Golf

I think I've found my sport.

My mom has always been very protective of me. Being a girl, I "shouldn't run around so much" or "play with balls". You know, typical stuff like that... so... I didn't. Well, not that we had balls to play with anyway... but I just never got into sporty stuff, even in school. I sucked in gym class and assumed I was just naturally nonathletic because I was a small asian girl. Good excuse huh?

4th Grade was when i actually started disliking sports. One day at recess when I was NOT playing any sports... I was just walking actually, i got hit in the face with a football. Yes, it hurt, yes I cried. Yes I now had a fear of any flying balls coming towards me.

So that's why I think Golf is my sport. There's no running involved. No outs, no chasing, no catching, no flying balls towards me, no team to bother with, no coach yelling at you, no ugly uniforms and i heard there could be drinking involved.

So over the weekend i got really into trying to hit that damn golf ball. I've played before, but of course i naturally sucked at it. (Swung and miss and hurt my hand.) Well, with some concentration... I think I'm getting the hang of it.... and i actually like it... I'll also actually be getting my own customized clubs soon to fit my damn height.

But seriously, i never knew how hard it was to pivot your wrist.

Oh yeah, does anyone know where I can get Pochacco or Hello Kitty golf club holder thingies?

Thanks.

The - crapimisshavingsomeonecookforme(mom!) & Happy Birthday MMT(heart) Bun Rieu recipe:

So I decided to make some home cooking for myself and the bf. I was going between Bun Bo Hue (my favorite Vietnamese soup) to Bun Rieu (one of his favorites) and decided to go the Bun Rieu route since it was for his birthday. Bun Rieu, I believe, originated from Northern Vietnam (where all the best soups come from). It is a seafood/tomato based broth with a whole lot of bang of flavor. My version is easy to make because well... i suck at cooking and my bf knows it.. so this is pretty much a fool-proof way of make Bun Rieu.

I had to think about this a week in advance believe it or not. Cooking is a HUGE deal to me since I don't do it a lot...and when i do it's usually rice & eggs & Ramen. I surfed the internet for any different bun rieu ideas and not surprisingly there weren't a lot of different variations out there. Matter of fact, i believe i only found 2 recipes... but lots of pictures of people who were eating bun rieu. (bastards!)

So to start off here's what you need to buy:
Damage: 1 hour/60 dollars/having to deal with some mean Asian people at the Asian store
Tomatoes (lots, I bought 8 but used 5, so buy 6)
Eggs
Green Onion
Onion
Cilantro
Bean Sprouts
Vermicelli
Chicken Stock (4 cans)
Minced Crab & Prawn meat w/ spices (6 cans)
Shrimp paste (the purple stinky kind. "mam tom" in vietnamese)
Spare Ribs (2 packages)
pre fried tofu
Garlic
Shrimp (a lot)

Prework:
Boil your spareribs for 1-2 hours. The length depends on how tender you like your meat. Cook it for at least 1 hour... I think i cooked mine for about 2:30 hours (i forgot about it) the meat was so tender it fell off the bones. Set aside.
The soup base:
Damage: crying from onions/smelly kitchen. Seriously. Smelly Kitchen. Open your windows, turn on your fans, and feel sorry for your neighbors.

Cut two big tomatoes into wedges. Cut 1 whole onion and smash about 10 cloves of garlic. Heat your pot, once your pot is hot enough, throw in oil and then garlic. Saute your onions until they are clear and then your tomatoes until they are soft.
Throw in two cans of minced prawn and crab stuff. (One can each)
At this point, i got lazy and forgot to take a lot of pictures =(. Pour in 4 big cans of chicken stock and bring it up to a boil, then lower the heat to bring down to a simmer. Cut up the rest of your tomatoes and let the join the party.
Prep every thing else. That is- peel all your shrimp. You may want to taste your broth at this point... if it's not flavorful enough for you, put in squirts of fish sauce for your liking . or if it is too flavorful, add in water.
You can also put your spare ribs into your soup at this time (just the meat not the water!)
Shrimp balls: Normally you mix shrimp with minced pork, but i totally forgot the mince pork so i made strictly shrimp balls.
Place garlic into a food processor. Process.
Place shrimp into same food processor. Process until well blended and mush.
Add salt, pepper, and sugar. How much? i don't know, guesstimate it... it doesn't matter too too much since the shrimp balls will be mixed in with your soup anyway.
Once this is done, take a bowl of oil, dip your fingers in it and grab shrimp and drop them into the pot. Shrimp cooks easily, and they'll start rising to the top.

