I never thought that I’d miss washing dishes in my kitchen…but after 12 days on the road, not only did I long for my own dish sponge (we all have personal relationships with our favorite dish sponge brand, right!? RIGHT!????) but I also missed my beloved rice cooker.

Of course I missed my children dearly…so much that we’re not gonna talk about that right now. But thank goodness for wonderful friends like Diane and Todd, who generously opened their home to host a party for me. The home was filled with good friends (do you see Matt and Adam in photo #2?), TONS of food (they cooked 8 dishes from my cookbook!) and a magical setting.

I’ve been waiting 3 years to meet this man. THREE YEARS. He’s as crazy as I thought he would be. And that’s his lovely wife to the right – she’s hilarious! Love them both. I told them my boys were going to marry their little girls.

Also got to see my blog-sistahs Jenny, Bee and Rachael. I love them too.

Diane even took time out to snap some photos of me…and since I didn’t really touch my camera that night, I have no photos of Diane or Todd myself (sad) but Clare made sure she snapped a photo of my hosts, including the very very handsome Mark.

Then off to San Francisco where I started the morning with an interview at KTSF, romped with great friends at the Foodbuzz Festival with these cool people. Breakfast with Foodbuzz was the best. It was the morning I decided that the best hangover cure was a Bacon Bloody Mary. I must give a big big shoutout and thank you to Stephanie of Wasabimon for driving Ms. Jaden and playing photographer.

Wait…is that David Chang of Momofuku in that photo below?! Why yes it is! More on that below.

In San Francisco, I also did a live television segment on View From the Bay where I cooked Firecracker Shrimp.

Little did I know the Boy Scouts were gonna be there in the live audience! I wanted to just hug them all.

Biggest surprise was that brand new author and very talented chef, David Chang of Momofuku was in the station as well and also cooking his ramen dish on TV. What a sweetheart. Stephanie and I hung out in the Green Room together with his co-author, Peter where he confessed that he was massively hung over. Something like 100 shots the night before. But doesn’t he look so happy here? He hides his hangover well. I want to cook for this man.

I also managed to pack in a mini high-school reunion and a cooking class at Sur La Table! Long time friends Irene and Maria came to the class and new friends Ben of Cooking With the Single Guy (dinner with Ben, Stephanie, Sean and Samantha was !$!@*# awesome!)

These people who came to the book signing at Omnivore were so precious – one even came and gave me home made hot sauce!

A big thanks for a city that I still call home…and an even bigger thanks to the companies who sent me hundreds of products to give away as prizes at goodie bags, including Scanpan, MacSpeech, Chefs Catalog, Pama, Sodastream, Vine Connections, Marky’s Caviar and Van Gogh Vodka.

And then…there’s Seattle…for next time…

It’s hard to capture the moments on my camera sometimes when I’m smack dab in the middle of the action. Outside of my little food world in my kitchen, there’s no “pause” button or “do-over” button in life while I fumble with my camera.

By the time I whip out the camera, turn it on, adjust, focus and click,

The moment is gone.

And it’s just not quite the same to say, “hey guys, um…I missed that moment, can you spill that drink all over yourself again?”

So for my very first book signing party in my hometown, I handed my beloved camera to Nathan. He’s almost 5, so of course I duct-taped the camera around his forehead, over his shoulder so he couldn’t drop it. With specific instructions on “take a picture of these lovely people” and “take a pic of this yummy plate of food!”, here is Nathan’s take on the evening.

I love the eyes of a 5 year old!

Right after that party, I was off to NYC, where my first event was the NYC Dumpling Festival. Oh…what’s this coming my way?

Hmmm…closer inspection…

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a massive dumpling filled with BABY dumplings – I think like close to 1,200 dumplings. This thing weighed 900+ pounds.

I was the M.C. for the Dumpling Festival sponsored by TMI Foods, the makers of frozen dumplings, noodles and dumpling wrappers. They raised $30,000 for the Food Bank of NYC that day! I could just lay here and fall asleep on this giant pillow.

I never got a chance to show you behind the scenes at the Today Show. The day before I went on air, we had a rehearsal. Yes, a rehearsal because this show is very professionally produced and they probably wanted to meet me first to make sure that I was not an insane person who dresses up like Rachael Ray….well…at least in Photoshop anyways.

When I get there, I was all ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work prepping for my segment.

There’s vegetables to cut! Meat to marinate!

But nope.

They are PROFESSIONAL.

Everything was already done. evvvveerrrryything.

