Story #75: Winter Days

Dear Santa,

I have tried my best to be a good girl all year. I don't know if you can deliver non-material things, but all I want for Christmas is to get a hold on life and to have a happy ending to my seemingly never ending journey to finding the right career for me. If not, I'll take a Visa gift card $xxx.

Thank you! Good luck with getting all the presents out in time to all the good children!

Stay Jolly!
Yours Truly,
j-wo

Note: This post is long due to the amount of pictures in it

So where did I leave off last? Ahh, all the pictures that I did not post in October! I still cannot post the Nike pictures since they still have not come out with their material, but I have pictures from the Gala held in Boston and GCC's anniversary service where I learned baking in mass is better done in smaller batches than in fewer large ones.

Silk Road Gala 2011

These pictures do not do justice to how beautiful the room was

GCC's Anniversary Service!
Half the batch: Pumpkin Bars, Carrot Cake, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies

2nd Half: Chocolate Fudge Cake, Pumpkin Bars, Carrot Cake, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies

November:
Continuing from the last post, Blue Bloods was fun, as usual, and I believe I got as much face time as you could get on that show. I guess we'll just have to see when they air it. I got my hair done, met old friends, and made a few new ones. As for the pictures, don't judge, I know I haven't been keeping up with my exercising, eating healthy and sleeping at a reasonable hour, but I DID just recently start fixing my bad habits. It's been a little shaky, but hopefully it will keep getting better.

The next worthy-to-mention November event was my reunion with my pledge sisters in the Big Apple! Having a girls night out with dinner, a movie, and chit chatting is a mandatory thing in a girl's life in order to stay sane. Boys/Men...you may want to respect that. We're crazy as it is, could you imagine what life would be like for yourself if you didn't encourage us to have our Girl's Night Out??

Dinner!

The Birthday Cake Aftermath. Thank you for making my birthday extra special!! <3<3<3

Vegging out on the couch (watching a movie)

Next stop, Maryland! Not only did I actually exercise a lot (which was exciting for me :P ) but I had an AMAZING time with one of my closest friends. There were many laughs, many talks and MANY hilarious moments that I wish you were all there for...but then again, it might have just been hilarious to us.

Getting ready for our night out in DC

More cropped pictures are on my Facebook (the outfits we tried on before heading out were a little ridiculous) :)

Onward to Thanksgiving. Since my oldest brother couldn't make it to our annual family dinner with the extended family, we had two Thanksgivings! nomnomnom Unfortunately, I only have pictures from my Uncle's house (I don't think it would be appropriate to post my mom in her non-sober state)

The Women :)

The original Wong's

I also baked cakes and cookies for my mom's good friend's surprise birthday. I baked a Carrot Cake, Chocolate Chip Cookies and a Green Tea Cake. Here's the Green Tea Cake...thankfully it turned out well and was a hit!

The final piece was much more decorated.

Now for some updated news. Recently, I did a gig on an MTV Prank Show pilot. I was portrayed as a Japanese School girl.

The star of the show is being camera shy :p

Me and my "Japanese" classmates. We're off to Go go's festival...the most famous dog in Japan!! We even had a theme song for Go go

And finally, the most exciting news of all!!! This Sunday I will be on the plane to Korea for 3 weeks! I am so so excited. Not to worry, I will have updates and new posts for all of you on a timely basis. Get ready so see scrumpdillyumptious food!

Stay tuned for my adventures in Korea!
Mucho <3

Shake 'n bake

Warning: there are a lot of pictures in this post...

So my cooking adventure actually started on Wednesday night...

I prepared all the dry ingredients.

Thursday, I went shopping...again (I basically go grocery/bakery shopping at least 4 days a week), and dry rubbed my baby back ribs. Laid the ribs out on aluminum foil, finished mixing the rest of my dry ingredients in, and got down and dirty with my babies, mm mmm, smelled soo so good. All cooking aside, I swear, I have changing neon signs on my forehead; one for every occasion of my life. Too bad I don't have one that says please hum/sing an accompanying Broadway musical or movie theme song to this dramatic moment in my life. How cool would that be? Yea...anyways, if you remember, I had the one sign that said "please hollar at me. I like creepy fellas and old men speaking their dirty thoughts out loud, taking pictures, and whistling", one saying "please speak Asian to me -- helps remind me of my Japanese background" -- **wait what?**, one that says "I'm a native New Yorker so please ask me for directions" -- if you actually knew me, I'm terrible with directions and use the GPS for every place I drive or walk to. And now, "I'm a lost little Asian girl in the market". To be honest, these last two really aren't that bad. I like trying to be a good Samaritan, so I throw my quick solving problem cap on and try to help out...now if I could just do that for myself. And the last one, well obviously, I don't have to stand wide-eyed trying to figure out where everything is and how to find out what is fresh or ripe and what is not. Seriously, how often do you go to the store to get capers, ham steak -- no...it's not in the deli section and no, they do not know what it is, or frozen artichoke hearts. Anyways, I've spent a lot of money,  a lot of time, had a lot of adventures and learned a lot about grocery shopping. You would think that it was easy, but do you know how to pick good meat/veggies/fruit? Do you know the specific guidelines and "rules"? I always thought it was innate or something, Well, lo and behold, that "I'm a noob at shopping" sign instantly went up upon entering the grocery store -- I even had the chef at shop rite trying to figure me out.

