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Like I said I’m not a big TV fan. You can hardly find me watching more than 3 hours of TV a year. But here, I’m totally hooked on Food Network. It’s a never-ending parade of chefs whipping up meal after meal after meal.

My favorite chefs to watch are Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee and Tyler Florence. I love how Rachael Ray has 2 or 3 dishes going on at the same time. That’s very real for me because that’s how I cook, I multi-task .

I love Sandra Lee’s tips too on saving money and using both fresh and prepacked items to save time. Again this combining fresh and storebought is very real for me. So it’s great to watch and learn.

And Tyler is very interesting because he talks about being hungry and can’t wait to eat what he cooks. That’s me too!! I’m an impatient person and his pace of cooking is pretty similar to mine – dancing back and forth and getting everything quickly together.

Do you watch cooking shows? Who’s your favorite and why?

You know what? I thought I would have lots more photos to share but I’ve been mostly car-less and housebound, hence not many photo opportunities. Anyhow, here are a few. Hope you enjoy them and have a great weekend!

Flowers growing near Whole Foods where we had a simple healthy lunch. Amazing how these flowers remain so pretty and fresh in this scorching weather. I’m all wilted and dried up the minute I step out into the sun!

We spent half a morning wandering among the giant shelves of Costco wondering, if I buy this 96-pack of granola bars or 20 lbs of coffee, will we be able to finish eating everything by the turn of the century ??!!

Seriously, you would need a document management system to track everything you see in a store this size! And after checking the giant bags of gummy bears and M and M’s my daughters wanted me to bring home, we were starved and stopped for this.

Okay so I’m finally a little more settled and finding the time to sit down and blog. So far, everywhere we go, it’s bursting with fresh fruit and veggie galore. There’s just so much variety this time of year in Sunny Cal that we’d be crazy not to go on a binge. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.

Here’s my snack (me? snack? nah!) of yogurt with fresh blueberries. Sometimes I add blackberries, grapes, banana or nectarine slices. Heaven!

We visited the Farmer’s Market last weekend and it was like strolling through nature’s very own garden in full bloom.

Beautiful locally grown fresh farm produce in every color imaginable! Amazing! I’m planning to go again this weekend !

I’m back with the photos and updates as promised. The thing about little aircrafts is that they kinda dip from side to side and make your tummy churn. Interesting how the noise of that engine makes everyone shut up immediately . I did a brave thing and took a picture just above San Francisco before my knuckles turned blue from my deadly grip on my seat!

This was my first meal after we landed. Tacos! Haven’t had them in ages so you can imagine how they made my tastebuds dance! So incredibly delicious.

And this here is my dream car monster truck! Now close your eyes and imagine Hip to be Mom sitting way up there and tearing down the highway in one of these! Cool, huh!

Just a few of the things that got me real excited .

Anyhow I spent the past couple of days running around with Steev on various errands. It’s scorching weather, and me and my umbrella, well, we’re are BFFs now. Wish Mary Poppins could see me now !!

We got home from errands and Tyson followed us into the kitchen where Skye was enjoying a meal of roast chicken. Tyson’s sharp nose quickly told him there’s good food on the table and he stood up at the table hoping to get some .

He was so cute dancing around on his hind legs as Skye raised her hand to tell him to get down. He must’ve thought she had a chicken drumstick in her hand, the silly beagle! Skye tells me dogs stand on their hind legs to beg for food.

So we were walking past this candy store like we’ve walked past it millions of times before. There’s always a huge crowd milling around the storefront watching how they roll these ridiculously long ropes of goo into little candy bits like these.

Frankly we’ve never stopped to look. But yesterday there was a lady standing in front of the store, distributing these colorful Stickies (as they’re called) to greedy shoppers, like us . She generously told us to grab a handful. How could we refuse? They’re so cute we almost couldn’t bear to stick them in our mouths! Too cute…

So what’s your favorite candy? Maybe you could convince me to like candy !

I’ve just finished baking a batch of my infamous cheese-crusted melt-in-the-mouth shepherd’s pie and they’re sitting in my oven waiting to be delivered to my two princesses at school.

Wednesdays and Thursdays, I have one finishing school at 4:00pm and the other at 5:30pm. My poor teens are up from dawn and at school from 7:00am with a measly 20-minute recess. That’s 10 hours straight, yes, even longer than working at an office. And of course, they’re most generously allowed a lunch break at 2:00pm.

That’s when I’ll be standing outside the prison school gate with a bunch of other parents waiting to sneak them lunch over the school fence!! I feel so sorry for my poor girls I just have to make them an extra special lunch to brighten up their day.

I pack their school lunches with a bottle of ice-cold water each and sunblock as they’ll be out in the blazing 95 degree sun all afternoon. Sometimes I throw in a couple of candies just for treats. These school hours are a real drag and frankly I can’t wait till they finish high school! Oops, look at the time, I’m off to grace the prison gates !

So we stumbled upon a new (to us) shopping mall on our way to a cousin’s wedding recently. This mall is pretty out of the way for us so we weren’t really aware of its existence. But it looked promising so we decided to check it out Saturday!

The place is huge. Land is cheaper on the outskirts and mall rental too, I reckon, as things seemed to be cheaper there. Maybe it was purely psychological, I don’t know, but our guys ended up with a heap of shirts and pants at $30-50 each which are normally priced at $300+!

Raine came away with 2 tops and 2 pairs of shoes and hasn’t stopped smiling since. Even the biggest losers, Skye and me, came away with 1 pair of jeans each ! Looks like we bought everything but the kitchen sink driveway alarm!

Between the 5 of us, we came away with 7 shopping bags filled to bursting. You can only see 5 bags and 2 pairs of shoes here. There’s 2 ecobags not in the picture !

We aren’t normally this crazy (or are we ?) but we’ve been so starved of retail therapy lately. And speaking of starved, lunch was (from bottom left) a sumptuous feast of blanched lettuce topped with fried shallots, steamed chicken, tofu in spicy black bean sauce, pot stickers and Thai-style fish in a tangy spicy sauce! Yums!

I would stop here but you know what? We went home so tired we stepped in the door and literally passed out on the sofa! And when we were nicely rested, we skipped out again later in the evening for another feast! Happy days !