I'm kind of mad that I didn't take a picture of this part. It's an important interesting part that I've specifically learned from my bf...but because I was just watching and spacing out i forgot to take pictures! The part i'm talking about is the eggs:

If you like eggs you can add as much as you want. We only had about 7 eggs left in the house so that's how many we used. Crack the eggs and seperate the yolk from the whites. Blend all the whites w/ a highspeed blender until you get a foamy froth like texture. Open one more can of shrimp/can meat and fold in with the eggs. Pour the mixture slowly over your broth. You will see that it won't sink in. Cover up in a low-medium heat for the eggs to cook into a yummy goodness.
The prefried tofu can be added later.

Oops- at some point, you want to cook your vermicelli! Pour your hot broth over some cooked vermicelli add some sriracha hot sauce and you got yourself some mommy did not cook this for me bun rieu!
(feeds 6-8 people)

So for bun rieu the result was:
6 hours of intense labor (1/2 kidding)
backache
feet pain
loads and loads of dish washing
smelly house
happy boyfriend
Enough bun rieu to eat for 5 days straight!


In the middle of all this i also made white cake with greentea creamcheese frosting. It didn't come out the way that i wanted so i won't waste time posting how i made that. It was good, but i couldn't get the green tea taste that i wanted. Why the hell is it so hard to find Matcha green tea powder around here?!

....damn i suck at cooking/recipe instructions. There goes my cook book dream.

oh well! Enjoy!

MOMMY!!!!!!

The visit went well, kind-of. The weather totally sucked, so we didn't get to go into D.C. at all, just a lot of shopping and eating. Anyway throughout these 5 days, I've realized a couple things about my mom:

1. She's crazy. Like absolute. Before she use to be like a regular mom and say things like, eat your vegetables, and then it became to eat your vegetables- they're healthy for you, to crazy things like eat cabbage and greenbeans but not squash because this and that is good for your hair to grow out and lets you sleep better, but this makes your muscles weak. Where the hell does she get this info from?!

2. She's a trash talker. She was kicking all of our asses in wii bowling. and she was all like... Psh. Why would i want to play a second game? I already won! and was all high and mighty. Must be all the cereal you ate mom!
(i love how i talk to my mom on this and there will be no way in heaven or hell that she'll ever find my blog and even if she did, would never read it, and even if she tried, wouldn't understand it)

3. She's a cleaning fanatic. I admit, what mom isn't right? Especially an Asian mom, but seriously, me and MMT cleaned the house the night before they landed, and she still managed to try to clean the house as soon as she stepped into the condo!! and STILL called me messy.

4. She's crazy.

5. Every 5 minutes she gives me "advice" on what to eat, when to sleep, how to clean, what to eat, what to eat, what to eat (oh my god i just realized she didn't say anything to me about my weight!!!), what to eat, that i should go to a buddhist retreat so i can learn to be stress free, what to eat, buddhist retreat, and how to clean.

6. She's crazy.
7. She's crazy.
8. She's crazy.
9. She's crazy.

10. She's very good at driving me crazy.

I'm like the cheerleader... but without the whole cheer thing.


Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to watch an all girls football scrimmage. Sweaty girls running around half tackling each other and falling all over the place?! Awesome!! I love them girls that are athletic. It's something I envy since I was always the bookish/cheerleader type. You know, the cheerleader without the cheer, because being peppy and enthusiastic took way too much damn energy and I was just to cool to be jumping up and down for retarded boys. But I look good in a damn short skirt. Not that I ever wore a cheerleader outfit... but I was some sort of cheerleader in elementary school and middle school and now that's too far for me to remember and talk about how that happened.

I blame it on my mom that I'm not as outdoorsy or athletic as I should be. She was nervous that I'd hurt myself. So all I did during elementary school that was sportsy was Chinese jump rope. Are you done laughing yet? During middle school I was too awkward to join any clubs. I got rejected from chorus.... let me know when you finish laughing again... and I was too utterly busy being amused by Mikki beating up girls that were bigger than her. Now I know most mothers are freakishly over protective of their daughters sometimes but you do know that my mom started a cult right? That's how influential she is. Also, me being hit by a football right smack on the nose in elementary school made me realize that holy crap my mom is right and I will never get near something so hard and stupidly fun in my life. In any case, every time someone tries to throw a football (or any type of ball), plush or not at me I just move out of the way and let it bounce right by me. So when I got asked to play as well, I had to stop myself from saying HELLLLLLLLLLL NO to the girls' faces. I just smiled and shook my head.