There’s a kitchen staff that chops, preps, styles, organizes and choreographs. All I had to do was walk through the what we were going to do on the segment and make sure all the ingredients were in place.

My segment was to be 4 minutes 45 seconds and we literally walked through every second of the segment – timing everything and even choreographing the exact moment when we walk over to the stove, when the rice is stirred and what gets handed over to whom with what hand.

Confused?

Yeah, so was I, especially when I scribbled my notes on the back of a crusty envelope.

And then…they asked me, “Shall we go to the prop room and pick out dishes?”

I nearly fainted. I want. Mommy.

Could I sneak past security and bring home with me? Will all cram in my suitcase?

The next day, they sent a car to my hotel to come pick me up and then I was promptly whisked to the green room.

Which isn’t green.

But who cares because Rod Stewart is in the house!

I got made up like a big girl.

As I was waiting for my turn to go downstairs to the studio, I had a moment of panic.

What if the kitchen crew all called in sick today? SHITSHITSHITSHIT!!!

But sure enough, they were all there. Very busily getting things ready for the segment.

There was nothing for me to do.

Except just stand there and look all purty.

And then ACTION! (Don’t you love my big whoooooosh! bangs? I forgot to look in the mirror SIDEWAYS) If I haven’t forced you to watch the segment 5 times already, you can click on that image right below and it should go to the video clip.

It’s been an thrilling 24 hours, starting with a book signing at Barnes & Noble at 68th and Lexington in NYC – and seeing for the very very very first time, my cookbook in a bookstore.

A real book, done by me. In a real bookstore.

I saw. I cried. I took a photo.

Of course, I’ve seen the book up on Amazon.com and friends from around the world have sent me photos of my book in their bookstores, but since the book has been out, this was my very first time ever seeing it in person with my own two eyes.

Damn. I did good, real good. People around me at the store noticed the similarity between me and the gal on the jacket cover (except the gal on the jacket cover is 10 pounds lighter. That’s what writing a cookbook does to you.) and started congratulating me.

“Oh yes, that IS me!”

“Thank you, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the book!”

I gushed with joy.

I still had a couple of hours til the event started, so I hopped into a cab to grab some lunch with my publicist and her friend, Maria.

Into the cab I go, still smiling from ear to ear, barely able to keep my happy feet from doing a jig.

And then I looked at the back of my leg.

All morning long.

This sticker was on my ass.

There’s nothing like a 10-inch long sticker advertising your jean size to the world to keep life in check.

I see it’s a sign from God and Buddha to keep me humble.

And heck yeah, it worked.

Had a fantastic book signing, with a very very special little bugaboo who took his first subway ride of his life to come see me.

This little cutie:

Who’s mother is beautiful lady, Ms. Smitten Kitchen.

And before I go to have lunch with my buddy Mark of the Culinary Media Network, I’ll leave you with my segment on the Today Show this morning….MOMMY, I DID IT!!

click on photo below to get video clip!

Well, this was certainly a new experience for me – my first interview on national television! Earlier this week, I got to be on a live interview with Meg Oliver of ABC News Now. I had to juggle our schedule a bit to make it fit – I was already scheduled to be in Boston that day to meet with Grace Niwa and my publisher, and it was just easier for me to do a satellite interview in Boston than trying to brave the morning drive from Boston to NYC on a Monday morning. So Grace and I head to Needham’s ABC studio, which ended up to be nothing fancy, just a simple, practical space in an office building. The studio was only used for satellite interviews about twice a week.

I walk into this room – a dark, plain room with two different backdrops – a daytime skyline of Boston and one night time. I sat in an office chair in the middle of the room with the lights turned off, three massive, hot lights spotlighting, a mega-camera pointing directly at me, a small box with wires and knobs right next to my chair – it felt a little like an interrogation!

Behind the scenes at ABC

Okay, so here’s my behind the scenes video that Grace shot for me:

Now you ready to see how I did?

It was a pretty long interview – exactly 7 minutes – and we chat about my inspiration to start my career in food, why I started my blog (it had nothing to do with expecting an audience!) and a bit about my upcoming Steamy Kitchen Cookbook which hits the shelves October 19th.

Apparently, both Meg and I decided that it was poofy shirt shoulder day! LOL! And I love the random stock video cooking shots that they stuck in the middle of the segment – HILARIOUS! Who are those women!???

Meg is so poised, calm, smart and gorgeous. I was a TOTAL SPAZZZ!!

Do you want to know what was going on in my mind that moment my eyes strayed from the camera for a split second?

