Sunday, August 30, 2009

Tomato Pie

Hubby baked this tomato pie to welcome me returning home from my trip to Long Island. Tomato in a pie is a very intriguing idea. I snapped some pictures when Hubby was assembling the pie. It was very tasty, and of course, a bit fatty. The original recipe was a vegetarian dish. Hubby is by no means a vegetarian, so he added fried bacon, which was why this pie was a bit fatty to my taste. However, it is worthy trying if one gets too many tomatoes, like us. Our veggie garden provided us with quite a bit of them, even though the late blight took most of our crop.





Audrey's New Bookshelf

Hubby bought this Dollhouse bookshelf for Audrey. Hubby finally got time to assemble it after I came back from Long Island.

It is in pink and purple, really pretty. Audrey was so surprised to see it after waking up from her nap. She even said "Thank you, Baba" to Hubby. It was very sweet!

See how excited she got:






Conference at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory


















The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is the Silicon Valley of IT in science. I wanted to go there so badly all these years ever since I stepped into the scientific field. After years' anticipation, I finally got the chance. I paid a visit to CSHL between Aug. 25-29, 2009.

I did not enjoy the science part of the conference much since it was not not related to my field very much. However, I enjoyed the food and the campus very much. Additionally, I had a cool room mate at Best Western Woodbury Inn, whose company made my stay at CSHL interesting.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Taste of Summer-2009

Summer seems to be in a hurry on the way to upstate NY this year. We had about 10 days with the temperatures in the upper 80s.

We bought a pool for the little one before the long-due summer came here. At one point, we even thought this pool was another dust collector in the garage. However, we put it into use when the temperature finally went up to the upper 80s. Audrey absolutely loved it. Since she was still too little to play alone in the pool, so hubby had to sit by the pool the whole time she was in the water. I offered them some water toys. They had great fun splashing each other.





Monday, August 24, 2009

My first real sewing project

I got this Viking Sewing Machine almost 2 years ago as a Christmas gift from Hubby. I rarely used it. The first experiment on it was a square blanket I made for my baby daughter. It is still not complete done today, shelved in the closet for over a year.

This weekend, I have a baby shower to go. My sewing gene became active, so I went to Joann Fabric and bought a lot of flannel fabric. I decided to make 4 receiving blankets, 4 burp clothes and a Boppy cover.

Since Sunday afternoon was the only half day I had before the shower, I had to battle with Audrey's interference constantly. I even switched on the DVD to baby-sit her, but I got too much attention from her while struggling with the sewing machine.

To be honest, I got frustrated a few times while sewing because it turned out not to be as easy as it looked. On top of that, I had to learn again how to operate the sewing machine. The Manuel helped me a lot.

I did not have time to take pictures while working on them. Immediately after done, I wrapped them away before I remembered to take some pictures. So here are the only pictures of the finished products. Perhaps, one can only see the stitches.

Two-sided burp cloth:


Right side of the receiving blanket:


Back of the blanket:

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Dinner from the Garden Haverst

Today Audrey and I were blowing bubbles, watching Daddy making BaBa Juice, reading books, chasing each other... Evening came, but we did not know what we could have for dinner. Hubby finished making his Juice and asked for dinner. No grocery was done today, so he headed to the veggie garden and brought in our dinner resource.





I took over the cooking task since it was relatively late. If Chris cooked for us, we would have had dinner around midnight because he is a slow and meticulous cook. LoL

I saw 2 smoked German sausages in the fridge and decided to do a fried Udon noodle dish with these really fresh garden veggies. And it was served to the table in less then 30 minutes.

Needless to say, the dish was t-a-s-t-y! Audrey loves fried noodles very much, too.

A Little Bookworm


Audrey loves reading basically everything. Very often, she would pull all the books off the shelves and immerse herself in the piles of books. She can sit still and read quite a bit while talking to the animals in the books. Sometimes, she slips out of my sight and becomes so quiet. I then start wondering if she is doing something that she knows she is not supposed to. But she often when I find her, she is concentrating on her books.

Reading is a good habit, but in the mean time, she is good at creating messes wherever she has been.

Look at the mess and her innocent expression:

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Washing My Very Own Car

Finally, we bought another car two years after we moved to this public-transportation-impossible city. We both work at the U, so we carpool daily to work. However,owning one car often restrained one of us from going out to so things alone, sometimes, we even complained about each other when in that situation. After debating, we agreed on that argument stemmed from car shortage was not worthwhile the money or environment we saved. Here we go, we bought this used 2002 Subaru outback.

The previous owner did not groom the car well, as least, to my standard, therefore, the first thing I drove it home was to clean it inside and out very thoroughly, and in a very rare 90F summer day here. When I was doing the cleaning, I seemed starting to understand why many men love their cars more than their wives. LOL....

Of course, hubby had to take some pictures of me and the car when he saw me in such a devoted spirit.




FYI, this car plate is already replaced, so the address or ownership you might find online is invalid.

Friday, August 14, 2009

THE Street in Zhoucun

The long street that is refurbished to an ancient look:




This place is famous for the silk:



My nephew is challenging the ancient chess player:

How the marriage was carried out in the past:

Sedan to carry the bride:
Ceremony:
The groom meeting the bride:
Zuo Yue Zi:

I even saw this multi-functioned baby crib in one of the show rooms:
Kneeing to the parents at the birthday ceremony: