Saturday was a day of sadness and also a celebration of life. We had the memorial service and burial for Jes’ grandmother who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 97. During the service, we listened to the eldest uncle talk about her life as a mother and teacher in China and then in the Philippines. Jason also gave a very touching “memory of my grandmother” eulogy. Jes helped out as a pallbearer and “A-ma” was laid to rest on a very beautiful afternoon.
On Friday night, Jes and I stopped in Santa Monica for some sushi with Brother and Joy. We took them to U-Zen, an old favorite of ours when we lived in West LA. We sat at the bar with Chef Masa and went omakase-style. It turned out to be quite an adventure since we tasted a surprisingly tender clam, yummy salmon toro, a smooth yet chewy cuttlefish, fishy-tasting sardines, and a very “creamy” and almost not swallowable cod melt, which Chef called “monkey brains”. And of course there was beer and lots of glass clinking with Chef. Overall, it was a lot of fun catching up with the brother and having a really good sushi dinner.
Michelle called me the other day and offered to take me along on her Target run. It was a nice little outing but definitely much shorter than I would normal stay. Since we had Jack in tow, we were shopping on his time schedule. Fortunately, we made it all the way around the store just as he was starting to get grumpy. Shopping on baby time can be challenging but it can also be loads of fun.
Last night, we received a very sad phone call. Jes’ paternal grandmother passed away yesterday morning.  Jes’ paternal grandfather passed away in 2002 and things hadn’t been the same with her since his passing. In their nineties, they had been together for decades and now they are together once again. We’ll be driving down on Friday afternoon for the memorial service this weekend.
I thought I’d share some photos of stuff that’s going on in my home.
I made some Khao Thom Gai, which literally translates into “Chicken Boiled Rice”, on Saturday morning. It’s one of my favorite homemade dishes and I think it tasted pretty close to how my mom makes it. I made the broth from scratch, poured it over some cooked rice, and topped it with some salty preserved cabbage, fresh cilantro leaves and homemade fried garlic oil to give it an authentic flavor. Yum. The photo above also features one of the three small square dishes that Holly bought for me…so cute.
I also bought a garden bunch of purple tulips at Costco on Thursday, which have started to open this weekend. Since Spring is just around the corner, I thought I’d freshen up our home with some color.
Koa needed a new dog tag since I changed my cell number. So, I purchased a coolio make-your-own tag. All I had to do was use a Sharpie to write his name and my number, pop it in the oven for 5 minutes, and voila! It was like when I was a kid again playing with Shrinky Dinks. It starts out as a huge floppy piece of plastic, shrinks before your eyes, curls up, and then flattens out again. The end product is a thick, hard, compact little tag a third of the original size. What fun! Here‘s Koa modeling his new tag. I think it’s cute and makes less noise that his old metal one.
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