I realize that my family gets the shaft. My sister has never ever tasted my banana bread…..I know! And my parents have had my cooking, post-culinary school, a total of only maybe 5 times. I lived in New York during all of my cooking escapades, while my family lived in Philadelphia. Then I got married, and Joe and I moved to New Jersey. That’s getting closer to Pennsylvania, but still far enough to not have many opportunities to cook for them. After a year, we moved to California. Now we’re talking different time zones here. So you can see, there wouldn’t be much opportunity for me to cook for them. Then I realized that they don’t get much face time or recognition on this blog either, probably for the same above explanation.
But on the occasions that I do get to go home, I revel in all the mundane simplicities that come with hanging out with family. Such as the last time I was there. I came back about a month ago from visiting Philly namely for my nephew’s 100th day party, which is an important celebration in Korean culture. And it was also my very first time meeting him since he was born. Joe had to work so I went alone, and being with my family felt like old times again.
This was my second day in Philly, and my sister, Christina and I took Hyden on an exciting trip to Michaels to look for crafting materials to make a banner for his party. Doesn’t he look absolutely thrilled to be there?
We ended up going with a bunch of stuff from the Martha Stewart collection, which made the banner turn out quite nicely. Pictures of the finished banner to come in another entry.
Then that night, my parents stopped by my sister’s place, where I was staying, after work. Now, I hadn’t seen them in months, but that didn’t stop these proud grandparents from zooming right past me and swooping up Hyden. Feeling the love, mom and dad!
Hello? Um hello... your daughter from California is here [waving hand in front of their faces]. My sister told me to get used to it. They’re physically incapable of paying attention to her now too. But after Hyden went down for the night, the grandchild cataracts fell off their eyes and they were able to see me again, and I got warm hugs and good conversation over dinner.
Day #3 consisted of staying in the house and looking like a hot mess in sweat pants and raggedy t-shirt all day while playing with the nephew. Then my brother-in-law, Dan came home from work and we went out to China Town in Philly. This brought me back to my college years.
And this was Hyden’s first time there, so I wanted to document the moment.
A weird face to face father and son stare down.
Cute picture of mommy and son.
Then we went to this one restaurant which sadly I forget the name of, so if you’re from Philly, please name this restaurant based on the interior you can see in this picture. Hint: there are scary things in fish tanks in the front.
We ordered one of my favorites, salt baked squid. It’s like crispy light as air calamari that’s seasoned so perfectly.
LOBSTER. Wow… just thinking about eating this succulent ginger sauced concoction is making my mouth water.
Then we had sizzling beef on the bone, which is kind of like Korean style kalbi (short ribs), but really tender, due to the corn starch, and seasoned with a black pepper sauce.
And I love all kinds of Chinese style greens. The best part is the simplicity of the ingredients, basically salt and garlic (and probably lots of oil), but it is soooo good. I could just eat a mountain of this alone with a bowl of rice.
Everything was so delicious and I want to eat this whole meal all over again.
So the moral of the story kids is: life is better with lobster, and more grounded with family. They finally got their face time on this blog, but I’ll keep posting more about them as I continue on with my east coast series. You can read my first entry, and how I spent day #1 my friends, here.
