The KunMing lake was all frozen.

The main gate to enter the Summer Place

Roads outside leading to the main gate.

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We were absent from our blog for the last 10 days as we went on our honey moon trip to China. It was a very wonderful trip with lots of interesting stories to tell.

China, for so long, has been mentioned with many world’s largest or longest or greatest heritages. This was the first time we traveled to China and also the first time we traveled with a tourist agency as we were so busy with the preparations of our wedding and unable to prepare for a free and easy trip, as we often did before.

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It’s been quite a time I haven’t cooked or baked anything to update this blog. I was too busy preparing my wedding and I just cooked simple dishes for meals.

In Vietnam, it is a tradition that the wife follows the husband when she gets married to him and the new couples stay in the same roof with the husband’s parents. This is usually a must if the husband is the oldest child as he does the responsibility of looking after the parents when they get older. Nowadays, unlike in the past, each family has only one or two children, and after years of working, parents are able to build or buy a house which is large enough to be lived by two or three generations. It is also a fact that young couples prefer living on their own so that they have more freedom. Some are well-off and they can buy a new house to live there right after their marriage, some are willing to rent a place. Either way has pros and cons. My parents-in-law wish to have us stay with them for the beginning so that we have a chance to know one another more, and to strengthen the family bonds.

In the first place I wanted to rent a house and we would live and work on our own. Then my husband persuaded me into living together with his family, who is also my family now, so that everyone gets to understand the others more. His biggest wish is that I can get along with his family and that I can feel like home when I stay here. So now, his family is my family. Everyday I cook in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and things are going on very fine.

Those are some words about my new life. My new family are very open about my baking. My parents and brother-in-law love my baking products in many ways, and they are often eager to my new baked goods. Now there are more people to try my baked stuffs, to give me more comments and feedback, to give me more reasons to be in the kitchen making something good.

I love lemon the very first time I made lemon tart. These lemon bars resemble lemon tart for the most part. This time I followed a new recipe in the Taste of Home magazine, with some changes to the ingredients.

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Dear friends who have been visiting our Little House blog so far,

You might have wondered what have happened to us recently that caused us unable to update our blog regularly as we used to. Yes, the reason was we were busy preparing our Wedding. The wedding party took placed last Monday, 7 December, right here in Hanoi, Vietnam.

We are happy to announce that my fiance and I are husband and wife now. In preparation for this wedding, we had a lot of work to do. Instead of using all services, we tried to do ourselves as much as we could as we understood the values and meanings of things that altogether made a memorable wedding.

We had our friends take pre-wedding photos of us and my husband did the editing and designing the album, and we brought them to the album-making service.

You can view our two pre-wedding albums from these links:

http://kokotaru.com/photo/NTU_Wedding_Album/

http://kokotaru.com/photo/HN_Wedding_Album/

Photos of our wedding day can be viewed on my Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/linhihi?ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2042163&id=1066881516&ref=mf

We delay our honeymoon until Christmas. During this time, we still have lots of post-wedding stuffs to do. Of course I will return to my new kitchen, at my parents-in-law’ home, and make good dishes, then share them in my blog, as usual.

We thank you for all the supports we have been receiving from you all so far.

I’ve never used bottled manufactured bbq sauce. The reason is that the first time I read the recipe in the book Joy of Cooking, I realized that I had all the ingredients in my pantry, then I went ahead making the sauce. I firstly used the sauce for my first hamburger, and the result did surprise me a lot. The 2nd time, I used the sauce to marinate the chicken wings for our bbq gathering with friends. My friends were so excited about this time’s chicken wings as they had never tasted such a wonderful flavor at the other bbq gatherings before. This persuaded me that the recipe for this basic bbq sauce was perfect. Therefore, I never mind the bottled bbq sauce on supermarket shelves. Making homemade bbq sauce is very simple once you have all ingredients ready.

This time I marinated the whole duck legs in homemade bbq sauce for 1 day, then I baked them in the oven. I took them out of the oven occasionally to brush bbq sauce over the legs. Baking temperature was about 350F to 375F until the meat attained a perfect color. After beming marinated for such a long time, the meat was very tasty, flavorful and tender. Even when I was writing this post, I wished I could have another barbecued duck leg to please my stomach

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