Today is Super Bowl Sunday and one of the traditions is to have chili on Super Bowl Sunday. Because our oldest child is mostly a vegetarian, I decided to make both beef chili and vegetarian chili. The beef chili was a traditional Chili Con Carne. About 24 years ago I won the chili contest at our neighborhood grocery store using the following, and every time I make chili I vary ever so slightly from it. The secret ingredient is definitely the teaspoon of cinnamon:
Chili Con Carne
1 pound lean ground beef
2 15-oz cans red kidney beans
1 medium onion
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 15-oz can tomato sauce
2 teapoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce or cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste (I usually don't need this)
Using a little cooking oil or olive oil, saute ground beef, onion, and garlic until cooked. Add kidney beans and tomato sauce. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Add chili powder, cinnamon, and hot sauce or cayenne pepper. Simmer for another 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Add salt and pepper if needed.
Top with parmesan cheese, shredded cheddar, and/or sour cream if desired.
The vegetarian version substitutes the ground beef with mushrooms, green peppers, and diced tomatoes. This time I used sliced white button mushrooms and canned diced tomatoes.
The other red bean dish I made today was a traditional Cantonese red bean dessert soup. A friend who recently spent several months working in Beijing was over for dinner this past week. He mentioned that every morning, he buys red bean porridge from a street vendor for breakfast. That inspired me to make the red bean dessert soup. I didn't have lotus seeds but had dried orange peel. Here's the recipe. It was an interesting harmony and an interesting contrast to have a Chinese dessert made with small red beans and a Tex-Mex American dessert made with the largest of the red beans on the same day.
Here is the red bean soup recipe:
Red Bean Dessert Soup
1 cup small red beans (Azuki beans), soaked overnight and then drained
1/4 cup lotus seeds (optional)
1 dried orange or tangerine peel (optional)
6 cups water
6 tablespoons brown sugar
Boil the water. Add the red beans, lotus seeds, and orange peel. Bring to a boil again and simmer for 1.5 hours. Add brown sugar (may need more or less brown sugar depending on how much water has boiled off.) The beans should be very tender and the consistency of the soup should be thick.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
VV Birthday Weekend--Dim Sum, Pizza, Cupcakes, Pancakes, and Chinese Bakery
Our third child turned twelve over the past weekend. For this momentous occasion, we had a grand weekend planned. VV's a precocious child who did most of the planning, including deciding on who to invite, choosing which goodie bag items and which pinata to order from Birthday Express, and deciding on a schedule for the sleepover party. I only supplemented with the before-party and after-party entertainment. So here is rundown of how everything went.
Early in January, VV picked out a SpongeBob pinata, a Mario Kart goodie box, and the items to go in the goodie box from the Birthday Express catalog, www.birthdayexpress.com. She also decided on which four girls from her class to invite. That small number means that everyone can stay in her room, or spill over to her younger brother's room (which is connected to hers.) She also decided on the pick up and drop off times (drop off early evening Saturday and pick up before noon Sunday.) I sent out Evites to the moms and also ordered the Birthday Express items.
On Friday, the day before the party, VV emailed me her proposed detail schedule for the party and also a list of additional supplies for the cupcake decoration. Here's the schedule:
5 pm Drop off
5-6 pm Rock band game
6 pm Ice-skating (there's a rink nearby with $6 skate rentals)
7 pm Pizza and cupcake decorations
Sunday morning
8 am Pinata
9 am Breakfast at a local pancake house
10 am Birthday cake (from a Chinatown bakery)
11 am Pick up
We stuck pretty close to this ambitious schedule schedule. On Saturday morning I took VV to dim sum in Chinatown and then picked up the cake, which I ordered the day before. Our children like cakes from Chinese bakeries because they use whipped cream rather than icing to frost the cake, use canned or fresh fruit for toppings and fillings, and the cake itself is a lot less sweet than American bakery cakes. After picking up the cake, we went to Target to get the ingredients and supplies for making the cupcakes and decorating them, as well as snacks and drinks for use during the sleepover, and ingredients for making the pizza dinner (Boboli crust, pizza sauce, pepperoni, mozzarella, and pineapple for the exotic taste of our oldest daughter.)
In the afternoon, before the guests arrived, VV and I baked 25 vanilla and 25 chocolate cupcakes. Then everything went according to plan. Guests arrived and played a video game (Rock Band) for a while and then we went ice-skating. Most of the girls were not very experienced with skating but they had fun anyway. There was a little scare with a college student falling on the ice because of a seizure. Fortunately the ambulance came quickly. Hopefully he will recover quickly.
