after the beans are roasted

We roast all of our coffees on site at the shop. I love the smell and the warmth of fresh roasted coffee! After the beans cool off a bit, John would handpick out the "flawed" beans and then bag them.

I love watching him work with coffee. He's always very focused and enjoying himself!

Picking out flawed beans.

Bagging coffee.

John was bagging coffee and I said, "Needs more intensity."

a package

I love how my mom always ties a rope around the care packages she sends me.




I used to work at the post office, and I know how post offices don't like it when a rope is tied around a package... it gets caught in machines, or tangled up with other stuff in the mail, but I love receiving packages with a rope tied on it, especially when it's from my mom! :)

chocolate cupcakes

I start making cupcakes for the shop again these days! Some of my favorite to make right now are chocolate ones.

For some of my friends, I even make vegan chocolate cupcakes! The recipe I use is adopted from one of Martha Stewart's cupcake recipes, and the chocolate frosting is from one of my Wilton cake books that came with the classes I took.





Vegan dark chocolate cupcakes.




Regular chocolate cupcakes.

I love making cupcakes!

kimchi pork

One of the dishes I like to make (to go with rice) these days is stir-fried pork with kimchi.




It's very easy to make. Slice pork thin (I usually cut boneless pork shoulders into thin slices,) and marinade quickly with a tiny little bit of soy sauce and sugar. Cut kimchi into thin strips (do not discard its juices). Heat a little bit of oil in the pan to cook the pork. As the pork start to brown, add kimchi and stir-fry together. Continue cooking until the pork is fully cooked and the kimchi is heated. Yum!

i love them

I got to see some of my favorite people when I was in Taiwan. These were the people who loved me lots and lots, too!

Here are some of them:







And there were also people who I met along with visiting different places and shops, and I think it was their passion, pride, and love of who they were and what they did that touched me. Here are some of them:






These were love.

food in taiwan

I ate a lot when I was in Taiwan.

I was organizing some of the photos of the food I had, and realized there were just too many of them!

Prior to getting to Taiwan, I was planning on eating all these different foods that always reminded me of home.

The first night John and I was in Taiwan we went to this chicken rice place. This place has been at the same location for decades. Everything seemed familiar, but there were just a lot more people dining in these days.


This was it. The first bite of "Taiwanese flavor" for me during the trip.

The next few days were packed with food, from my mom and dad, grandma, relatives and friends, restaurants, and street vendors; and there were two things that I "craved" the most, and just couldn't get enough of:


fish roe slices.


bell fruit. (some people call them water apples.)

But all and all, it was the time that I spent with my family getting, cooking, and/or enjoying food that I loved the most.

colors in taiwan

So I haven't blogged for a while. I think I just got lazy. There are so many fun things around me to blog about, and I'm just going to take it easy and blog as I go.

Some of you know John and I went to Taiwan and spent Chinese New Year with my parents. It was a great trip. I had not been back to Taiwan for Chinese New Year for over 10 years, and everything seemed different, yet unchanged.

One of the greatest things that impressed me was the colors I saw. The sky was so blue, and the produce and food were so vibrant and colorful... all in the middle January - February! Here are just some examples:


Pretty (and delicious) peppers at the market.


Juicy wrinkly  tangerines.


Grandma's food was pretty colorful, too.


It was so blue by the water.


I loved all the colors I saw.