New adventures in cooking

One of the best things about living in Houston is the variety of food. Of course I love the Mexican influence but I have really grown to enjoy the wide variety of Asian food as well. I have been lucky to have a Vietnamese coworker who has taken me to many of the Vietnamese restaurants in our area. All of these experiences have really fostered an interest in Asian cooking and for Christmas, the husband got me the perfect cookbook to get us started:

The book is a compilation of recipes and stories and is a really great read. We've definitely had some challenges cooking with different techniques and ingredients but it has been a lot of fun trying various things out of the book.

After reading through a great deal of the book we realized we needed to buy a wok. The husband ordered one and seasoned it when it arrived with almost an entire container of kosher salt.

We used the wok to make a beef and ginger stir-fry and a vegetable stir-fry the other day and it was quite tasty.

The beef and ginger stir fry had 1/2 lb of ginger - whoa.

Vegetable stir fry - cabbage, mushrooms and snow peas.