Until our visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the farthest road trip we had ever taken with Bebe E was to San Diego for a visit to Sea World or the San Diego Zoo, which is a mere 1 1/2-hour drive. However, since our 17 hour flight to Beijing, we’ve gotten bold as parents. Just prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday, Bebe Dada invited us to accompany him on a business trip to Northern California. He suggested we take a road trip and that we...

  This year, our Halloween celebration was a bit impromptu, resulting in a quick lunch at Wahoo’s for Aya-chan, Bebe E and I and trick-or-treating on-the-fly at a few retailers at the mall before nap-time. It wasn’t the typical Halloween celebration I enjoyed as a child, but Bebe E had a blast and it was fun to watch her enjoy herself so much. Our plans to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood at dusk were foiled by an exhausted and...

M.I.A. Alright, this is the last post of my “China Adventures” series and I’ve been meaning to draft this post for over a month, but I honestly haven’t had the time or the motivation to sit down and write.  It was perhaps two weekends ago when I had brunch with a few of my best girlfriends and one of them told me that she wasn’t receiving my posts via email anymore. Uh… I told her that was because I...

Our adventures in China just keep on goin’! On the third leg of our trip we visited the City of Guilin in the Guangxi Prefecture which is located in Southern China, near the border of Vietnam. Our visit to Guilin was our chance to see the beautiful countryside of China. When we arrived in Guilin, we finally experienced the very hot and humid weather we had anticipated in China. Despite the heat, I found Guilin to be quite delightful only...

Since last week’s post  when I started sharing our recent travel adventures to China, I thought about coasting through the next few travel posts without sharing any recipes, but that would defeat the purpose of my foodie blog / ongoing digital family cookbook project, a.k.a Bebe Love Okazu. I got away with it the last post with Part I: Beijing, and no recipe, but I will start this post by sharing the second leg of our trip, Xian, and...

Home sweet home! Sunny blue skies and mild California weather. Love it! AND there’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed after a long trip. For two weeks, my family and I were half-way across the world sightseeing in China with my in-laws. Bet you didn’t even notice I was gone, huh? I drafted a few blog posts prior to our departure and scheduled these to be published while we were on vacation. Sneaky, huh? :)   North Beijing...

  One of the easiest appetizers I enjoy serving (and eating) is bruschetta. And let’s be clear that the Italian pronunciation for bruschetta is: brus’ket.ta. Note, the “ch” is pronounced with a HARD “k”, not a “sh”. It drives me up the wall when I ask for brus’ket.ta at a restaurant, only to be incorrectly corrected by a server with a response that goes something like, “you mean, you...

  Mmmmm. I love cheesecake. Cheesecake loves me. I love ANYTHING cheesecake, let me count the ways… There is my favorite childhood blueberry cheesecake cups, Cheesecake Factory’s pumpkin cheesecake and vanilla bean cheesecake, Japanese rare cheesecake from any type of Asian bakery, anything cheesecake (including cream cheese filled pastries) from Amandine Patisserie in Santa Monica, 85 Degree Bakery’s mango cheesecake, Marie...