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A Patient, Perserving God

⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

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BLOG UPDATE: for all my faithful readers (i.e. all 3 of you), here’s a link to dedicated food blog of mine: www.whatiate4dinner.blogspot.com

I tried making this, “churng fun”:

But what i made was more like a white loogie.  I’ll spare you the pictures, but what’s supposed to be a noodle-like pancake turned out to be a nasty white goop.  Even with this visual sight, I still had to try my creation.  And I can still feel it crawling down my throat 1 hour later. Blegh.

Lesson learned: never assume glutinous rice flour will act the same way as rice flour.

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#6 A God of Justice

“he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26)

so my whole family has gotten bitten by the Cooking bug.  don’t get me wrong, my parents (especially my mom) has always been a great cook, churning out amazing meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner (on top of a full schedule of work and maintaining a household).  but as of late, with the food blogs to the rereading of old cookbooks, my family is going through a sort of a “Food Renaissance.”  let’s use tonight’s dinner as an example:

Beef Bourguignon

(and this is not just any beef bourguignon, this is Julia Child’s beef bourginon! you know, the one that was a major milestone in starting her cooking career! if you don’t know, educate yourself and watch the movie).

take a look at these pictures (beef bourguignon on top of BUTTER noodles) and start drooling:

props to the moms for making this. here’s hoping to more experiences like this!

I was working on some stuff this weekend and I got a major writer’s block.  But the thing is, when I get a writer’s block, I usually just try to push through it and continue typing.  Suffice to say, this does not work out very well as I end up just sitting in front of my computer doing nothing really productive.  I am a fool for continually using this method to work/write, but somehow I keep on doing it. Anywho, it took someone else to pry me away from the computer and tell me to do something else to clear my mind and get away from my work for a little bit.  So what did I do in that time? I made some food – Pineapple Pastry:

This little pastry, although its name has pineapple in it, does not contain any form of the fruit.  Someone said that its name comes from it’s appearance resembling a pineapple.  It sorta does… *shrug.  So since it’s not made of pineapple, this pastry is just the standard sweet chinese bread with a sweet sugary crust on top.

The pastries ended up a little too dense and short.  So for next time, I need to knead (and add more air) into the dough, before I let it rise and bake.  Oh well, next time…

Tonight my family and I celebrated my grandma’s birthday by going out to dinner.  She was in the mood for anything non-Asian and not too greasy/heavy.  My parents yelped “American food” and eventually chose to go to: Jack’s Restaurant & Bar (San Bruno)…

I had very low expectations for dinner tonight as I do not always trust the ratings that Yelp gives.  I actually overheard my parents talking about some restaurant named Jack’s before we went out, so I yelped “Jack’s in San Mateo” and thought we were going to “Jack’s Prime” (which I’ll talk about later).  But to my surprise, the restaurant we ended up going to (Jack’s Restaurant and Bar), a  fairly new restaurant (2 weeks old) that is run by a Bay Area family, blew me away.  The ambience was a classic and sleak, the waiters were especially nice and the food was amazing and good-portioned (and when I saw good portioned I mean large!).  And even better, the price was decent ($12-15).  The early bird specials (5-6:30 pm) even came soup or salad plus a drink with your entree for $12 (Oh what a deal!).   We ended up getting the fried chicken, fish and chips, catfish and chicken piccata.  Yum yums.

The waiter also mentioned that the family that ran this restaurant also owned another restaurant: Boulevard Cafe.

…which apparently has the best fish and chips in the Bay Area.  I’m definitely going to try this place out.  The breakfast menu looks pretty darn UHHHmazing too.

But getting back to my misunderstanding of where we were going tonight for dinner, I thought we were going to a place called “Jack’s Prime”:

After looking at their menu on their website and some of the pictures on Yelp, I really want a burger and sweet potato fries real bad.  This is another food joint that I’m going to try.

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And to think that just a few weeks ago, I had no idea where to bring my Socal friends for dinner at a good old Bay Area exclusive.  Now I have three!!  Guess y’all better come back up here soon…

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UPDATE: this is the 150th post on this blog! how momentous.

I really disliked brussels sprouts and yogurt when I was a little kid.  But now, I can’t get enough of them.

Maybe I am growing up.

So I didn’t necessarily plan on making this a weekly thing, but the way things are working out it sure seems like it.  And just like last week, this culinary creation was borne out of the need to procrastinate as well as flipping the channel and watching the last 10 minutes of the movie: Julie and Julia (yes, i think it’s a good movie).

This week’s “masterpiece” is the Chinese Cocktail Bun: 雞尾包.  It is a sweet bread with a sweet gooey coconut filling on the inside.  The top of the bread is then dotted with some of the coconut filling and glazed with some honey.

雞尾包 still in the pan

look at that yummy goodness inside!

This turned out so much better than the dan tat last week.  It was warm, sweet, and almost like chinatown’s.

On days where where I should be studying, I dedicate my time obviously to everything but focusing on my work.  So as promised, I proceeded to make Dan Tat 蛋撻, a Chinese egg custard dessert.

in the making

little dan tat

the bigger dan tat.

So making the dough was very labor intensive (too labor intensive) so next time I think I’ll just buy some store bought dough.  And I thought I could skip the step in straining the beaten eggs, but later found out that if you leave the eggy albumin protein (the white part of the egg) in the dan tat, it makes the custard have a weird texture and makes it taste too eggy.  Hmm lessons for next time.

All in all though, they turned out decent.  Maybe I’ll try again (probably when I want to procrastinate).  Not as good as them wife cakes though…

this morning i was blessed to be able to go to SFBC for my first time.  Alton preach today about the importance of God’s Word and the great desire we need to have for learning about and growing from it.  the message was a good wake up call to me about how little i crave God’s truth…how immature i am spiritually.  sunday school was just as insightful and interesting (1 Sam 21-22), reminding us that our ultimate aim is to follow, obey and glorify God; not to follow a set of strict rules.  also the historical context and parallels between King David and Jesus were pretty cool to learn about.

after service+sundayschool though, a bunch of us went to San Tung (a restaurant that apparently has some of the best fried chicken and that my parents have actually been wanting to try).  the food was pretty good and the fellowship of sfbc-ers was even better.

from yelp. fried chicken. yeaaaa.

NOTE: i think the dan tat will have to wait til another weekend…

Tonight i decided (along with the help of the parentals) to use my culinary skills to…bake (yes, i made it manly).  And so i channeled my angrylittlebaker inside and made:

Wife Cake 老婆餅.

These are chinese pastries that have a flaky outside and have a sweet filling made out of winter melon, sugar and coconut.  Traditionally, these little devils are given out to celebrate a wedding. But as a kid growing up with these in chinatown, I couldn’t get enough of them and still can’t. And so i’m super happy that now I can make these anytime I want.  They turned out pretty darn good…

the tools. the flour. the mess.

final product.

yum

Recipe came from- www.passionbaker-phoebe.blogspot.com/2011/02/wife-cake.html