baby rambutan

yesterday, it was.

more and more snow–the photo does not quite capture how fast and furious the flakes were falling.

banh xeo, for pancake day (Shrove Tuesday) at our neighborhood pho palace…this was a disappointment. not much flavor; thankfully our only child for the day, #2son, loved the crispy egg crepe. (daughter was off on a trip with her friends, #1son at college. their winter/spring breaks don’t jibe anymore).

comfort food: a bowl of bun, noodle salad, with all good things as toppings (grilled pork and shrimp, meatballs and shrimp cake).
so why is today another (painfully flat as ) pancake day?
i’ve just had my not-quite-yearly mammogram (i am always reluctant to book this appointment), and to you my blog sisters…you know what i mean .
have you had your check-up yet?

or more precisely, tea cookies to eat while drinking tea, from Bruce Healy and Paul Bugat, The French Cookie Book.

a friend’s sweet 16 birthday, on Valentine’s Day, no less!, called for something sweetly special… (more…)

have you? had red velvet cake? have you been curious about it at all?
(more…)

from Vietnam, to Morocco, in my dreams.
(more…)

a bunch of broken hearts. .
forgive me, i am a sourpuss lately.

The Birthday?
our fat little furry cat has turned 4. still as finicky as ever–we’ve had a helluva time finding canned food that he’ll actually eat up, instead of us scraping them off all dried up and shriveled from the bowl.
for now, it’s anything sliced, never ground, not pate, nothing minced! AND, Fancy Feast only.

fancy cat. HRH, Emperor BaoBao, Jack Bauer, Napoleon of Maine, and Massachusetts. fancy cat food for him, brownie, a la mode, for us (kid-suggested King Arthur Flour brownies + Breyer’s extra creamy vanilla ice cream).

and the crepe-y fail i am writing about, only to appeal to anyone out there, yoo hoo, help?!, with a friendly recipe for Saigon sizzling crepes (banh xeo). it is a savory crepe made of rice flour, turmeric, curry and coconut milk, filled with ground pork, mushrooms, shrimp and bean sprouts.

it’s just that the memory of the first bite i had, many many years ago, cooked by a co-teacher’s Vietnamese student, is so tugging at my heartstrings, and belly, that i long to replicate it at home.

mine was a complete and utter disaster, which my family courageously attempted to eat, out of pure love i think…i snatched away the platter after seeing their politeness dissolving into grimaces.
could it be because i used a bit of mung bean flour in the crepe batter? ( saw an online recipe which included steamed/mashed mung beans–it looked delicious!)
hmmm, i am retreating from this challenge for a while, and ordering a take-out portion from my friendly neighborhood pho place for now.
a successfully cooked crepe, and tips for its creation, is pictured here.
my #2son was very wary, suspicious, no! he was outright scared!– the next day when he saw me opening up the Vietnamese cookbooks once more.
“er… more Vietnamese experiments, mom??”