Hungry Bear and I love bamboo shoots, but we've never cooked with fresh ones until recently. During the winter time, we always see fresh bamboo shoots in our local Asian markets, but hesitated to buy them until a few months ago.

Neither one of us knew how to peel them, so we searched the Internets and discovered it was relatively easy to prep bamboo shoots. Here's an informative video that shows how they are found and prepared. The bamboo shoots in the video are boiled to remove their bitterness. We're not sure why it is necessary because the shoots we get are not bitter, so we simply peel them following these steps.

Zha ziang mian, aka Chinese spaghetti, is one of Hungry Bear's favorite comfort dishes. It has everything she likes... sweet, salty, spicy and carbs! The rich meaty sauce is nicely contrasted by the cool refreshing vegetable garnish.

It's a popular item in Northern China and legend has it that Marco Polo got his inspiration for Italian spaghetti after spending time in China. Growing up, Hungry Bear often had this dish served with regular spaghetti noodles, but it's best served with Chinese noodles. We included a photo of the brand we like in the slideshow.

We've been really bad about taking pictures of our Sunday nite dinners lately. Sometimes we just want to eat and not deal with the photography, especially when dinner is not at our place. It's a pain in the butt to lug around the DSLR and tripod to our friends place and figure out the lighting conditions. After accidentally dropping our point-and-shoot camera on the strip in Vegas (long story), we recently got an ultra-compact Canon SD1100IS, which is great for discrete restaurant shots.

This past Sunday, Hungry Bear and I went over to Jane's place for dinner. It was a perfect opportunity to test out our little camera. For dinner, Howie (who is a much better cook than he lets on) made mapo tofu and stir-fried green beans. Jane and Garry made angel food cake with a lemon glaze and creme brulee. We would have taken pictures of dessert, but Jane and Garry weren't happy with their results. We thought they tasted perfectly good.

Our friends, Jerry and Gabriel, are moving to Seattle in a few weeks. To give them a proper send off, we had them over for dinner last night. For SND, actually Monday night dinner, Hungry Bear and I made...

• Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey
• Roasted Five-Spice Pork Tenderloin
• Cauliflower and Mushroom Sticky Rice Risotto
• Stir-Fried Water Spinach
• Chocolate Bouchons

Well, we didn't actually make the bouchons. We were up in Napa over the weekend and picked up some goodies from Bouchon Bakery. Sometimes it's just easier to pick up dessert than to make it yourself.

Vietnamese fresh spring rolls? Summer rolls? Salad rolls? What do you call these things? It's goi cuon in Vietnamese. The literally translation is salad (goi) roll (cuon). Whatever you call them, they are light, refreshing and delicious. Most restaurants serve salad rolls with nuoc cham, a fish sauce based dipping sauce, but did you know, it's ten times better with a spicy peanut Hoisin sauce.

A few weeks ago, Hungry Bear had a major craving for goi cuon after Nikki, a.k.a. Canary Girl, asked me to share my recipe. My version is a common shrimp and pork salad roll recipe that most Viet people make. As long as the ingredients are fresh, especially the lettuce and herbs, the salad rolls are going to be good.

I made goi cuon this past Sunday night as part of our Vietnamese/Chinese New Year celebration dinner with our SND friends. Every time I make a batch of salad rolls, I have more respect for my mom's ability to crank these things out. They are easy to make, but time consuming to prep and roll. My mom can probably roll 2 or 3 batches in the time I can make one. Next time, I'm just going to do the prep work and we'll have a salad roll rolling party.