**If you didn't know, I'm half Chinese and half Korean**

Alright, so Friday I baked like a mad man!

Chocolate Chip cookie from scratch...seriously these best recipe ever :)

These were AMAZING!!!

For Saturday's BBQ I made Campanelle Tuna Salad, Sweet Chicken Bacon Wrap, and RIBS! We also had special curry shrimp, hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken

Took for ever to season and reduce the liquid

Soda did the trick -- got rid of that salty zing after tast

I didn't get to try them, but they were gone in an instant. All three racks. We also celebrated 3 birthdays:

♫ ♪ ♫ Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you... ♪ ♫ ♪ 

Gotcha!

 And finally today, Sunday.

nom nom nom

More updates to come...but for now, I have got to get some shut eye.
Mucho <3

Story #60: Bake-off...

...with myself??

I'm so excited. Even though I wish I took a little more time and was a little more careful, I am very happy and proud of how they came out. But now that I know what I'm doing (well I kind of know what I'm doing), hopefully next time I will be even MORE happy with the results. I wish you could see the cakes in person, they look much better than the photos below (they were both for a fellowship diner):

The start of my fondant making experience

Left Cake was 99% covered in fondant and the cake on the left was a ganache covering with fondant strip on the bottom and squiggle

s

Oh, I also made these KILLER chocolate chip cookies...a recipe my brother sent me. They are amazing. Well, I think they were amazing. Best I've ever had at least.

Anyways, in honor of my newfound dedication to baking a lot for the rest of this year, I went to Michael's and bought a lot of baking utensils and glitter! There's a 50% off of one item coupon that you can print right off their website...I think within 2 days I went there 4 times and used at least 5 coupons. My mother taught me well :p

Finally, about work-work. I'm debating on whether or not I should just take the week off...I'm thinking and assuming that the lack of work is a mixture of downtime in shows and me being cycled out from the casting system. Meaning that there are moments when I will be super busy and others where I will rarely be used...which would be now. Plus, this way I can finally just relax and focus on things I want to do instead of having this subconscious anxiety of fear in missing phone calls.

Next on my list to bake for the week (not finalized): a fruit tart, two cakes, a cheesecake and truffles. There will be pictures at the end of the week! :)

More updates to come.
Mucho <3

Story #43: Every end is a new beginning

"Every end is a new beginning."
~Thinkxist.com

This post is not as profound as the intentions of this quote was probably made out to be; however, today marks the end my VERY busy week, which also marks the beginning of another hectic week. All I can remember from the past week was the non-stop shopping, cooking, and preparing food and decorations for this weekend.  Working in New York. Weddings and BBQ's are not as easy as they are cut out to be! Anyways, the rooftop lounge for the pre-wedding cocktail had a gorgeous 360 degree view, and the snacks were scrumptious (esp my truffles and my mom's 7 layer chip dip). The wedding was the cutest thing ever! I loved their theme, it was entertaining the entire time, and the dancing was great. If the bride and groom were not as creative as they were, the different selections of how they wanted to do things definitely would not have turned out well, but I give them props for making everything work out well. The bbq was great, especially at the end of the night. Drunk adults are hilarious! During the BBQ there were endless amounts of food, and it all ended with my baking skills! I will admit, a few of them became my own concoctions due to a few mishaps, but surprisingly, they all turned out well. And the one that I was the most worried about turned out to be one of the biggest crowd-pleasers. :)

I made crab and avocado crostini, Oreo truffles, truffles with pecans, bourbon and southern comfort, Oreo fudge cheesecake, apple cobbler pie (w/ vanilla ice cream), peach cobbler (w/ vanilla ice cream), and flan. 

Most of the kids :)

Crab and Avocado Crostini

Pecan/Bourbon/Southern Comfort Truffle (Outer Ring), Oreo Truffles (Inner Truffles)

Apple Cobbler Pie

Truffles (Left), Peach Cobbler (Top Right), Apple Cobbler Pie (Bottom Right)

Flan

Celebrating 4 birthdays!!

More updates to come!! (wish me luck on my auditions this week!)
Mucho <3

Baking! ♥

The most frequently asked question this week was, "what did you do for Valentine's Day?"
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, my appreciation was shown through the love I put into my baking. I baked a Freeform Apple Pie from scratch. Despite the scrambling around in a kitchen that you would think I was very familiar with, I love baking. There is something very warming about baking that cooking does not quite capture. What do you prefer -- cooking or baking?

A video for your entertainment:


More updates to come!
Mucho <3

Ahhh!! =o

Ahhh, two days, 2 DAYS, twooo daaaayyssss!!! OMGosh! 2 days.

Anyways, HSH Valentine's social was sooo much fun. Although it wasn't salsa, Henry's and Claudia's performance was a-m-a-zing. It was so intimate and so touching. :)

As promised, here are the pics of the Angel Cake and Oreo truffles that I conjured up.

More updates are sure to come! (hopefully some really good news)
Mucho <3