Spanish rice

Most spanish rice is served as side dish to meat or fish dishes. I don't have time to make so many dishes, so I actually make my spanish rice filling enough to be dinner itself. My son loves this and it's also very easy to make. I improvised this off a recipe from www.elise.com

2 tablespoons olive oil (can use up to 1/4 cup)
1 onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup of green peas
1/2 cup of carrots, chopped
1 egg
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups of medium or long-grain white rice
3 cups* chicken stock (or vegetable stock if vegetarian)
1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
Pinch of oregano
1 teaspoon salt

optional: 1 lb sausage

*Check the instructions on the rice package for the proportions of liquid to rice. They can range from 1:1 to 2:1. If your rice calls for 2 cups of water for every cup of rice, then for this recipe, use 4 cups of stock for 2 cups of rice.

1 In a large skillet brown rice in olive oil, medium/high heat. If you're cooking with the sausage, remove casing and brown the meat now. Add onion, garlic, carrot. Cook onion rice mixture, stirring frequently, about 4 minutes, or until onions are softened.

2 In a separate sauce pan bring stock to a simmer. Add tomato sauce, oregano, and salt. Add rice and peas to broth. Bring to a simmer. Cover. Lower heat and cook 15-25 minutes, depending on the type of rice and the instructions on the rice package. Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes.

Kalbi Jim

You don't have to use short ribs for this. I made this dish with Costco size stew meat. It basically isn't Kalbi Jimwhen it's stew meat, but Jiang jo jim (I think that's what it is called, sorry I'm not Korean). It tastes just as good though! I know the recipe doesn't have the exact recipe, but it isn't that hard to do it by "taste" unless you pour in a cup of sugar or something.

KOREAN BRAISED SHORT RIBS (GALBI JJIM)

INGREDIENTS:
* 1-3 pounds of english cut short ribs (have the ribs cut into 3-5 inch long pieces)
* corn oil
* sesame oil (about 1-2 tablespoons)
* sweet dessert wine or vermouth (about 1/2 cup to 1 cup or to taste)…or white wine as substitute (but then you will need more sugar)
* soy sauce (about 1/2 cup to 1 cup or to taste)–about an equal amount to the wine
* black pepper (to taste)
* sugar (about a handful or two, to taste)
* several cloves garlic, chopped or minced
* two medium onions, chopped
* several carrots, chopped
* several potatoes, chopped

DIRECTIONS:
Take short ribs and cross cut them (basically make cuts into the beef so they look like “fingers”). Put in large stockpot, add water to cover, and boil. (this is the step that some cooks might cringe at, but it makes the beef more tender and boils the fat out of the beef). Boil for about 10-15 minutes.

Do NOT throw away the short rib stock.

Fetch a dutch oven. Heat. Add about 2 tablespoons corn oil. When hot, add onions and short ribs (no stock, just the short ribs). Saute until onions are golden and short ribs are browned. Add garlic.

Add wine/vermouth (I prefer sauternes, but that is my personal preference).

Add stock from the short rib stock–you will need about 3 cups.

Add the soy sauce and sugar. Then add sesame oil.

Taste the broth, it should not be TOO salty or TOO sweet, but a combination of both, with a healthy dose of sesame taste. Bring to boil.

Add potatoes and carrots (and other veggies such as brussel sprouts and turnips if you so desire).

Simmer for at least half an hour, or until potatoes and carrots are tender, and beef is tender. (You may want to simmer longer if you’d like–the longer the better) Add ground black pepper. If broth is too watery, mix a tablespoon of potato starch with about two tablespoons of water in a cup and add to the braised short ribs (while broth is still hot and on a low flame). It will thicken the broth.

Serve with rice.

Old Time Beef Stew

This is what I'm making for dinner tonight to finish the stew meat we got from Costco. It is quite easy to make and my husband actually requested it. I got it off of foodnetwork.com

2 pounds stew beef
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups water
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 or 2 bay leaves
1 medium onion, sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Dash ground allspice or ground cloves
3 large carrots, sliced
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 tablespoons cornstarch

Brown meat in hot oil. Add water, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, bay leaves, onion, salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, and allspice. Cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours. Remove bay leaves and garlic clove. Add carrots and celery. Cover and cook 30 to 40 minutes longer. To thicken gravy, remove 2 cups hot liquid. Using a separate bowl, combine 1/4 cup water and cornstarch until smooth. Mix with a little hot liquid and return mixture to pot. Stir and cook until bubbly.

