They needed me to be at the Application Support Center in Atlanta so they can get my fingerprints. I guess it’s one step closer to getting my residency. In 2 weeks, Mike and I have to be there to be interviewed… to ensure that we really have married for the sake of marital purposes and not just for me to stay. (Remember Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu in the movie, Green Card?)

I was out there pretty quick and had time to eat lunch at Whole Foods. A weekday afternoon, taking a leisurely meal… I had samosas. Bundles of curried potatoes/veggies and chicken. Tall glass of sky juice and the warm sunshine on my face. It was good, before it started to get too hot.

Came home, made dinner for us: Bak Kut Teh (Pork Rib Soup) with the spices that Cindy sent me in our Easter swap. Vegetable stir fry with fresh shiitake. Leftover Basmati Rice fried up with ginger slivers, dried shrimp, some chili powder and soy sauce. We’re taking that for lunch tomorrow too.

On a non-food note, Mike took me out to the gym, and he smoked me. Upper body. My arms are kinda stiff now… I hear it gets worse in a day. So if I blog less, write to Mike and yell at him

This morning when Mike got out of bed at 5, and left for PT, I felt a shaking in my bed. It was the exact time that he closed the front door. I said to myself,” Hey, why did he slam the door so hard?” After a while I realize that the tremor was not caused by my grouchy-don’t-want-to-be-up husband. I drift off back to sleep for another 90 minutes of slumber. 90 minutes felt like 9 when I woke to the sound of my local NPR station. The voice on there told me about an Alabama earthquake that rocked most of Northern Georgia. We felt it too in the ‘ Hoochee valley.

I spend most mornings listening to NPR before I head to work. This morning, they were talking about GeoCaching, a new sport for those who love an adventure and owned a little GPS device. Some weeks back I discovered the old sport of Letterboxing. GC is just a new way of finding whatever someone has left behind – a little stash of goodies. I love treasure hunts and looking for things, and I have a pretty decent sense of direction… I think Mike and I will try this out. I’ll keep you posted on it. But if you want to read more about it, the link above will help.

Another morsel of news I got from NPR this morning was about this restaurant up in Portland Oregon. It was a place where parents can bring their fussy toddlers for a meal without worrying about them breaking the dishes or messing up the table linen. It’s called Peanut Butter & Ellie’s. I can’t seem to find a link to it but when I do, I will update you.

Update: Jennie sent me the link to the restaurant, thanks! I also forgot to add that they will be expanding the restaurant to include cities like San Diego, LA, San Francisco and Seattle. Moms there, don’t fret!

From Rachel, I found out about Uh-Oh Oreos. We haven’t seen it in the supermarkets yet but this sounds interesting. Mike would just call it communist. Maybe we’ll get some on Saturday for our 7th day a.ka. eat whatever you want day!

I cleaned up the recipes in my sidebar. Instead of putting all the links to recipes before I complete my recipe page, I decided to only list those that I have active recipe pages for. I have made it a point to add at least one recipe a day. I have left it untouched for a while. Yesterday I put up Nigella’s Lamb Shank Stew recipe and her Coca Cola Ham one.

From today onwards, I’ll note the added recipe at the bottom of each daily post.

Today, Mike and I embark on a journey together. We’re working on getting healthy and fit. We love to eat, so going on a diet can be a challenge. Still, I choose to look at this as a way of getting creative with our cooking. Portion control is key here and I am looking for various ways to add flavor to food, without adding the calories.

The plan is that for 6 days in a week, we stick to a well-planned eating agenda. Within those meals, we have a guide on our building blocks. From there, we find ways to put together a healthy meal. Some very good ingredients we’ve found are curry powder, 5-spice powder, citrus zest, fresh herbs, tofu and tamari.

Curry Powder: this is basically a blend of spices. A very good rub for grilling meat/fish, a very good addition to a tuna/chicken salad and perfect for stewing chick peas.

Five Spice Powder: used as a rub, it’s great for grilling meat too. I’ve only tried it on lean pork chops. Traditionally, it’s used for Chinese roast pork (from the belly region).

