Sake for winter days

Recently, I try to reduce drinking coffee. I want to wake up in the morning, go to work happily without a cup of coffee. Drinking too much coffee sometimes let me feel TIRED! ~~~~~

Ok, so I have a new hobby (hope not become habit as it was with coffee): sake: a traditional drink from Japan. It makes my mind clear before and after every final exam ^-^ .

My husband does not allow me drink any sake with alcohol in ingredient. The pure sake does not include it as a material to make sake but only rice and yeast rice. The problem is the good sake is imported from Japan without English description.!!!!! 

After several purchasing, we figured out that buying sake from Wholefood is the cheapest, even compare with Japanese supermarket around Irvine. The difference in price for each bottle (300 ml) is about $4.

Wholefood (in Tustin, next to Costo) also has a large range of GOOD sake, they keep it cold!

 The flavor sake

These are what we tried.
- Prepare a big tea pot (you can use a big bowl)
- Use medium hot tape water
- Put the whole bottle into water for 10 minutes, the water will warm up the sake. Warm sake is better for a cold night!
- Then drink haha

You can drink a bit before you put the sake into warm water, and pour the sake out every 5 minutes, you can enjoy all range of sake's flavor, from dry to sweet, cold to warm.

Each of these bottle is about $10.5

pS: don't drink when you are pregnant and under 21 year old, or when you are using medicine.

Count down Chocolate box for new year

Around $4 a box, the chocolate days 'til Christmas from Trader must be a fun toy (and sweet) for the days before big holiday!

One per day is enough!

Japanese herbal tea

Yesterday, we found this tea in Mitsuwa, Costa Mesa. It is a very simple tea combination but very suitable for a humid and cold day like recent weather in Irvine.

They combine 6 kinds of teas and herb in a big tea bag: barley, oolong, soybeanm cordata, chapanpsao, and cassiatorea. It is suggested to brew with 600 ml of broil water, but I use more than that, I think 1 1000ml. The flavor and color of the tea is still very great! At least this tea has less caffeine than the original oolong tea or back tea, you can drink it at night.

I use the glass tea pot from Ikea, it can hold up to 1000 ml of water.

And this is the color of a cup of tea

Mini phalaenopsis orchid for December

The winter comes, time to take a new pot of orchid from Trader Joe's! Today I bought the mini phalaenopsis orchid for only $8.99.

 At a closed look, the mini flowers are so beautiful!

 The orchid has double spikes

It comes with a mini ceramic pot. Orchid pot from Trader Joe often comes from Germany, but this one from China.

I prefer they put orchid in a small basket before put it into the pot. For the mini pot, they put the whole roots of the orchid directly into the pot, looks so painful for the orchid. The watering problem also comes. The extra water has no way to get out of the pot, unless you put it up side down !!!

These are other orchids we bought from Trader Joe's this year