H is hr How to enjoy Blog Searching #AtoZchallenge via @trincarl

After much writing online it can be enjoyable to just sit back and look for blogs that other people have written.  Something might catch your eye that reminded you of the most joyous occasion of traveling abroad.  For instance one of my most enjoyable moments in South Korea was when I was listening to a American Korean explain what we'd be doing while teaching overseas and I looked out the window and saw a hundred rooftops that I could clearly jump from one to the next and I felt like WoW! I'm in South Korea!
Applevalley, MN

Here are some more expat blogs that I found on 
matadornetwork.com/abroad


Best travel writing   

www.whiteindianhousewife.com Its just as the name suggests White American Indian Housewife writes about her life in India.

www.ieatmypigeon.com Italy very beautiful blog

http://hereishavana.com/

http://www.dannychoo.com/  I love this blog because it has anime dolls that are made in Japan and they are so unique.

  

Eat, Drink and be Merry:You May Diet

   

Veggies have made an appearance in my life but like most American dishes they are put as an aside veggies like corn, carrots and broccoli  which have been put on my plate just for the purpose of saying I ate a veggie.  Here are some great blogs that emphasize veggies versus just throwin' them on the plate

www.veggierunners.com has  a veggie feta cheese pizza.  Now I don't eat pork but would l would still like to jazz up my pizza without having to return to the boring plain cheese pizza. 

Europeans love vegetable stock and here's a great soup from Kate Ford's blog  www.thevegspace.wordpress.com called hot and sour mushroom soup .  She also has a recipe for  

Chana Masala.

www.theppk.com This is very approachable vegetarian blog by Chandra.  It has recipe called rice paper roll with red curry peanut sauce- I'm in love with peanuts more than ever after making a peanut and veggie rice dish. Chandra also has a chana-masala   recipe.  Now ever since I've been shopping at the indian market on Central in Minneapolis, I've fallen in love with any form of orange masala and I will get to the bottom of replicating the to-go dishes they have at this Indian market even if it kills me,lol. Here's one last kale recipe .

When Home Feels like a Revolving Door

   


When home feels like a revolving door its nice to be able to explore food that can be made fast online. I like a few  food blogs in particular because their recipes can be made fast.  A lot of food recipes online will say that they are fast but then they require 20-30 ingredients.  I don't think that is fast.  Or they will say they are fast and then require you to use a food processor or blender which takes 15 minutes to clean.  These food blogs don't put you through that work.  Its my belief that when you can learn to cook easy and fast, you can learn to cook exquisite and great meals too.


www.iamafoodblog.com   Stephanie Le writer of this blog has a coconut almond rice krispie recipe and a 15 minute doughnut recipe. Also a two minute chocolate mug cake recipe.  isn't that the coolest thing ever! In two minutes you could be serving yourself a chocolate cake in a glass. These recipes are easy enough even for me!  

http://weelicious.com/ This is another great blog if your in the habit to search for the ingredients you have and work for their in order to throw together a great meal.

 

Big Fat Donut Purveyor

Its hard to find absolutely unique donut ideas because you have to know what your looking for. People don't usually blog about the donuts itself but the donut shops.

www.voodoodoughnut.com they have donuts like triple chocolate penetration donut, neopolitan and Miami vice doughnut.

www.kingarthurflour.com buy your baking merchandise here.  Also has pumpkin donut recipe and cinnamon spice donuts.

Shops in the United States like

Glam dolls (Minnesota)

Blue Star donuts

Donut Bar has crème Brulee donut

Dynamo Donut and Coffee

Donut Vault (Chicago)

Dough(Brooklyn NY)

Gour Doughs (has a big fat donut purveyor)

Housing Vs the Elements

      

Give Me a Bell, I'm Gormless

Shine a Light for Community-MN Artists

If you come South Minneapolis, you need to visit the Community-MN artists stall in the global market, off of Chicago and 27th.  This stall consists of artwork from at least 30 Minnesota artists. The show case items included things like postcards and jewelry made out of old, used wristwatches.  Also recycled materials that have literally been melted down from an artist's stove in order to make earrings.  Finally yarn weaved ornaments that resemble animals like cats and birds, dragons and frogs.