Miso Glazed Salmon.

Looks like more people are interested in my fast and easy recipes than my stock posts. I'll blog recipes that are simple and good here as well.

Here is one that I found lately that took less than 15 minutes to make.


1 tablespoon of sake

1/4	cup brown sugar, packed
2	tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
2	tablespoons hot water
2	tablespoons miso (soybean paste)
4 (6	ounce) salmon fillets (about 1 inch thick)
	cooking spray
1	tablespoon fresh chives, chopped

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Combine first 5 ingredients, stirring with a whisk.
3. Arrange fish in a shallow baking dish coated with cooking spray.
4. Spoon miso mixture evenly over fish.
5. Broil 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, basting twice with miso mixture.
6. Sprinkle with chives

Don't skip on the chives even if you want to. They make a big difference on the dish. The salty Miso and soy sauce can use a little lemony taste to make it more refreshing.

Kinds of stocks

When it comes to investing in stocks, there are many ways to look at them. There are numbers to look at, potential to consider, and many other factors. Here are a few classification on analyzing stocks.

1. Value -- if you want to buy value stock, you're probably going to look at things like P/E, Earnings per share, etc. The idea is that the company is going to make good profit, so it makes the stock a good value.

2. Growth -- Remember the dot com days? There are stocks out there that people were buying thinking that it has the potential to grow, regardless of what the P/E were. That's purchasing growth stock.

3. Income -- A lot of companies give out dividends for the stock holders. Some people buy stocks for the good dividends.

4. GARP - grow at reasonable price. Growth + Value + share price that is cheaper than the company is worth that is. The company has good potential to grow, but the stock price and numbers also look good. One of the most common GARP approaches is to buy stocks when the P/E ratio is lower than the rate at which earnings per share can grow in the future.

5. Quality - Growth + Value+ GARP. Basically you look at everything. And things like management competence, Return on equity. Warren Buffet follows this.


Next time : Analyzing numbers.

Crazy fees for mutual fund

I've been so busy with my son lately that I haven't done any research for this blog. I'm determined to figure out all the investment options so I can make some mula out of my small amount of cash saved up.

Anyhoo, I read up on Mutual fund fees. OMG, I had no idea how much they charge to manage mutual funds!!!

Mangement fee -- it pays the manager to manage the fund
Admin cost -- bookkeeping, customer service line, etc
12b-1 distribution fee -- fee used to advertise the fund. WTF?
Loads -- fee for selling the fund to the investor. So the middleman makes a cut. Thank Gawd here is also No load fund.
Front end load -- The broker takes a cut immediately after you buy the fund
Deferred load -- Kinda like Front end load, except that it is deferred to when you sell the fund. aka B shares
Leveled load -- there is a load every year for holding it. Yikes! aka C shares
Turnover rate and tax -- It means how often the fund sells stocks and gets new ones. The money earned from selling the stocks means there is tax for it. So the higher the turnover, the more tax to pay every year. It's kinda a PITA.

Well obviously the best stock to earn according to the article is No load Index funds. I have to agree. I don't want to pay money for a fund that will underperform! Unless I have a lot of time, and I found a killer fund that performs way better than market, I'll probably go the safer route of owning No Load Index fund.

Now I think I have to go back to check on my funds to see what I have. I'm probably paying an arm and leg for the fees. I wish I read about these sooner.

Mutual Fund I

I've been investing in Mutual fund for as long as I've been working. I used to look up all the mutual funds my company offer, picked the ones with best returns and tried to diversify as much as possible. So far that strategy worked pretty well for my 401k. It was pretty easy since my company would offer only a few funds to choose from.

Investing in mutual funds with my savings is a different story. The goal is different and the amount invested in is different.