My view from the sideline was better anyway.
By the way, the sight of a bunch of 5 foot 100lb something Asian girls taking down a team bigger than them? Priceless.

hello my name is hanh and this is my blog.
that's the only intro you'll get.

----
My bf, Mr. Man T., is a master chef in disguise of a jeweler. Since he hasn't been able to bestow his cooking abilities lately he has outsourced his gianormous talents in cooking on me. Me, who has not cooked a single dish (besides eggs/instant noodles/beef & [insert vegetable here]) for 24 years of my existing life. Me, who burnt the one time I tried to cook chicken fried steak. Me, who only made cake out of a box (woot). Me.

My mom has told me numerous times that I will never be able to cook for my husband which made me insist on finding a husband who would be able to cook for me. (So far I am on track.)

Anyway, since I'm as n00b as you can get with cooking, I thought I'd share some hard dishes in an easy to do way for anyone who likes living on the edge of a butcher knife for once.

Hanh trying to cook take 4.5

Bun Bo Hue! Translated: Noodles Beef Hue (city in Vietnam)!

Elements:
Beef Shank (2-5lbs depending how much meat you likey)
Bun Bo Hue Powder 1 (ask the Asian Market lady)
Onion 1
Lemongrass 4 (ask the Asian Market lady)
Garlic (lots)
Pig leg (2-4 legs depending how much pig legs you likey)
Shrimp sauce in brine 1 jar (ask the Asian Market lady)
MSG (if you want your mother to yell at you)
Chicken Broth 4 cans
Rice Vermicelli 2 packages

Shrimp chips 1 bag (to eat while you're prepping)

For the rest of the ingredients I will assume you have in your kitchen... if not I give you this face -_-

The rest is going to go really fast cuz details suck and all the n00bs know that we'll lose interest if it seems to complicated in 5 nano seconds so ready set, go!

Take two pots, one medium size (enough to fit your pig legs) and one b i g (for the broth).
Boil both separately.

Rub salt on your pig legs, like you're massaging oil on a fat lady's thighs.
Medium water comes to boil, throw pig legs in. Take out after 20 mins after water boils up again.
Meanwhile slice up your beef. This shit is hard, you must have a sharp knife. If you don't go out and buy one. Now. or ask your neighbor.
Slice..
Slice..
Slice..

Put the sliced meat up in a big bowl. Slice up a whole onion and add that too.
Also throw in Shrimp sauce like 6 big spoon fulls, don't go cheap on that shit.
Take the bottom of the lemongrass (the whitish part) and about 8 cloves of garlic. Put it in a food processor and chop it up. Add that with the beef as well.
3-4 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of pepper
2 tablespoons of msg (again, if you want your mom to yell at you)
6-7 sprites of fish sauce. No fish sauce?! Asian market lady.
Add one packet of bun bo hue powder

(all numbers are estimates cuz I won't know how much meat ya'll will use. Anyway, less is better (for now) you can always add flavor after the fact. Man I feel so smart right now...

By this time your pig legs should be done, take that shit out and rinse with cold water. Then drop it in with your chicken broth. Add a can of water too.

Fry the meat in a big pan or pot. Fry your meat for about 10-15 minutes. Dump it into the chicken broth
Boil for 1 1/2 hours.
Take one lemongrass and bash the bottom of it. Throw that in the pot.
Cook for another 30 minutes.

Cook your rice vermicelli... uh follow directions on the bag (its kinda like spaghetti)


Put rice vermicelli in a bowl. Pour broth over bowl. Add green onions, cilantro and bean sprouts.




Eat that shit with chopsticks.
Cry from the spiciness and that you've made one of the most popular Vietnamese dishes. Ever.

Damage:

4 Hours (includes shopping time)
Approx 30. dollars (feeds 10+ ppl)
Your mom yelling at you for using msg (and perhaps chicken broth from a can)
Tears from cutting an onion
Food coma

Enjoy!

hanh.