Avon SkinSoSoft WinterSoft Intense Concentrate

This Avon SkinSoSoft Wintersoft Intense Concentrate was among the items in a care package I recently received from home. I was thrilled, since it is getting chilly outside and my hands and feet are starting to dry up.

Apparently there is alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) in this cream and the tube warns to use sunscreen and limit sun exposure during use and even for a week after use! That may be a bit problematic, since I was expecting to be able to use this on my hands. The instructions on the tube says elbows, knees and other problem areas, but one of my biggest problem areas is my hands! Also, wouldn't I have to use my hands to apply this to the other "problem areas" anyway? Are they really expecting me to wear gloves out during and a week after use? Or are they expecting me to wash my hands after each use to get rid of the AHA? But wouldn't that be counterproductive, causing my hands to become even drier? I guess you can see I'm not so thrilled about this product containing AHA. I don't quite understand why I would need AHA on my elbows, knees and other "problem areas" to begin with.

Anyway after a few uses, I think I might actually have to follow the tube's instructions after all. The texture of this cream doesn't feel so thick, just like any other cream, but it turns out to be quite intense. It truly isn't meant to be use anywhere else other than the problem areas and I made the mistake of applying it all over my legs once just to see. Nothing bad happened, only that my legs felt sticky for the next 24 hours until I could wash it off in the shower! So yes, if you apply it on areas other than the super dry areas like elbows, knees, or heels, you might be annoyed with the sticky sensation as though the cream never really absorbed into the skin.

Another thing I found really annoying with this cream is that it is very heavily perfumed. And not with just any fragrance but a very flowery grandma's perfume. Sigh. But hey, at least it does its job on my elbows and knees, but I definitely will not buy this again :(

Salmon in Yuzu Sesame Sauce

A very simple dish! Quite easy to make, and the yuzu sesame combination is super tasty!

Here's my recipe for Salmon in Yuzu Sesame Sauce.

Ingredients:

- Salmon, 5-6 slices skin on

- Negi thinly sliced, or scallions chopped, about a handful

Seasonings:

- Sesame oil, 3/4 Tablespoon

- Yuzu vinegar (it's called vinegar, but it's really concentrate, just like the lemon/lime concentrate in the plastic fruit-shaped bottles), 1 teaspoon. Don't go over board with this or it will turn your sauce bitter.

- Soy sauce, 2 Tablespoons

- Sugar, preferably dark brown, 1 heaping teaspoon

Steps:

- Heat pan with sesame oil, sear the salmon skin down until skin is golden brown.

- Mix yuzu vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar together until sugar is all dissolved, pour even over the salmon in the pan.

- Cook for 15 minutes, basting occasionally to coat the salmon well, until the sauce is thickened.

- Right before serving, sprinkle the sliced negi or chopped scallion over the salmon, baste a few times again to coat the negi or scallion well before turning off heat.

- Serve hot with steamed vegetable and rice.

Tarte Double-ended Lip Gloss

This mini Tarte Double-ended Lip Gloss came from the Sephora Favorites Give Me Some Lips set.

The Sephora Favorites Give Me Some Lips set include minis of Benefit Posietint, Smashbox, Urban Decay Pocket Rocket, Laura Mercier, Buxom, and a full size Korres Mango Butter Lipstick.

Homemade Gyudon

One of my favorite Japanese dishes as it's really delicious and quite easy to make!!

Here's my recipe for Gyudon.

Ingredients:

- Beef, 1/3-1/2 lb., preferably with some fat, sliced thinly sukiyaki style.

- Onion, 1 large or 2 medium, sliced

- Eggs, 3, beat well

- Optional: beni shoga, for garnish

- Optional: shichimi or ichimi, if you want your gyudon spicy ^.^

Seasonings:

- Water, 1/2 cup

- Dashi powder, 2 teaspoons. You can also use concentrated dashi broth sold in bottles instead of dashi powder. In this case, use 1/4 cup of concentrated dashi broth and 1/4 cup of water (instead of 1/2 cup above).

