Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta

This is something I made before and loved it so I wanted to make it again for a while. Finally, I was able to make this again and as I remember, it was so delicious! (Click here for my previous post for the same dish)

This is another recipe from Food Network. One of my favorite Food Network Star is Sunny Anderson. Her recipe always seems quite easy and tasty. I also love her personalty on TV. She seems very positive and friendly. I would love to meet her in person someday.

Anyhow, the dish I made from her recipe was "Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta". This is easy to make with usual ingredients which you can find in a local grocery store and always comes out great. I mean, I love garlic, tomato, basil, Parmesan Cheese and Shrimp so this dish is full of things I like. For her "Shrimp with Roasted Garlic Pest Pasta" recipe, click here to go to for Food Network site. 

I also love the pine nuts topping. Yummy!

Speaking of nuts, there is this one nuts which I recently discovered and have been eating a lot. It is "Candied Pecan" from Trader Joe's.

I knew that they have candied walnuts because I buy them quite often for my salad but I found out the other day that they also have Pecan version.

I bought this since I needed pecan to make chicken salad sandwich . Recipe did not ask for candied pecan but I thought it will be nice with a little sweetness.

Then, I tried one before I use it for the chicken salad and totally fell in love with this product. It is so good. It is difficult to stop eating. I had to control myself. I will definitely buying this again when I go to Trader Joe's.

If you have a chance to go to Trader Joe's, please try this. It is really good snack!

Manhattan Soup Dumpling Lunch & Indian Feast dinner with great friends

On Weekend, my husband and I went to Manhattan to see a Play called "Elling". There are famous actors in this show such as Brendan Fraser, Denis O'Hare and Jennifer Coolidge. It was a quite small theater and our seat was great!

The play was pretty funny and heart warming. The actors were great. I think their timing is just wonderful. I never had a chance to see those famous actors act right in front of you so this was a great experience for me. I feel blessed to live close to Manhattan at the moment like this.

Anyhow, our play was Matinee so we decided to have lunch before the show. We went to a Chinese place called "Joe's Shanghai. This is a famous soup dumpling place and I have been to their downtown location a few times and I liked it so I wanted to try their Midtown location also.

We ordered two different kinds of soup dumplings.

It has super hot soup and meat inside so we have to be very careful to eat those things.

The dumplings are really good. We had crab dumpling and pork dumpling. I think crab ones were a bit too crabby for me so I preferred pork ones.

The other thing I always order at this restaurant is Shanghai Fried Rice. This fried rice is my favorite. It is so good. It is just simple egg and scallion fried rice but the rice is always very shiny and it is so good. I wonder what kind of rice they use for this. It is just amazing in my opinion.

After the show, we walked around a little bit since it was such a nice day. Some people were wearing short sleeves and everybody was enjoying nice weather.

Then, we went to our friend's apartment since we were invited for a dinner at their place. They prepared wonderful Indian food for us.

Chick Pea dish and Cauliflower dish.

Cucumber, Red Radish, Pomegranate.

Lamb Keema.

Everything was so good and I had to go back for more after I finished my first plate. Lamb Keema reminded me of the lady who I used to like with when I was in California because she used to make this quite often. I missed this dish! I should try to make this at home. I wish I could eat something like this everyday. I love Indian food!

After the dinner, we had dessert.

We had cake and ice cream.

Cup cakes.

Banana Pudding.

And they made us great milk tea with tea leaves from Assam area. It was also really good.

We ate so much and we had a great time. We also had a friend of theirs from Cypress and all of us had a great time. I really enjoyed spending time with them. I wish we live much closer so we can do this more often.

Next time, I would love to invite them over and make something special for them. We are so lucky to have such great friends everywhere we go. Anyway, we had another great weekend!!!

Roasted Pear_butternut Soup & Chicken Salad Sandwich

I found these recipes again at Food Network website. I made roasted pear-butternut soup & chicken salad sandwich. It was very autumn like supper.

This soup has butternut squash and pear and tomato, etc and tasted really really good. It was creamy yet I didn't have to add any cream and it was also very refreshing because of pear.

First, I tossed vegetables with oil and salt, pepper.

Then, Arrange in a sheet pan.

Roast in the oven until soft.

Then, blend them in a mixer with chicken stock. That's it.

I really liked this soup. If you would like to make this. Click here for the recipe from Food Network Site. 


When I have soup, I crave for sandwich so I made chicken salad sandwich using the roasted chicken breast which I made when I made chicken flautas.

This chicken salad recipe is from Ina Garten from Food Network. Click here for her recipe from Food Network site. 

I cubed the roasted chicken breast.

Mixed with lots of other ingredients such as pecans, walnuts and grapes and made a sandwich with pumpernickel bread.

I loved the combination of chicken, nuts and grapes. This was perfect paring with pear-butternut soup.

Butternut squash is a great thing to make soup or sauce. I would love to try some other recipe using butternut squash while it is in season. I highly recommend this soup and sandwich!