I was very excited to receive a Magic Bullet for Christmas, especially after we watched the commercial again last week and my husband said he wanted it.

But figuring out what to do in it is more challenging. Any ideas?

Need a new dessert for the holidays? How about warm ginger cake?



My all-time favorite dessert is the warm ginger cake topped with pumpkin ice cream, caramel sauce, and whipped cream from Park Chow restaurant in San Francisco. There’s nothing like it anywhere else.

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These are recipes based on using a moka pot mentioned in the previous post. As you can see, the espresso drink recipes are simple. Do something nice for yourself or a loved one, make your own espresso drinks every day without having to leave your house! Be a home barista at family gatherings. And save yourself hundreds of dollars throughout the year.



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The frigid weather makes me crave more comfort food. Arroz caldo is one of my favorite Filipino comfort foods. It’s basically, Filipino porridge, much like Chinese congee or jook. But what’s different about arroz caldo is that it has so much more flavor than Chinese porridge. There’s ginger, fried garlic, and fish sauce to spice it up.

I use whatever rice I have on hand – brown, jasmine, calrose, long grain, or short grain. You can even mix them up. Also, if you have sweet rice, substitute it with one rice cooker size cup, which will make the arroz caldo creamier.



Fried garlic is sold in a plastic container at Asian grocery stores. It makes it much easier than chopping and frying your own garlic.

After making the arroz caldo, we can eat it over several days. You can also freeze it, which is what Filipino restaurants do.

After making this countless times, I’ve come up with an easy and quick way to make arroz caldo, by cooking the rice first and using a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken.

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Cooking at home saves so much money. If you don't know where to start check out a menu for a month's worth of easy dinners:

Miso soup, the soup in Japanese restaurants, is one of my favorite foods and it's easy and inexpensive to make yourself. Basically it's just miso paste (available at the health food store or Asian grocery store), tofu, green onion/scallion, and dried wakame (a type of seaweed) flakes. The miso soup recipe is available at