Nha means House

Starting this Thursday, November 12 through 14 show hours from 10:00 – 5:00, at the Puyallup Fairgrounds in the Pavilion Building/Gold gate, they are holding the Quilt, Craft & Sewing Festival.

Visit their website at www.quiltcraftsew.com for more information and a $1.00 off coupon or even better visit any Pacific Fabrics or Hancock Fabrics Stores and get a 50% coupon.  Tickets are good for all three days!

Reason why you should go, well if you love to sew, quilt, knit, beading, paper craft, well just do all sort of crafts you should go and check out the latest fabrics, designs and notions. Plus there will be free workshops and seminars to check out too.

• Here is the locations and vendors (and booth locations) that will be there! 
• Hope to see you at the show!
• Puyallup Fairgrounds/Western Washington Fairgrounds
• 110 – 9th Ave SW
• Puyallup, WA  98371

Thanksgiving is in 17 more days and Christmas is next month. 

For the life of me, why did I think that I was going to hand-make all my presents for my family this year?  So far I have not finished any of them but definitely working on all of them at the same time.  I also have a large family too! We have my parents, three siblings, husband, three brother-in-laws, one sister-in-law, and six nieces and nephews! Just thinking about it makes me nervous about not finishing all my projects. Eck!

But onward to Thanksgiving, definitely one of the best eating holidays, and I can go all out and no one blinks an eye but just eat and eat.  I loving meeting people who love to eat.  All my close friends are good eaters and I just love that! <Big Smile>

This Thanksgiving my friends,Yuna and her husband, Jonathan, are going to co-host the dinner with us.  We have so many great ideas bouncing around for this delicious meal and I can’t wait to start cooking and baking!

Here’s what we have so far:

1. turkey
2. potato dish – I will be doing two types, a garlic sour cream mash and rosemary-garlic pan fried
3. cranberry, cherry, orange relish
4. cornbread stuffing
5. yam dish
6. roast delicatta squash salad
7. sweet potato chips with lime salt
8. pumpkin, feta and spinach tartlet

and we are still adding more and tossing ideas around, plus I started to plan my Christmas baking like mini yule logs with those great meringue mushrooms, different flavored chocolate sandwich cookies, like caramel bourbon vanilla, pumpkin cream, salted caramel chocolate and passion fruit & coconut, plus more.

Just a recap of what I did last week.  Last Monday, I went to Foodportunity at Tom Douglass’s Kitchen Palace downtown.  What a great event for networking.  There were over 300 participates to this event and I met a lot of interesting people, including Tom Douglas and Robin Leventhal  from Top Chef.  I won’t go over all the details here but you can read it here.

Also last Saturday we had the Chili Cook-off at our house and it was so much fun! Four chilies were submitted: a chicken white bean chili with verde chilies and cheddar, a chorizo black bean chili, turkey butternut squash chili, and a jalapeno beef chili.  They were all delicious and so different from each other.  It was really hard to choose a winner, but the chicken chili won.  It was so good, especially with Frito chips!!!  Everyone there would say don’t eat your chili without your Frito chips next time.  It just add a great crunch and texture to the chili.  Delicious.

I do and I’m very excited about it.  Thanks for the Seattlest for letting me know if you bring in a cork to any of Ethan Stowell’s restaurant you can get up to $25 off your bill, and it’s all for a good cause.  How exciting is that? For every cork you bring, you can get one dollar off, up to 25, off your check. Read more about it here. 

This deal is good from November 1 to December 31 at Tavolata (Belltown), Union (Downtown), How to Cook a Wolf (Upper Queen Anne) and Anchovies & Olives (Capitol Hill).  I have been to all of them and they are all delicious (Ethan Stowell knows his food), and if you go to Tavolata, make sure to leave room for some dessert and order the fresh doughnut with the chocolate sauce. Yum yum! 

Another great food deal this month is the Dine around Seattle for $30!

My goal this month is to visit as many of these establishments as possible and review and post the good and bad here…let me know if you like to join my husband and me this month!

• All Things Pass
• by Lao Tze
• All things pass
• A sunrise does not last all morning
• A cloudburst does not last all day
• All things pass
• Nor a sunset all night
• What always changes?
• Earth…sky…thunder…mountain…wind…fire…lake…
• These change
• And if these do not last
• Do man’s visions last?
• Do man’s illusions?
• Take things as they come
• All things pass

His son, Robert, spoke these words at his father’s memorial on Saturday, October 31, 2009. It was a very moving service filled with many wonderful, funny and heartfelt stories about Chao Yu Wu.  I learn much about my husband’s side of the family, their kindness, humor and love.  I wish they lived closer so we can get to know them better but some of the families live in Germany, Singapore and other faraway places.

While we were at the cemetery, one of the aunties asked us if we knew the difference or why some of the headstones had red or white writing on them, and she told us marriage couples will buy pre-lots together and if one of the partners passed away, they will put both of their names on the headstone.  The deceased’s name and information is painted in white and the person still alive will be shown in red, but once that person passed away then they will switch to white.

At the end of day we went to a really good Shanghai restaurant in Richmond, called Shanghai River Restaurant.  We had about 22 people in our party and ordered way too much food but it was all delicious and I definitely recommend this place.

Our first course was the cold dish appetizer, starting on the bottom left, consisting of all jelly fish, braised fried tofu with peanuts and black fungus mushrooms, tofu skin rolls filled with spinach, julienned celery and scallion salad with tofu stripes and in the center rice wine poached chicken.  It was all very tasty.

Second course was one of the better shrimp dishes I had from a Chinese restaurant. 

Next came, the wonton soup with tender chunks of pork and baby bok choy which were very simple but satisfying

Our fourth course Xiao Long Bao or soup dumplings.  Shanghai River is known for these delicious dumplings.  These particular variety is small and for me two bite size, husband one bite.  I love how the dumpling skin was just perfect ratio between the meat, soup and skin. Definitely order this when you come. We had the pork, but I heard the crab one is much better.

Here is the team of people making those yummy fresh dumplings all night long.

Next came the traditional fried crabs which were finger licking good for our fifth course

Sixth dish was the Smoked Peking Duck with buns.  The duck was delicious perfectly seasoned, tender and juicy.

A whole braised napa cabbage.  I was really surprised how good this dish.  I was skeptical at first but look at it! It does not look that appetizing, does it? It turned out to be flavorful and tender.  It was a shame by the last course I was completely stuffed but I continue eating because the food was so good.

The next dish was probably the scariest looking dish ever!  Don’t you think?

Here’s a better angle.  My uncle said this is a squirrel fish because of its tail.  I have to admit beside it being scary, the fish was really good.  The fish was fried to perfection.  The fish was not overcooked but tender and flaky and the sweet and sour sauce was like none I have tasted before. It really looked disturbing because it looked like they just open a can of cocktail fruit and added ketchup but surprisedly it was really tasty.

Then came the noodle dish, which after all the good food, was just okay

Just when I thought we were done, they finally brought over the last dish, black sesame paste balls in an egg white drop sweet soup, which were so-so, unfortunately Chinese restaurants are not known for their dessert dishes.

Overall, the food here was very good and the restaurant was continuously packed all night while we were there and we were there for almost four hours that night, just eating. 

So if you are in the Richmond/Vancouver BC area, I definitely recommend this place and don’t forget to order the fresh fried doughnuts!

• Shanghai River Restaurant
• 7831 Westminster Hwy
  Richmond, BC V6X 4J4, Canada
  (604) 233-8885