- Soy sauce, 3-4 Tablespoons, or to taste

- Sake, 1-2 Tablespoons. Some sake can be quite bitter, so use your judgment here!

- Sugar, 2 Tablespoons. I prefer dark brown sugar because I like my gyudon with darker color, but the gyudon at Yoshinoya is quite lightly colored.

Steps:

- Mix all seasonings together in a pan and let simmer for about 10 minutes. Do not boil!

- Add sliced onions and cook on medium heat until almost translucent.

- Add beef, mix to coat well in sauce, cook for about 3-5 minutes.

- When beef looks almost done, pour beaten eggs evenly over food. Cover, and let cook until eggs is almost done if you like soft boiled eggs, or just let the eggs be well done.

- Serve on top of rice and garnish with beni shoga and shichimi or ichimi.

DHC Eye Bright

I've been using this DHC Eye Bright ever since I moved here, thinking a light eye gel will provide just enough moisture in this humid environment but at the same time won't be too thick to melt my sunscreen.

This DHC Eye Bright fits the bill pretty well having no oil ingredients, although I guess it was meant to be an eye brightener, containing cucumber juice and caffeine. I haven't been paying attention though to see whether it did brighten my eyes, but it fares well underneath my sunscreen and that's really all I care about, to be honest. It is an unscented clear gel, very light and spreadable, so all I need is a pin's head amount for both eyes. Whenever I apply too much, I would know right away as it would start to pill up. I would imagine this 0.52 oz. tube will last me a very long time and for $21.50, it doesn't seem too bad. I bought mine on sale though and would probably wait to buy it on sale again :P

DHC Eye Bright:

water/aqua/eau, cucumis sativus (cucumber) juice, butylene glycol, pentylene glycol, placental protein, isodonis japonicus extract, carbomer, potassium hydroxide, phenoxyethanol, caffeine, saccharide isomerate, dipotassium glycyrrhizate, sodium hyaluronate, allantoin.

***List of ingredients from DHC North America.

Feeling like a tomboy ^.^

Today's a warm day, so I feel like wearing shorts...and somehow ended up looking like an ojichan :D

Thai Basil Chicken

Hubby and I really love Thai food, so once settled down we searched all over for ingredients for some of our favorite Thai dishes. Given the absence of herbs like Thai basil leaves (has purplish stalk, sharper fragrance and spicy flavor in comparison to the sweet basil) as well as my wok, I think we made out okay although it could have been better.

Here's my recipe for Thai Basil Chicken (or beef, your choice).

Ingredients:

- Chicken, 1 lb. dark meat

- Garlic, 1 large clove, chopped

- Bell peppers, 1/2 green, 1/2 red, sliced

- Onion, 1/2 large, sliced

- Bamboo shoots, fresh sliced, or 1 can of pre-sliced strips

- Thai basil, a handful, rinsed and pat dry. If Thai basil is not available, in a pinch you can substitute with sweet basil. I had to use sweet basil for the dish pictured. The flavor is weaker but it still tasted pretty good. I'd rather substitute with sweet basil than having no basil at all in the dish.

- Optional: fresh chili peppers, chopped

Seasonings:

- Southeast Asian soy sauce, preferably Golden Mountain brand, 1-2 Tablespoons, to taste.

***Picture from Amazon.com.

Please note that the Golden Mountain bottle says "Seasoning Sauce" and not "Soy Sauce." Growing up, "seasoning sauce" (nước tương - a colloquial Southern Vietnamese term) and "soy sauce" (xì dầu, a more generally used term derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of 豉油) are both synonymous in the Vietnamese language. This is why I call the Golden Mountain Seasoning Sauce "soy sauce." Taste and ingredients wise, there's a difference in most Southeast Asian soy sauce and the more well known Kikkoman soy sauce, and many Southeast Asian soy sauce contain ingredients other than fermented soy beans and salt. This is the reason I caution you to check the ingredients of your soy sauce bottle to make sure it is vegetarian. Sometimes it's not just Southeast Asian soy sauces that contain non-vegetarian ingredients, and the innocent-looking Kikkoman soy sauce may contain fish extract (dashi) as well!

