Loving bell peppers is easy when stir-fried with chicken and black bean sauce.

When I was younger, there were certain vegetables that I didn’t care for—bittermelon, celery, watercress and bell peppers (specifically green bell peppers). These vegetables tasted bad to me except for watercress (that one I just didn’t like because it was so stringy—we mainly had it in soups and I could never chew it enough to swallow it).

When I met Nate, he had his own food dislikes but they didn’t match mine. I was incredulous that he didn’t like mayonnaise, bananas, and asparagus. Those were all things that I loved. So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to me that the things he loved, I didn’t – especially bell peppers. And this particular dish of stir-fried chicken with bell peppers in black bean sauce is one of his favorites.

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Sweet marinated meat, skewered and char-grilled for that irresistible, flame-kissed, smoky flavor.

Indonesian Chicken and Pork Satay

If you recall I have had many wonderful eating experiences stemming from that International Dorm in Hawaii (Niku-Jaga, Chicken Pho, Thai Son-in-Law Eggs, Indonesian-inspired Sauteed Shrimp). But for this particular recipe, my memories are not based in the dorm. Yes, the Indonesian friends who made them were from that dorm but we had taken the satay and hibachi (portable grill) and had gone to cook them at the park by the beach. Hawaii does that to you—it makes you want to go out to the beach as often as you can!

So imagine with me, if you can, the cool tradewind breezes, and in the background, the sound of Hawaiian music playing on somebody’s boombox, the blue ocean beckoning a slight distance away, the wide, expansive park next to the beach and us sitting under a shady tree with our hibachi going. Now that you have that setting in your mind, imagine any food not tasting just wonderful. But this was satay, it wasn’t just any food, it was GOOD food.

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Okay, so I know that bacon is *so* 2009, but seriously, these bacon-wrapped chicken lollipops are too good to ignore. And they’re so easy to make, too!

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Lollipops

Living here in Malaysia, we don’t get to watch much American football anymore. Truthfully, I haven’t been that big a fan of professional football to begin with. Like Annie, the only reason to watch the SuperBowl was for the ads, and for the SuperBowl get-togethers. I mean, where else are you going to find so many great hors d’oeuvres?

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Elizabeth and I have been friends since high school. Our friendship was not the most immediate—she is naturally more suspicious and takes a long time to warm up to people. I, on the other hand, will talk to just about anyone who is near me. So the first time we met, I had come up to her to say hello and ask her name only to be met with a suspicious, “why do you want to know?” At least, this is what Elizabeth tells me. I don’t remember that at all. I only know that we’ve been good friends for a long time. We’ve been through years of sitting next to each other through high school, work (graduate school for me), and of course, FOOD.

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