Celebrating July 4th with My Family

Happy Belated July 4th all! Hope it was well.

We're sorry for not posting last night about our July 4th celebration with my family. It was a crazy, busy day, but here we are tonight posting about the fun celebration

Dumplings

Will and I made our special dumplings. Yep, that was all us. It took us about an hour and a half to fold just two packs of dumplings.

Our cooked dumplings

We were intending on making our fried dumplings and we did, but we had a bit of a jam and than ended up boiling the dumplings. I was quite disappointed that our dumplings didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. It turns out that we used the wrong pan.

Shrimp

Mom makes the best shrimp ever! It's always packed with a somewhat sweet and juicy flavor. It has an excellent scent to it too. I'm slightly allergic to shrimp so I didn't really have any.

Stir-fried Vegetables

Mom also made stir-fried vegetables with dried calamari. I love mom's stir-fried because it's always tasty and filled with different vegetables.

Vietnamese Grilled Chicken & Pork Chop

Mom didn't make this. My dad bought this from the Vietnamese restaurant near by our house. It was tasty and lightly sweetened. My only complaint was that my dad or the staff at the restaurant forgot to give us the sweet fish sauce.

Meat from Daisy May's

My soon to be brother in-law brought amazing barbecue meat from Daisy May's . On top is the Tennessee Whiskey Beer Can Style Chicken which I absolutely loved. The meat nice and tender, packed with amazing barbecue flavor, and so moist! I wish I had the whole chicken to myself.

Unfortunately I forgot which rib was which, but these are the ones we had:  Kansas City Sweet and Sticky Ribs and the Memphis Dry Rub Pork Ribs. I don't remember which one I had, but whichever one I did have - it was amazing. The meat came right off the bone and was moist and tender.

Sides

These were the sides that came with the barbecue meat from Daisy May's. We had macaroni & cheese, collard greens, Bourbon peaches, baked beans, creamed spinach, and sweet potatoes with brown sugar.

I really liked the macaroni & cheese. It was creamy and just the right amount of cheese. The baked beans were awesome because it had a barbecue smokiness to it. The Bourbon peaches were awesome and sweet.

String Beans

My big sister made two dishes for our July 4th celebration. The first dish was this mixed string beans dish with roasted pine nuts. I'm not sure what she seasoned the string beans with but it was amazing and flavorful. I hope she'll tell me the recipe soon so I can learn how to make it.

Roasted Vegetables

This was my absolute favorite dish! My sister made roasted vegetables which consisted of baby potatoes, carrots, parsnip, garlic, and sliced onions. She seasoned it with thyme, rosemary, and some other herbs. I really liked the combination of vegetables and herb-like flavor and seasoning.

Sangria

My sisters and I attempted to make our "own" version of Sangria which wasn't so bad. I had about 2 cups of this and I really enjoyed it. It was refreshing and tasty. I really liked that the apples were flavored with the red wine.

Sweet Potato & Taro with Tapioca

I think the best conclusion to a good meal is a good dessert. What do you think? I requested for mom to make this amazing dessert - sweet potato & taro with tapioca and I can't forget the heavenly coconut milk. Mom refrigerated it so it can be cool when we drink it after our meal.

I'm not sure how many people had it, but I definitely had a cup to myself. It was amazing! I really tasted the love and hard work mom put into the dessert. I need to learn how to make this, seriously! This is one of my favorite Asian desserts.

I hope you all have had a Happy July 4th and stay tuned for our next and exciting post.