Before we dive into what’s really a photo spam rather than a piece of intellectual writing, I want to first apologize for already failing 2X blog posts a week on the second week. There’s a lot of topics I want to post about but I’m often limited in accompanying media or I feel like it would be better paired with an upcoming video.

THIS JUST MEANS I’M TRYING TO GET MORE VIDEOS OUT, REALLY SO PLEASE BEAR WITH ME AND WE WILL GET THROUGH 2018 TOGETHER.

So yeah, let’s also take a look at what other goals I’ve failed so far within the first two weeks of the day after Christmas.

There you have it – I’m still sloppy but working on it.

Now, we can get to the fun part. The part where I woke up and so did Jae, but my first thought was that I wanted food and Jae’s first thought was to clean the entire house.

If you aren’t too familiar with how Jae and I work, here’s a basic run down. I am a free-spirited passionate creative lowkey neurotic maniac – when it comes to anything that’s not domestic chores. Jae has the work ethic of something with a very high work ethic and applies it to everything in life, his job, taking care of Haru, the house and his unstoppable OCD. I am now a housewife in training and Jae is the commander of weekly seasonal cleanings, which is largely for my sake because I’ve been getting sick super easily from the air quality after the fires happened.

But since it was the new year we were preparing for, our cleaning had to be extra thorough so that we could start off the new year in a beautiful clean home.

Our bathroom which looks bare but really I shoved everything into a drawer so now they can’t open easily

My ‘vanity’ table. Here you can see my boxes that hold my skincare supplies and my makeup box and brushes.

Our kitchen island which has stuff stacked on top of it because we don’t know where it should go

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SAY THIS BC I SEE IT ON REDDIT ALL THE TIME. GUYS, THIS IS OUR BATTLESTATION AHHAHAHA

We also got our car washed, our laundry done and Haru bathed as well.

Jae was happy, I was happy, and Haru was Haru.

And of course, the holidays wouldn’t be considered a happy occasion if I didn’t third wheel Jae and Yeujin again so yeah, this is my life now and I should accept it.

Agedashi Tofu – Jae’s favorite appetizer.

Baked green mussels – MY FAVORITE

Miso cod SO GOOD

Because I have the memory span of a developing toddler, I cannot remember what we did after dinner so let’s pretend I went to sleep at 9PM.

After all, the next day was New Years Eve and we were going to be social with someone other than a teammate!!!!!

We had an incredibly jam-packed pre-dinner schedule, starting with taking Haru to the vet for her bordatella vaccination renewal, a journey to HMART where we had to eat as well, and then dinner prep. We were joined by Piff and Toby for the first half of the morning.

By the way, if you ever go to HMART on Huntington, their food is not worth the price. Unless you feel like you’re about to keel over and die from hunger, just go buy the cut meats for same price and grill at home or something.

So the main dishes for the night were steamed fish, Shanghai style rice cakes, and bossam. Because the vlog is much better at explaining what we did, I’ll end this with my fish recipe!

You will need:

• A whole fish! I bought a ‘Striped Bass’ and had it gutted and de-scaled. You will need to do a bit of preparation yourself because they don’t clean it 100%. All fins need to be cut (you will need kitchen shears), all scales fully removed and wash out all the blood and gunk inside.
• Vegetables – cilantro, ginger, and buttloads of green onion. You can prepare the ginger however you like, I only use a little because I want to get rid of the fishy smell but I hate ginger in general. The green onion should have the green parts separated from the white.
• Sauce – soy sauce, oyster sauce, cooking sake, sesame oil, and sugar (depending on how sweet you like the sauce.)

Let the fish steam for about 10 minutes. You can probe it with a butter knife to see if it’s finished (the meat should be tender and semi-transparent and the bone should be white.)

While it’s steaming, in a hot wok with any oil of  your choice, sautee the white parts of the green onion and ginger and then add in the sauce mixture.

It should more or less sync up with the fish steaming, so once the fish is done, take it out carefully and pour out the liquid that accumulates onto the fish. Garnish with the green pieces of the onion and with the cilantro. Spoon the sauce onto the fish and you’re doooonee!

To server, just cut down the back bone and flip the half over and remove the long nasty bone.

Once again, thank you for watching and reading and supporting!