Vietnam

My Summer Vacation, where I’m going to be fed

May 16, 2011

I haven’t taken a personal vacation in years. To be exact, it’s been two years and 9 months. To be even further precise, dramatic (and redundant), it’s been 1,015 days, which feels like a lifetime for me.

Every time Todd and I plan on a vacation, an opportunity arrives at our door step and we accept it, putting our personal vacation aside till next the next month. Our choice to take these gigs over vacation isn’t because it’s about the money, but rather, they’re jobs that will help us grow as photographers, filmmakers and more importantly, as people. We’ll accept »

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Nail Shop Eats- Vietnamese Chicken Cabbage Salad Competition

August 22, 2010
Thumbnail image for Nail Shop Eats- Vietnamese Chicken Cabbage Salad Competition

 Delicious Vietnam is a monthly blogging event celebrating the love and diversity of Vietnamese cuisine.  Delicious Vietnam was  founded by Anh of Food Lovers Journey and Hong and Kim of Ravenous Couple.

I’m joining in on this month’s festivities and sharing my Vietnamese Chicken Salad Recipe. If you love Vietnamese food and have a great recipe post to share, please join the community!


My Mother has acquired an unprecedented fan base here on our blog since I started writing about her Nail Shop Eats escapades and she has absolutely no idea of her devoted following. Mom is not a woman of »

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Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream – Summer Fest

August 10, 2010
mint chip ice cream

Summer Fest is back again and  the theme for this week is herbs, beans and greens. To participate, read more about Summer Fest on Away To Garden from Margaret then come join the community!  Catch up on this seasons previous  themes on the bounty of Cukes N Zukes and Sweet Corn.

There are few herbs which give the connotation of “fresh” like mint does.  A vibrant, bright, opening of the senses.  As most home gardeners will know, there is hardly only one kind of mint. For culinary use, it is easiest to break it down to two main types, spearmint »

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Vietnamese Style Pickled Carrots from Eating Local Cookbook

May 24, 2010
pickled carrots and Daikon

I’ve fully embraced the fact that I’m addicted to salt and crunchies. To preen me away from a jar of anything picked is like separating a mother bear from her cub. Please don’t get between me and my precious jar of pickled vegetables. Just don’t even think of going there. OK?

With that submission to salt made clear, I’m blaming it all on my Vietnamese heritage because I pretty much started at birth (once I moved to solids) to eating pickled foods as part of my meals. The colorful collage of Vietnamese cuisine includes fresh textures of raw herbs/greens and often bright »

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Memories of Vietnam

April 18, 2010

Daily Crack Photo Blog- Tips and Tidbits from our Everyday Frenzy

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Going through old libraries of photos and found some from our Vietnam trip. Love this photo.

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Roasted Radish and Greens Salad – A friendly food fight

March 1, 2010
radish greens recipe

We were talking to a friend about radish recipes and she swore up and down that the only way to eat radishes was raw, crunchy and fresh. There was no other option to eating radishes, raw was it, she declared. She’s a great gardener, cook and mom. Her dedication to family, food and a healthy lifestyle is admirable. We wish we could be like her when we grow up. But she’s wrong.

We don’t often argue about food, knowing that everyone has their own tastes and preferences, however we had to disagree with her about radishes. Yes, she’s very wrong in »

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Vietnamese Caramel Braised Pork Belly Banh Mi – Nail Shop Eats #4

February 17, 2010
banh mi recipe

The leaning tower of pork belly banh mi: not for the light hearted

I’m not a comedian, nor was I trying to be one when I spoke frankly about my mother’s Nail shop cooking escapades. Like I’ve always said, my mother is a culinary fool, a manic of a woman who lives to feed her family of 6 kids and our extended family of neighborhood friends. She’s been known to get even more carried away and feed her nail shop clients homemade noodles and fish sauce while they’re getting their pedicures.

My mother’s nail shop has launched her notoriety as »

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Creamy Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe & Full Picture Tutorial!

November 18, 2009
Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe

With Thanksgiving just a drop of a leaf away, it’s time to start planning the feasting menu. Since Diane and I are always working the day before and the day after, we stay local and spend Thanksgiving with Diane’s family.

The menu is a classic ethnic Thanksgiving, where traditional dishes are entwined with cultural ones.  Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cha gio (eggrolls), nuoc cham for everything, bun bo hue. Diane’s mom takes care of the Vietnamese dishes & we’ll do the American (although sometimes we’ll help a bit with the Viet, too).  There is no way that we would get to »

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Mangosteen Noir

November 14, 2009

Daily Crack Photo Blog- Tips and tidbits from our everyday frenzy

“The morning was cold and miserable until she walked in…”

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As much as we love eating from our garden and buying from local farmers, there are some things which allow us to savor and appreciate how wonderful it is that our current world has become so global. Fresh mangosteens it one of them.

Here in So Cal, more specifically in Little Saigon, we are lucky to have phenomenal fruit vendors scouring the the world to bring their homeland’s fruit to our little corner. We know we »

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The SteamyKitchen Cookbook- Garlic Butter Noodles

October 19, 2009
Garlic Noodles Recipe

It’s here, it’s finished and we’re thrilled to finally be cooking from the new Steamy Kitchen CookBook by Jaden!

The journey of the Steamy Cookbook has always been a public affair. Jaden’s tweets and blog posts about her trek from being a mom of two hungry boys, to food writer/ tv personality, to her whole cookbook process has had us engaged, absorbed and laughing out loud.  Jaden has always been generous with her wealth of knowledge and very transparent about all the hard work it takes to write and photograph all the final recipes in the cookbook  by herself.»

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