I was so afraid that ear thing would fall out of my ear because you know, glasses NEVER stay on my face because I’m Asian, have a flat face and don’t have that nice bridge on my nose to keep those glasses perched up and what if I had a flat ear too?? Do Asians have flat ears!? So many times in that interview, I had to resist the urge to use my finger to push that ear thingy in deeper in my ear, but then I thought – crap! would that look weird like I’m randomly stickin’ my finger in my ear? Well, news anchors do it all the time, but usually it’s during a hurricane coverage when they’re out in the middle of the street with hundred-mile-an-hour winds whipping them around. Um, okay, so no wind here in this enclosed studio. Probably shouldn’t stick my finger in my flat ear.

Yep.

You just witnessed the crazy convo that whizzed through my mind in a split second.

AWESOMELY SPAZZZTASTIC

And because I’ve gotten a few dozen emails asking the same questions, I’ll just tickle you with a quick Q&A session:

Q: I heard Meg Oliver say that your book is in stores now! Is it really?
A: No, that was a goof. The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook is available for pre-order from Amazon, but won’t hit the shelves until October 19th-ish.

Q: Do you really get 500,000 page views and 250,000 unique visitors a month? How do you track that? Should I track my stats?
A: Some months yes! I’ve had some kick-ass months where Stumbleupon, eHow and Digg really spiked up my traffic due to a cool post. Generally I hold steady between 300,000 to 500,000 page views per month. Through Google Analytics, I can track that each visitor goes to 3.28 pages per visit. The unique visitors number is incorrect – it should have been 152,500.  The best free stats tool that I’ve found is Google Analytics – there are better and more thorough tools out there, but they cost money. And I’m too cheap to pay for them. To answer if you should track your stats on your own blog – well, if you’re highly emotional or your self esteem depends on how many comments you get or how many vistors you get to your blog each day…then, no.

Q: Do you really have flat ears?
A: When I was a little girl, my mom used to tell me I don’t listen very well. I’m blaming that on my flat ears.

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While in Boston, I got to enjoy a fab lunch at Myers+Chang, got to meet the Chang part of that equation – the lovely Joanne Chang, also owner of Flour Bakery

And food blogger/writer Jacqueline Church joined us for lunch too – in the photo below – that’s Joanne, me, Jacqueline and Grace.

More on Myers+Chang food in a later post…a sneak peek….PORK BELLY BUNS!

A little over a year ago, I met Chef Martin Yan for the first time at a Publix Aprons event. I was so girly-giddy that I breathlessly told him that he was my “culinary superhero.”

And if that didn’t scream, “freaky-fan-stalker!” then maybe he got a clue when I got a little so close trying to videotape Yan carving a chicken in 15 seconds that I almost got my bangs thwacked off. But nope, because that same evening, when I mentioned I was writing a cookbook, he actually said, “Send me a copy to review, I’ll write a quote for the back of the book.”

There was a chance that Chef Yan was just sayin’ that to be nice. I mean, he’s a celebrity chef who meets hundreds of people every day, he couldn’t possibly have remembered what he said to whom? So, two months ago, when my book was complete, I prayed that he really, really meant what he said and sent him a copy of the book galley with a kind note.

He remembered. And Martin graciously penned, “Jaden Hair delivers beautiful, simple and delicious food that will bring famly and friends to your table. She is the real deal who learned from the best, her mom. – Martin Yan.”

My publisher slapped that endorsement on the back cover of the book…and then I nearly fainted. The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook hits the shelves in mid-October, and I think the moment I see the real book at a real bookstore, I’m going to personally kiss the back of each book, right where Martin’s quote is.

A couple of weeks ago, Martin came back to town for a class…of course I attended and I gave Martin a big hug and thanked him profusely, freaky-fan-stalker style.

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Martin Yan China Cookbook Giveaway

Martin Yan’s sponsor, Tsingtao Beer has kindly given me two autographed books to give away. CONTEST OVER…WINNER ANNOUNCED!

He wanted to send a little message to you, as he autographed these two books:

I’ll randomly choose 2 winners on July 31st. Just comment below with a nice little note for Martin Yan! What do you want to say to him? I promise he’ll read it.

CONTEST OVER…WINNER ANNOUNCED!

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If Yan Can…

carve a chicken in 19 seconds…SO CAN YOU!

This is the second time I’ve seen him do this – just simply amazing. Hear that camera-clicking? That’s me, multi-tasking. Camcorder in left hand, heavy camera in right hand. Hold still….don’t get too close to that cleaver!

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