INVITATION

After two weeks of sunshine and blue sky, now on Mother's Day the rain comes. It rains a whole day with tiny breaks. The rain will continue into most of the coming week. It feels like Vancouver, not California, again. I bought steak yesterday though I have no grill. I found this fabulously easy no-grill steak recipe and tried it out today. The result was quite good - juicy and tender steak, and miraculously the smoke detector did not even go off. I took the steak out of the refrigerator 2 hours before cooking time. A hour later, I used paper towel to pad the steak dry. Then I rubbed salt and black pepper on both sides of the steak. Let the steak sit for another hour or so. For cooking I used a cast iron stir-frying pan. I heated it up with medium heat for about 45 seconds. Then I added a teaspoon of vegetable oil, and turned the pan so that oil was spread evenly on the cooking surface. I waited for another 5 to 10 seconds for the oil to get hot enough...

This year, I decide to create a little balcony garden. I used to buy annual flowers every year. This year I decide to get more perennial ones, and I want different shades of color, not just green. So I bought three hardy plants and put them in the wood flower box. They will give me blue, pink and purple flowers through out the summer. I still have the strawberry plant, which does not growing so well. I moved it from the porcelain pot to a plastic pot. I think the porcelain pot is suffocating it because it is thick and does not drain well. Actually any flower I grow in that pot died. I move the Japanese Primrose into it and hope the shade-like plant will break the spell. I also have tomato plants and sweet peas. Harvest is not expected, as the balcony only gets 3 hours of sunshine at day time. More work is expected, however, to fight the invasion of slugs and aphids. The dwarf lilies are easy to care and each year reward me with their bright yellow f...