After we came home, we made three pizzas-- two with pepperoni and cheese, and the last one with pineapple tidbits on one half and black olives and mushrooms on the other half for the few non-pepperoni eaters. Then after pizza, we decorated cupcakes according to instructions on Pup Cakes from Hello, Cupcake (http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Cupcake-Irresistibly-Playful-Creations/dp/0618829253).
Of course even though the official bedtime was announced at around 9:30 pm, the girls stayed up giggling and talking in their rooms for hours. At 8:00 am, I carefully duck-taped the SpongBob pinata to the side of the stairs with the help of our youngest child. Then the girls had fun tugging at the pinata strings (it's a pull string pinata), and even more fun gathering the candy that came pouring down.
The pancake restaurant close to our house is popular on the weekends, and we were lucky to have gotten there right around 9 am. Shortly after our party of 8 were seated, the line begins to form. We enjoyed our breakfasts and were reasonably stuffed when we got home. So imagine my surprise that after about an hour of playing on the Kinnect, the girls were ready for the birthday cake! I guess it's great when you have the metabolism of a preteen instead of the metabolism of a 40-something.
So we did it! Everything on VV's proposed schedule were accomplished by the time the parents came to pick the girls up between 11 and 11:30 am. Then we had our own after-party, just the four children and me, at the local bowling place. There is a Cantonese saying my dad is fond of, which translates into "even using up all the sauce on the rice", or roughly "down to the last drop". And that seems to sum up the weekend exactly.
Early in January, VV picked out a SpongeBob pinata, a Mario Kart goodie box, and the items to go in the goodie box from the Birthday Express catalog, www.birthdayexpress.com. She also decided on which four girls from her class to invite. That small number means that everyone can stay in her room, or spill over to her younger brother's room (which is connected to hers.) She also decided on the pick up and drop off times (drop off early evening Saturday and pick up before noon Sunday.) I sent out Evites to the moms and also ordered the Birthday Express items.
On Friday, the day before the party, VV emailed me her proposed detail schedule for the party and also a list of additional supplies for the cupcake decoration. Here's the schedule:
5 pm Drop off
5-6 pm Rock band game
6 pm Ice-skating (there's a rink nearby with $6 skate rentals)
7 pm Pizza and cupcake decorations
Sunday morning
8 am Pinata
9 am Breakfast at a local pancake house
10 am Birthday cake (from a Chinatown bakery)
11 am Pick up
We stuck pretty close to this ambitious schedule schedule. On Saturday morning I took VV to dim sum in Chinatown and then picked up the cake, which I ordered the day before. Our children like cakes from Chinese bakeries because they use whipped cream rather than icing to frost the cake, use canned or fresh fruit for toppings and fillings, and the cake itself is a lot less sweet than American bakery cakes. After picking up the cake, we went to Target to get the ingredients and supplies for making the cupcakes and decorating them, as well as snacks and drinks for use during the sleepover, and ingredients for making the pizza dinner (Boboli crust, pizza sauce, pepperoni, mozzarella, and pineapple for the exotic taste of our oldest daughter.)
In the afternoon, before the guests arrived, VV and I baked 25 vanilla and 25 chocolate cupcakes. Then everything went according to plan. Guests arrived and played a video game (Rock Band) for a while and then we went ice-skating. Most of the girls were not very experienced with skating but they had fun anyway. There was a little scare with a college student falling on the ice because of a seizure. Fortunately the ambulance came quickly. Hopefully he will recover quickly.
After we came home, we made three pizzas-- two with pepperoni and cheese, and the last one with pineapple tidbits on one half and black olives and mushrooms on the other half for the few non-pepperoni eaters. Then after pizza, we decorated cupcakes according to instructions on Pup Cakes from Hello, Cupcake (http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Cupcake-Irresistibly-Playful-Creations/dp/0618829253).
Of course even though the official bedtime was announced at around 9:30 pm, the girls stayed up giggling and talking in their rooms for hours. At 8:00 am, I carefully duck-taped the SpongBob pinata to the side of the stairs with the help of our youngest child. Then the girls had fun tugging at the pinata strings (it's a pull string pinata), and even more fun gathering the candy that came pouring down.
The pancake restaurant close to our house is popular on the weekends, and we were lucky to have gotten there right around 9 am. Shortly after our party of 8 were seated, the line begins to form. We enjoyed our breakfasts and were reasonably stuffed when we got home. So imagine my surprise that after about an hour of playing on the Kinnect, the girls were ready for the birthday cake! I guess it's great when you have the metabolism of a preteen instead of the metabolism of a 40-something.
So we did it! Everything on VV's proposed schedule were accomplished by the time the parents came to pick the girls up between 11 and 11:30 am. Then we had our own after-party, just the four children and me, at the local bowling place. There is a Cantonese saying my dad is fond of, which translates into "even using up all the sauce on the rice", or roughly "down to the last drop". And that seems to sum up the weekend exactly.
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