Sunday Randomness #39: Pigeon books in Chinese and English by Mo Willems and two new candy bars from TJ's

Mica could read and understand most of the Chinese version of The Pigeon Wants a Puppy! by Mo Willems.  Mo Willems has written some great books for early readers that are still funny for adults too! He has a great website with links to games and merchandise and books at:  http://www.mowillems.com/

Two new candy bars that we found at Trader Joe's.  Quasar Bar with "whipped chocolate nougat and rich caramel enrobed in dark chocolate" and Boffo Bar with "peanuts, caramel, and nougat enrobed in milk chocolate".  They were fine but nothing spectacular.  I thought the Quasar was a bit like 3 musketeer with caramel and the boffo was a bit like how baby ruth use to taste before they changed the recipe.

Author #127: Gabrielle Wang with The Race for the Chinese Zodiac

Gabrielle Wang wrote this version of the Chinese Zodiac story titled: The Race for the Chinese Zodiac with illustrations by Sally Rippin.  The pictures are done in Chinese Ink, linocuts, and digital media.  With beautiful earth tones and bold lines in the illustrations, this simply executed story flows smoothly from one animal to another as they reach the emperor and their designated year on the zodiac in the text accompanying the pictures.  Included are the Chinese characters for each of the animals.  For more about Gabrielle Wang and her other books, visit her website at: http://gabriellewang.com/

Author 55: Christoph Niemann teaches some Chinese

A cute book introducing some basic Chinese characters in a very understandable way as the characters are incorporated into the illustrations. It would have been nice to have a pronunciation guide either with the story or at the front or back of the book. Then the book would have been even better but it's still well worth reading even without knowing the Chinese pronunciation.

Read more about Christopher Niemann and see some inside pages from The Pet Dragon at his website: http://christophniemann.com/

Taking a page from a friend's book in reverse

After we went to Chuckie Cheese and played games we enjoyed dinner at the Joy Luck Restaurant. We sampled Moo Shu, Tangerine Chicken and Pan Fried Noodles.
The girls liked the games more than the rides.

Dave and I were even willing to have our picture taken during the outing.

We weren't celebrating anything spectacular other than coupons, spring, group birthdays, and family. It was actually quite fun just to go to Chuckie Cheese and only play games while following up with dinner elsewhere.

Americanized Chinese cuisine

Rice-a staple food for most of the world

One of our favorite staple dinners is fried rice. For the longest time I thought there was a special, magical recipe only to find out that fried rice is a leftover dish. To add to the commonality, it’s disputed that a famous Chinese chef, Tao Feng, initiated fried rice but rather peasants started the trend, using leftover rice with other leftover ingredients to use up food rather than throw it out. Anyway, it’s an old stand-by at our house and we always make a double batch. Here’s our recipe but feel free to add or subtract from the ingredients.

Fried Rice Wilson Style

8 strips of bacon (or roughly ½ pound)

½ cup chopped green onions and tops

½ cup diced colored pepper (red, yellow, orange-just not green-green is too bitter for the recipe and detracts from the other flavors)

1/3 cup frozen green peas, thawed

1 egg, beaten

about 4 cups cold cooked rice

1 ½ to 2 tbsp soy sauce

Cook bacon until crisp and remove to drain but reserve grease in fry pan. Add green onions and pepper and stir fry for a few minutes in bacon grease. Add peas and stir fry for another minute. Move mixture to one half of the pan and scramble the egg on the empty half-then mix together when egg is barely set. Gently stir in rice, crumbled cook bacon and then soy sauce. Cook and stir gently until mixture is heated thoroughly. Serve immediately.