Fool.com's article on Mutual fund suggests this strategy

"BUY AN INDEX FUND"

Why? The article states that most "managed" funds have higher cost and 90% underperform an index fund. Hey that sounds good enough of a reason for me. I have seen a lot of mutual funds underperform myself. Sure, the market can go down, but history shows that it goes up, and beats inflation.

Different Kinds of Funds:
Bond Funds: Just bonds. Kinda like a bond with interests.
Balanced Funds: Bonds + stocks, about 50/50.
Stock Funds: Stocks, could be based on company size or category (value, income-based, etc)
International/Global Funds: Companies with homes with value beyond those of US
Sector Funds: such as financial, computer, whatever industry

Options!

I've heard so much about options before but I honestly had no idea what it is. Even now that I've read about it, I'm still a little confused.

At first when I heard about options, I thought it sounds like stock options that you get from a company. Turns out, it's not all that different. Instead of being granted the options, they have to be purchased. When you buy options, you are buying the RIGHT to purchase stock at a certain price (Strike price) with an expiration date.

Expiration date:
American style lets you purchase BEFORE or ON the expiration date
European style only lets you buy ON the expiration date

Call options: You are betting that the stock will go up. So the writer of the stock has to pay you more money than your strike price
Put options: Opposite of call. You are betting the stock will go down

Pro:
You are buying the option not the stock, which is usually cheaper. So you can potentially get a much higher return than what stock can give you.

Con:
If you exercise the option at the wrong time, your loss can be limitless. The expiration date makes it hard to make money.

How to make money:
You can exercise the option if you actually bet correctly OR
You can trade the option. If the option looks good, people will pay more than you did for them. Think Google. Say you bought options at at 100 strike price. You want to sell it when it's 200, but it looks like it'll go up to 400 before the expiration date. Then the option is going to worth more than when you bought it.

Options look pretty cool, but I'm not sure I'm ready for this kind of high risk investments yet.

Stock basics

I guess I won't really learn about how to invest in stocks unless I know what stocks are. What I know is that stock is owning a part of a company. That was pretty much all I knew. Maybe that's why my investment hasn't been doing all that great in the past.

There are 2 kinds of stocks:

1. Common share - It's 1 kind of stock for the company. Everyone owns it the same way.
2. Diff classes of stock - So apparently some companies don't like to let everyone to vote on everything. They decided that for certain important issues for the company, a different set of stock owners can make the decisions. I don't know, it sounds kinda fishy. It's like come and invest but you don't get a say on things. Media companies do that a lot.. no wonder.

Stocks are traded like in the movies. Someone yells to sell in a big old market, and someone yells to buy. Well, except Nasdaq. They have market makers. The "market makers" buys when someone is ready to sell, and sells when someone is ready to buy. Market makers are such experts that they can make money from trading low and selling high.

I was gonna blog on options, but it is totally new for me. I'll dedicate the next post on that and maybe a few other things on stocks.

Game plan

I read the next chapter on investment from fool.com. The article was a little boring at first, so I won't hash everything. Here are the summary:

1. What is real return? You gotta consider tax, inflation (CPI, bureau of labor statistics)
2. You gotta know what your goals are: retirement, education, second home, etc.
3. Wanting to make it big in a short time instead of following a long term plan is as bad as gambling.
4. Don't invest money you need in the next 3 yrs in stock cuz it's pretty risky.
5. Know your investment style.

Alright, I'm being lazy today and will continue with stocks for the next chapter.

Basic types of investment

I'm following the investment basics from Motley Fool (www.fool.com) for now and will post whatever I've read. I usually get only about an hour of free time a day so I can only read a little. I'm sure some of my next few blogs has info that is pretty basic and a lot of people already know, but hey it doesn't hurt to review the basics.

So to start with, there are savings acct, CD, etc considered to be "short term investment" since their return is low but is fairly safe. I'm not going to go into those. I mean even my mom knows what a CD is (no offense mom). The stuff that is more interesting is the long term investments which are:

• Bonds
• Stocks
• Mutual Funds
• ETF (Exchange-traded funds)

ETF isn't listed as one of the long term investment vehicles in the article, but my friend mentioned it to me. I also remember hearing about it from Suze Orman (www.suzeorman.com). You know that lady who is always giving financial advice on TV shows. She mentioned a while back that it's way cooler than Mutual funds. I figure I'll put it down here so I don't forget.

