Superbowl Pork Buns

For Superbowl Sunday this year, I decided to try my hand at making Nikuman (Chinese style pork buns) after seeing so many delicious pictures of these pork buns on B's facebook.  The recipe comes from a Japanese cooking show called "Cooking With Dog" which is hosted by a cute little Japanese lady, dubbed over in English by an awkward sounding man, and features a real live poodle named Francis that just sits to the side and oddly enough, never once lurches toward all the food in front of her face.  Note, Asian people should never, ever title anything "cooking with dog" for the obvious double entendre associated with such a phrase!  Never...not even when the dog is helping to cook rather than being cooked (gruesome, yes)...sigh! 

The pork buns were not difficult to make, per se, they were just really, really time consuming for the amount of grubbing you actually got to do afterwards.  I started right after kickoff and I think we had but a mere 8 buns at the 4th quarter.  I am so ghetto that I used a butter knife with a round handle to roll out the dough because I do not own a rolling pin.  Oh well.  They were still quite tasty!

Above: uncooked pork buns ready to go in the steamer!

Below: four steamed buns - moist and flavorful on the inside with doughy goodness on the outside!

Older male attorneys - boo on you!

Why oh why does this opposing counsel (an older male attorney) think it is in any way appropriate to refer to his client as a "young lady" in discovery responses?  She's over 50 years old!  So annoying!

Baby Booties

K's high school friend A and his wife S are having twins!  We went to their baby shower last month (btw, easily the biggest baby shower I have ever been to with probably close to 150 guests...) so I knitted these baby booties out of 100% organic cotton.  My lil sis A sent me the pattern for "one hour baby bootles" from her Stitch n' Bitch Nation book.  I followed the pattern exactly except I did not put buttons on the sides to decorate the booties because I thought that might be a choking hazard; instead, I did one pair with single straps and the other pair with double crisscrossed straps.

I love how easy they are to make and the fact that each pair really only took an hour...and the fact that anything that mini just looks so adorable!

Pair #1 - single strap

Pair #2 - double strap

Both pairs next to my cell phone for size-reference.

Finished!

I completed my second 1/2 marathon (Carlsbad) and I am officially retiring from running for at least a year.  This race was really tough on my shins but I'm just glad I finished!  The course was super gorgeous...right along the Pacific Ocean.  Even better was the mounds of all-u-can-eat Korean BBQ we all went out for afterwards :)

WOW MOM

The wind & rain storm blew a big branch right off the tree across the street from my building!  It's hard to tell by the picture, but the branch is definitely bigger than a SmartCar.

Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen...

Bear Down Scarves

I knit these two red & blue striped scarves for the Holiday Bowl last week because none of my UA gear is cold-weather friendly.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to knit stripes using two colors! D'oh I should have tried it much sooner! I used this youtube tutorial on knitting stripes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyE4zBSyGng

The scarves are 2x2 ribbing and were fairly quick to make because I used oversized (in relation to the yarn) size 10.5 needles.  For stiff, 100% acrylic yarn, the scarves actually turned out very comfortable against the skin.[1]

Here we are, bundled up with our new scarves!  Even though our seats were high up, we were right on the 50-year line which was pretty cool.  Not-so-cool though was UA's terrible performance in the Holiday Bowl.  We got totally shut out and there were way too many Huskers fans sitting on the Arizona side, boo!  I was all ready to sing "Bear Down, Arizona" but the opportunity only arose after the marching band played it once in between quarters due to the aforementioned shut-out.  Even though UA was not that great at football when I was there as a student, the games were always still a ton of fun ...probably because of the rowdyness of being in the student section.  Alas, I suppose the grass was greener then :)

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[1] I would have liked to use nicer yarn but it was the only type that came in both red and blue at Michaels and there are not many other places to get yarn here in SD...the knitting stores I do know of are only open until maybe 5 or 5:30 pm.  ***Note to SD knitting store peeps -- people with full time 9-to-5 jobs knit, too!***

Weeks 8 & 9

So I've totally fallen off the training wagon after dealing with a month-long cold and the return of my shin splints. K and I did work out 5 out of 7 days we were on vacation (with K actually running 10 miles on a treadmill...that might have more to do with our boredom with all-inclusive, but I'll save that for another post.) The last couple of weeks I did 8 miles at MSP and then 10 miles this weekend at DAC. Twenty more days until the Carlsbad 1/2! I'm thinking I'll do 12 miles this weekend, then a nice easy 8.5 mile taper down the week before the race.