meat loves salt

While it’s still January and the start of Chinese New Year / Tet, I thought I’d take the opportunity to pop in to say HI and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I know it’s been a while, so thank you, faithful readers, for sticking with us!

(A Chinese new year housewarming we had a couple years ago.)

The past few months have been a wonderful blur of welcoming this little guy into our lives…

… who actually looks a little more like this now…

It’s been a crazy wonderful journey. We were very blessed to have my mom stay with us  — thanks mom! — to help us in all sorts of ways. She did a fair bit of night duty with me, cooked me all kinds of nutritious, restorative foods, and generally just loved on all of us. I’ve mentioned before how everyone, young and old alike, treats my mom like she is their own mother, because she truly has a tenderness and sacrificial nature that makes people instantly trust her with the deepest things in their hearts. Watching my mom with little E. the past few months has given me a glimpse of just how she must have cared for me when I was first born, and I feel so special to be able to witness that. I am truly blessed to call her mom!

As I’m adapting to my own new role of being a mom, I’ve been trying to streamline my life more, which includes how I prepare our meals. So I thought I’d take the next few posts to share a little bit about what I’ve been doing and ask readers for anything you’ve found helpful in your own meal prep routines. So stay tuned, and in the meantime, HAPPY YEAR OF THE DRAGON!

Sorry for the long silence around here. I’ve been traveling — LA, New Orleans, Houston, and now China again. My trip to LA in February was actually my fourth trip there in less than a year, so I have quite a few food-related things to report back from those visits. And I’m hoping to explore some more of Beijing in the next couple of weeks as well.

I’ve also been adjusting to a new little development who will be joining us in early October! (At 17 weeks, he was the size of a turnip.) Thanks to Becca for the banner. :)

Meanwhile, I have been cooking and have a couple things lined up for the next few posts. Will get to the second part of my instant noodle series too. And hopefully Becca will be getting back on board here as well. :)

Be back soon!

A number of articles have come out of late that I just couldn’t resist posting about. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

• I was excited last week to see Tim Carman, who recently moved from the Washington City Paper to replace Jane Black in the Washington Post food section, write about modern twists on pho in the DC area. Included in the piece is Ba Bay, a French-influenced Vietnamese restaurant that recently opened in my neighborhood and that I’ve been meaning to try. The menu looks really intriguing, with dishes like roseda farm shaky beef, lemongrass pot de creme, and the controversial already composed pho bowl with sous vide beef slices.
• This week, the New York Times ran a piece by Julia Moskin on hand-pulled noodles at various restaurants in New York City. I have to confess that I’ve attempted noodle-making several times since I’ve returned from China, with no luck whatsoever. The flour here seems to be quite different, and I’ve heard that mixing in some bread cake flour may help with that. With Chinese New Year coming up, I may just give it another try next week.
• And, as if I don’t already have enough on my plate in 2011, with a blog name like Meat Loves Salt, I feel like at least one of us is required to jump on the Charcutepalooza wagon, which I just discovered through the Washington Post article on DIY meat. I live in fairly cramped quarters, with less-than-normal-size appliances in a pretty pitiful kitchen that required some remodeling to be functional. I don’t have a dining table or even counter space for my knife block (which is now in storage), much less somewhere to hang a chunk of meat. We also have trouble with temperature control. But if there is one of my favorite things in the whole world, along with cheese and noodles, it is cured meats. I already missed the first Charcutepalooza challenge, but the project is quite flexible — cook along as often as you want, projects that don’t involve hanging meat, and open even to non-bloggers. (If you do do all twelve challenges, though, you’re eligible for the grand prize: a trip to France to learn about charcuterie. And though the challenges are technically due to be posted the 15th of each month, the site seems to mention you having a little more time to get your post up since the roundup isn’t posted until the 30th of the month. Not sure about that one.) January’s challenge was to make duck prosciutto. February’s apprentice challenge is to make bacon; the charcuterie challenge is to make pancetta or guanciale; and the vegetarian challenge is to cure salmon or make preserved lemons. Complete rules are here.