living dreams

Soup's for dinner!

Yesterday, for the first time in my life (that I can remember), I cooked a version of my mom's chicken soup.

Complete with making soup broth from bones, and not to mention I cut up the chicken too.

That, my friends, is so not typical of me - we usually go with the Costco box of 4kg frozen chicken breasts, thank you very much.

Anyway, the soup turned out wonderfully. My mom told me you can literally throw your odds and ends from the fridge and it would taste good.

My favorite part? No measuring.

Here's the "recipe" if you haven't made "chinese" chicken soup before (and yes, there are a thousand and one variations - this is just one of them, and a simple one at that).

Ingredients:

Chicken bones - anything from breastbone to neckbone - get what's on sale for a cheap alternative!

Chicken meat (not frozen preferably)

Veggies of choice

Salt/soy sauce to taste

Here's how to put it together:

Boil water in your pan. I literally have no idea how many cups - it was about half my dutch oven pot. (I told you there were no measurements!)

Throw in chicken bones, boil, boil, boil..

Take off the burner and scoop off any yucky foam / oil that collects at the top.

Put pot back on burner. Boil, then remove bones.

Throw in veggies. Always a good idea to throw in veggies that take longer to cook first. I threw in carrots first.

I then added onions and celery and after a few minutes, added cut up chicken meat. Boil until cooked.

I also added in fish balls and boiled for 5-10 minutes.

At the last minute I added pea shoots - yum!

I served this with rice - we threw the rice into the soup - for a variation you can use noodles.

Some other veggies that my mom uses: mushrooms, chinese cabbage, daikon, lotus roots. I'm sure there's more but these are the only ones I can remember right now.

It was so good that Rob and the kids requested a repeat performance tonight. And happily, I have a pot happily boiling away as I type. :)

Enjoy!

I *know* he was thinking this.

(Scene: parked in a Safeway parking stall, waiting for Rob to pick up a birthday cake and a Starbucks).

Me: "Cam! Cam! Look here, buddy!"

Cam: "Huh?" "What?" "What's the big black thing stuck to your face, mom?"

Me: "It's my camera, Cam. Remember? I said I was going to try and take more daily photos, and use my camera more?"

Cam: "Oh yeah. Ok."

Me: "Smile, Cam!"

Cam: (thinking: Here it goes again...) "Cheese!"

Me: "Yeah, smile! That's good! I'm gonna take a few hundred more shots while we wait for Daddy, ok, bud?"

Cam: (sigh) (and thinking, "no other kid in my daycare has to put up with this. I know they don't. Their mothers use little point and shoot cameras that don't scare the stuffing out of all the other little kids.")

Me: "what?"

Cam: "nothing."

Me:"Ok, I think Daddy's done and will be out in a minute."

Cam: "Ok Mom" (while thinking,"I'm gonna get Dad for leaving me in here with her. She's interrupting my in-van video of High School Musical that Emily is making me watch since she's got the remote).

Me: "Look, Cam, I'm even taking one of those reflective self-portrait pics."

Cam: "as long as I'm not in the picture, it's cool. Where's Dad?!"

Happy Cam.

We celebrated Cam's 5th birthday with some of his friends from daycare and church on Saturday at this crazy indoor children's place called Koko's in Port Moody. We ended up with 16 kids and some of their parents spending 3 hours running up and down the playarea, complete with slides, bouncy walls, zipcords, and more. I actually preferred this place over Crash Crawlies as it wasn't as crowded as Crash usually is, and this seemed a little more geared towards littler kids and so there weren't as many "big" kids playing, which means fewer little kids crying when they get knocked over.

I loved watching Cam and Emily playing with their friends and how they interacted with each other. Cam is definitely a very well-liked friend, and a few of the parents commented that their kids always talk about how nice and what a good friend Cameron is. You can bet it made Rob and me feel good that Cam is doing well socially. We talked to him about this after the party and in typical 5-year old boy fashion, he just shrugged it off. That made me laugh - at least we can appreciate it if he can't. :)

He asked for a Lightning McQueen cake which we ended up getting from Safeway. Anyone noticing that the cakes are getting smaller but more expensive? This cake was $24.99 and Cam loves the Lightning car it came with.

Can't share many photos from the day as I haven't asked the parents if I could post pictures of their kids but here's a couple I can share that I thought were just so cute.