- Thai fish sauce, preferably Squid brand, 2-4 Tablespoons, to taste. The ratio is 1soy:2fish, so if you add 2 Tablespoons of soy sauce, then you must use 4 Tablespoons of fish sauce.

***Picture from squidbrand.com.

- Sugar, preferable dark brown, but regular sugar is fine too, 1 teaspoon, add more if you use more soy and fish sauce.

Steps:

- Heat oil in wok, quickly brown garlic

- Add onions and small amount of sauce, stir fry for a couple minutes

- Add bamboo shoots, red, green bell peppers, and another small amount of sauce, stir fry for a couple more minutes

- Add chicken (and chopped chili peppers if use) and the rest of the sauce, stir fry until chicken is done

- Turn off heat, throw in basil and mix them in with the dish

- Serve hot on Jasmine rice.

Yes, I know the dish I made doesn't look very appetizing being in a metal pot and lack some coloring from the red bell peppers. But hey, at least it doesn't taste bad :P

Hubby and I have only 1 favorite Thai restaurant of all time, and it's not even a restaurant but rather a small, hole-in-the-wall-ish stand in a college town food court! We've known about this place since our undergrad days and we discovered it by following a bunch of Thai international students to see where they hang out and have lunch LOL! And what a gem we found because to date, we have not eaten better Thai food than at Thai Avenue! No matter where we go, no other places could compare to the food we had at here and we never miss a visit (or 2, or 3, or 4 visits) whenever we are in town.

If you are ever in Boulder and need a quick and cheap lunch, you must check this place out!Thai Avenue is located in the basement food court on The Hill, across from the CU Bookstore at the College Avenue and Broadway intersection. The owner Kim is some of the nicest people we know!

Thai Avenue

1310 College Ave

Boulder, CO 80302-7394

(303) 443-1737

Dishes I recommend:

- Red Curry with chicken (no picture, sorry!)

- Thai Basil Chicken

- Tom yum koong

- Beef Street Noodles (Pad Sie Iew)

- Shrimp Pad Thai

They can make your dish as spicy or as mild as you wish. And I do not recommend asking for "Thai spicy." The last time I did that, they added an equivalent of half a cup of chopped fresh chili peppers and all I could take was 3 bites - and if you know me in person, you'd know that I'm very tolerant when it comes to spicy food. So spare yourself some pain and just don't ask for it.

Naive Peach Hand Soap

From my pleasant experience with Naive Peach Body Wash, I was so excited when I spotted this Naive Peach Hand Soap at the local drug store. Soft, moisturizing, foamy, and nice smelling soaps for my hands? Yes, please!

I was sorely disappointed however. This turned out to be like any other average Japanese hand soap. It's a translucent pink liquid that barely foams and dries out my hand as though I am using harsh glycerin soaps. Boo. Hiss. I wouldn't bother with it if I were you.

My first Japanese mooks (Picture Heavy!)

Boutique and designer brands in Japan like to release a quality glossy spread they call "mook" (magazine + book) with lots of info and pictures, and as incentive they throw in a decent-looking "freebie". These mooks, usually around 1,300-1,600yen each copy, aren't regularly published periodicals. In my opinion, they seem to be what you would call glorified catalogues. I honestly didn't buy the below mooks for what they are, so really I bought whatever that came with the mooks (I guess it's the same for most people?). Yes, I am turning into an even bigger sucker as I would never pay a single penny for any catalogue in the states :X Hopefully the mooks are worth it for those who actually follow these boutique/designer brands as they are little more than picture books for me.

Japanese periodical magazines regularly come with freebies too, good thing they are about half the price of the mooks, around 550-750yen each copy. I really hope these magazines have more worth while contents to make their freebies truly "free." We'll see about that, I have my eyes on a few...

