Leah’s Cafe

The big boy has a friend who is married to a girl from China. They told us that they shop for Asian groceries at a town 45 minutes from where we live. So, we decided to have an early dinner at 5.00 p.m  yesterday and then drove down there to check out the store.

Super H-Mart is one of the chain grocery stores owned and run by Koreans. This particular store we went to has a generous floor plan and the store is spacious and clean.

I was so happy to find the store, it not only has most of the ingredients for Asian cooking, the prices are also very competitive. We bought a cart load of fresh vegetables, fruits, seafood, pork and dried goods, total of $102.78!

We thought the gingers we bought at the Thai grocery store was cheap compare to what we paid at the normal American grocery stores. But here at Super H-Mart, it’s even cheaper than what we paid at the little  Thai grocery store. We paid $3.45 per lb for ginger at the normal grocery store, $1.90 at the little Thai grocery store, and it’s $0.69 per lb at Super H-Mart! It is a big difference, isn’t it?

The prices of produce are also so much cheaper compare to the normal American grocery stores. Even for non ethnic food like tomatoes, we paid $3+ per lb at the normal store, and it’s only $0.89 per lb here. That’s it, we are not buying produce from the normal grocery stores anymore.

Even though it took 1 1/2 hours driving back and forth to this store, it’s certainly worth to spend the time and gasoline to go down there. We certainly will be back there to shop at least once a month!

It was darn cold this morning, the thermometer indicated 47 degree Fahrenheit ( 8 degree Celsius)! It’s too early to turn on the central heating yet as the fall has just begun! Thank god for portable heater!

It is difficult to do housework when you are all bundled up. I moved the portable heater to the kitchen and was able to take off the sweater and do some housework. If not, probably can’t do anything but hiding in thick blankets all day!

Was able to unpack the food stuff brought from home, stock up the pantry and organize it into a functional kitchen. We went grocery shopping yesterday and spent $120+ on grocery. The big boy’s cooking in the last two years consisted mainly microwavable convenient food, so he didn’t even have sugar and salt in the kitchen!

Now we have uncooked chicken, fish and pork in the refrigerator and a kitchen cabinet filled up with food instead of dust.:-)

I have finally received more pictures of the inside of our new home on top of the 1001 picture showing outside of the house! :-)

It’s a big old house in the downtown area, we will be living on the second floor.

We use the side entrance and stairs leading up to the second floor.

The balcony and the view of the family room from the outside.

The dining area. I like the fact that it has plenty of natural light from the windows.

The living room.

The bedrooms before moving in the furniture.

I like what I see so far. The big boy knows I would fall for the wooden door and window frames, built in cabinet and those decorative panels that scatter around the house. :-)The rich brown colour and its beautiful grain has character, don’t you think? Though some people say they make the place look a little darker !

The big boy has already moved in some of the furniture and lived at this place. But he hasn’t unpacked most of stuffs, they are still in the moving boxes. He would have to change the mailing address and get more kitchen appliances too.

Hey, the house is ready, why am I still here? Unfortunately, it’s going to take much longer before we can be united. Uncle Sam hasn’t started to look at the papers. It was like throwing a rock into the ocean, we have not heard anything back. I bet the papers are collecting dusts somewhere at a storage or warehouse. We sent in an expedite request last week, hopefully we would hear some good news next two weeks !

We expected that it will take a month or two for me to recuperate after the surgery. And I properly can’t carry anything heavy for a while.  Look like the move to IL has to be postponed another month or two.

Though we have sold some furniture few months ago, but we still have some electronics items and furniture to get rid of before the move. May have to put up an ad and do a yard sale after the surgery.

We want to sell the junk car before the move to IL. We have passed on the news to the people at the workshop and promised to give them a little commission if anyone they introduced end up buying the junk from us.

We still haven’t gotten any buyer because we are upfront with them, we told them that they need to spend some money fixing up the car, it needs an overhaul! The bearing of the engine needs some work. We have replaced a few things recently. Though it’s easy to get a used Nissan radiator and it doesn’t cost as much as a new Taurus Radiator, it still cost us a few hundred getting the radiator and water pump fixed.