Citrus Zest: essential oils of citrus fruit reside in the zest. Added to salads, fruit cups and orange or lemon chicken, it’s the perfect anointment. You should try pink grapefruit zest, it’s wonderful. Remember not to get into the white parts.

Fresh herbs: we use a lot of cilantro and Italian flat leaf parsley. Especially for our pastas, bean salads and salsa. Salsa on grilled meats, heavenly!

Tofu: being Asian, I’ve come across many ways to eat tofu. Silken or Firm. We put them in broth to stew, pan-fry them, or added in a stir-fry of veggies.

Tamari: [tuh-MAH-ree] Similar to but thicker than soy sauce, tamari is also a dark sauce made from soybeans. It has a distinctively mellow flavor and is used primarily as a table condiment, as a dipping sauce or for basting. We like to use it in braising liquids with ginger and star anise.

On the 7th day each week, we make something spectacular, something to look forward to. This weekend, maybe we’re having chicken curry with roti.

I just want to link you to a post of my husband’s. He talks about Singapore, he really enjoyed his visit last January. I think if he didn’t have army commitments, he would have stayed longer than a month!

We took Ang Pow out for a drive in the country. Since we live 40 miles from the Little White House where F.D. Roosevelt spent a lot of his time, we decided to go visit it.

I took out my new Lomo LC-A and snapped a bunch of pictures. You will see them on Stef Snaps, when I get them developed.

The Little White House is located in Warm Springs. One of the 7 springs in Georgia. Many years ago, the pools were filled with water from the springs and was known to relieve many polio patients, including F.D.Roosevelt. The warm waters had healthy minerals and a perfect temperature (88 degrees F) for these patients who enjoyed the much-needed relief from their ailment.

Today the area is home to the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.

We ended the evening with dinner at Oscar’s Steak & Seafood. It’s on Warm Springs Road, in the middle of cow pasture. The food there is excellent. Mike had a medium T-Bone steak that was, in my honest opinion, VERY large. I had a Seafood Platter… scallops, shrimp, crab claws and oysters… plus a twice-baked loaded potato.

A day well spent.

No, I’m not talking about those tins of processed meat… I’m referring to those strange emails you get. I have my email address out here on my blog and because of that, my mailbox gets around 200 emails a day, only 1 from a person I truly care about. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is face with this awful task of sieving through spam but I decided that enough was enough, I had to get an anti-spam program to help.

Yesterday evening, I looked on Downloads.com and Tucows, then found this program called “MailWasher“. From the name, it might seem tacky but it works like a charm. Developed in New Zealand, it downloads your email to its own view, helps you detect spam and differentiate from normal mail but yet gives you the chance to label those as spam too. It remembers your choices and intelligently blacklists those spammers. It even bounces these emails so that the sender thinks your address is invalid. Most of all, MailWasher is free – if you like and decide to use it, just donate whatever amount to the creator so he can help further develop the program.

I’m not getting paid for this marketing. This program has been noted on CNN and BBC World. Just wanted to share this with those of you who have to deal with unwanted clutter.

I love this woman’s voice but I never considered all she had to go through before she made it big. Before I got the chance to listen to her magical voice. Thanks to Maril*yn Mon*roe who supported her and gave her the opportunity to play in New York.

She was born today in Newport News, Virginia on 1917. During her career of over 50 years and some 2000 songs, she had played with many legendary musicians. My favorite are her works with Louis Armstrong and a favorite song, “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”.

“The way you hold your knife
The way you sing off-key
The memory of all that
No no they can’t take that away from me” – E*lla Fitzgerald (1917 – 1996)

Happy Birthday to the late First Lady of Song.

I read on Carol’s blog about the May Day Project and since I just got my new Lomo camera, I’m going to sign up for it. I think May 10th will be fun. We don’t have anything planned for that weekend but I think now I do

And oh, sign up’s for the 1st teaswap is over. We will be sending out teas soon. I can’t wait to see what type of teas our international group can bring together.