The article also mentioned about different types of retirement plans:

• IRA
• Roth IRA
• 401k/403b
• Keogh
• Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) Plan

I've always heard about IRA, 401k and the less popular Pension plan. I had no idea there is Keogh for self employed people. I guess if I ever want to start my own company, it'll be good to know about this option since there will be no 401k. The article gave some basics on them, but let's be honest, they're so vague I'll forget about them before I hit publish, so I won't even bother to review them. Besides the tax benefit for each one is so different, I should spend more time to research about them.

Like I said, pretty basic, but I'll just stop here for now.

Is everything from China bad?

I just saw a news article about Simplicity and Graco cribs from China are being recalled. What the hell is going on with all these recalls? And why are they all made in China? I'm having a hard time deciding whether Chinese manufacturers have poor quality control or the country is being targeted for bad press.

I mean, let's face it, what isn't made in China? If you subscribe to Parenting magazine like I do, you will see plenty of recalls in every month's issue. When has the "Made in China" tag become almost equivalent to saying something is unsafe? Look at cnn.com. The link to the article about these cribs is Chinese-made cribs being recalled. Shouldn't it be Grace and Simplicity cribs being recalled? While China is definitely responsible for the hazard, so are Graco and Simplicity!

It's like saying you use Windows operating system, it crashes all the time. It turns out that the program that keeps breaking is written by engineers in India. Instead of saying Microsoft has poor quality control, people say India has bad programmers. It doesn't really make too much sense, right?

My sister thinks this is all part of the trading war that's going on between China and United States. It can very well be. I just hope I don't hear about these kinds of recalls again.

And spaweek

I swear, I'll get into learning something new.. maybe tomorrow. I just have to mention about Spa Week (www.spaweek.org). This is the coolest site ever. They work with these spas to offer 3 50 dollar treatments every once a while. That includes expensive facials, massages or whatever it is the spa offers. The website helps promote these spas, especially the ones that are new in business and don't have a customer base yet. The spa week is going on this week in Los Angeles until Sunday. It is not too late to make an appointment for a nice massage or facial yet!

Oh well, let's start with a bargain

Well the whole point of making money is so you can spend money. So let's start with sharing a good bargain. I was over at The Children's place (www.childrensplace.com) today. They're having a 50% off on sale items! I got a bunch of long sleeves shirt for my son for 2.5 a piece. 2.50!!!! And nice corduroy pants for 5 bucks. I know my son doesn't really need more pants, but who can resist a good deal (except maybe my husband).

Why I'm starting this blog

Let me first introduce myself. I'm a mom with a toddler. Before I had my baby, I was a young professional in the software business. My future was bright. I kept getting promotions and raises, making pretty good money for someone that age. While enjoying my success, I had always known that I wanted to be a mom.

Then I got pregnant and became a mom. Pregnancy went smoothly, but the reality of having a newborn kicked in the minute I gave birth. My baby was pretty high maintenance. He was colicky and never wants (even now) to leave mommy. While my plan was to go back after my extended 5 months maternity leave, it was obvious that my son would not thrive if I did so. Okay, he probably would be fine, but I couldn't stand seeing that cute little face cry because I have to go back to work.

We saved up enough money so that we will be fine even on one income for a while. After months of being home, I'm starting to feel a bit useless. Yes I am a housewife and a mom, raising a child, but I can't help but feel a little empty. I need something else to keep me busy, and something that I can say that I've achieved. Going back to work is certainly one option but I have no idea how marketable I'll be when I am finally ready to go back to work.

So let's be honest. I want to be able to stay home, make money and spend as much time with my baby as possible instead of shipping him to daycare. I'm in many mommy network. I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. A lot of my mommy friends are starting their own business. I don't know if I'll ever come up with that brilliant million dollar idea. And before I do that, I'll focus on educating myself something that should help me make more money one day.

The first thing that I know I should be learning is on investment. I'm tired of saving all my money in the bank because I don't know how to invest properly. I will go through books, websites and blog whatever I've learned. Hope you will enjoy my journey as well.

So investment 101, here I come. Let's start with the stock market.