Hello hello since New Year’s! I hope you are all having a wonderful 2013 so far! I’ve been busy trying to get all my resolutions and things in order. You’ll be happy to know I’m right on track for all of them. Though the cooking show is being edited concurrently with this blog post, so it was supposed to be posted on Sunday but there’s a lot more stuff involved with this first episode than I first anticipated, but more on that later!

Since my last post it’s been an exciting week! I went to lunch with the Chang clan as well as Katrina’s family. Unfortunately my parents fell ill, and so I was the representative of the Wang household there. We ended up going to Golden Harvest and had an amazing dim sum! Definitely one of the better Chinese restaurants in the area that a lot of Asian families go to.

On Wednesday the 2nd, Paul and his new wife Jamie came over to hang out. Originally he had suggested we all go to dinner or lunch, but I instead invited them over and made beef bourguignon for them and showed them the video that I made for their wedding. We had a lot of fun playing Sports Champions, Rock Band, and Just Dance while waiting for the beef to stew. It ended up turning out delicious, and we had a lot of fun. Those two are super fun to hang out with. Paul commented on how I was “an adult now” and said some pretty touching complements. I guess moving out and living on my own has definitely helped mature me. In his words, “we’ve both come a long way.”

Then on Thursday the 3rd, Nikki came over to hang out! Dante eventually joined us, and we made a spicy simmered egg and kale dish. It was pretty spur of the moment, and Nikki taped us as a “trial” for the cooking show. It was pretty horrendous so Dante and I had some prep to do for the actual taping on Saturday. The dish turned out delicious and it was pretty simple to make. Just a little bit of prep-time involved. Not something I’d serve on it’s own, but it’s a nice light dish to accompany another main course.

Friday the 4th was Paul and Jamie’s Michigan reception. We went to another fabulous Asian restaurant called Hong Hua. It’s probably the premiere Chinese restaurant that all the Asian family friends go to when there’s some kind of big event/celebration. My grad party was there. There was a lot of old family friends there, and it was good to see them again! I was tasked with taking more pictures and I also took a video of Paul’s speech as well as his Dad’s. I should convert that and get that sent to him. The food was great, I took pictures of all of it but I wasn’t sure how to display that here effectively since I don’t know all the dish names. Instead I just posted the Peking Duck related dishes cause it is my favorite food of all time! It was great to sit next to Vicki and Steve and hang out with them again! I thoroughly enjoy every encounter I’ve ever had with them.

Saturday I went to look at a house again to see the shape it was in. It was not bad. I need to make a decision quickly though on if I want it. I’m afraid people will think I’m rushing into this, but I’ve been looking at houses for like 3-4 months now and none of them have been move-in ready at the same price point that this house is at. And I expect to work at my current job for at least 5 more years, so I think this is a good investment. It has a lot of potential, even my boss agreed it’s the best of the bunch I’ve been showing her.

Also on Saturday Dante and I filmed our first cooking show! I’m currently editing it, we made a few mistakes in terms of the filming and what we had to do. But it still is our first episode so I think they will only improve from here, and editing will only get faster. The plan is to film Saturdays, and then edit that night/Sunday and have it posted on Sundays. This one will probably not get posted until Tuesday or Wednesday. But we have a few dishes in mind for the next shows. The premise is to show new cooks that it’s not that hard, and our show can be a stepping stone for people to get into cooking their own dishes or trying more complicated recipes. Cooking isn’t that hard, and it can even be fun as well as delicious!

Sunday was spent picking up my cousins from the airport and watching the entire series of Future Diary with them. It was a crazy show with twists galore, but I thoroughly enjoyed. Just wish it ended more like the Manga. Anime cut the ending short by like 10 min. It’s a little science fiction-y, but if you like action packed anime, I would recommend this show.

Thanks for tuning in! Wow a lot happened last week. This week will hopefully calm down a little!

-Evilmanta