Cooking Chinese for the Olympics!
This is Recipe 3 in the series and another home-style Chinese dish for you to try (see below for the rest)

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My friend, Lynne, is an assistant at The Rolling Pin, the cooking school where I teach in Florida. She’s often free in the evenings to work at the school, since her husband, Kevin, has been serving in Kuwait for the past 11 months. Assisting in the classes are fun for Lynne and it keeps her busy during the otherwise lonely evenings.

Normally, for my classes, I have 15 students, as that is just the right number of students that can fit into the studio kitchen. With hands-on classes, it can get pretty intense for me, as I need to totally be on top of everything from working with each student individually, demonstrating new techniques, explaining how to use Asian ingredients, ensuring that students don’t hurt themselves with the 22 or so super-sharp knives in the kitchen, and of course keeping an eye on the food so that we can all enjoy a wonderful meal! I would probably call myself an orchestrator of sorts, some evenings wishing that I had another set of eyes mounted to the back of my head to coordinate and keep track of it all.
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Cooking Chinese for the Olympics! This is the 2nd recipe in the series…see the end for links

Oh…and there’s a contest in the middle of this post!!!

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Last fall, my parents treated Scott and I to a 10 day group tour around China. Our first stop was Beijing, and first thing I noticed was how clean the city was. I literally could eat off the streets, as there was an entire team of sanitation engineers whose sole job was to scrape gum off the streets and sidewalk. I’m so not kidding - they wore white gloves and could scrape even crusty, 2 week old Bubbalicious in one quick motion.

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As promised, I’m doing a series of simple Chinese dishes as we lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I’m hoping to post a new recipe at least 4 times a week, though that might be a little ambitious and make my family very hungry for something like spaghetti or meatloaf. This dish, Ground Beef with Beijing Sauce over Noodles is so flexible - you can use ground turkey, chicken or even pork. If you don’t have Chinese noodles, serve over rice or any type of pasta. The greatest thing about this recipe is that the entire thing comes together in 15 minutes (if using noodles) and costs around $5 to feed a family of 4. How can you beat that?! Normally, I’d serve this over rice, but I had some of these wonton noodles leftover from my Crab and Pork Wonton Noodle Soup recipe that we’re currently testing for my Steamy Kitchen cookbook. (Come take a look and join the testing group if you’re interested!) So, as thrifty as I am, I’ve served this over noodles instead of rice. You can do either. There are certain dishes that my Mom always says in Chinese, “goes very good with rice,” meaning, You’re gonna eat A LOT of it and won’t be able to stop. This is one of those dishes where before you even know it, you’ve eaten the entire pot with rice or noodles!

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This weekend, we decided to take the kids to DisneyWorld to celebrate Andrew’s 5th birthday. I had absolutely nothing to do with Scott’s selection of attire and this just goes to show you how much this man loves me, by wearing the SteamyKitchen shirt that I made him.

Traveling with kids and especially going to theme parks where it takes 3 hours just to walk back to your car because you have to catch the train to catch the monorail to catch the parking tram to then forget where you parked your car in the sea of 50,000 minivans and then head back to the park the same way. So you want to make sure you’ve got it all and when the kids were babies, we used to pack everything in 30 foot trailer and drag that behind us rickshaw style. Yes, I was one of those freakish parents who wanted to be prepared for any situation. Hungry for deep fried ice cream with bubblegum jewels while pretending to be a pirate? I’ve got you covered.

And every year that goes by, we are able to lug less and less. No more diapers, wipes, strollers and 5 changes of clothing. We’ve graduated to a DELUXE fanny pack, as modeled by my husband:

Sorry for the porn music…I just couldn’t resist.

As we were in Tomorrowland, I saw something that made me shriek with laughter. It’s very rare that I come across a situation that makes my body uncontrollably convulse into the most annoying human in on the planet. And especially at Magic Kingdom, where the park is really designed for kids. Yes, it’s really cool to watch the kids totally have fun, but there’s just something about people wearing big, furry, fuzzy costumes with heads the size of a giant water tower that makes the mother in me uncomfortable. Are they hot? How can they breathe? Can they see? How much do they get paid to wear this 50,000 pound costume in 95F Florida summer with 10,000% humidity? All these questions and I start feeling sorry for these people and I have an urge to unzip their costume and throw a bucketful of ice cubes down their backs.

We had just come from AdventureLand, where were rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and the boys wanted pirate toys. They chose the light-up pirate gun and I happily paid the $10 each for them, because the other thing they were eyeing was the $40 dress up costume (and you know I’d have anxiety issues over that!)

So we get to TomorrowLand…you’ll have to watch the short clip. I just love the part where Nathan (3 1/2yrs old) doesn’t even say a word, calmly picks up his gun and shoots the robotic trash can.

Of course, I’ve just disqualified myself from winning the Mother of the Year award since I egg on my other kid to shoot him too. I just have one thing to say to defend my obnoxious behavior. When alien forces attack planet Earth, I’m standing behind my kids.

(btw Andrew is wearing a big “Happy Birthday Andrew” button)

Did you see the guy at the end talking and controlling the trash can? He was so sly, dressing in regular street clothes and looking very Keanu Reeves. He wore a messenger bag slung across his broad, hunky shoulder, one hand in the bag controlling the trash can and the other hand holding a voice-changing microphone.

Ok, enough blabber, I’ve got a lot of work to do! In two weeks, 08/08/08 is not only my BIRTHDAY!!!! but the start of the Beijing Olympics and I want you to be prepared. I mean, prepared for cooking good, authentic, easy Chinese food - not necessarily my birthday, though all gifts of the chocolate or coffee nature are welcome with open arms - so I’ll be posting quite often and you’ll see a series of Chinese recipes and menu ideas!

from the Steamy Kitchen archives….

The software that runs my website has a nifty little feature that tells me what terms people are entering into the search box when they come to Steamy Kitchen. Although smart authors would probably use this information to enhance their site and serve the needs of their readers, the only reason I check this page is for comic relief. Most terms are legit, such as a recipe for jap chae, but at least once a day, I find a gem, something that just makes me giggle. It’s a total mystery why someone would come to my Asian recipes Web site and enter into the search box: "what foods give you spots" and expect that I have the answer!? I doubt if these people ever found what they were searching for on my blog, but I wanted to take the time to address these curious questions and concerns: Read the full story