lynn in love with weekends

Dallas peeps, it was beautiful weather this weekend wasn't it?
Husband had to work both days, but we still had a lovely time together.
We alway try to relax on these days, but it always ends up being busy busy...
with much family and friends to see :)

Friday, us girls from residency got to reunite since Priya, my good friend who is doing GI in Indiana, came back to Dallas to visit. Since we graduated in June, we haven't really gotten a chance to hang out, so it was a great time at Taco Diner. We were only missing Sonia, who is far away in Denver doing her heme-onc fellowship.

Saturday, we had a lovely dinner at Cafe Expresso, with the husband's family. Cafe Expresso, located in Preston Center, is owned by a sweet German couple, Paul and Christa Dieter who actually taught Jon English. The food was delicious and we left with big bellies...

and we rushed to Irving to celebrate my cousin, Nolan's baptism. Here's the chubby cutie with my mom and I.

Sunday, we took a breather to eat all fresco by our apt's pool. It was glorious to have a sweet breeze and mild temperature.
The rest of the day was spent running around at Frye's, going to our awesome evening church, and getting dinner at Central Market. After getting some research and paperwork done, we finally had time to look at my ailing computer.

Just one year old, my computer has been acting super funny, making a loud "whirring" noise that makes me think it's going to combust any time. At 1 AM, we finally had time to take a look at it. We pulled off the side panels... and... it..was..disgusting. Every inch inside the computer, in all the nooks and crannies, the fans, my graphic card was COVERED in dust and dust bunnies! We tried to swiffer it away and but was impossible. We got some of that duster thing in a can, took it outside, and sprayed away... It looked like it was snowing in August! But sweetness and light, my computer is now working well, without all the racket!

So lesson learned, every 6 months or so, open up your computer and give it a good spring cleaning!

lynn in love with weddings

Man oh man oh man this wedding is gorgeous. Anthro inspired. Beautiful pictures.

If I was going to have one of those kind of weddings, this is how I'd want it to look.
Maybe I will....5 years everybody?

Featured on oncewed and 100 layer cake.

http://www.oncewed.com/16976/real-weddings-blog/real-weddings/charles-nadia/

http://100layercake.com/blog/archives/2093

lynn in love with crab...and moms

hello friends! Thanks for all the well wishes for my boards! It was quite gruelling, especially since I was visited by my old friend, insomnia, the night before. However, it is all done and over... and hopefully I'll be board certified in December :)

To celebrate, my mama lured me home with promises of a crab meal.
Did you know I love crab? It's one of my favorite foods... well, any seafood really, but crab and crawfish hold the spots of the top contenders to my stomach's heart.

Ha! I didn't know my parents read this blog! But apparently they do. Hi Mom! Hi Dad! It's nice to know they support this little bit of writing of mine. Apparently, my mother was impressed by my new found domestic-ness, and offered to teach me how to make her famous tamarind crab recipe! Definitely a step up from my simple chicken recipes! and boy... was it yummy!

Here we go: Mama's kitchens are always the best, yes? Always stocked, with all the spices and flavors we grew up with.

beautiful baby onions and garlic

this recipe definitely needs lemongrass

we bought the live crab at Hiep Thai in Garland. My sweet dad, cut them up and precracked them, my least favorite part of this whole thing.

pretty colors

Do a little intial fry of the crab in a skillet...sort of like browning the meat, not really cooking them all the way through.

lay them on a wire rack between batches

mama cooking them crabs up

the special sauce: oyster sauce, soursop sauce (tamarind), couple spoonful of sugar, mushroom powder, pepper...and a special ingredient not to be revealed :)

fry the crab again in the onion, lemongrass, garlic, butter and sauce mixture in batches. The sauce will thicken up.

transfer the crab to your plate. Meanwhile add cooked rice to the leftover sauce and fry. This will make the BEST FRIED RICE EVER

the best crab.... sweet and savory

and the fried rice is to die for...

my mom is the best cook

hope you all can make this one day! Sorry I can't give you exact measurements, as I wasn't given any. I hope I can be a great cook like my mama one day!

Happy Weekend!

lynn in love with crocks

Alright guys, I should be taking my Internal Medicine Boards right about now! Wish me luck :)
I'm really looking forward to this next month after this sucker is over: photography, invitations design, learning html, learning Illustrator, starting my business, writing thank you cards, keeping house, and maybe a little travelling with the hubs on interviews! Can't. Wait!

Tomorrow is our 5 month anniversary! :) time goes by so fast, but I sure do love being a newlywed.

Um... saw this from Mrs. Green Tea's post on Weddingbee.

I love! It may be a little homey for some of you guys,
but for hubs and my style... it's perfect!

I see a lifetime of anniversary bouquets in this one.

I might have to get one for our half-year anniversary in a month!
http://www.personalcreations.com/shop/product.asp?product_code=9171&world_code=2&category_code=312&subcategory_code=312&search_type=subcategory#

lynn in love with chicken piccata

hello loverlies, welcome back to my kitchen! It's chicken week here!

