Last night, a flower on one of my parents’ houseplants bloomed!

Isn’t it gorgeous? I’m happy whenever I get to see it because the flowers on these plants rarely bloom and when they do, they open for a few hours and then are wilting by morning. I did some Googling and the plant is known as a night-blooming cereus, and sometimes also called queen of the night. Cool, huh?

Breakfast

Yesterday’s breakfast was a toasted everything bagel with strawberry jam and half of a lemon Chobani with blueberries.

My family is weird and whenever we split bagels, we cut them right down the middle to make four pieces, as opposed to just using the pre-sliced line to get a top and bottom half. This is because we mostly eat everything bagels, and the top halves tend to have way more of the “everything” than the bottom halves.

After breakfast, my sister and I went to Zumba at her gym. It was tough! I’ve never taken a Zumba class before and it was fairly easy to keep up with the pop songs, but the songs that incorporated Latin moves were harder. I just don’t have the coordination for it! We were dripping sweat and left after about 40 minutes to do some strength training before heading home.

Lunch

For lunch, my mom made two Chinese noodle dishes.

The first was udon noodles with bok choy.

And the second was Shanghai rice cakes with pork and a Chinese vegetable my dad’s coworker gave us. I love her traditional cooking.

For dessert, I went to a neighborhood froyo place called Let’s Yo with my best friend Rony. I’m loving all these self-serve froyo places because I’m a maniac for mochi. And yes, there was some froyo buried under this mochi pile. I had the green tea tart and it was pretty good!

After lunch, I came home and hung out with Cissie. She’s such a little cutie!

And this is my sister holding her this morning.

The long weekend has officially started! My family doesn’t celebrate Easter, but to celebrate the long weekend, I’m visiting my parents in central Jersey for the weekend.

One of our family traditions since I went away to school has been feasting whenever we get back together. Pretty sure most families share this tradition, but I don’t mind at all.

Tonight we went to West Lake for dinner, one of my parents’ favorite Chinese restaurants in the area. The food is authentic and we’ve been going for years (since I was in 6th grade)! We recognized the manager as usual when we got there, but didn’t see any of the usual servers and were given unfamiliar menus this time. Maybe the place is undergoing an overhaul? Still, the meal was fantastic so no complaints here!

We ordered four delicious entrees to share, the first being lobster!

We followed up with my mom’s favorite: pan-fried fish with string beans and Chinese black beans. I love Chinese black beans in any dish at all so really liked this dish.

My sister’s usual was next: pan-fried noodles with chicken and vegetables. Pretty standard, but they were a little oily for my taste.

Last was my choice! Pan-fried rack of lamb with some broccoli. It was delicious, really tender and well-seasoned.

What a satisfying meal! Now time for bed with a full belly of food.