Anyway, I've been reading about the mooks and magazines online, mostly from Rouge Deluxe, and although many look so tempting with their cute and adorable freebies (or rather, the non-freebie selling point), I'd been successfully refrained because it just didn't make sense to pay a boat load to have them sent overseas to the states. But now that I'm here, I see them everywhere at the conbinis, bookstores, and magazine stands. And let's just say they're thismuch harder to resist when they're right in front of you no matter where you turn. So yes, that was how I ended up with the 4 mooks below.

Released September 21 - Mary Quant 40th Anniversary in Japan Mook.

I walk by the Mary Quant boutique all the freakin' time at the Yokohama Station, and while the daisy logo motif is super cute, I wasn't going to shell out some 2,000-4,000yen for simple pouches. And honestly, most of the pouches aren't that much better than the ones usually included in the common GWP promotions from Lancome, Clinique, Estee Lauder, et al., so the prices for the Mary Quant pouches seem totally absurd to me. But of course, that's how a brand markets itself...

Didn't stop me from being curious though :P And I definitely won't deny the freebie tote that comes with the mook is the driving force behind this purchasing decision ^.^ Who could resist such a cute tote bag and daisy accessory?

The tote has the signature Mary Quant print of the daisy on various cosmetics items. It is cotton canvas, though on the softer side, and measures 31.5(height) x 43(length) x 12cm(width).

There are no zipper or snap button enclosures but there is 1 pocket inside, barely visible from my picture...sorry!

A close up of the print shows gold glitter on the pink coloring, really cute!

The white daisy accessory is on a metal ball chain. Over all, the tote feels somewhat substantial and well made. The daisy accessory is a nice touch and together, I do think they are worth the price of the mook. Given the retails of other Mary Quant accessories, I would much rather buy these :P

Below are some highlights from the mook itself. These pictures were not taken in the order of the pages as I jumped back and forth. It seems many of Mary Quant's fashion designs are very mod (well duh, she's famous from the 60's!). Most are in black and white with stripes, checkers, plaids and other geometric prints. The only flowery touch is her signature daisy. I guess I do like these designs and would definitely wear them for their understated chic and easy pairing. You can check out more of Mary Quant's designs via the Mary Quant Online Shop (in Japanese).

Left column, 3rd from top: love this stripey one-piece with the wide black band bottom, 2 pockets and the matching stripey daisy motif at the bottom left.

Dead center: super cute babydoll one piece with puffy short sleeves and again the daisy motif in black at the bottom left.

Dead center: adore the checkered one piece with daisies across the chest.

Dead center: would totally wear this poncho with tied tassels.

Cute small pouches.

I very tempted to buy these finishing powders at the urging of my other hobby. At 3,675yen each they seem to be in line with the rest of the Japanese mid-range makeup world, namely Maquillage and friends.

But 3,150-3,570 for a strap seems a bit ridiculous to me.

Adorable wallets.

Paying more for a nice handbag, however, seems much more reasonable.

Released September 17 - Jill Stuart 世界中が We Love Jill Mook. I don't have pictures of this yet because it's with my sister - she bought it for me ^.^ That said, this was a popular mook so there are other blogs with tons of pictures of this mook already. See Rouge Deluxeand A Dream of Tokyo's posts for pictures and details of this mook and its attached freebie. I will post my pictures later, though of course they will be late and redundant. Oh well...

Released August 26 - Cath Kidston 2010 Autumn & Winter Fly to the UK Mook.

Bought this along with the 2010 Spring & Summer Hello from London edition because Amazon Japan is still stocking both. Why the hell not, right?

2010 Spring & Summer Hello from London versus 2010 Autumn & Winter Fly to the UK

Normally the frilly flowery prints are so not my type, but the boxes the mooks came in are in polka dots. If you know me in person, you'd know that I'm a total sucker for anything in polka dots.

The mook comes with a set of 2 totes, both are made of cotton canvas that is a bit thinner and softer than the Mary Quant tote above. So for daily use they should be okay, but I wouldn't load them up with heavy groceries or textbooks.

The small one measures 17.5(height) x 25(length) x 9cm(width).