 

Making it easier.

Have had a few emails about the stamps on sale, so I thought I'd make it easier with links:

http://www.fontwerks.com/Store/view_product.php?product=cs-941&cat_id=11

http://www.fontwerks.com/Store/view_product.php?product=cs-942&cat_id=11

and http://www.fontwerks.com/Store/view_product.php?product=cs-955&cat_id=11

Hope that helps!

More soon.

The perks of inventory.

Recently we did inventory and now I get to pass  one of the perks on to you!

We are awaiting our next shipments of product and need to make space and we also have some stamps that are overstocked - so you get the benefits. Check out www.fontwerks.com for a selection of stamps that are on for 50% off - we've never had them on sale that low before (except for our seconds) so this is a fantastic deal. :)

We'll be adding on more stamps and more deals as time goes on as well.

Oh, and can I say that veggies from the garden = the most amazing thing ever? We had salad plucked fresh from our container of lettuce and wow, I'd forgotten that veggies from the garden taste totally different from store bought veggies. We planted more last week so I'm looking forward to fresh salad for weeks to come! We've also got tomatoes, beans, peas, radishes, peppers, celery, squash and strawberries going. Missed out on the carrots this year but I've been seriously bummed about that so I wouldn't be surprised if I put them in this weekend. I've also caught myself smiling as I've washed the vegetables at the kitchen sink, knowing at they are totally organic and grown without use of pesticides. Total bonus!

So even though I can't share my overabundance of leafy goodness with you, at least I can share some FW goodies via the wonderful world wide web. :) Have a great day (and eat your vegetables)!

That thread.

There is a quote from Amy Tan's book "Joy Luck Club" about a silk thread and how it entwines itself and connects people and generations and time and space. I can't find that quote but I remember the gist of it. I can't help thinking about it today as my dad boarded a plane bound for Malaysia today, having bought his ticket less than 2 days ago.

He hadn't had plans to go back, and had actually just returned from one of those "I'm-retired-and-I-have-other-retired-friends-who-I-can-travel-with" month-long vacations with my mom and a few of their friends. But he told me he felt he'd better go back to see his mother, and so he went.

It just strikes me how even across all these miles a mother can beckon to her son, and he will listen, even if no words are said to communicate this.

Anyway, just thinkin' about my dad and grandma today. She'll be 101 in less than a month.

No longer a baby but forever my baby.

Did you know?

You can get 15% off your Typepad costs by logging in and going to your control panel, clicking on Account Info and entering VRWEBINAR as the discount code?

And so in that same spirit, enter FWFIFTEEN for 15% off your retail order from www.fontwerks.com.

Fun. :)

Here is the winner of the kit:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

29	

oooh, love your stuff! i know i would love the kit! thanks for the giveaway! =)

Posted by: carla | May 27, 2008 at 01:52 PM

So congratulations Carla, please email me with your address and I will get the kit out to you! I hope you'll enjoy creating the wall hangings - it was a lot of fun to come up with and a blast to teach, and I am hoping to create a few more for some more classes since it was so much fun.

And since I can't seem to take photos of anything but of Cameron with water going up his nose, here's one from the weekend, where the kids broke in the new slip and slide at my inlaw's place. I didn't get to play with a slip and slide while growing up in Malaysia, but loved watching my kids and my nieces having a go at it. An awesome way to spend an afternoon.

Good things.

A few good things:

A weekend getaway to Vancouver Island:

- teachin' it up at Scrapbookin' Adventures in Parksville. Debuted my "wall hangings" classes to a great, great bunch of ladies. We laughed and painted and stamped and Utee'd and ate candy like nobody's business. They are all coming back for the big event that Jenn's holding in September, can't wait to see them again. Thank you Scrapbookin' Adventures!

- Coastsaver rates. Saved about $40 on the ferry. Woot!

- Getting to spend some wonderful time with Rob's family - always a good thing.

I'm going to be teaching the Wall Hangings class at Photo Express June 21 from 1-5pm - they have limited seating so give them a call if you are interested. It'll be a fun, fun class for sure!

I'm giving away a kit today in recognition of All Good Things so leave a comment here and I'll pick a winner here at 5pm on Wednesday. This kit includes the stuff we use in the class so you'll get the stamps and utee and all that lovely stuff. Good, no? :)