More fun than a barrel of monkeys

The smile shutter feature on Sony cameras is actually effective. You can even set the sensitivity of it to detect "Low", "Medium" or "High" smiles. I tried to trick the camera by making funny faces that weren't really smiles and it knew!

Road trip!

We're packing up the kids and going to Burlington, VT for Memorial Day weekend in our newly acquired mini-van, the Honda Odyssey. Sometimes I wish we had an RV so I can poop, pee and wash my hands on the road.

What part of the fish do you like?

There's been very little sunshine since we put in the first plantings. Nothing but rain. I feared that some of the miniscule seedlings would get washed away. I'm happy to report that the cilantro is doing awesome. We're going to have a lot of cilantro this summer.

So I need to brainstorm what we can use it for, like guacamole and Thai beef noodle soup.

Interestingly, I think white people only use the top part of the plant or the leaves, discarding the rest, whereas Asians also use the stalk and Thais consider the roots to be the best part of the plant. In conventional supermarkets like A&P, my mom was mystified that they don't even sell the roots, the clueless white people cut off the cilantro roots!!!

This reminds me of a few anecdotes:
1. We once took a co-worker out to Wu Lang Ye, an authentic Szechuan restaurant where you can get a menu in printed only in Chinese. He ordered in Chinese and a variety of interesting-looking food stuffs arrived. He was so excited and relayed to us how special all of this food was and how hard it is to find it in NY. He encouraged all of us to try but no one was brave enough except a white co-worker. As he started chewing on the food, he asked what he was eating. My Chinese co-worker non-chalantly pointed to each of the dishes in front of him and recited, "Tongue", "Pork Stomach", "Intestine". My white co-worker nearly choked and the rest of us were laughing so hard, we were tearing.
2. A Chinese friend of mine from childhood told me a story about a fish that only has one eye. When that fish is served in her family, her parents fight over who gets to eat the eye.
3. My aunts in Thailand only eat the head and the tail of a fish. My mom claims that the best part of a fish is the cheek.
4. Another childhood Chinese friend told me a saying that Chinese people will eat anything with a stomach pointing down. She clarified that it meant Chinese people will eat all animals.
5. I think the best part of a crab are the eggs. When cooked, they look very strange and are bright orange in color. When I order crab in a non-Asian restaurant, I'm always disappointed that they've scraped out the eggs. I can hear my mom thinking suspiciously, they're saving the best parts for themselves, but I'm pretty sure they scrape the eggs out of the crab (consider it innards) and chuck it. Probably the same thing happens with fish. I'm always disappointed when I order whole fried fish and the eggs are not there. I console myself by thinking that I got a male fish. Fried fish eggs are just so heavenly.
6. Another friend interned at Per Se. Part of his job was to do arcane things like remove a tiny little part of a lettuce and discard the rest.

We need some POTTY POWER!

We have been very frustrated that our daughter is not yet potty trained. But maybe she's not really delayed in this competency, based on where we live. Josh ordered the DVD, POTTY POWER and it's apparently super popular around here, as I just got an email from Netflix advising me of a delay due to the title's inavailability from my "local shipping center". My DVD is going to come from "Coppell, TX" where everyone has all the potty power they need.

Menstrual Cups - first of a series

WARNING: Graphic and intended for ladies only!

The day before Mother's day, I got my first period after 3 1/2 years of nothing due to pregnancy and breastfeeding. I was ill-prepared and felt helpless as if it was literally my very first period. I finally found some pads around the house and remembered again how much I hate them and tampons. What to do? Enter menstrual cups! Here's a pic of the varieties available.

I ordered a Diva Cup (model 1) from iherb used the referral code KAS985 and my total came out to $15.49 (including shipping), which is at least 10 dollars cheaper than I can find any where else. I ordered it on Thursday and it arrived on Monday, so I'm a happy customer.

There's a nice community of cup users at Livejournal, menstrualcups.org. I even posted my first entry and received 3 responses from other ladies. It's really very cool.

Hence, I will catalog my personal experience with the Diva cup for my blog readers because this is the type of journalism you can expect from me.

Earthquake in China

My father in law's emailed comments, in praise of NPR's All Things Considered's live earthquake coverage, were read on program on May 15, 2008. Click here to listen to it.

Coincidentally, this morning, I read an especially poignant NYT article, In Rubble, Couple Clung to Each Other, and to Life . It's about the physical and emotional struggles of a Chinese couple trapped in earthquake debris.

Our Anniversary

Birfdays

Mrs. Renfro's salsa

is delicious. I like the Mango Habanero with some roasted salmon.

Diabolical baby eater - me

Can you believe that baby corn is literally a baby corn? I thought maybe they might be a midget or small variety of corn, but in actuality they are regular corn picked at immaturity, before they reach their adult size. I feel a little funny eating a baby corn now. I have the same feeling eating an egg. It's like I'm eating a fetus. I wonder if pro-life supporters eat baby corn or eggs?

BTW, I always thought baby corn from a can tastes really bland and gross. It was not until I went to Thailand that I had fresh baby corn. I was hooked; it's so delicious. If you go to Thailand, make sure you eat some baby corn. You can get it at any restaurant as part of a mixed vegetable stir fry. Factoid: Thailand is one of the world's biggest exporters of baby corn!

Cassandra and the beanstalk

Looking at seed catalogs or web sites is so mouth-watering.
I love their copy writers: delicious and nutrious! touts one. Pretty to look at AND good to eat! entices another.
I'm ready to empty my bank account on seeds.

Garden of Eatin'

Today, we put the tomatoes, jalapenos, basil, cilantro and dill into the ground! I'm especially excited about the tomatoes because I picked out some neat ones (Grape tomatoes, Lemon Boy, Black Prince and a surprise rainbow heirloom tomato -- ooh will it be pink, orange, black, yellow or who knows?!) as well as the regulars (Early Girl, Better Boys and Beef Steak).
We're also going to plant Thai or holy basil, if we can ever locate the plant or seeds.

Whitey white!

Here's Josh's before and after. Didn't work very well but giving him a wife beater cracked me up!

Given the title of this post, I should be running for prez. Eat your heart out, Hil!

Half white

Here's Daisy's Simpson's avatar. My theory seems to be correct so far. Onward to a fully white person!

All look same

I was lamenting to my Asian co-workers/neighbors today how difficult it was to create an Asian avatar. For example, Yahoo avatar only offers one Asian face!
So they created Simpsons avatars of themselves through Simpsonizeme.com and used them as the name plates on their doors. We were all cracking up.
Now that I'm in the comfort of my own home, I decided to load in a picture of myself and create my Simpson avatar. Behold, the before and after pics.
(I chose the skin tone, sex and nerdy style of dress for my avatar.)
As you can see it didn't work very well for me. So I'm going to do Daisy next (half white) and then Josh (fully white) to see how they turn out.

Delay on my monogrammed towels

My towels are back-ordered and not scheduled to arrive until early June. Bummer!!!!

Stuph!!!

We're going to be getting a new camera and computer. Woo hoo!

Happy Birthday Daisy!!!

My little one turned one today!

Today, she took 62 steps before falling! A few days ago, she reached a max of 47 steps and less than a week ago, I counted around 14 steps.

Check this out

The photobook of our Thailand and Hawaii vacations that I've been working on.

Sadie and Dazee

I thought this was a nice picture of the two of them.