The Middle '87's Ninja Quilt

With all this quilt talk, I thought I should show you the Ninja quilt that the middle '87 made. Isn't it so cute?

My cousin said she found a picture of the ninja online and traced it. It took her 10 days to do the appliques, sewing one per day. Then several weeks of machine sewing the pieces together.

Here's a close-up of the ninjas.

Canh Tan O (Vietnamese Chrysanthemum Greens Soup)

This isn't really a recipe as much as it's a suggestion for what to do when you've boiled pork and shrimp to make Goi Cuon (Vietnamese Salad Rolls) or for any number of Vietnamese salads.

What do you do with the leftover Canh (Vietnamese Soup Broth)?

You toss in some greens and make soup.

A typical Vietnamese meal would include a meat dish, a vegetable, and a soup. Each component doesn't have to be heavy or a full meal. You could have a simple stir-fry, boiled vegetables, and a light, brothy soup like this.

Use up the ingredients while cooking and get multiple dishes. Nothing particularly revelatory, but these photos have been sitting around since February 2008 so I figured I might as well blog it.

Chrysanthemum leaves are one of my favorite greens. They can be added to hotpots, used to flavor soups, or stir-fried. They're very high in vitamin K, as well as manganese, beta carotene, and B9.

Hot Stuff Cafe!!! - San Gabriel (Closed)

I try to visit local restaurants at least twice before I blog about them. To be fair, but also because showing two or three dishes doesn't make a very interesting post. So we're going pretty far back to my early blogging days for this one. Back in September 2007, I checked out Hot Stuff Cafe!!!

Partly spurred by a Los Angeles Times article that mentioned chef and owner Jimmy Wang was a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who once worked at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey. I'm not sure if the owner is Chinese-Burmese? Old reviews of the former incarnation, Romantic Steak House, indicated so, but there was only one Burmese item on the menu, tea leaf salad. The rest of the menu was a blend of Chinese cafe classics and some fusion dishes.