Happy Birthday, Yen!

My cousin Yen turns 25 today. She’s a month and a day older than me. I can’t believe time just flied us by. It seems like yesterday that we were riding bikes together. On Saturday, we had a family gathering and celebrated her birthday at the same time. Like always, we had bangin’ ass Vietnamese foods. First, we had “lau,” one of my all time favorite dish. Not sure if there is an English name for it but it’s basically “cook as you eat.” There were shrimps, meatballs(raw), oysters, beef, mushrooms, cabbages, all type of Vietnamese vegetables. They were all fresh and uncooked so you have to do is dip them in a boiling seasoned water (soup) located in the middle of the table on top of the gas stove. Take them out when it cooked, dip them in Sate (hotsauce) and soy sauce, and put them in your mouth. My Gosh, they are heaven, especially with a bottle of Heineken. After that we had steamed salmons with vegetables. Rolled them up with spring rolls and dip into man nem (the real fish sauce that only the real Vietnamese can handled). Then we had bo kho (Vietnamese beef stew with french baguette). I am not gonna go on with desserts and all the sweet stuffs. Damn my stomach was about to exploded.

After stuffed all that foods, we sat together to chit chat about my cousin Minh wedding which is coming this december. He’s currently a MIS professor and his fiance is a maternity doctor. What a perfect match huh? I am so happy for them. He asked me to put together a small site for him so that our family all over the world could access it. I told him I will be glad to do it. So check back later for this special project.