Duck Noodle Soup (and Sneak Peak!)

J manned the kitchen again today. I have to admit, he's been doing most of the cooking since we moved, since I'm exhausted after dealing with the house all day and he's been getting home reasonably early from work. It's a good thing we both love to cook. There's usually at least one person willing to man/woman the stove! Today's dinner was a joint venture. But for those who are surprised that J cooks, here he is in action!

Here are J's hands as he busily blanches some bok choy and enoki mushrooms for our bowls of roast duck over noodle soup. And in the background is our new Samsung induction range! It's really amazing. We're both still getting the hang of it, and we've been cooking very simple meals so it hasn't really had a chance to shine. I haven't even used the oven yet, other than to run a short steam clean cycle. But so far, we already love two things about this range. It can boil water for my morning coffee in about two minutes (fast and hot!), and it creates such even heat distribution that an egg dropped in simmering water turns into a beautifully poached egg with no work at all from the cook.  I can't wait to see what else it can do!

Here's a close up of our dinner. Not too shabby. We painted one entire room and got started on the ceiling of our hallway today, in addition to doing laundry, prepping some wall trim for paint, laying contact paper in the kitchen, and trying to clean up a little. 

Soup noodles are hardly enough when you lead a life of hard manual labor, so we added another plate of lu wei to tonight's dinner. I gussied it up with extra chili oil and ground Szechuan peppercorns.And another sneak peak for those who are looking: that's our kitchen countertop to the left, and our finished hardwood to the right! More to come...