Thursday, June 23, 2011

Her new home

One of our friends recently purchased a new home.  Wanting to give her a small housewarming gift, I made her some fridge magnets.  Oh the joys of Mod Podge and magazine images.

Don't let their cute exteriors fool you-- these magnets are super strong!

Doesn't everything look better with a bow around it?

Hmm, I just realized that I've made more crafts and baked more sweets in these past two weeks than I did all last year.  Is this due to some strange nesting instinct?  Let me ponder this as I clean and rearrange some furniture...

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Eating into the new year

We celebrated hubby's birthday with a lot of yummy food.  
Here are some photos documenting our good eats:

Hubby's homemade bbq pulled pork with a basil and garlic potato salad - yum!

I used this recipe to bake hubby a birthday cake.

Chocolate icing + chocolate cake + raspberry filling = decadent eats

For dinner, we visited a nearby Ethiopian restaurant and scarfed down a plate of sour and spicy food (and then ordered two more side dishes- oh my!)

What a delicious way to celebrate hubby's birthday.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Can you identify this plant?

Sometimes hubby and I bemoan the absence of Asians and Asian cuisine in our area.  However, as much as I miss seeing Asian faces and eating delicious foods (oh steaming bowl of ramen, tender bulgogi, juicy soup dumplings, NY style bubble milk tea, tender kong xin cai, salty nasi lemak, fresh sushi, and piping hot samosas-- how I miss you) we are fortunate to have befriended a few Asian gals.  

So we're not so alone.

One gal is originally from Cambodia and though we often misunderstand each other, we do share the common language of  food.  Most of our talk centers around food: what we enjoy eating, what we've made, and what we want to make some day.


 Recently she brought me this plant to grow in my deck garden:

The stems have to remain in water until roots grow.  Then, I'm supposed to pot them in soil.

Apparently the leaves are (1) tasty with pork, and (2) good for people with bad eyes (I wear glasses.)  Hubby and I are excited to try the leaves out, but there's one problem:  I'd like to know the name of this plant before I put it in my mouth.

So that's where you, dear readers, come into play.  What is this plant called?  I tried googling "Asian plant tastes good with pork leaves Cambodian" and didn't find anything besides kaffir lime leaves.

Here's an up close shot for all you super sleuths...

Bow tie onsies

This weekend I finished sewing bow ties on these onesies:

The ladies are going to find Baby irresistible!