I made my yummers chicken piccata last night, to celebrate that my chicken soup made the hubs all better :)

This is a super easy chicken dish that is light, yet flavorful. A perfect summer dinner meal.

It's adapted from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe, which you can find here:
I made a few small changes judging from the reviews (less butter/oil/lemon juice; more stock, added peas)... and I think I made it just right!

Ingredients:
a package of 4 thin sliced chicken breasts (or 2 chicken breast, butterflied and cut in half)
sea salt and pepper
all purpose flour, for dredging
3 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup chicken stock
1/8 cup of brined capers, rinsed.
1 cup frozen peas

all the ingredients needed minus the chicken

Squeeze fresh lemon juice, cut a couple slices for garnish.

Rinse out your capers to cut back the tart taste. I love these fellas.

I think the thinner the chicken, the better it will taste. Pound it out into thin slices. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Dredge chicken in flour.

In a large skillet over medium high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons of olive oil.

When butter and oil start to sizzle, add 2 pieces of chicken and cook for 3 minutes. When chicken is browned, flip and cook other side for 3 minutes. Remove and transfer to plate. Melt 1 more tablespoon butter and 1 more tablespoon olive oil. When butter and oil start to sizzle, add the other 2 pieces of chicken and brown both sides in same manner. Remove pan from heat and add chicken to plate.

Inside the pan, add the lemon juice, chicken stock, and capers. Return to stove and bring to boil, scraping up brown bits from the pan for extra flavor. Check for seasoning. Add your frozen peas. Return all the chicken to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve chicken on top of angel hair pasta, and pour sauce over chicken and pasta. Add some slices of thick french bread and garnish with lemon slices. Serve any extra sauce in a dipping bowl for your bread.

easy peasy, and totally yummy! Next time, I'm gonna add onions, garlic...and maybe a little cornstarch to thicken up the sauce.

lynn in love with bento boxes

Remember that post below where I mentioned my love for bento boxes? I wanted to show you how you to create a bento box, ghetto style.

Here are a few from MY collection of bento boxes. You can get them in lots of size and shapes, but this is the standard: a small two tiered plastic box with something absurdly cute on top.

Usually, they love to have some silly English phrase! This one actually makes sense!

"My name is Rinda. I love the white cake and sweet cherries. Yummy, Yummy!"

Right on, Rinda, I love the white cake too :)

dear old husband, however, gets his bento packed in just some old tupperware. So he doesn't die from embarrassment when he pulls out his lunch at work. But surprise, surprise! It's still somewhat cute inside!

it's not much inside, since I'm was making a bland lunch for my sickie. Soup in pink container, rice on a bed of peas and chicken.

It's hard to see, but the rice balls are in the shape of a bear, star, and heart! I have little rice balls molds for this :)

the condiment containers make their debut: the orange guy is holding ranch, the green guy has BBQ sauce for chicken dipping!

Hopefully I'll have something more presentable and cuter to show next time, but unfortunately, this is as much cute as the hubs can handle. Hopefully they won't make too much fun of him at work!

I'm using faststone photoresizer for the first time on all these pics! Thanks Jenna! She recommended this free program on her site, That Wife Blog. Here's a link to the download of the program. http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm. Man, it totally made this posting a breeze, being able to downsize my pictures for the web in like a second. And it make uploading the pictures to blogger so much faster. Love it!

lynn in love with chicken soup

husband is feeling a little under the weather with all this traveling and interviewing. I was planning to make a chicken piccata last night, but plans got switched around. Poor thing was having chills in this hot weather.... so chicken went into hot chicken soup instead.

I don't know about you guys, but homemade chicken soup has just a way of hitting the spot when you're sick. Don'tcha think? The simple, warm and hearty flavors. Always feels like home.

I'm no chef: but here is my recipe for simple healthy chicken soup:

Ingredients
2-3 chicken breasts (with all the fat cut off please)
1 whole onion (I used 1/2 red, 1/2 yellow), cut into thin slices
5 cloves of garlic (or any kind of garlic substance), chopped
Mushrooms, sliced
Peas and/or carrots (I use frozen packages)
salt/garlic powder/pepper to taste

1. Take a pot and fill with water, enough water to make 4 large servings of soup. Bring to a boil.
2. Boil your chicken breasts through. Now you'll likely get more flavor if you use a whole chicken or any chicken with bones... but for us and for the sickly, I like the soup to have as little fat as possible. I just like the soup to taste as..clean..as possible. Not everyone's taste, I'm sure. Cooking the chicken will take, say, 20-30 minutes, just make sure it's cooked through.
3. Remove the chicken and set aside. I skim the top of my soup to remove any fat/debris.
4. Now cook the onions and garlic in your chicken broth. Add mushrooms halfway through. Add peas/carrots ten minutes to finish. Really you can add any of your own favorite vegetables... I think my MIL uses dates. Your soup will be somewhat bland if you use breasts. Add salt and garlic powder to taste. If you have enough onions and garlic, the soup will be compensated with their flavors.
5. The longer you let the soup simmer and cook, the more awesome it will be as all the flavors mesh with each other. I let mine cook for about an 50 minutes, and it was divine!
6. Meanwhile, I shred at least one of the chicken breasts into small pieces (you can use forks, but it's faster with your fingers)
7. Prior to serving, add your chicken. We like to eat our chicken soup with rice, but you can add whatever for filler... growing up, my mom loved putting mini star pasta in our soup.

