Please PLEASE check our new site at joshandchana.com and let me know what you think. I’m in the baby stages of figuring it out and it’s actually blocked here in China so I’m not getting a good feel for how it really looks. On the welcome page, can you see the photo galleries? what about the google map? Can you read and subscribe to our blog? Leave comments? Do you like it? what about the photo albums?
It’s a work in process so let us know!
I’ve finally got a goal for the summer! I know, we’re halfway finished with the summer already! Oh well, better late than never!
I want to become a full fledged foodie. I think I sorta kinda already am…. at least according to this definition taken from slashfood.com:
The dictionary defines a foodie as “someone who has an ardent or refined interest in food.” Anyone can be a foodie. To be a foodie is not only to like food, but to be interested in it. Just as a good student will have a thirst for knowledge, a foodie wants to learn about food. A foodie will never answer the question “What are you eating” with “I don’t know.”
I’m not sure my interest in food is all that refined, but I definitely have an interest in it. I subscribe to 10 food related blogs. I am always obtaining, filing, trying and culling new recipes. I get so happy when we have a guest over to eat so that I have a reason to try a new recipe. It’s been tough adjusting first to a Turkish kitchen then to a Chinese kitchen…. but I’ve learned lots of new things along the way.
This summer, however, I am in a dream house for a month (housesitting) with a dream kitchen - with all the appliances (bread machine, ice cream maker, full sized oven, etc etc), double sink, raised countertops… and BEST of all….. the house owners are foodies and so I find myself surrounded with cookbooks and Bon Appetite magazines! It’s awesome. They have also lived in France, Japan and Belgium so there is quite a diverse selection of cookbooks to choose from - as well as an entire Williams-Sonoma collection! Whoo-hoo! I am in foodie heaven!
So pass the port and dark chocolate and leave me to my reading!
(by the way, so far we’ve tried and loved the following recipes:
Chicken Saute Provencal
Caramel Bananas
Balsamic Chicken with Prosciutto
Oven Roasted Garlic Broccoli and Cauliflower
Zucchini Fritata
Hashbrowns
and it’s only been 3 days… I have a whole slew of new recipes I want to try including several sent to me from some of my best friends! Yea for big kitchens and friends!)
I learned today that you have to parboil potatoes BEFORE shredding them when you make hashbrowns. Huh. Now I understand why my hashbrowns were always grey and never tasted good (and why I gave up trying to make them several years ago). I actually made my first ever from scratch perfect batch of hashbrowns tonight.
I’ve decided I need to make an effort to learn something new everyday. I actually have several categories of things I want to learn about and hope to get a schedule going in the future. For now I will just share a couple of other things I learned today:
To remove crayon marks from hard surfaces us WD 40 (from howtocleaneverything.com)
In the Eastern Church, the wide circulation of the Acts of Paul and Thecla is evidence of her (St. Thecla’s) veneration. She was called “Apostle and protomartyr among women” and even “equal to the apostles”. She was widely cited as an ascetic role model for women. (cut and pasted from Wikipedia)
In honor of the 4th of July I thought I’d write a post about all the things I miss in America (freedom, garage sales, my family….) but then I realized that the list would be too long and would put me in a rather unhappy place…. so let’s stay upbeat today!
My dad asked me if we saw any fireworks here… uh, well…. the Chinese aren’t really into celebrating America’s Independence Day so…. no. Go figure. 
Before Annabelle was born I saw in a magazine a lady who had taken a picture of her daughter every year on her birthday in the same swimsuit. It was awesome to see how much difference one year makes…. so I decided to do this same thing for my kids.
Here’s the first and second installment of the “Swimsuit Project”
