Growing up in Allentown, PA, my family would take trips down to Washington, DC to visit my great aunt and uncle. As an active kid, I always dreaded going down to DC because I had to spend most of the time cooped up inside my great aunt and uncle's apartment. The highlights of the trips were the amazing home cooked Vietnamese meals prepared by my great aunt. Her roasted chicken (ga ro ti) and sticky rice were my favorite dishes.

It's been over two decades since I had ga ro ti. I never see it at restaurants (at least in San Francisco), as most Viet places serve grilled chicken (ga nuong) with five spice. So last week, I decided to make Vietnamese roasted chicken. I called up my parents to get advice. Unfortunately, neither of my parents make the dish and my great aunt passed away several years ago. My dad said, "marinate it in soy, fish sauce, garlic and a little sugar"...like every other Viet dish, not much help there. I was on my own with this one.

I remember my great aunt pan fried her chicken low and slow. I believe this "roasting" method was used because traditional ovens weren't available in Vietnam back in the day, unless you were wealthy. My great aunt's chicken had an extra crispy skin and the meat was shreddable by hand, almost like a confit. To get this texture, the chicken needs to be cooked longer than normal.

After Hungry Bear made her Hawaiian marinated chicken last week, we still had three pounds of unused chicken thighs. I needed to figure out what to make with them before they went into the freezer, where they would be forgotten. We are really bad with frozen meat and don't plan ahead enough to thaw it out.

I had a craving for green chili chicken stew, but couldn't find a recipe to my liking. Hungry Bear loves sweet potatoes, so I made braised chicken curry with yams, which is based on a Ming Tsai recipe. I've been tweaking this curry over the years. The dish calls for orange-flesh sweet potatoes, a.k.a. garnet yams.

The biggest changes to the original recipe are the omission of the banana and adjustments to the curry powder. I think there is enough sweetness from the yams, so there's no need for the banana. I've also adjusted the amount of chicken stock and added peas for some color.

Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

I love Chinese sticky rice. It contains several of my favorite ingredients — sticky rice, Chinese sausage and mushrooms. I know I'm going to have Hungry Bear's sticky rice at least twice a year, at Thanksgiving dinner and during Lunar New Year (Vietnamese/Chinese New Year) festivities. It's become a traditional dish for us on these holidays.

I really enjoy the rich flavors from the Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, oyster sauce and soy sauce that get infused into the sweet, sticky rice. Chinese-American families often serve sticky rice in place of stuffing during Thanksgiving. It's great with turkey, roasted duck or just by itself. I didn't grow up eating this dish, but I now consider it a comfort food.

Hungry Bear started making Chinese sticky rice using a recipe from Grace Young's The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. The recipe has dried scallops and shrimp in it, which takes additional time to prepare. Over the years, Hungry Bear has altered Grace Young's recipe, excluding the dried seafood, in order to save prep time. The scallops and shrimp are a little too fishy for my tastes and I prefer my sticky rice without them.

This past week, Hungry Bear and I hosted Sunday night dinner. I love pulled pork, but I don't like most BBQ sauces. They are usually too sweet and tangy for my palate. Instead, I decided to make pulled pork with all of my favorite Vietnamese flavors. The entire menu was...

• Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey
• Vietnamese Pulled Pork Sandwiches
• Fumi Salad (Asian Cole Slaw)
• Pumpkin Loaf

The Vietnamese pulled pork was fantastic with great flavors from the caramel sauce, lemongrass and chili peppers. Although I was very pleased with the results, I want to make it one more time and tweak the recipe a little bit before I share it with you.

However, I will share our curry cauliflower soup recipe. We first had this soup last year at Chapeau!, which is our favorite neighborhood French restaurant. It was served as an amuse-bouche. We loved it so much that we had to try to replicate the recipe.