My husband is not the consistent "mushy-type" romantic guy so I was so surprised to find a knock on our door at 2PM today. At first, I didn't want to open it because of fear that it might be someone who will either try to "kill" me or steal something from our house. We don't have many friends in China so the chance of having a visitor at home is totally non-existent.

I wanted to call Hubby first before opening the door, but the knock was so loud and persistent that I had to open it so as not to disturb the neighbors. Then there it was! A bunch of "blue" roses carried by someone. I didn't see the face of the one holding it so I thought it must be the delivery guy. But then, it was Hubby!!! :-)

In exchange for his romantic gesture, I served him my double chocolate pudding made with Jell-O and Oreo cookies which I topped with crushed almonds. 

In the days leading up to the Chinese New Year, I was inspired to try cooking some Chinese dishes which I had never cooked before or cooked wrongly before. I'm not sure why, but it must be the spirit of the CNY that urged me to try out real Chinese cooking. I also got bold enough to make use of ingredients that I normally don't use in my cooking like: rice wine, mushroom dark soy sauce, dried mushroom and dried whole red chillies to name a few.

Here are some of the dishes I made. And well, CNY 2012 has already concluded several days ago but I'm still going to make some more dishes like the Sichuan style orange chicken so stay tuned...

Hubby celebrated his birthday a few days ago, and as is customary, I was obliged to cook some birthday noodles for him. In the Philippines, we believe that one must have noodles on his/her birthday so that he/she will have a long life. I believe we got this belief from the Chinese, although we are not too specific on which kind of noodles to prepare.

I was not able to make the noodles on the day of his birthday though because our house (building) lost its water connection due to some pipes being repaired. I just made it on the day after his birthday. This time I used flat egg noodles which I cooked with the traditional ingredients of meat, seafood and vegetables. In the Philippines, we would always call this "pancit canton". If we add some vermicelli to it then it will be called "bam-i". Don't ask me why, that's just how it is.

So what did I make on his big day? I made "dongpo pork" (braised pork or the Chinese version of "humba") for the first time. Luckily it was a success. I would never want to ruin a dish on my husband's birthday. 

This year we also ditched the traditional birthday cake from the bakeshop because we noticed that all their cakes just taste the same (whether sponge or chocolate, they have the same taste). Instead, Hubby requested for a blueberry cheesecake which I happily made for him as well.