Shen Bei Bei's Chicken

Shen Ye Ye sneaking Lily a cookie at church.

Numerous times people have asked for this recipe and I can never answer since I always just throw it together without measuring. But I'm not always fabulous at the 'ol eyeball method and while it usually turns out great, sometimes it...doesn't. So the past couple of times I've tried measuring and have come up with a recipe for:

Shen Bei Bei's chicken

6-7 lbs chicken thighs
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 T sugar
1 T pepper

Throw everything in a bowl (or two) the night before you want to cook it and let set in fridge until the next evening. Place on baking sheets skin side up. Pour over marinade. Bake at 300 for about two hours or until very tender.

Recipe notes:
1. If you find 6-7 lbs of chicken to be a ponderous amount, remember I have 5 kids.
2. Don't even think about using boneless skinless frozen chicken thighs. It would mock Shen Bei Bei's culinary genius. The Shen Bei Bei who makes pumpkin pie filling entirely on the stove top. The Shen Bei Bei who drinks a peanut butter jar of water and does 100 leg kicks every morning. The Shen Bei Bei who faithfully eats 7 pieces of fruit daily. The Shen Bei Bei who despite being nearly blind from macular degeneration, would every Tuesday and Thursday painstakingly cut up fresh fruit and put it in bags then bring it to the courtyard for my kids to eat while they played. The Shen Bei Bei who sings American Christmas songs from the '30s and '40s every ward Christmas party for at least a half hour wearing his purplish/plaidish suit and bowtie. The Shen Bei Bei who is, I believe, the one and only Chinese man of his generation who likes to cook and sew. You see where I am going. This is Shen Bei Bei's chicken. It's simple, yet brilliant and I can just see the look on his face if he was told someone were to use bonesless, skinless chicken in his recipe. So don't do it. Please. However, feel free to frig with the other ingredients as Shen Bei Bei doesn't have set amounts since he really is good at the 'ol eyeball method.
3. This recipe keeps on giving. Pour the chicken oil in a bowl and use it during the week for stir frying and egg frying or for frying whatever it is you like to fry. Scrape up the rest of the junk from the pans (except the stuff that is REALLY stuck), put it a bowl and away in the fridge. The next day heat it up in a pan with the leftover rice and eat it with a fried or soft boiled egg.
4. Soak your pan for at least an hour before you attempt to scrub it.

Shen Bei Bei, Shen Ai Yi, Lin Ma Ma (standing)

P.S. It's possible Eliseo has a booger on the end of his finger.

Feel free to be impressed...I made a quilt!

I decided if I was going to stay home and call myself a homemaker then I might as well do something homemaker-ish. So I made a quilt.

It looks sort of blue here, but in reality is a solid purple. If you are really impressed by the pattern I, sadly, cannot take the credit. Grant was the mastermind there.

Detail of the binding

I lied. I didn't make a quilt to elevate myself to talented homemaker status. I did it because a really talented person in my ward made the below quilt for Violet and gave it to me at my baby shower. I love it so much that I just had to have one for myself, in my favorite color..purple. And since I thought that my talented friend probably wouldn't super want to make one for me I figured I'd have to do it myself. My motives were purely selfish.

Isn't this quilt awesome? If it had a Hello Kitty on it somewhere it would be the pinnacle of my girlish dreams for Violet. And the binding! I would never think of something so clever.

Am I going to become.....A QUILTER???? I don't know. It was pretty fun, kind of tedious, fairly expensive (like $80!), all in all a good experience but I think I'll mostly stick to projects that can be done in an afternoon. Like this.

A dress for Violet made from the leftovers.