On this rainy day in SF, I met up with LT for dinner at Hukilau. I ordered from their loco moco specials, apparently the dish has been around 60 years! I ordered the mini moco since the regular size has way too much rice (3 scoops) and the mini only has 1 scoop.
I still only ate a bit of the rice but enjoyed the meat pattie, onions, sauce, and fried egg. It was served with a side of macaroni salad. Only $6!
I am looking forward to going back after baby is born so that I can try their saimin…
Just a few more weeks until we’ll see Baby Boy Chung in person and no, we still haven’t settled on a name. I guess I haven’t really been updating on how the pregnancy is going so I thought I’d make a brief post.
So far I’ve gained about 25 lbs, less than 2 lbs since I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I worried a bit about that but my provider says that the baby is still a good size and growing. I was doing really good with the diet for controlling my post-meal glucose levels but no matter what I did, my fasting blood glucose in the morning just wouldn’t stay under 95. So a few weeks ago I started on a small 1.25mg dose of glyburide every night before bedtime. So far, so good. The good thing about starting medication is that I get to see our baby twice a week. I have to go to have “non stress tests” twice a week which involves a sonogram to check amniotic fluid levels and then have a separate monitoring session to check the baby’s movement and if I’m having contractions. So I had the opportunity to see him again last week and will see him twice a week until he’s really to come out.
Ron and I went to an all day childbirth preparation class which was very informative and made us a bit more comfortable. I’m sure the actual day will still be very intense but at least we have more of an idea of what to expect.
Our lovely friends planned a surprise baby shower for us a few weeks ago where a great time was had by all and we received some lovely gifts. I’ll have to post some pictures soon. Thank you to our friends who planned the party and those who attended.
Now just to share a picture that was taken last week while I was at work, my co-workers really liked my top (and so do I!) which I bought at H&M (and it is NOT maternity wear so I can wear it afterwards too!). I know he’s a boy but I still like Hello Kitty!
Oh, and a great book I finished reading this week: Baby Owner’s Manual, which we got as a baby shower gift. It’s an easy read and fun plus actually is full of good information. Ron read it first and he really enjoyed it as it really did read like an instruction manual.
Well, that’s all folks (for now)…
http://www.yelp.com/biz/china-bee-san-mateo
Before taking Ron to the airport, we went for brunch at China Bee in San Mateo. We’ve heard from friends that they have yummy Taiwanese breakfast so thought we’d finally try it out. We ordered quite a bit to sample our favorite dishes.
Sweet soy milk, rice roll, pickled spicy cucumbers, and salty soy milk. The salty soy milk was properly made (according to Ron) where the milk is curdled and filled with crunchy fried dough and green onion and preserved vegetables. The rice roll didn’t have enough meat for Ron and I thought the pickled cucumbers were a bit over-pickled.
The fried stinky tofu. The sauce and vegetables were good, tofu nicely fried, but not all that stinky. Overall still good though as I liked the crunch it had.
Egg crepe. Ron thought the wrapper was machine made so not that good and there wasn’t any sauce so it was a bit dry.
Oyster pancake, I thought was yummy. Ron found it too fishy flavored. I liked whatever the red sauce was on top.
Last but not least, xiao long bao. They were really good when hot but not so tasty as it started to cool down. The wrapper was a bit thick but the juice with the meat inside was pretty good.
We’re not sure if we’d drive all the way to San Mateo again for breakfast since you can get similar quality at Taiwan Restaurant in SF.
China Bee Restaurant
31 South B Street
San Mateo, CA
I’m lucky to have a friend who likes to share sweet finds like Cupkates cupcakes. Apparently the owner created a new flavor: salted caramel, a chocolate cake with caramel buttercream and flaked sea salt (the cupcake on the left). The other cupcake is a lemon raspberry cupcake.
So far, I’ve tried half of the salted caramel and the chocolate cake is really moist and yummy. Although I think the chocolate may have overpowered the delicate caramel flavor of the buttercream but the salt was a nice touch.
I’m looking forward to trying the lemon raspberry cupcake: lemon cake with Meyer marmalade topped with raspberry buttercream.
I’ve also tried her vanilla cupcake and a peppermint chocolate cupcake.
I felt in the baking mood again and thought I’d try something different. I follow a few food blogs and had bookmarked this posting for Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting. They sounded delicious so I thought I’d try to make my own but would skip the frosting (have to watch that blood sugar you know). The recipe was only for 12 cupcakes so I decided to double it and did a bit of tweaking to the recipe.
Here are the mini cupcakes:
Here’s the recipe I ended up using:
Ingredients:
4 large eggs, at room temp
1 cup sour cream, at room temp
16 oz Guinness stout beer, at room temp
4 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2 cup sugar
2-1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
12 tbsp butter, melted
1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Line 2-12 cup cupcakes pans AND 2-12 cup mini cupcake pans with paper liners. Spray the whole thing, cupcake papers and all with nonstick spray (I used Pam nonstick spray with flour) and set aside. (I highly recommend this step as I did not do it for one set of pans and the cupcake ended up sticking to the papers.)
3. Melt butter in microwave then set aside.
4. In stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix eggs and sour cream. Add beer and vanilla and mix until well combined.
5. In a separate bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together (cocoa powder, sugar, flour, baking soda, cinnamon).
6. Add about 1/3 of flour mixture into wet ingredients and blend well. Add the rest of the flour mixture, 1/3 at a time, mixing well after each addition. When all ingredients are blended, add the melted butter then continue mixing until very well combined.
7. I transferred the batter into a measuring cup with a pouring spout so it’d be easier to fill the cupcake cups. Fill each about 3/4 full.
8. Bake at 350 F for approximately 25 minutes for the regular cupcakes and 15 minutes for the mini cupcakes.
9. Cupcakes will be done when a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Remove pan and place on a wire rack. Let cool for about 10 minutes then remove cupcakes from the pan and let them cool completely on the wire rack.
I think the original recipe was deceiving in being only for 12 cupcakes since it seemed like with doubling the recipe, it made plenty more: 24 regular cupcakes, 24 mini cupcakes (plus a bit of leftover so I used part of a madeleines pan to make 8 cookies).
Since I reduced the sugar and increased the beer, the cupcake was probably too bitter for some people’s taste buds but overall the cake was moist and you could taste the flavor of the Guinness. Next time I’ll try it with the frosting, it’ll probably give it that extra sweetness it needs.