We were quite a boring family when I grew up in North Platte, Nebraska. There just weren’t very many super exciting things for a Chinese immigrant family to do in the small town and we lived on a dirt road, across from the empty field lot, next to the traffic light in the middle of nowhere. Usually on weekends, we’d stay at home. But once every couple of months, when we were feeling a bit frisky and itchin’ for some variety, we’d all pack in our puke green Chevrolet Impala station wagon (complete with the lovely wood paneled sides) and drive to the nearest Asian market - Denver, Colorado, which was four and half hours away and four and a half hours back. It was good to be near our peeps, stock up on Asian ingredients and pick up a Chinese newspaper, our only link to what was happening back home. Oh, those were wild times. Read the full story

Zimmern: “completely rotten, mushy onions.”

Bourdain: “…Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.”

Alfred Russell Wallace, some naturalist in the 1800’s: “After a fruit-eating bat has pee’d on it.”

Henri Mouhot, French naturalist: “On first tasting it I thought it like the flesh of some animal in a state of putrefaction.”

BBC: “It has been likened to rotting onions, unwashed socks and even carrion in custard, but the most accurate description by far is that of a sewer full of rotting pineapples.”

Richard Sterling, travel/food writer: “… its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.”

Lovely.

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Thanks to two of my favorite bloggers WhiteOnRice and Wandering Chopsticks, I learned a few secrets to some great recipes that I shared on TV last month…come take a look at the video:

(by the way, ABC7 upgraded their video application, now it plays on both PCs and Mac!)

When you get to ABC’s site, click on FEATURED VIDEO right below recipe name.

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from Steamy Kitchen column in Tampa Tribune 5/21/08

When I was little, my mom used to take a 2-quart pitcher, fill it with water, add a few tea bags and placed it in a sunny spot early in the day. My job was to chase the sun. As the sun moved throughout the day, I had to nudge that stupid pitcher.

Not a fun job, especially since back then as a kid, tea to me tasted like tree bark. What made the whole job worse was that our patio was covered with an open latticework canopy of two-by-fours. Great for playing a quick game of tic-tac-toe in the shade-produced lines, but you can imagine the frustration of making sun tea?

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Note: This post seems silly now - because

1) I’m not mad at Scott anymore - that was SO last week

2) Andrew had a brain MRI on Tuesday morning

However, this story was published in the Tampa Tribune (my deadlines for the paper are a week ahead of pub date), and I’m not quite ready to talk about Andrew quite yet. (Yes, he’s healthy, fine) So I’m posting this little story anyways.

Also, something happened on the way to Flickr…the colors on the photos flattened out and are a little mushy. ??? Can’t figure it out this morning and will work on it later. In the meantime, enjoy!

Uninhibited Rage of Energy

I’m mad at my husband and it sucks. 36 hours ago, he lashed out at me, totally uncalled for and ever since then, I’ve been waiting for that apology. Waiting…nothing. That’s the trouble with being married to one of the most stubborn individuals this side of the universe.

When I’m upset, I retreat to my kitchen and make something. Sometimes, the most brilliant concoctions arise from my uninhibited rage of energy. I tear, chop, slather, peel, whirl and blend. Pots clang on the stovetop, the KitchenAid spits out patches of stray flour, the cheap blender vibrates across the counter, and the whirring exhaust fan drowns out angry thoughts in my head. I chop loads of fresh mint because no matter how hard I run my chef’s knife across the leaves, it happily returns with a bright, refreshing, crisp fragrance that bathes my tear-streaked face and clears my breathing.

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