Daring Kitchen - Cha Sui Bao

Blog-checking lines: Our Daring Cooks’ December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui, and filling from scratch – delicious

When I first read this challenge, I had no idea that it was for one of my favorite Dim Sum buns.  This month's host is from Australia, and they refer to Dim Sum as Yum Cha.  After a few minutes with Google, I had an AHA! moment when I finally figured out what the challenge was for.  BBQ'd pork buns!  

This challenge called for a trip to our local Asian grocery store, where I got the necessary ingredients and set to work.

The dough is a simple flour, yeast and water mixture, with no egg.  There was different recipe, with eggs, that you could use if you wanted to bake your buns, but I much prefer mine steamed.

While the dough was rising, I cooked the pork tenderloin that had been marinating in the Cha Sui sauce.  I would have been quite happy to just stop there and eat the meat as is, but I kept going.

The pork is then finally diced, mixed with onion and another sauce that is thickened.

A tablespoon of meat mixture is rolled inside the dough, and formed into nice little buns.

The buns are then steamed, giving them an unusual but light, bread texture.  I was pleased to note that you could steam them ahead of time and then re-heat them in the toaster oven for lunch the next day.  They weren't as pretty (the deflate a bit), but they were just as tasty.

Be sure to check out the full Daring Kitchen Cha Sui Bao recipe.

Happy Birthday Heather!

My friend Heather knows how to celebrate her birthday in style.  She's changed it from a single day event to a full week extravaganza, making sure she can get as much cake as possible. This year she is doing something different:

Here's what I'm hoping we can do for my birthday: I want to have a worldwide celebration of helping others. Paying it forward. Doing good deeds. If  can get 40 people to do 1 Good Thing between now and my actual 40th birthday, that would be just about the best present ever. (Or 20 people to do 2 Good Things. Or 10 to do 4. I'm not  picky.)

She issued this request on September 30th, giving people 2 and half months to do some good deeding.  I love me a good challenge, so here are the good deeds that I have done while thinking of Heather's birthday wish.

1. Paid for a man's Thanksgiving dinner.  No one should have to eat dinner alone at a restaurant on Thanksgiving, so I hope I made his day a wee bit brighter.
2. Helped tourists by offering to take group pictures.  There is nothing worse than always being short one person in the picture because they had to be the one to take the picture.
3. Arranged a play date for a boy from school who doesn't have very many friends. 
4. Turned the lights off on someone's truck in the parking lot so that they could get home after work without having to find jumper cables to get their truck started.
5. Filled a box of needed items for a 10 year old boy staying at a shelter for abused women and children over the holidays. 
6. Gave a man money for breakfast on a cold Sunday morning.

I had really hoped that I could get much closer to 40 good deeds, but I'm still pretty happy with my list.

HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY HEATHER!

The Nutcracker

Liam loves the Nutcracker.  He collects them; he listens to the music; he twirls about while humming it.  And so we've started the tradition of seeing the Symphony Nova Scotia version each year before Christmas.

But my favorite version will always be this one:

Liam Performs the Nutcracker at age 7.

Be sure to watch (or fast foward) to the very end.   The best part happens in the last 3 seconds.

"18"

Today Hilary and I celebrate 18 years of being together! 

Happy Anniversary My Love.

Three and Three Quarters

3 and 3/4 pounds  or 1.7 Kilograms, as the Dr. announced (and I was glad to see that she had to use the calculator to figure it out too).

That is how much weight Liam has G.A.I.N.E.D. since our last paediatrician visit in September.  More then 1 pound a month!  This might not seem like a lot for an active, growing boy, but considering that he had LOST weight on every previous visit (albeit very small amounts, but losses still), this is great news!

We still have food issues - the number of things that he will eat can be counted on both hands, but slowly his appetite has been increasing.  He now eats 2 Mama Burgers from A&W and not just one.  Even one was way up from the days when he would only eat the bun from a Baby Burger.

We are going to try some new medication for the ADHD - something that is NOT in the stimulant category so that his appetite will hopefully continue to grow and that he can start having better, longer sleep.  It's not unusual for me to go to bed close to 11:00 and find him still awake when I go to turn his light off and then have him up when my alarm goes off at 6:30.

Hopefully the transition to new meds will not be too bumpy.  He only has a few days of school left before the winter break, so any rough patches will likely occur at home.  Oh joy!  But if it helps in the long run, I'm sure we can make it through.

I want to parent like this

I can only hope that I can parent Liam half as well as this man's parents raised him. What an amazing speaker.

Happy Unbirthday

Have you ever had one of those weeks when everyone is grumpy and nothing seems to be working?  We've been having some of that around here.  So I decided we need to have a little fun!!! So I threw us an "Unbirthday Party"

There are decorations.

There are presents.

There are loot bags.

There's even a cake!

I think everyone should celebrate an Unbirthday!!