Bung Me my Bits and Bobs

Bees Knees, Belt up and Botch me

      

 

Italian Asian Pasta

Last week I selfishly went to Leeann Chin's restaurant and decided I needed to do a little Asian food research if I am to ever to become adequate in Asian food cooking.  These are the cooking blogs that I came across online in my research.

www.kyspeaks.com   I like this Malaysian cooking blog because its one of the most visited Asian blogs and also because it has some unique food recipes.  It also has pictures of Malaysia with the  writer Ky, on a motorcycle.  Ky has recipes like Sansai Okowa & Chestnut Steam Rice at Isetan KLCCand seafood I never tried for like prawns, snow crab, and fish head.

www.gourmeted.com Who says that Asians can't rock desserts on this blog is a fabulous German Sunken Apple Cake( AKA Versunkener Apfelkuchen) which I found so unique in appearance.  Its has your basic apple pie look with a weaved lattice pie-top crust but the apples inside are cored, peeled and  placed like an accordion making it look so fabulous.

 

www.steamykitchen.com  I like this blog because showcases a Korean food writer who is a TV chef and cookbook author.   She has a post called Food too Cute to Eat showcasing Sushi Pandas, polar bear in mushroom and cabbage hot tub and Sugar Kitty in a coffee.

www.indiansimmer.com  I found this blog interesting as it explores Indian food and some of the pictures just pop out at you.   Bright all blue kitchen shelves with bright blue cutlery. And fabulous food photography that gives new life to the typical ginger, cinnamon stick and turmeric typical in Indian dishes. ( I should know, I have to cook for a Pakistani individual daily and let me tell you  that cooking with Turmeric is not my favorite thing to do).

All the Candy You Should be Eating

   

Babbles From my Relative

Marion:(Marion opens her gifts)Candy-hmmmm yummmmmm  Energy in the morning

Marion:I'll have candy instead of cereal tomorrow or candy instead of pop for breakfast

Marion:Reese's Pieces- Yay! Protein

Marion:Hmm what's in this gift?

Brother:Its sea salt

Marion:Oh No! Sea salt is not good for you

Brother:Its a gift card with an endless supply of sea salt in the box

Marion:Oh, that's Terrible!

 

 

 

 

  

Musings on Italy and Beyond

   

The ice is melting in Minnesota. I woke up this morning and instead of watching the parades that bombard the networks on December 24th  I decided to search very hard on finding posts on people's blogs that cater to their kids and the fabulous work by parents in nurturing them.  

Here's www.amommyabroad.com a woman writes about her life in Europe and she writes a post called Teaching my monster to read and below that is a post about bringing her kid to the circus.  I love the fact that in their is a stuffed angry bird in the background of her kid's stuffed animal collection.  Her post on taking her kid to the circus in Italy is very similar with my post about going to see Disney on Ice.  So I had to check out her pictures on a Circus overseas.  So here's what they seen at the circus according to her There were acrobats, roller skaters, horses, trapeze artists, a hula hoop girl.
Here is another blog, this family is actually visiting Minnesota currently but they have travelled throughout China. petersonchina.blogspot.co.uk/ They have four kids many of which are adopted.  Which I love because I myself was adopted and consider it a blessing to be adopted.   
 

Raining non stop in Minnesota

The sun sets amongst a cold dreary day.  Between two rows of rooftops slightly below their edge lies a circle the size of a tree stump.  Its outlined with  holiday lights enveloping a house like a looking glass.  Rows and rows of lights that mesmerize you and  for a second you don't think about the fact that its too cold, because there is absolutely no snow on the ground and its the 23rd of December in Minnesota which is unbelievable and you sit outside for a second, for two seconds for three and the scene is all too familiar.  Yes- its a reminder from the holiday you spent in Britain.  This place can't be Minnesota, you think.

Dancing in the Winter

Take me Home

Feeling Green in Roseville

Our Juicy Nukes and Crannies in Minneapolis

As I was travelling through south Minneapolis, I seen some fabulous businesses with even more bright colors than I ever thought possible.  
I was on my way to  drop off six bags of stuff from my house to Arc Value Village, a thrift store  There are hundreds of unique places to drop off used stuff and furniture items throughout Minnesota.  Those places include churches which will often go as far as picking up your old furniture.  craigslist  also allows you to post your used items online and you can leave the items near your garage and patrons with come and pick them up.  

Views as a Turbo-Body Pump Fashionista

View at Twin Lake in Robbinsdale, Minnesota










I was at the gym yesterday and I did a Body Pump class which is an aerobic strength training class.  It uses a platform, bar and weights.  We literally pumped it up to a song called What You Got by Colby O'Donis feat. Akon and another song called  Give Me love with LL Cool J feat. Seal. Our teacher challenged us to put more weights on our bars. I throught to myself I'll pass.... If I add any more weight to my bar so early in the game I'll probably wobble right over along with the bar.  

