An edible wreath…

This year my sisters didn’t want me to cook up a storm like I did in the past. Instead, we just ordered the food. It was hard to find places that are open on Christmas day (the day we always celebrate with my side of the family), let alone to find a cuisine we all like. Fortunately, we found one (Perilla on Irving St) and they even deliver! Originally I wanted to cook, but later acknowledged it was a good thing I stuck with my sisters’ plan. I was so busy leading up to this day my energy was pretty drained. Anyhow, I still managed to make a couple of appetizers just to be festive. Merry Christmas everyone!

A cookie galore…

Right before December, I’m grateful Mr. Piggy found a way to fix our oven. I took a week off from work in hopes to bake cookies (and sell them). Unfortunately, I had other agendas which didn’t give me enough time to market and sell these cookies. I ended up sharing them with our families. According to the poll, the chocolate chips and the butter cookies are a huge hit. Decorated sugar cookies take the most time, but always fun to play with. Hope to get these out next year.

A Christmas roll…

My sister ordered these coffee rolls for her son’s teachers as Christmas twist. Since it’s for Christmas gift, I thought it’d be fun to make them with a Christmas twist. I’m happy how these turned out!

A moment…

A weekly ritual.

A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember – {this moment}

A batch of gingerbread cookies…

My first batch of cookies came out and they turned out pretty good, don’t you think? I make these once a year, so I get rusty. Different type of pans yield different results? Who knew?! Decorating these guys and gals are always fun!

A merry meal…

Because of pandemic, this year our families weren’t able to get together for Christmas! Instead of cooking for 30 people, it’s only the 4 of us enjoying the meal at home. Prime rib was on sale at Smart and Final ($5/lb) last week and Mr. Piggy took 6 hours to sous vide it and roast it for 15 minutes. It was delicious! I was responsible for all the sides.

Wishing everyone a warm and safe holiday!

A quiet Christmas eve…

Normally today would have been hanging out with Mr. Piggy’s family, cooking, eating and chatting away. This year, like everyone, is a bit different. None of that is happening. With Dai Bee working on college applications, we haven’t gone out much lately. Today we all took a break from crafting, from video games, from college and took off to my SIL’s place. We took our in-laws along the ride. We’ve all been cooped up for too long. Though the visit was short, but it was a good change of scenery. The boys got to hang out with their lil’ cousin and took home a big surprise!

A new batch…

Here are more cookies for the donation this week: chocolate butter cookies (ginger bread man), sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies (from my sister), butter cookies, peanut butter blossoms and chocolate pistacchio biscuits.

My sister, nephew and nieces made these beautiful cards to go along with the boxes of cookies.

This week I managed to box up 13 boxes of cookies. On top of the 7 from last week, I got 20 boxes for 20 different families. Yay!

A sweet donation…

I spent the bulk of the weeknights in the kitchen baking cookies in our semi-working oven. Our oven is hanging on the thread these days (with temperature not going any higher than 300 degrees). Every night I’d baked a small batch and keep adding to the pile. Today I’m excited to box these up because I’m donating these to front line healthcare workers in our neighborhood! My sister shared her tray of Mexican wedding cookies (snow balls).

Once I posted this on FB page, these were claimed within minutes! I got 7 boxes total and with the high demand for them, looks like I will be baking more next week.

A Christmassy clay pot rice…

Since this is season for clay pot rice, why not make it a little more festive?

Just love everything about this…