There are no pockets inside and no enclosures either.

The bigger tote measures 30(height) x 41(length) x 14cm(width).

It does have an outer pocket with a small velcro closure.

No pockets inside though.

Small versus big tote.

Released March 19 - Cath Kidston 2010 Spring & Summer Hello from London Mook.

I like the freebies from this edition much better, and not just because this flower print is more elegant and easier to stomach. Between these 2 mooks, I personally could do without the Autumn & Winter edition. Having extra totes never hurts, but if I have to choose, I'd definitely pick the Spring & Summer edition over this newer Autumn & Winter edition. If you have access to this earlier edition and not having to pay an arm or a leg, I would definitely recommend it.

This freebie is a set of nicely sized makeup/toiletry/multi-purpose bag measuring 15.5(height) x 22.5(length) x 5cm(width), a mirror, and a tissue case. The bag and tissue case are made of very sturdy polyester, though they feel a tad rough to the touch. In any case, I'd rather they be rough and substantial versus smooth and falls apart easily. The craftsmanship looks solid too, even better than the 2 totes set in the Autumn & Winter edition.

The best part, for me at least, is the inner polyester lining. It is a to-die-for pale sky blue with white polka dots print. Hooray for polka dots xD *happy dance*

The mirror is pretty with the same print on the front and "Cath Kidston" written on the back. As you can see it's bigger than my hand!

The multi-purpose bag has many pockets inside and I would imagine it is excellent for travel.

Even the tissue case has polka dots lining! *squeals*

I'm not going to go into details of the contents of either Cath Kidston mooks because, you guessed it, it's just a cataloging of items. Visit Cath Kidston UK-US or Cath Kidston Japanwebsites of you want to see more.

In conclusion, I would say the Mary Quant and the Cath Kidston 2010 Spring & Summer Hello from London mooks are much better an investment, unless you're a Cath Kidston fan or like to collect cotton canvas tote bags. I don't regret my purchase of the Cath Kidston 2010 Autumn & Winter Fly to the UK mook, but I don't love those 2 totes either. Oh well...

Sunstar Tonic Shampoo

My hair washing routine always include a clarifying/deep cleansing shampoo twice a week even though I don't use any styling products. I have an oily scalp, you see, and my hair gets greasy easily so I have to use clarifying/deep cleansing shampoo regularly to keep my scalp clean and my hair roots clear from oil build up.

Usually, I just pick whatever that's on sale or cheapest, like Suave Daily Clarifying Shampoo, but of course since that's not available here, I'd have to find something else.

***Picture from Suave.com.

And you wouldn't guessed it, but finding something is rather challenging. Out of the gazillion choices of shampoos at the drug store, all were for moisturizing, damage repair, shiny, or smoothing. There were several other shampoos for color protection, but I actually found very few clarifying/deep cleansing shampoos! That's odd. May be I'm missing something. Anyway, out of the couple choices I had for clarifying shampoo, this Sunstar Tonic Shampoo looks most promising, so I grabbed it. And actually, there are 2 different colored bottles, green and blue, and I tried the green first.

***Picture from Sunstar Tonic.

I'm not sure why it's called "Tonic" Shampoo, perhaps because of the menthol? Either way, it's supposed to make your scalp tingly and the scent is supposed to be energizing. Well, let's just say it delivers, and then some. Holy crap this stuff is strong!!! The clear shampoo looks innocent enough, but the first time I washed my hair with it, I had to hurry and rinse it off because the tingly sensation quickly turned into burning sensation.

Over time, I guess I've gotten used to it and the strong tingly sensation is actually feels really nice. After rinsing, my hair feels super clean and my sinus is cleared! Two birds with one stone, haha! And surprisingly, this tonic shampoo works better for hubby's hair than mine, as it makes his hair super soft for days after too! He liked it so much that for a week or two, he kept using it every other day instead of twice a week and I had to remind him he doesn't want to strip his scalp too much. I guess this means we'll have to go back and try the blue color bottle as well :)