Thank You Honey!

Thank you to my lovely honey for coming with me to my photo field trip.

Recipe: Pork Fried Rice

Instructions:

1. Heat vegetable oil at medium-high heat.
2. Scramble eggs soft (still runny).
3. Remove eggs.
4. Add vegetable oil and turn heat to medium.
5. Add cooked rice and stir-fry (consently stir-fry so that the rice won't burn.)
6. Add salt and stir-fry
7. Turn heat to medium-high.
8. Add soy sauce and stir-fry
9. Cook and stir-fry cooked rice for a while.
10. Add more oi from the rim and stir-fry to keep rice moist.
11. Sitr in diced roast pork.
12. When pork is reheated, add vegetables and stir-fry.
13. Stir-fry in green scallions.
14. Stir-fry in eggs.
15. Finished.

Recipe: Ultimate Fun Cee

Preparation:

1. Hydrate dried black mushrooms for 2 hours.
2. Hydrate dried seaweed for 1 hour.
3. Hydrate dried tofu for 1 hour.
4. Hydrate dried dates for 30 minutes.
5. Hydrate dried fun-cee for 30 minutes.
6. Hydrate dried black moss for 30 minutes.
7. Hydrate dried lily flower for 5 minutes.

Instructions:

1. Heat olive oil in wok.
2. Sauté celery, dried black mushroom and dried seaweed.
3. Sauté dried date.
4. Stir-fry
5. Sauté dried tofu and dried lily flower.
6. Stir-fry
7. Turn to medium-low heat.
8. Add fun-cee on top.
9. Turn to medium-high heat.
10. Cover to steam until water is boiling.
11. Add black moss and cut length to 1-inch long.
12. Uncover and stir-fry.
13. Add water if liquid is low.
14. Turn to medium heat and stir-fry.
15. At end, add a tablespoon of soy sauce and teaspoon of sugar.
16. Cover until liquid has evaporated.

Recipe: Steamed Fish

Instructions:

1. On a plate prepare fish with dried tangerine peels, ginger, green scallions and a pinch salt on top.
2. Bring shallow water to boil within a wok.
3. Place fish in, cover and vent on high temperatures.
4. Cook for 15 minutes.
5. In a separate pot, sautee olive oil with a few cloves of garlic.
6. Check fish by making sure chop sticks can hit bone.
7. Place fresh green scallions on top.
8. Pour garlic infused oil on top of green scallions and fish.
9. Place soy sauce on top.

Recipe: Fish Balls

Instructions:

1. Bring water to a boil in a medium pot.
2. Place fishballs into boiling water.
3. Turn temperature to low.
4. Cook for 15 minutes.

Recipes: Retro-Posting

When I was home for the holidays, one of the best part is getting some great home cooking. I'm happy to share some of my favorite dishes from my parent's kitchen.

Happy Valentine's Day

Look at what my wonderful hubby got me for Valentine's.
I love, I love, I love!

Homemade Pizza

My honey and I have been making homemade pizza since Adrian and Jenny, my sister, made them for us during Thanksgiving. So, now we don't eat any other pizza but homemade ones.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 of a pre-made Pizza dough recipe (from Whole Foods' freezer section)
  
• 1 cup Organic Marinara Sauce
  
• 2 cups Organic Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
  
• 2 Organic Italian Sausage links (from Whole Food's meat section)
  
• Optional: Sauteed Sliced Mushrooms

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Have you wonderful hubby roll out the pizza dough into a 1/8 inch pizza crust, which is his favorite part. While husband is working on crust, take casing off the sausage, crumble meat into hot skillet and cook. Place marinara sauce onto the pizza dough. Place 75% of the mozzarella cheese on top. Place Italian sausage on top. Place remaining cheese. Bake for 15 minutes. Don't open oven until 15 minutes have passed for a perfectly baked thin crust pizza.

Chancellor Yung-Ming Ahmad

Chancellor Yung-Ming Ahmad
Date: February 6, 2008 10:05 am (French Time)
Place: Marseille, France
Weight: 3.34 Kilos (7.27 lbs)
Length: 49.5 cm (19.5 inches)

Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley

VC Nation
Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley

By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 8, 2008

Many communities dream of becoming the next Silicon Valley. This one is actually doing it.
Stroll through the hip Fremont District and you will sense the Valley vibe. Google recently opened a research lab here, its second in Microsoft’s backyard. Technology start-ups are sprouting up amid quirky neighborhood landmarks like a bronze statue of Lenin and the Fremont Troll, the giant concrete creature lurking beneath the George Washington Memorial Bridge.
More young companies are moving in downtown, near the art galleries and bookstores around Pioneer Square. Still others are spreading into the surrounding suburbs.
“The Seattle start-up ecosystem is vibrant, and growing rapidly,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Washington and a serial technology entrepreneur.
The University of Washington, in fact, is one of the big draws. It is fostering the entrepreneurial climate here the way Stanford University does in Silicon Valley. Another advantage is the tech-savvy talent at the Seattle-based Amazon and nearby Microsoft.
Microsoft offshoots, sometimes called Baby Bills, after Bill Gates of Microsoft, are being joined by Amazon progeny called Baby Jeffs, for Amazon’s Jeffrey P. Bezos. Baby Sergeys — those formed by veterans of Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., and was co-founded by Sergey Brin — are opening here, too, Mr. Etzioni said.
The influx of entrepreneurs and of venture capitalists to bankroll them is slowly reshaping this city and a regional economy long buffeted by the booms and busts of the aerospace and timber industries. A start-up ecosystem needs social networks, support businesses and a business culture that views failure as a badge of honor, not shame. All of that is in place in Seattle.
Tom A. Alberg, a partner at the Madrona Venture Group, one of Seattle’s leading venture capital firms and an early investor in Amazon, says the city is now home to a growing community of technology innovators who are willing to take risks.
“People were more risk-averse in the ’80s,” said Mr. Alberg, who is on the board at Amazon. Madrona lost money on HomeGrocer, the Seattle-based online grocery service, he said, “but if you never invest in a HomeGrocer, you will never invest in an Amazon.”
Money is pouring in. During the last 12 years, venture capital investment here has more than tripled, to about $1 billion annually. Last year Washington tied with Texas as the third-largest destination for venture capital money nationwide, behind California and Massachusetts.
A crucial part of the chemistry is the University of Washington, in particular its computer science and electrical engineering departments. Washington State ranks first nationally in engineers employed for every 10,000 workers and in percent of total payroll in high technology. And then there are Amazon, Microsoft and their offspring.
“Now tons of companies are spinning off people,” said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist who holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair at the University of Washington. Veterans from Amazon, Microsoft, RealNetworks and other established companies are leaving to form start-ups and venture funds, he said. “We’re finally at the stage of becoming a perpetual-motion machine.”
Several generations of start-ups are beginning to cross-fertilize, fostering the kind of rapid growth seen in biological systems, said Mr. Etzioni, whose latest venture, Farecast, uses data-mining techniques to anticipate fluctuations in airfares.
One example of the growing start-up economy is Jackson Fish Market, a Web software company founded by three veteran Microsoft software designers. Inside a windowless loft in Pioneer Square, the company is now working on starting its third advertising-supported Web service.
The start-up culture “is beginning to work now,” said Walter Smith, one of Jackson’s founders, who worked on Microsoft’s Vista operating system but left before it was introduced. “Seattle is like an adolescent version of Silicon Valley.”
Mr. Etzioni says Seattle has at least one advantage over its storied counterpart in California. “People aren’t distracted by too much sunshine,“ he said. “They sit in their offices or garages and get creative.”