Prairie Ave North was gifted this gorgeous cookbook (and another I’ll write about soon) that I have been loving. The hand-pulled noodles Ash Street South and I made during her visit northward were drawn from a recipe in this book, with delicious results. I was halfway through reading To Asia With Love before realizing the author was the very same lovely person behind one of my favorite blogs, Arthur Street Kitchen! Clearly I wasn’t reading the header of her blog, which has Hetty McKinnon’s name right at the top, LOL.

My lunch today is an homage to Hetty. In the cookbook, she ruminates about growing up Asian in Australia, and how food was a crucial component to figuring out her ethnic identity. Much like the recipes she has in the book, the dish above has a Vietnamese-inspired pho base with some Korean twists in the addition of tofu, turnips, and gochujang, all boiled together into a pan-Asian hot pot for lunch this afternoon.

Got to hit a round on Boxing Day! Snuck on to the course with the six other fellas who had the same idea. Might have been my last hits for 2021 but if this weather holds out, I may get a few more rounds in before 2022. Either way, it has been a solid year of improvement for my golf game. I went from the pits of despair and frustration to being able to hit the ball with some consistency. Still have a long way to go in developing my overall game but am enjoying the process, which ultimately, is the goal. That, and to play on the senior LPGA tour. Kidding, kidding. It’s to enjoy the process (sort of).