Today was even more work out with turbo class.  Turbo kick is a combination of cardio-kick boxing.  Basically jab punches, hook punches, upper cuts and shuffles.  The punching moves that can be done to the beat of the music, The song we kick-boxed to was quite invigorating, the hardest move of the body pump class was a move called burpee. The burpee is almost impossible as you get older but i have seen women as old as 50 do it.

I'm busy fighting off the calories lately from eating too many cookies some of which include ginger bread cookies, tea cakes, and lebkucken (german ginger cookies which are sold in a bag found at gingerdelights.com.)  

A Bit of Blog with my Tea

I'm reading more blogs.  Let's see this one caught my attention because it has a cartoon picture of a woman flying with an umbrella. How Mary-Poppins-like. its called quintessentially-English This writer has a blog post about reminiscing on the Friends show while she's in England. Obviously she's feeling a bit homesick but I give her credit she'd been in  England for Ten Years. 

Moving forward. Here's a blog from an expat in Norway called meganstarr.com she writes a post called 8 things to love about Minsk.  Here's a flashback from the blog listed above where the previous writer was talking about her love of the show Friends and I recall an episode in Friends where the character Phoebe was in love with a man who worked in Minsk. How coincidental! Anyway, this blog has many lovely pictures of Norway and great pictures of the people if I might add.      

Tiny Notes from Expat Blogs

More Expat blogs that I have viewed.  This one is from an Expat who has lived in India.  Her blog spot is at madamletmetellyouonething.com -Isn't that the greatest name for a blog! Well, I was intrigued right away just because I love the dialogue of a language and especially accents and this blog title was clearly the dialogue from India. I can picture the Panjabi behind it. I just finished watching the movie Fargo and I was so deeply moved by the movie and the depiction of the Minnesotan accent. (my accent)

Anyway madamletmetellyouonething.com  blog writer is currently back in the States but her post Blimey-that took long enough gives you a good indication of what her return trip from India was like not to mention that she is from Ireland but has a British accent, awesome!


I like to pick blogs to read based on whether or not they have a picture of the expat's city that they're currently residing somewhere in the cover page.  No pic of city, no visit to blog.  Well that's not always the case but here's a pretty good blog with a picture of Shanghai, China ephemeraanddetritus.com  She has a post called Tiny Notes from Hanoi.  I'm always looking for attention grabber titles in people's posts and this is definitely one of them.  Isn't the name Hanoi for a city just awesome?  It reminds me of different cities and names of people that my parents used to come tell me about as a kid after their military stay in the Philippines.


Here is another great blog from Shanghai huntingcheeseinchina.blogspot.com instead of lostincheeseland.com we've now got a blog about hunting for cheese.  Hmmm sounds great.  Well this blog has plenty of pictures. Fanstastic! I especially like the color in the pictures and specifically one that shows the outdoor market toys for children to buy in China-way cool, who doesn't love toys by the way. 

Serial Podcast made me feel despondent

 I finally finished Serial Podcast. First released in October 2014, it is a spinoff of the radio program This American Life.

 Season 1 is an investigation into a 1999 Baltimore murder.Hae Min Lee was an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She was last seen at approximately 3:00 p.m. on January 13, 1999. Her corpse was discovered on February 9 in Leakin Park and identified two days later. The case was immediately treated as a homicide^. Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed, was arrested on February 28 at 6 a.m. and charged with first-degree murder 

 As the podcast drew to a close after I had been  listening to  it for the past six weeks, I was not pleasantly surprised at the ending.  Of course they wouldn't say that a couple journalists were able to find enough evidence to say that a man who was accused of murder 15 years ago was wrongfully committed.  Adnan Syed may or may not get out of prison but I  learned a few things about the case:

 1. Don't ever think that by speaking with someone whose loved one is in prison that there going to agree with you that another man is innocent.-

 (I learned this the hard way by speaking to a friend of mine about the case she ended up telling me that Adnan Syed probably did it and doesn't deserve freedom, and this accusation is based on what???)

 2. I learned that what a person does before they commit a so-called crime makes a bigger difference than what most people might think.

 3.I learned that audio podcast is a great genre and something I will definitely enjoy in the futurew