Blog - Two Red Bowls

salted yolk & lotus paste beignets

09.20.2018

Beignets! It’s been awhile since a capital-P Project has landed on this blog. Since the advent of our little guy, I’ve been more tempted to fill my Saturday mornings with alphabet books and trips to the playground and the occasional quick and easy food experiment than making extended messes in the kitchen. But then a few weeks ago, while daydreaming about the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and all the mooncakes that it heralds, the idea of these salted yolk and lotus paste beignets popped fully-formed into my head. My very favorite flavor of mooncake, silky, fragrant lotus paste and punchy orange yolk, but dispersed throughout an airy, tender beignet instead of in a dense mooncake? They were, at that moment, as good as made.

a common table: book trailer!

09.12.2018

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Oh my goodness, we have a trailer! If you’ve been around for awhile, you might remember that it’s B2 who likes to tinker with video every now and again. This has been his recent labor of love, and I’m so excited to share it with you. There’s more coming about the book in the next few weeks, including some goodies for those of you who have preordered (thank you!) and details about a few events for any friends here in Los Angeles, but for now, hope you enjoy the baby footage as much as we do.

buttercream roses and rose buttercream

08.14.2018

Believe it or not, these pretty little buttercream roses were piped by yours truly. For someone who is all thumbs and, at best, has a passing knowledge of how to decorate a cake, this is a feat indeed–and it’s all thanks to a dynamo of a friend and her marvelous book, Coco Cake Land, which is coming out today! I truly cannot be more excited.

red cabbage slaw with peanuts and dukkah

07.31.2018

We have lately entered the phase that I assume is a rite of passage for all parents, where at least part of our dinner a couple times a week is “whatever our toddler didn’t eat.” (This is especially because one of his favorite new phrases is “No-no,” which he uses often and with delight.) All things considered, it’s actually a fortunate turn of events for us, given that the things we feed B3–like, say, actual fresh veggies–tend to be way healthier than what we usually put in our bellies, and more often than not, happen to be pretty tasty, too. If you’re wondering if I ate more of Luke’s food than he did last weekend, I admit nothing.

curried couscous with roasted cauliflower

06.27.2018

As it turns out, one of the happier features of law school and, now, law firm life is the dependable occurrence of free lunches at least once a week–whether for a talk, or a deposition, or just inexplicably placed in a breakroom and abandoned for three hours (that’s okay, I’ll still eat it). As someone who will happily consume anything that’s offered to me for free, I am a big fan of this, and I have hardly met a catered work lunch that I did not like. (Which is a good thing, since I’ve been seeing a little bit more of work lately than I have for awhile!) That said, it makes for an extra delightful surprise when, in the vast landscape of half-sandwich platters, there manages to appear something new that I like so much that, free of the confines of fluorescent lights and conference rooms, I’d still happily search out on my own dime.

a common table cover and preorders!

05.09.2018

It’s real! Two years of reminiscing about favorite family recipes, making messes in the kitchen, running around during naptimes, washing (and washing, and washing) dishes, and a little bit of manic refreshing of online book listings, and A Common Table is all dressed up and out in the world for you to preorder wherever books are sold. I am still pinching myself.

where to buy:

amazon • barnes & noble • books-a-million • indiebound
powell’s • google • ibooks

more bits and bats

04.10.2018

Today is the very last day of B2’s trip to Korea! For the last week, B2 has been taking depositions in Seoul and we odd-numbered bowls have been fending for ourselves in a papa-less wilderness. For me this has meant subsisting solely on the weird-but-maybe-balanced diet of roasted Brassicas (of which B2 is not fond), ramen, and gigantic M&M pancakes. For B3, it has meant having to suffer through my far poorer renditions of daddy’s lullabies. As much as I like M&M pancakes, it is difficult to tell which one of us is more excited that my husband is on his way to LAX right now.

salt & pepper garlic fries with jalapeno & cilantro

02.23.2018

The calendar tells me that it has been more than one month since I was last here, which feels both much shorter and much longer than the reality (as always seems to be the case). The biggest event of the last month for us, though, is definitely this: We are now officially the proud parents of a bona fide, honest-to-goodness toddling toddler. Our little man can walk! A few weekends ago, B3 graduated from his half-lunging, half-toppling three-step walk to teetering halfway across the room on his own, and in the last few days he’s been making his way around the entire apartment–usually with both fists up, his belly stuck out, eyes opened as wide as they will go, and mouth open in a grin like a manic puppy. It is the craziest thing. If someone could bottle up the giddiness you get from looking up to see your previously quadripedaling baby suddenly wobbling towards you on his two feet, no one would ever have a bad day again.

pho noodle salad

01.18.2018

We are in the midst of a thoroughly January state of affairs: We got home on New Year’s Eve from our trip to see B2’s parents in Honolulu, where I was lazier, more relaxed, and more rested than a parent with a toddler has any right to be (God bless grandmas), and in the midst of our post-Hawaii gloom, were all promptly felled by the Great California Flu of 2018. Well, more accurately, I was felled by the Great California Flu of 2018, B2 was mildly sick, and B3 was sick for exactly one night before bouncing back to his same exuberant self, charging around the house while casting me mystified looks and wondering why his mom was being such a baby.

cookies and christmas pjs

12.20.2017

Hi! In less than three days, we’re jumping on (or, more accurately, “squeezing a toddler and many bags and a stroller and a car seat onto”) a plane and heading to Hawaii for the first time since our two-bowl household became a three-bowl one. There are aunties and uncles and cousins for Luke to meet for the first time, beaches to explore, galbi to chew on, and to say we–and even more, his grandparents–are excited would be an understatement. Our fellow passengers are probably less excited, though they don’t know it yet. (If you have any tips for entertaining a 14-month old in an enclosed space for five hours, I welcome them and our seatmates will thank you.)