My Big Burger Lunch

Leftovers bug me especially when there's only one more piece of food left. This is how I sometimes end up eating something that I do not actually want to eat and subsequently, accumulate unnecessary weight gain. Once in a while I can put the blame on someone or something, can't I .......?

I had one burger left from dinner the other day and I thought I had it for lunch. Crunchy lettuce and juicy tomato slices made healthy and pretty layers for my burger, especially when two slices of pan-grilled wholemeal bread held them. I couldn't resist putting a slice of cheese on top of the hot burger and topping them with two slices of bacon. I drizzled some honey barbecue sauce on it.... and they look gorgeous. Umphh........it was good....... It's hard to bite, because it was really big. Of course, after putting everything on the plate, my lunch became a super gigantic tall one and, big surprise, I was not able to clean them all up. I still felt full at dinner time. So, it was a super size lunch for sure.

Sisters

They get along well..............sometimes.

He Did It Too!

I had a little reservation about taking up cable car during our holiday in Beijing but just went on without talking about it at all. We have done it before in other countries and it should be safe enough. We have tons of pictures taken with our 5-6 cameras and it takes a while to look through all of these. Yesterday, I my eyes were on this one. Apparently, former US president Mr. Bill Clinton took cable car at the Great Wall of China too. His picture was put up on the board that displays the ticket prices. You can see his face better down below.

It's Been 37 Years ...

Exactly 37 years ago today, November 2nd. I was just a little girl, who woke one morning and had her mom telling her that her dad was gone. Yes, I said, he's gone. I knew that he went out of town, I was told, he went with his best friend. I didn't understand much more than that, I saw my mom with tears rolling down her cheeks calling out dad's name. As hours went by, I began to see that things are different around the house, we had guests, some relatives came, I saw sad faces. I noticed no smile around. It was really somber and cold. Grey and dark. Gloomy.

I remember seeing one of my cousins although I knew many were there too. But it was what she said to me, to this day I could never forget. She's about 10 years older than I am, she said something about me not shedding any tears...... How could I shed tears if I could not comprehend what happened? Nobody explained to me what "gone" meant, even the word death itself, that was mentioned around then. Nobody saw this coming, dad seemed healthy, nobody talked about death and dying. Everyone was young, too young to die. Only old people and the sick were supposed to die, I would think.

Then, there was a funeral, there was a lot of tears, there was my dad's body being buried and everyone cried. Why? What did all these mean? What's going to happen next? I could not understand the consequences of what happened that day ...... so why cry? I was lost. So lost without direction, I can't recall what happened that day. Nothing.

Being so young, I also could not revive the memory of my siblings' reaction to what happened that day and I just could not place where they were and what they did and who was with me. My eldest brother was 20 years old and my younger sister was merely five months old, the numbers were calculated years later, after I knew Math better and understand life better. People's attention was more on my mom, who cried so much and my baby sister, understandably. I found out, bit by bit and over time, that financially we were so tight too. Mom didn't work and had no savings. My brothers had work to support the rest of us. It was really tough on everyone.....

Years later, I still have very little memory of my father, who suddenly left his wife and his nine children at the age of merely 48 years. We have some of his pictures, which helps me put together how he looked like. But I barely had any recollection of him and what he and I did together. I registered a couple of things in my mind only because I was repeatedly told of the stories, one of which was that dad took me out on his bike to get some food to bring home. There are pictures of our trip together as a family and some family pictures taken days before he left. Those were the last pictures of him..... Pictures that more often than not, bring a pang of sadness.

Today I just want to remember my dad and hope wherever he is, he knows that I think of him and my tears of sadness for losing him have been poured out many times many years later and right now as I write this. Yes, I am sad that I lost him and the sadness of not having a father is always there, no matter how old you are. I always remember November 2nd. I wish I could have spent more time with him and really remember things that we have done together better. I wish he could have stay on this earth a little longer. But whatever life experiences I had to go through has made me what I am today and I believe I am a stronger person and a bigger dreamer because of that.

Mom is with him now and they can hang out together again. Here I am dad, one marriage and three kids later. Love ya!

Father And Daughter

A walk to remember, another holiday together.....

Black Pepper Beef With Celery

Here we go, my dinner. Black pepper beef with celery, onion and red chilies, served with warm rice. It is also a quickie and yummy!

Long Beans With Minced Pork

It is not always too difficult to feed my hungry children, especially when DH is away. Originally, I wanted to prepare black pepper beef, but their faces said it all, they wanted something else. The dish above is one of their favorites, it is normally prepared with fine french bean. My very kind mother in law has sent us a bunch of long beans three days ago and I just used them instead. The meat is minced pork, cooked with garlic, onion, ginger, chili, sweet and soy sauces. Another quick and easy dish to prepare, it certainly took less than 30 minutes.

I still cooked black pepper beef later on, for myself!

Finishing Off The Dough

We have arrived at the final installment of the challah dough story here, so bear with me. Previous ones were here and here. I only made a half of the recipe, but we had a hard time finishing it. We do not have strong sweet-bread eater in this house and it is sad to say that the breads that I made were really slow moving. I probably should have bribed the kids to make sure the breads were eaten. But, I didn't...



Anyway, I decided to finish off the rest of the dough the day before yesterday. I baked two brioche-style buns, one raisin snail and one braided bread with Nutella filling. I topped all of them with crystal brown sugar. I thought they were good, I like them a lot.



So now I am done with this, at least for a while. So long.

Welcome To Wangfujing

It was Tuesday and we took a walk along Wangfujing. It is one of Beijing's most prosperous commercial areas. Tourists are drawn here from all over the world and around China. Wangfujing is also home to Beijing's largest foreign language bookstore. The street was not as packed with people as on Sunday when we were there earlier, it's just steps away from our hotel.



As I waited for the rest of the family browsing at the bookstore and I was done with it, I decided to sit down with my iPod in hand. My kids came and go, talked to me. A young lady sitting next me started a conversation by asking me whether I was from the United States. A nice surprise, she came from the Bay area, she stayed in Beijing with her grandparents who lived in Beijing. She told me that she finished college and decided to take a 3-month break before looking for a job. We talked quite a bit about the food in Beijing and traveling around the region before we said goodbye to each other. She was really lovely.



We had lunch in a food court at Sun Dong An Plaza and afterward the rest of the gang decided to look for Häagen-Dazs. Yes, they saw the sign inside the mall and now they had to have it. I stopped by to get a cup of Orange Julius on the way there, that turned out to be as bad as the one I had from a different mall, two-three days before.



DH and the kids had some ice cream and banana split.



I am not an ice-cream person, I normally have coffee when we go to ice cream place. I was a bit disappointed that the Coffee -with a fancy name and RMB38 attached to it- that I ordered came with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and the server poured out the hot coffee on the ice cream. Gah! I wanted my hot coffee!

Low

Some steps in the Great Wall of China are really low, but some of them can be as high as adult-knee high. Close attention must be paid when one walks around here because there are some chips and cracks that could make any that do not look out well, trip over ...... ain't gonna be pretty....