Birthday Party

Well, It has been already three months since my son's birthday but I wanted to share what I made for his birthday. He turned 4 this year. I can not believe how time flies. He is such a wonderful boy and I am looking forward seeing him grow up.

Anyways, we invited many of his friends to out place to celebrate his birthday. It was nothing fancy but we had a wonderful time with our friends.

I made bunch of snacks and also lasagna. I forgot to take picture of lasagna but here are the other things I made for the party.

Corn and Bean dip

Buffalo Chicken Dip (This is before baking)

Caesar Salad

Veggie Sticks

Fruit and Cookies

Caprese Salad

For a cake, I decided to make banana pudding this year instead of Strawberry Cake. This Past three years, I made strawberry short cake for his birthday but I know I am not a great baker and it is quite difficult to make a big square cake which is moist and taste good. I remember it was quite hard and dry last year and I didn't want to take a risk this year so I decided to make something which I know it always come out great and always a great hit with everyone.

Banana Pudding (Magnolia Bakery Recipe)

This banana pudding never fails me and everybody loves it!

The birthday party was a success and I am very thankful that my son is a healthy 4 years old. I started this blog more than 4 years ago before I get pregnant with my son. Even though the update of this blog slowed down significantly, this blog helped me a lot and I would love to continue posting whenever I can.

Thank you for your support and I really appreciate my life every single day.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to everyone! I really hope that 2012 will be a great year for me and my family and for everybody who is reading my blog!

In Japan, tradition is to eat soba noodle on New Year's Eve. Even though I am in the U.S., I feel like I have to eat soba noodle on New Year's Eve in order to have a good ending of the year and good beginning of the new year.

Here is the soba noodle I made. The shrimp tempura is from Trader Joe's frozen shrimp tempura. I tried this item for the first time but it was actually pretty good! I think I will buy this again since I prefer not to deep fry things at home. (It is a lot of work and lots of cleaning after :-))

My husband's house tradition is having a broth fondu on New Year's Eve. So we invited a few friends over and had broth fondu. The recipe for the fondu broth and the sauces were all from my mother-in-law. She taught me how to make all the sauces and the broth!

Broth Fondu is a lot healthier than cheese fondu and you can enjoy it with different kinds of sauces. We had some vegetables, chicken, shrimp and salmon. The sauces were banana curry sauce, onion ketchup sauce, garlic sour cream sauce, egg pickle sauce and also cilantro mint sauce which my friend brought.

Everything was really good and we enjoyed nice fondu and good conversation.

There were lots of things happened in 2011. I hope we will have a great 2012. I know we will!

Also, I didn't update my blog too often in 2011 but I would like to try updating my blog more often in 2012! Hope you guys will come visit my blog :-)

Have a happy and healthy 2012 :-)

International Thanksgiving Pot Luck Party 2010

Nov 25 was Thanksgiving day here in U.S. and it is a day with family and friends. Normally, people eat Turkey on this special day but we normally have pot luck party without Turkey.

We invited some of our friends and ask them to bring whatever food from their country or whatever they like. The reason we don't roast turkey is that we tried it before and it just took so long to cook and it tasked OK but not spectacular. I guess I am not too keen on Turkey flavor..

Anyway, my husband and I made Lasagna and Banana pudding and Piggy in a blanket.

Lasagna is my husband dish which always comes out great!

I made banana pudding. This is also always a hit!

Then, I tried making piggy in a blanket for the first time. It is super easy appetizer and it looks kind of cute, I think. I just used Pillsbury Crescent roll and rolled up cocktail sausages and bake it in the oven for like 12mins.

Our friend bought lots of different stuff also.

A friend from Argentina and her husband brought empanada and chimichuri sauce. They even made the dough themselves. It had beef and garlic in it. It tasted really good. I love empanada.

Another friends from Romania brought roasted beef and potatoes. The beef was roasted for a long time so it was super tender and melt in my mouth. It was so good!

The other friends brought huge salad. This salad had bell pepper, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber. They also brought special salad dressing which they made from scratch. It was great salad.

We ate all day, talked all day and watched American Foodball. It was so much fun and I love having pot luck party! It was another great Thanksgiving party this year. I hope we will have a nice Thanksgiving again next year and years to come!