Merry Christmas, My Dear Friends

Sweet and Sour Pork

This is not exactly the same kind of "Sweet and Sour Pork" that we grew up with in Hong Kong. But this is not bad. Click here for the recipe...

Tomato and Onion Salmon

This salmon recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Peppermint Freezer Pie Recipe

This peppermint freezer pie recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Wilted Spinach Salad Recipe

We think this dish totally meets our need for the old-fashioned, wholesome diet that we occasionally seek. (yeah... we want to eat healthy, but we don't always stick with it...) Spinach is rich in calcium and potassium which are great for controlling blood pressure... (even though we haven't had a problem in this area yet....).... And mushrooms are good for ??? We don't know yet... may be you can tell us.... We think throwing in just a little bit of egg and a little bit of bacon crisps won't hurt. Afterall, our bodies all need protein to function, right?

Boy, this salad really tasted wonderful. It was easy to make and it's pretty filling. We were told that in the 30s and 40s, this salad was a popular dish served in elegant restaurants in America. The tuxedoed waiters back in those days flambed the dressing ingredients and tossed the salad tableside. Wow, we can imagine what an entertaining scene it must be.... We had never seen waiters made this salad at the tableside. As a matter of fact, we had never even seen this salad on the menus in the restaurants we visited. Fortunately, we can make this tasty salad at home with little effort, click here for the recipe.

Cheddar Bread Twists Recipe

This cheddar cheese twists recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Szechuan Grilled Flank Steak

This flank steak recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Sweet-Sour Red Cabbage Recipe

This red cabbage recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Sweet and Spicy Chicken Stir-Fry

This chicken stir-fry recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Single Serving Microwave Carrot Cake

The concept of baking a quick one serving cake using the microwave really intrigued us and got us excited. Unfortunately, the result was far from what we expected. The time we spent mixing up the batter for this one serving cake was not much shorter than the time we typically spent mixing up an oven-baked cake from scratch (no boxed cake mix). The cooking time was of course a few minutes with the microwave versus 25 minutes for oven-baked cake. However, the taste and texture of this cake was not close to the goodness of the traditional oven-baked cake we were expecting. This microwave cake was dry and the texture too spongy. It became even harder and drier after a few minutes. We felt like we were eating a bath scrub.... We wonder if it's really possible to bake any cake at all using microwave... or it's just our taste bud that we don't like eating cake in such texture? For those of you who are curious and who are willing to spend a little time to try this out, you can click here for the recipe.

Quick 'n' Tangy Beef Stir-Fry

This beef stir-fry recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Cottage Cheese Yeast Rolls Recipe

This cheese roll recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Easy Make-at-Home Chinese Chicken

This chicken recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Rustic Nut Bars Recipe

This nuts bar recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Chicken Chow Mein

This chicken chow mein recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Apple Butter Cake Roll Recipe

This apple cake recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Stir-Fry Tomato Beef

This beef stir-fry recipe is featured in the 3 Books in 1: Chinese, Thai, Japanese Cookbook, how do you like it? Click on the picture to get the recipe.

Broccoli Chicken Fettuccine Recipe

This chicken fettuccine recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Italian Sausage Egg Bake Recipe

This breakfast recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Citrus Cranberry Tea Recipe

This tea recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Simple Fried Rice Recipe

Without even looking at our grocery receipt and sitting down to divide every item we bought by tablespoons and then to muliply by the number of tablespoons we used in this recipe, we are pretty sure that we made this rice dish for four people for much less than $5.00.

We love this recipe because we love fried rice. When we were growing up, our mothers always made fried rice using leftover from the fridge: leftover steamed rice, leftover ham, vegetables, shrimps, bbq pork, etc. Fried rice is just a Chinese way to use up leftover scraps. The best fried rice is actually made with cold rice from the fridge. Freshly steamed rice will make the fried rice too mushy. The fried rice will get stucked to the wok and is difficut to flip and stir if freshly steamed rice is used. Fried rice was never meant to be a dish made out of freshly cooked rice, it's always meant to be a dish to use up leftovers from previous meals.

So after buying a package of bacon and a bunch of green onions for the salad we made the other night, we decided to use up the bacon by making Chinese fried rice out of it. We never really liked bacon, cause we found it too salty, hard and crispy when eaten alone. Bacon is just not our cup of tea. Just we needed the dripping and the bacon bits to try out this salad recipe..... we were stucked with a whole package of it.

Surprisingly, the bacon worked very well with the fried rice and we really enjoyed the way it seasoned the fried rice and the texture it added. Mixed with the fried rice and green onion, the greasiness and fatty texture of the bacons (we didn't cook it to a hard chip) became not noticeable. Instead, we felt like we were having some really tasty meat or ham with fried rice. A bowl of fried rice just brought back childhood memories of how our mothers used to feed us a bowl of fried rice and an apple or an orange for our lunch. Fried rice is often eaten as a side dish here in America, but it was always the one dish meal for our families... This explains why we are skinny even when we don't care for eating low-fat health food...Click here to see this cheap and easy fried rice recipe.

Ham 'n' Broccoli Triangles Recipe

This ham recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Walnut Blue Cheese Coins

This blue cheese crackers recipe is featured on the Martha Stewart Living Magazine November 1997 issue, how do you like it?

Chicken Spareribs Recipe

This chicken recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

No Bake Maple Praline Cheesecake

We love cheesecakes but we are no good at baking. The idea of a no bake cheesecake is what motivated us to make our first dessert last night. This cheesecake tasted very good yet we failed to get the firmness of a regular cheesecake out of it even we put it in the fridge for over 1 hour as we were instructed. We absolutely loved eating this cheesecake, just we wish it could be firmer in texture. We wonder may be 1 1/3 cup of cold milk is too much liquid for the filling? What do you think? We think next time we will make it with 3/4 cup cold milk instead. You can click here to get the recipe.

Sweet Potato Hash Browns Recipe

This sweet potato recipe is featured on the Martha Stewart Living Magazine November 1997 issue, how do you like it?

Hot Crab Pinwheels Recipe

This crab pinwheels recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Linguine with Butternut Squash, Spinach, and Mussels

This linguine recipe is featured on the Bon Appetit Magazine Oct 2009 issue, how do you like it?

Cherry Almond Cups Recipe

This cherry almond cookie recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Hearty Beef Soup Recipe

This beef soup recipe is featured on the Taste of Home Magazine Dec 2007 issue, how do you like it?

Pesto Mozzarella Cheese Cups

Our New Year's cocktail party this year was an effortless orchestration because we chose to serve easy finger foods with refreshing "easy to concoct" cocktail drinks. This is one of the appetizers that gave us a lot of applause from our guests. This pairs very well with the apple cider punch, wine or beer. It is one of those impressive looking appetizers that is incredibily easy to make. It's an appetizer which has the perfect ingredients that complement each others so well; that it's very sophiscated tasting, yet deliciously uncomplicated with a very pleasant melt-in-the-mouth crispiness. We totally love it!! Click here for the recipe!!