MEETING VIVIAN ROBINSON

Those first few weeks with the newborn baby is the best. It may not always feel like it because it can be hard/rough/sleepless, but looking back, I also remember a dreamy haze and a slowness of pace that I look back on with nostalgia.  That time of beholding your new little one, figuring out who she is, how she fits in with the family and making a new rhythm feels magical.  Which is why I loved getting to spend some time with my friends, Martha and Ian, to capture some of this magic with their new addition, Vivian!  Here are some of the photos I took that afternoon (and these photos I did of them four years ago!) 

SUMMER SALADS

My 2018 summer salad round-up! By which I mean, a few of the salads I tried this past summer that I am lassoing into one blog post here for future reference.  I love a good salad and could live on salads all summer. The bounty of fresh and good produce is so inspiring! 

(Have you seen this list of 101 simple salads by Mark Bittman?! He is a master and I can't wait to try some of them.)

The first photo above is a salad from Sam Kass's cookbook, "Eat a Little Better", via Cup of Jo.  It's white beans, celery, hearts of palm, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, olive oil, lemon, and pine nuts mixed up all together in this gloriously flavorful and salty combo.  I had leftover mushroom orcchiette from the day before, which I mixed into this and it was divine.  

This is a avocado and cucumber salad that I saw on Smitten Kitchen, which I thought was good but not obsessively good.  I think it was partly due to the fact that I didn't love the mayo and siracha combo as the dressing on this - next time I'm going Japanese style with the miso, sesame oil and ginger!

Sometimes I just throw cucumbers, tomatoes, avocado, and red onions into a giant bowl, dress it with balsamic and olive oil and call it a day. 

The MVP of the summer is the green sauce, that can do no wrong, that should go on everything you eat.  I ate it over greens, avocado, grilled corn and hardboiled eggs and it was a home run. I love this combination.

Speaking of the green sauce, I wanted my birthday meal to be this dish because of the green sauce and also because of the sous vide method of cooking steak that we had recently tried. It was accompanied by sauteed garlic kale, and roasted carrots and mashed potatoes (courtesy of Mignon).

I first had this sort of broccoli salad with yogurt dressing at my friend Laura's house (who said she got the recipe from the Wellness Mama cookbook) and I loved it so much I tried to recreate it.  I based it off this recipe here and made a huge batch to eat as a meal or as a side.  Here we are having it with buttered toast, sardines, grape tomatoes and peaches.

Not really a salad... or is it?? While my mom was here she made us bibimbap (a Korean dish of various vegetables and meat over rice) and it was so delicious. 

While my mom was here, we went on the hunt for good tomatoes and hit the jackpot at the farmer's market.  We got a bunch of vegetables there, including these beautiful cranberry beans, which we added to salad and rice.  We used all these vegetables to make one of my favorite dishes to eat in the summer: Panzanella sald. Along with green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, cranberry beans, I added salmon, red onion, mozzerella, and croutons from french bread...all topped with a homemade vinaigrette of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  

SLOANE TURNS SIX!

In a stunning turn of events (it always does feel stunning), my baby turned SIX! We think she is fabulous. She is smart, determined, caring, and makes me laugh all the time. Her thoughtfulness and creativity astounds me and I'm floored at how well she cares for her sister. I miss her when I'm not around her, and love doing things with her by my side.  What a glorious six years it has been with my girl Sloane!

For her party this year, we combined forces with two other lovely girls who have August birthdays - Loah who was turning six and Eden who was turning five - and had a joint birthday party!  It was fun, easy. and we avoided making people come to three separate birthday parties....and the girls loved it! Shout out to Mignon who made the girls these darling cupcakes and my cousin Lois, who helped put up all those streamers. I included a video I took with my phone of some of the festivities below if you want to see!

Triple birthday party ! from Christine Lu on Vimeo.

WHAT I'M READING V.34

1. You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld 

I read her book, "Prep" a while ago, liked it okay, but I like this collection of short stories so much better! The stories are delectable, because she has a way of getting inside the character's mind to reveal all the inner thoughts of a person, including the embarrassing and vulnerable, and couch it in observations that are humorous and comment on topics like motherhood, women friendship, and politics. 

2.  The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

We read this one in our book club last month, and it was a difficult read because of the subject matter, but I appreciated the sharp and skillful writing and the conversation we were able to have about it.  Whitehead writes in a way that is reminiscent of trauma - swift and descriptive, almost emotion, but in a way that is powerful exactly because of the delivery.  I wondered what additional stories there were to tell about the Underground Railroad, but Whitehead as a specific agenda. Underneath the stories of the horrors of slavery, he writes about the ways in which black history has been taken over by white narrators and about how the power belongs to the one who is able to tell the story, on their terms. 

3. The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky.

 I loved this one. I was instantly captivated by the sharp turns her writing to describe the most ordinary and mundane. It was refreshing. I was deeply intrigued about a quarter through the book, I couldn’t put it down after the halfway mark, and I cried reading the chapter called "The end of forever."  It is sort of a self-absorbed book, almost like a journal turned novel - if you know what I mean by that, but I didn't tire of it, and was deeply satisfied by the whole thing. It takes you through the adult life of a woman, through her relationships, doubts, career, etc. and one of those books that make me want to journal more.  A sample of the writing: "What she loved most about sitting at the coffee shop was not the coffee or the shop but the brief, listless feeling it gave her of having her life together. She could sit beside the richness and warmth and see herself as something so divinely competent. This is what it is to be an independent person, and she’d take a sip. This is what it is to be a cosmopolitan person, and she’d take a sip. So easily could she lose herself in the sense." 

4. A Gentleman of Moscow by Amor Towles

Another book club read ! It was a delicious read - I recommend this book if you love food, drink, and historical fiction. It tells the story of a man - Count Rostov - who is sentenced to house arrest in 1922 (for writing a poem!) in The Metropol Hotel in Moscow, Russia.  It's a lovely, sweeping read, and I underlined so many passages because of the lovely writing that described the pleasures of life. Count Rostov, although imprisoned in the hotel, enjoys the finer things and makes a whole world for himself within that hotel, making lifelong friendships and even a career as a waiter.  The descriptions are elegant and clear, and the sentences are not overworked. Towles wrote another book called, "Rules of Civility" that I'm looking forward to reading because of how much I liked this one. 

WEEKEND ROADTRIP TO NYC & DAD'S BIRTHDAY - VIDEO

As a follow-up to my previous post with photos from our 24 hours in NYC, here's a little video I made with clips I took on my phone that weekend!

ROAD TRIP TO NYC

A weekend trip up to Silver Spring to see my parents after they flew in from Korea turned into an impromptu road trip to NYC for 24 hours, and while it was sort of a crazy trip to take with two little ones in tow, I was all in! It was to be just me and the girls up to Silver Spring, and after dinner and a night at my sister's, we would continue on to NYC with my parents.  I knew it would be fine because I could split the driving with my parents, both of them are pros at navigating NYC, and I knew the girls would do well in the car because of their excitement.  We went up primarily because my mom wanted to go see Adrian Piper's exhibit at MOMA, and we would also stay with my other sister and celebrate my dad's birthday up there as well. I think a big part of the girls' excitement had to do with the fact that they had just gotten sleeping bags from Karen and they were eager to try them out.  They had their bags packed and sleeping bags slung over their shoulders, ready to go long before I ushered them out. 

We were only in NYC for 24 hours, but we got to spend a whole afternoon at MOMA, and then an entire evening at my sister's place, following by church and bagels on Sunday morning. Here are a whole bunch of pictures to commemorate!