin potatoes at the market, and even some Burgundy wine for cooking. It was a fantastic experience, so much so that when dinner was on the table, neither my husband nor I exchanged much conversation because we were so concentrated on the flavor of dinner.  I can tell you that doesn't happen often around here, even more strange since we live in a country where food is offered in such endless abondance.   It took me right back to days of this past summer when I was traveling in France and discussing Mozart daily with my taxi driver.  I'm thinking now that at least a couple of days a week I should make some effort to cook a decent meal.  After all, what is life about if not for fine dining?

Homemade Okonomiyaki. Yummy!

           I promised I will post a recipe for the cold noodles, so here it is.
The vegetable ingredients are cucumbers, cilantro, tomato, chili peppers and green onion. Personally, I prefer home grown tomatoes that are vine ripened, they have a much more intense flavor compared to store bought ones. I also prefer Persian or Japanese cucumber for its taste. Cut the vegetable into small pieces.

            To make the garlic sauce, chop up three to four cloves of garlic, combine with equal parts of soy sauce, sesame paste, and Chinese barbeque sauce, about two to three tablespoons each, and small amount of sesame oil to taste. Stir the mixture into a smooth consistency. You can also play around with the amount of sauce according to your own taste. There's really no way of messing it up. I think it's just one of those things that taste good no matter how you spin it.

            In the meanwhile, cook black rice noodles in boiling water for about 10- 15 minutes. Buckwheat noodles are more commonly found in Asian supermarkets, but if you look hard enough, black rice noodles can be found at some places.

When the noodles are done, run them under cold water until they are thoroughly cooled.

           Top the noodle with vegetable topping, garlic sauce, a couple pieces of ice cube, and serve!

Grocery shopping during rush hour is bad, but getting home and start cooking in the kitchen alone with a glass of wine is good:)

What's cooking? Balsamic strawberries with honey!

Good things to eat for me...

Good things to eat for Kelly and Bobby...
And, my navy repetto oxfords are given a new life by putting on some lacy shoe laces:)

Before:

After:

Whola~~~

I did it! Homemade marshmallows, recipe from here!

I made pizza last night, the dough came out ok but we got a little carried away with the topping and it filled up like a dome. Kelly and Bobby went wild with the smell, of course!