Christmas Sugar Cookies

A very very Merry Christmas to all!!  It's that wonderful time of the year again, time for the baking, decorating and eating of Christmas Sugar Cookies!  

Do you like my little girl's Santa Claus Cookie?  We're going to save this cute one to put out for Santa Claus when he comes by on Christmas Eve.  (Don't know how he's going to get into our tiny house!)  

These cookies are a great Xmas project to do with your kids cuz all kids love to draw and what better thing to draw on than a cookie you can eat!  My little girl and I had a blast making these decorated cookies in preparation for the holiday season and we figured out some great tips for the cookie decorating part that made it much, much easier for my little girl to work with the icing to decorate the cookies.

Perfect Stove Top Steamed Rice 蒸米飯

In the past I have always been astonished that people would want to steam rice in a pot instead of using a rice cooker.  Why, I would wail, would anyone want to add more work into cooking a Chinese dinner!  After all, if you wash your rice out well and are careful with the measurements, your rice cooker cooked pot of rice is a beautiful thing.  

However, recently we decided to try to Cook Steamed Rice on the Stove 完美的蒸米飯 and I realized at the moment I first tasted the perfect, perfect steamed white rice, that it was soooo worth that little bit of extra effort!

Watercress & Fish Ball Soup 鯪魚球西洋菜湯

Recently my 老公 has been trekking out to all the far flung ends of Hong Kong for his work.  There has been a wonderful side benefit to us on the eating side of things, though, cuz he's been finding and bringing back home all sorts of delicious things to cook and eat!  

The other day he came back tired and hungry with a really huge bag of something green.  I scratched my head at first, wondering what on earth he could of brought back that was so big and green.  Turns out it wasa big ol bag of farm fresh watercress, picked that very day from Hong Kong fields!  

Wow, I could have never imaged that, living as we do in the middle of a concrete jungle, we could still cook up a yummilicious pot of Watercress & Fish Ball Soup 鯪魚球西洋菜湯 using freshly picked watercress!

Steamed Lap Cheong Rice 蒸臘腸飯

A classic (and easy!) way to wrangle two delicious things to eat out of one pot!  If you've never tried Chinese Lap Cheong, or Chinese sausage, you are in for a treat.  These lovely dried sausages hung from hooks in pairs tied to colorful strings are so distinct in look, texture, taste and smell, just thinking of them reminds me of all the chinese groceries I have ever visited.  A happy memory indeed!  

So this is one for all the sausage lovers as well as all the rice lovers in this world, not only will you end up with a delectable dish of steamed Lap Cheong but also a heavenly pot of rice aromatically infused with all the sausage's flavors!  Steamed Lap Cheong Rice, or 蒸臘腸飯, is the perfect cold weather comfort two-in-one dish!