use real butter

Recipe: chocolate bag

Ahh! Finally, I can sit down after a whole day of cooking. In the morning, I baked. Starting from noon until now, I’ve been slicing, dicing, mincing, wincing… Chinese New Year’s Eve is tomorrow, yo. That means I must dedicate at least 24 hours of my time to chopping vegetables and tofu and all manner of Chinese ingredients for the big feast. I guess it’s to preserve my Chineseness since my Mandarin is in the shitter.

Okay, two points.

1) I know a lot of bloggers have this problem and it crops up from time to time for me too. While I was searching online today for a good wine recommendation to pair with Chinese hot pot, I found a PDF with recs from Simon Tam who I think is in Hong Kong. Great! I open the PDF and what greets me is a collage of MY PHOTOS from this post on Chinese hot pot. The fuck?! What is it with folks who ignore the copyright notice, don’t have the decency to ask permission (I usually say yes if you ask first), and then post my photos without giving credit? Jerkwad fuckheads. *Edit: Turns out it was Macau Closer – a glossy magazine – who stole my photos and not Simon (Simon is a nice fellow – he emailed me). That’s great – magazines stealing from bloggers. You assholes.*

2) In my about section, I have a few guidelines about interaction on this blog. The fifth one down states, don’t be rude or nasty. My litmus test is: if your comment was said to my face in my house and my reaction was to 1) haul off and punch you 2) give you the verbal smackdown or 3) kick you out of my house, then you probably violated the fifth guideline. You wanna be an asswipe? Get your own blog and be an asswipe there. That’s what I did.

Yesterday was a squirrel day. I covered a lot of ground in search of ingredients for our Chinese New Year’s celebration. It was a tad frantic at the H Mart in Denver because we were on time constraints and it’s a Korean market, so when I asked where x, y, and z might be, the little Korean employee smiled and then asked me to ask someone else. I say we, not in the sense of the royal we, but as in myself, Manisha, and Kitt. Oh yeah, that same little Korean employee flagged me down and asked me to help another customer… it turned out to be Manisha! Hi-larious. Yeah babe, I know where the dried shrimp are.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate macarons

My overhauled website is up! The gallery is not up. That will probably have to wait until after Chinese New Year because I am a paranoid Good Chinese Daughter. If you happen to find errors or broken links, please let me know via email. I got tired of proof-reading it after several hours. Sometimes I think I should just shut up.

I looked across to the Continental Divide this morning when I let Kaweah out into the yard. Cooler weather is coming back. There is a formidable bank of dark, angry clouds sitting over the mountains, screaming past overhead. The winds are up. They sound and feel violent. I love weather.

Just yesterday I was skiing in a short-sleeve shirt and a thin, hard-shell jacket, gliding down the mountain with my ladies in the sunshine. It was 50°F. Too hot for goggles, I pulled out my sunnies. Felt like spring. But anytime is a good time to offer your friends a box of chocolate macarons. Nothing works up your appetite like a morning of tele, and these betties earned it.

Recipe: chinese stir-fried rice cakes

Congratulations to Jenny Williams! She won the raffle prize I offered for the Menu for Hope fundraiser. Jenny, I’ll be emailing you shortly to find out which photo you’d like. The entire effort raised over $62,000. A big thanks to all who participated.

This week, I baked a birthday cake for someone’s surprise 50th birthday party. The original plan was to bring a bunch of macarons, but the day before the party, I thought I should ask her husband if he had arranged for a cake. I normally wouldn’t volunteer during such a busy time, but I have a soft spot for guys who are so sweet on their partners. He was cooking dinner for 30 people, so I said I could handle the cake. I doubled this chocolate espresso fudge cake with beautiful results. Probably the most nerve-wracking part was driving it down Boulder Canyon, but the structural integrity of this cake is rock solid. Love that Marcel Desaulniers.

**Jump for more butter**