Romanian Dinner

Did you know that the 1st of March is the traditional celebration of the beginning of the spring in Romania? The holiday is called Martisor. On that day, our Romanian friends took over a local restaurant and hosted a Romanian dinner for a fair price.

It was my first time having Romanian food, and it was delicious. Unfortunately, we forget to take pictures, but to find pictures and more about the dishes, check out this page.

First, Alvin and I shared a soup called "bors." It tasted like a hearty chicken, vegetable soup.

Second, we had "sarmale." This is cabbage rolls with meat inside served with sour cream, hot pepper, and bread or polenta.

For dessert, our table was presented with "prajitura," a plate of about 8 different desserts. All of them were very good.

Pasta with Tomatoes

One of our friends, when his wife was feeling nauseous around the first trimester, asked me to write up some recipes that he could cook for his wife. I handed him three simple recipes, and then one day we cooked together for his wife and Alvin. Many of the recipes do not include meat because the wife was feeling sick at the smell/taste of meat at that time.

The first menu was pasta with tomatoes and a side of roasted carrots. The pasta with tomatoes was a recipe given to me by my sister-in-law MSolari (but I did tweak it a little).

Pasta with tomatoes
Serves 4
Ingredients:
½ package of pasta
3 tomatoes, diced
1 teaspoon dried basil (or 1 T of fresh basil)
8 oz. mozzarella, diced (about a handful)
2 T olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
5 drops of lemon juice

Directions:
1) Boil pasta for 10-15 minutes, until pasta is soft. Remove and place pasta in strainer.
2) While pasta is boiling, sauté garlic in oil until garlic is soft but not burned.
3) Pour oil and garlic over pasta.
4) Add tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and lemon juice. Stir.
5) Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Optional meat: Chicken chunks
2 chicken breast
¼ teaspoon olive oil

1) Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper over chicken.
2) Drizzle 1 teaspoon of olive oil over chicken.
3) Bake for 15 minutes in oven at 176 C (350 F)
4) Remove, let sit for 5 minutes.
5) Cut chicken in large chunks, and add to pasta



Roasted carrots
Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 carrots, cut in ¼ inch rounds
2 T of olive oil

Directions:
1) Put carrots in oven safe pan.
2) Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F).
3) Drizzle olive oil over the carrots.
4) Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper over carrots.
5) Bake for 20 minutes, or until tender. Halfway through the baking, mix up the carrots to prevent burning.

My Chinese TV Pet Peeve

When I am watching Chinese tv, I like watching foreigners come on the tv and speak Chinese. Some foreigners are very good in their Chinese; some of them even sound like native speakers. My least favorite part of tv is when a foreigner comes on to a Chinese game show, and the host decides to speak to them in "foreigner Chinese." Basically, the host is mocking the way foreigners speak Chinese by messing up the tones completely. I don't like this because often times the foreigner on television actually is pretty good with his/her tones, but secondly, I can't understand anything the host is saying. Yet, the host speaks "foreigner Chinese" to the foreigner thinking that he/she can now understand him better because he is speaking like them. It doesn't work because Chinese is a tonal language. If you mess up the tones, the foreigner has no idea what you are saying, and then he/she looks stupid.

I had this happen to me in real life too. I went to buy a bag, and the sales person used "foreigner Chinese" with me.

After this pet peeve started growing, I have been trying to convince Alvin not to do accents anymore, esp. accents that make fun of the way non-American speak English. For example, Alvin likes to speak to our Australian friend in "Australian English," and to our Cantonese friend, he speaks to him in "Cantonese English." In my opinion, it is the same thing. Alvin argues that it isn't the same thing because English is not a tonal language.

By the way, we have an Australian friend who does a very good American English impression. We also heard about a former French classmate who did an impression of American English by dropping the F-bomb a couple times. Interesting what our international friends think about us.

Pot Pie

Last month, I had an urge to make a chicken pot pie. Here is what it looks like:
Alvin can comments on what it tasted like.

Winter Clothes

Spring is coming. Last week the weather was warm, but the last few days the temperature dropped again. It is now around 50-65 degrees F during the day time. We are just itching to put away the winter clothes, but today I brought out my gloves, and Alvin wore his hat.

We noticed that in this city, the order of what winter clothes to wear is different from Alvin and my thinking.

We think:
Even if it is slightly cold, we wear jacket and boots.
If it is cold, the most important is gloves and long underwear.
If it is medium cold, then wear a hat.
If it is below freezing, then wear a scarf.
And when the lake has frozen over, put on the face mask.

Our locals friends here think:
If it is slightly cold, they wear boots and a light jacket.
If it is cold, face mask.
If it is medium cold, they wear gloves.
When everything has frozen, they finally break out the big jackets and long underwear. Some people wear hats. Yet we hardly ever see hats, and scarves are rare.

What Alvin and I don't understand is how their ears don't feel frozen. I think they know we are foreigners by our hats and scarves.

Kimchi Again!

This semester, we are in class with one of our Korean friends. She is an excellent cook, although she still laments how the last meal she cooked us (a year ago) was too salty.

She gifted us with a jar of homemade kimchi. Of all the kimchi we have received, this one has been the best.


In one weekend, we ate half the jar. We made bibimbop one day:


The next day, we made kimchi tacos.


Just yesterday, we had kimchi fried rice. Yummy!

Birthday Cake

Last Thursday, I by accident mentioned to one of our teachers that it was my birthday. The head administrator of the school, then ordered me a b-day cake as a thanks for all the help Alvin and I have been to the school (ie. helping out with Chinese Corner, Computer Club, heading up the school's v-ball league). We were shocked by their generosity. So Thursday afternoon, Alvin went and picked up the b-day cake. Mmm, I love Chinese cake.



We shared the cake with our Australian, South African, and Norwegian friends who live in our complex. I was serenaded with a birthday song from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, America, and China. (We also got an African sweeping song, but that was not a birthday song.) They were all pretty interesting, but I think the Norwegian birthday song is the most fun because the birthday person gets to be in the middle while everyone else jumps up and down while singing the song.

Thanks for the Comments

Thanks for all the congratulations and the birthday wishes. I had a great day on my b-day. Thanks Alvin!

I am also doing very well in the pregnancy. The nausea was not bad, except for a few events of returned food. Too bad two of the four times was outdoors for all to see. I am not very tired, and this week was the first week where I felt especially hungry. Mmm, cheese.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Bethany! I am one day late on posting this, but wanted the whole internet world to know that I think that being married to you is absolutely wonderful.

For Bethany's birthday this year, we did not go with an assortment of cheeses like last year. Instead, I decided that I would cook dinner for her. Not too long ago, I also got her the 8th edition of The Professional Chef. So far, we have had mixed feelings about this book. It is definitely an incredibly detailed technical book, and it has great pictures. It seems to be better for teaching core skills and fundamental recipes rather than for specific dishes. And so, for her birthday dinner, I was to make a braised lamb. But... Bethany helped by making the Mirepoix, as recommended in The Professional Chef.



Also for dinner, I made a Chinese dish: 汤圆 (tang yuan). But, Cantonese style (or, at least, kind of like the way my mom makes it). In a savory soup with white radish, mushrooms, dried shrimp, and a little bit of meat (here, we use lamb, not Chinese sausage). And then, of course, the 汤圆, or in English, the soup rice dumplings (made from rice flour). The soup came out pretty well.



All in all, a quiet evening at home. Very nice. Happy Birthday, wife!

Oh yes, we also thought today would be a good day to tell the world...