Food, Friends, Faith and more…

So I got a bug from my travels to Boston. But the Boston Bug blew up in my brain (gross! I know!) after a 6.5 hour plane ride back to LAX on jetBlue. (My new favorite airline, got a row to myself two flights in a row and in the same month. January must be a low travel month.) All the muckety muck of a minor cold entered ever crevice of the noggin and I never could to “decompress” after landing.

So, a week later, after lots of rest, 2 boxes of Kleenex, sinus rinses, a whole jug of mucinex…I’m still on the mend. While every day has shown a minimal degree of progress, I’m hesitant to call the doc for those antibiotics. Those things supposedly kill everything good and bad in you!! And it seems drugs don’t have the most effect on me anyway. Last time, the antibiotics didn’t work either and once, I had to take Vicodin and didn’t even get sleepy. This time, the mucinex doesn’t seem to do much either but I keep thinking the next dose will help…nothing notable yet.

Come on little body…you can do it…pull through ‘cuz what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Why do kids these days have all these allergies? They say it’s ‘cuz we’re too clean. Probably because at any sign of weakness (or inconvenience), we load up on the antibiotics. My theory is, taking them antibiotics probably has the same effect as scrubbing the kitchen floor or even bathtub clean enough to eat on it. Sometimes, we probably need a little dirt in small doses…as with everything else and build up the tolerance levels.

Oops, I never mentioned anything about soup. Guess I really am sick. Will have to blog about the recipes later, but I’ve been loading up on the soups…week 1, your typical chicken soup and week 2, chicken tortilla soup. Then of course there’s the spicy beef noodle soup from A&J to help break up the chicken-ness of it all and throw in some miso soup from Fukada too. One good thing about being sick is for some reason I haven’t gotten sick of all this chicken soup business because normally, leftovers kill me (more than a cold)…and no matter how many different soups I make to keep things interesting…sadly, it’s all soup to me. Oh well. Soup’s on!

Whenever someone says I’ve perfected a recipe over the years, it makes a bell go off in my head…I want to know your secret recipe! For Mama Su, that’s her amazing mochi’s, tea eggs, sponge cake, and yo fan…after 20 years of trial and error (where I had to consume lots of the unpleasant errors), you definitely want to know those recipes. But today is not the day for those recipes.

The only tricky thing about secret recipes is the chef often cooks by their gut versus an actual recipe…having made it so many times.

Alas, I attempt to capture Nancy’s paella today…and will leave the freestylin’ up to you so one day it becomes your one-dish-wonder too. I guess we all get to put our signatures on our dishes and that’s what makes them even tastier. (Technically, this is dish requires 2 pots to make, so not exactly a one-dish-wonder, but close enough…you get the picture).

Servings: Approximately 6-8

Prep and Cook Time: ~ 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 3 Fresh sausage links (i.e. chicken varietals)
  
• 1 Red bell pepper, slivered
• 1/2  Large onion, slivered
• 1/2 Large onion, uncut for seafood stock
• Garlic, minced
• Mussels (a healthy 2 handfuls)
• Shrimp (a healthy 2 handfuls)
• 3 c. Rice
• Salt
• Pepper
• Saffron (cheaper alternative includes a mix of turmeric, paprika, and cumin)
• Cilantro
• White wine
• Olive oil

Directions:

1. Boil your seafood broth in a pot with 1/2 a big onion, mussels, salt and pepper.

2. Chop your bell pepper and onion in slivers. Chop the sausages into bite-size chunks.

3. Stir fry the onions and minced garlic in a big pot with olive oil. When fragrant, add bell peppers and stir it up, add more oil if needed. Add the sausages. Add some salt and pepper and let it all cook until the veggies are soft and the meat is cooked through.

4. Add shrimp to the seafood stock pot and let it all boil up. Remove the seafood from the pot when shrimp is pretty much cooked through (about 90% done) and let it cool a little and peal the skin of the shrimp (if it has some). Note: I was the sous-chef for the night and had the job of peeling shrimp. It was HOT when I did this, so you may want to peel the shrimp before you cook it. I’m not sure if that makes the shrimp more tough to cook without its skin, but anyway, you can decide what order to do all this based on your preference).

5. Add three cups of rice to the main pot and add 3 cups of seafood stock to the main pot. Note: If you want to make less, use less rice and keep water to approximately equal parts with the quantity of rice. It’s up to you how you adjust your rice to other ingredients ratio. Stir it up and add some more salt, pepper, and saffron spices (or cheaper alternative of turmeric, paprika, and cumin blend), a splash of wine and let it cook up. Stir every so often so it doesn’t stick to the pot. Add more seafood stock as necessary until the rice gooey glue-iness is to your liking. When the rice is almost done, stir in the shrimp and mussels, and add more seasoning to taste.

6. Take it off the heat when all is mixed in and flavors are to your liking. Stir in fresh chopped cilantro if you’d like and serve! The quicker it’s served, the better, or it gets even more gooey-gluey over time instead of a more Nancy-preferred thick watery-ness. Buen provecho! (as they say in Spanish).

Beverage Pairings: Blood Orange Soda (or on special occasions, a drink of clear nature containing fresh mint leaves is a nice complement).

…muffins that is, and who says it doesn’t snow in Irvine? Well, after three batches of a mint & chip derivative of a basic muffin mix, this was the outcome in order to supply 30 college students with a tasty dessert that challenges your tastebuds to “ice cream” that’s outside the box.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

A morning view of the Empire State Building (in the light, on the left)!

At least, this is what it looks like to wake up in NYC if you ever got to sleep that is. It really is a city that doesn’t sleep. The horns are honking all night long (it’s 11:24 pm). The fire truck sirens blare at night and in the morning. Your neighbors might see into your place from across the 14th floor. It’s definitely not a place to be if you’re noise and light sensitive (which I am). But after a full day of Bibles for America (BfA) distributions at the World Trade Center and Columbia University and an evening of Christian fellowship on The Economy of God by Witness Lee with 31 people squeezed into a little studio, and the all-fitting life (2 Corinthians 6:1, footnote 1), all I have to say is NYC is awesome!! It’d be so fun to live here…though I think my favorite place would be Central Park for some peace and calm away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

Hmm…brownies? Poopoo eh? Read up here for a little chuckle first.

Well, perhaps little man would appreciate this month’s attempt at making brownies look more like a moving truck. Then he wouldn’t be so quick to brownie bash!

To help out with a staff send-off, I offered to bake a batch of brownies. So, mustering the hidden elementary school teacher in me that completed a BS and MA in Education, never on the teaching track, I had to channel my unrealized teacher energies into making an unconventional display of brownie bites. So long Russells! God-speed as you move to Billings, MT (perhaps it’d be better not to take my proposed brownie trail).

And I’d say my co-worker’s amazing Frosting’s inspired homemade cupcakes were just the perfect complement. Thanks Paper Rosie! You did an amazing job!