Fooood!!!!

Since Chris and I have yet to find jobs, we have quite a bit of time on our hands besides our schoolwork. Even though we are still actively seeking for jobs, we have also taken advantage of our free schedule by indulging on one of our favorite hobbies: FOOD! So here is just a "taste" (haha!) of what we've been doing:

Chris is the baker of the house and he's a gosh darn good one! Being exact with measurements drives me insane. Here he is proudly showing his yummy chocolate chip cookies.

This year Chris decided to try making pies. Here is his very first apple pie. It was just perfect with vanilla ice cream!

This is his lemon meringue pie. It is the first time I actually enjoyed this kind of pie! He has also made a banana cream pie that was excellent. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of that one. But our friends have been requesting Chris' desserts more lately. =)

I have been occupying myself with finding Asian recipes. This is my stab at Hamburg Steak, a Japanese dish that I learned from a great series I found on Youtube.

Here is our very Japanese Hamburg Steak meal complete with Ramune. The sauce is delicious!

A friend of mine several years ago showed me how to make kimchi stir fry. Chris loves this dish!

This was our Halloween meal. It was Chinese style chicken with a mix recommended by a friend. Then I just stir-fried some napa cabbage with some garlic and ginger. We also had kimchi on the side.

Chris treated me out to a strawberry shortcake from the Japanese Bakery called J Sweets. I love Asian pastries! You don't get a headache afterwards from the overload of sugar.

Pho! YUM!

One of the DEFINITE benefits of living in San Jose is the abundance of good Asian food everywhere and how reasonably priced it is! Chris and I were running late doing errands, so for dinner we decided to go for one of my favorites: PHO!

We found a place which specializes in Vietnamese chicken dishes with various chicken noodle soups or boiled chicken with special rice and etc. It's called Pho Ga An Nam. It was only a five minute drive away and averaged about $6 a per person, not too shabby. Be warned! If you are going to check it out, they take cash only and they do not have an ATM there.

What amazes me about Pho is the amount of flavor they are able to pack into the broth! Looking at this pic you would think that the soup was ok tasting, but take a sip and your tongue gets a multi-layered hit of sweet, savory and Oh-s0-goodness. It's the perfect thing to warm you up when the weather is cooling down....or if you are just having a bad day.

Chris also liked being able to watch Vietnamese TV shows while eating. The time we went it was the Vietnamese equivalent of Dancing with the Stars, only it was called Celebrity Dancing. It was pretty addicting despite the language barrier.

Ponyo

So Chris and I were wanting to see this movie since it came out in theaters a couple of months ago. However, whenever one of Miyazaki's films come out in the States I have a dilemma - I want to see the movie, but I want to see it with the original Japanese dialogue. The actors and actresses they have to dub it in English are talented, no question, but there's something special about seeing a film in the language it was intended for.

Thankfully, I didn't have to worry for too long. While we were exploring Little Tokoyo with my cousins we went into a mini-mart. There, just on TV was Ponyo even though the local theaters around it were still showing it. I guess it has been a year since it came out on DVD in Japan so not only were we able to buy the movie for a reasonable $13.99 but it's only in Japanese (with English subtitles of course!). It's a super cute movie. I enjoyed it, especially the scenes where they're eating ramen!

San Jose!!!

Yay we made it! We started out on Monday Aug 10th, stayed in Hood River Oregon for a day then headed down to San Jose! Our apartment is also finally set up, we're just waiting for internet to come and it's nice sunny weather. I guess my few complaints are:

1) It's scary to drive around here

2) Everything is expensive

3) It's a bit too crowded for me! (Surprisingly enough, I'm NOT a big city girl)

But I love the weather here! It has been sunny, but not ridiculously hot. I also love how everything (i.e. library, shopping, grocery) is only about a mile away from our place -AND- there's good food EVERYWHERE!! You can get really good Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and etc all within a few minutes! Well just to let you all know, we're doing well!

Oh my Gardenz...