So simple, but the end result is so hearty and so yummy. Definitely our kind of comfort food!

lynn in love with wild things

oh! my hubs always brings me the best presents!
He just got back from San Fran, and on his way out,
he stopped by Japantown and got me some goodies!

I practically squealed from the cuteness, oh all the cuteness!

Come, take a look! I've been obsessed with bento boxes for a while
and all the sweet accessories you can get for them.
Makes eating so much fun!

Meet my little wild things:

the cutest little food forks and picks!

see no evil: little condiment containers!

penguin sauce containers! the beaks are spouts!

lastly, little sauce containers with dry erase labels-perfect for dressings and soy sauce!

I've been practicing my tabletop photography, and it's so great to have such cute colorful subjects to work with. All pics taken with the Nikon D70 at F3.5. (my next lens will be a 50mm f1.4)

Speaking of wild things, have y'all seen the preview for Where the Wild Things are? Looks amazing!

Edit: Oh this trailer is awesome!

lynn in love with sunday morning tea

one of my favorite things is sunday morning tea with my honey.
when we can talk about our dreams, silly things that has happened in the week

both in our lives and in the news, and plans for the upcoming days.

I love sitting by the kitchen table with the morning light streaming through the window.

lynn in love with rise

Happy Weekend, dears!

I just wanted to leave you with a quick restaurant review.

My dear friend, Connie, took me out for dinner this week to catch up on life.
We went to a sweet little restaurant just around the corner of where we live
that specializes in... french souffles! It was a completele delightful experience!

The restaurant is called Rise No. 1 and is located in the Inwood Village.

Once you enter the restaurant, you are transported away from Dallas.
Decorated in both a french provence and electic style, it was incredibly charming. The whole restaurant decor is based on found and recycled objects nestled among birch tree branches.

don't I have adorable friends?

I adored all the details: the variety of antique french linens used for napkins, the stoneware used for breadplates, the beautiful antique silver.

As I was forwarned that the souffles were large and we were planning to get frozen yogurt aftewards, we ended only ordering savory souffless for dinner.

My favorite was Connie's truffle infused soufflee. delicious. Look at that beautiful poof!

My crab and cheese soufflee was good too!

Definitley good food, although I'll have to say that that amount of egg for dinner was rather overwhelming. Next time I go (which I'm sure will be soon), I think I'll share a savory soufflee and round out my palate better with soup or their amazing cheese plate as well as indulge in one of their dessert soufflee. mmm... makes me want to go now! Their entrees range from 14-20$

Seriously, for a nice, non frou-frou meal, you should definitely check this place out!

lynn in love with thirty

What can I say about this man of mine. I didn't think that we can love each other any more than we do, but after getting married, every day is even more delightful than the next. This is for reals guys. We are seriously in love.

and today is a special day, because it's his thirtieth birthday!

And to commemorate this day... I am going to give him a big dirty 30 list of why I love him so!

I love the hubs because:

1. He always cleans up the messes I leave behind, turns off the lights I leave on, and closes the the cupboard doors.
2. He is the most loyal guy I know.
3. He loves his family fiercely.
4. He always gets up to look for me when he wakes up and doesn't find me sleeping next to him.
5. He's gets the most adorable eye crinkles when he smiles.
6. His feet always finds mine under the covers.
7. He watches with me all my silly bad movies and lets me cry all over him even though I've seen the movie a thousand times.
8. He always askes me if I want to go run with him, but never makes me feel guilty when I say no.
9. He appreciates my craftiness.
10. He lets me decide on my own if I want to work or not and support any decision I make.
11. Even though he acts like a toughie, he is the biggest softie I know.
12. He is quick to anger, but even quicker to forgive.
13. He always makes me laugh.
14. He's got an incredible sense of style.
15. He's supports my artistic endeavors.
16. He watches the news and listens to NPR and always keeps me updated.
17. He takes my car in for oil changes and tire rotation.
18. He has the greatest smile with dimples.
19. He prays with me.
20. He discusses with me everyday about our future together.
21. He's thinking about letting me get a puppy.
22. He compliments me perfectly
23. He drives like a grandma because it keeps me safe.
24. He likes watching cartoons.
25. He praises my cooking.
26. He likes to hold hands with me in public.
27. He likes to hold hands with me in the house.
28. He always changes with me as our relationship grows.
29. His favorite nights are nights in with me.
30. He is my best friend