My garden is in full swing this year. It helps that I had time to prep everything in the fall and early spring. Now it's looking pretty good. I have beans, corn, pumpkins, squash, gourds, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, bok choy, nappa cabbage, jalapenos, and watermelons galore! I'm kinda sad that we'll be leaving for San Jose before lots of it is ready, but I have more fun gardening that actually consuming what I grow. Although, nothing beats fresh vegetables out of the garden.

This last picture is an arbor I constructed for my gourds to grow up, and to let all the gourds hang down. It might also be a nice shady spot to sit in once they grow some more.

Ponds Away!!!

I've been wanting to build a pond for a while now. And I finally got my mom to agree with me that she should have one, and she financed the venture. (I don't have anywhere to put a pond yet, so it makes sense it should be at my parents house). Anyway, here are some pictures of my creation.

The liner and plants came from a pond store in Redmond, they had a lot of cool stuff. I would love to build something like their koi ponds some day. I guess I'll have to wait until I have a house or something. I built the fountain out of bamboo that we bought at the Bamboo gardens. I used my geometry skills to make the octagonal border out of cedar. I really like working with cedar, it smells nice. Tomorrow Katrina and I are taking Hayley to chinatown to pick out a couple of goldfish to put into the pond. It's gonna be a party.

What Chris has been up to... and other exciting topics

What haven't I been up to? I guess it's been a while since I made any posts, so now it's make up time. We'll start with the state of the art chicken coup I built.

I didn't build the actual coup, it was a playhouse given to us by a friend several years back. I did all the modifications and chicken yard construction.

This is Easter sitting in one of the nesting boxes, which is easily accessible through a hatch on the side of the coup.

This is the feeding area. It rains a lot here, and it isn't much fun to clean out the food when it is soaking wet. So the chickens have a nice covered area in which they can eat.

The black and white chicken is Wanda the Wyandotte. She's my personal favorite. I saw wyandottes at the Puyallup fair last year and thought they looked really cool. So I had to get one.

Knitting, a very addicting hobby

I have a cousin that knits and I was always in wonder at the things she made. I finally had a chance to learn from Chris' grandma. Chris also picked it up as she taught me so we both started knitting. Ever since then we have been adamantly supporting our local knitting shop.

Chris was the first conqueror of knitting hats. This one is for his mom with Alpaca/wool mixed yarn.

It turned out great and she loves it!

We got a small Japanese book with cap patterns and Chris whipped this one up for me using Alpaca/Peruvian wool. He's still going to add a flower on the top. It's super warm!

One of our cats Yumi has also taken to knitting. If anyone is knitting in the house she will sit in their lap. Actually right now as I am writing this she is sitting in Chris' lap watching him knit a scarf.

This is my second project, my second scarf. It's simple with just knit and purl stitches, but I like the way the texture turned out. It made it for Chris!

So Chris and I are cautious with knitting. There have been times when we thought to ourselves, "I'll just knit a row or two" and end up spending hours upon hours working on a project. It feels sooo good to create and finish something!

Wild Wet Adverntures in the Northwest

It's been forever since we last posted but I thought I might include this interesting story:
Around November it had been raining non-stop, Chris and I barely came back from a night out. I was walking across the laundry room in my socks and I noticed my feet were very cold and soaking wet. Worried, Chris checked out the storage room which is in our apartment and this is what we saw:

Water was seeping through the walls in our basement apartment quickly. Our landlord (Grandma) Kevin and Dad came over and we started battling the flood waters with towels, a water pump and the boys digging a little ditch with a pump for the water under the house to drain.

We worked until midnight and finally beat the water. Chris and I were still able to sleep in our apartment that night, but in the living room since the carpet in the main bedroom was damp.

Woo hoo for adventurous times!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays!

Ok it's been forever since we've updated. Christmas was great. Chris and I were spoiled silly. We got gift cards galore, awesome cookbooks, games, money and DVD's. Chris also made me a kitty scarf and adopted a polar bear in my name through WWF. I made him some artwork, a Wii game and Threadless t-shirts. New Years was easy going and quiet. Anyway, happy belated holidays!