Bep

Co-worker brought some treats back from Japan.

DCF

1 - 6 - 8 Day

So how did you celebrate 1-6-8 day? In a previous post, I explained the ausciousnessus of 1-6-8 in Chinese. "I Liu Ba" sounds like "I Lu Fa" which means a "road of fortune." So on January 6th of 2008, it is a special day to do something to pave a road of fortunes into the new year. If you live in Europe or are from Europe or other countries that read the dates "backwards" you'll have June 1st of this year to replicate this magic.
















These are my own new concoction of stuffed mushrooms. Mushroom caps. Stems removed. In the oven, I baked a small pyrex dish with a container of anchovies (really could have been... maybe half of it as they came out a little salty, but with rice that could be a preferred thing!), 6 garlic cloves, and topped with some olive oil and Italian parsley. Dunno, baked at 350 for 30-40 minutes? I dipped the mushroom caps in the oil and place them on a tray. For the filling, I start with a dollop of bechamel sauce (butter, flour, milk, and ground nutmeg). I mash up the remaining anchovy garlic sauce (which also makes for great crustini dip), mixed it with about 1 Tsp of dry bread crumbs to make it a bit pasty and then dollop those into the (18) mushrooms. Sprinkle a little bit more of the bread crumbs on top for effect. Bake 20 minutes. Deda always says no cheese with seafood so that ingredient is absent. Tastes great. Needs some extra color. Originally intended to use some of the parsley to garnish but was too busy to do it. I guess a few pieces/stalks just on the side would have done.
















Baby Bok Choy pt. 2
















Ground pork with eggplant and mushrooms stems that mysteriously appeared in the kitchen. This didn't come out so well because 1) didn't use enough scallion in the oil to really cook out that meaty smell. 2) wanted to use fish sauce in marinade but forgot and didn't use enough soy to start with. The good news is that just adding some soy or fish sauce afterwards helped make a big difference and made it a nice dish.





















I neglected to take pictures during the meal so this is one of people leaving. Jeep, Kevin's hair, part of Jeremy's head. Part of Dan's head. The is the doorway leading to their road of fortunes. That is the doormat with which to wipe away your misfortunes.

Rained In

There was an enormous rain storm on Friday and I decided to wait it out to see if my commute would improve before setting out for work. As things would develop, it became abundantly clear that leaving the house was a bad idea. Our producer emailed in his failed attempt to get to work from the city but by then I had given up on work today. Attempts to work from home also failed. See the above traffic map. Yellow is moderate congestion. Red is heavy congestion. Black is stop and go. That's a good 10-15 miles of stop and go! Urk. The winds were the real problem however. The Richmond bridge was closed down because 1-3 trucks were blown over (not over the bridge) by the wind. Something like 60-70 mph I hear. The rain would eventually let up and traffic was starting to return to normal around 3:00pm. I got some groceries and invited coworker Chris over for some dinner.
















My lame-o attempt at Yin Si Zhuen. I guess they flash fry it in restaurants?
















Tofu Curds

Homeward Bound

Some snazzy airplane shots.


























































































So all the big hotels are right there on the other side of the landing strip. Is that why they call it the strip?
















This airport is... weird.
















And there are the airport slot machines. Some of them.





















So Las Vegas is officially lame. I got a bottle of champange at the duty free shop in Toronto. The problem is that the Vegas airport is so old that to transfer from the international terminal to the domestic terminal you have to exit security and come back in. Oops! Champange bottle is over 3oz liquid limit. The best advice they could give me was "why don't you slam it in the back parking lot?" Gee, thanks bozo. So why isn't there a red-flag when they scan my airplane ticket in the duty-free shop and it's right there. I'm transferring through Vegas. I was planning to write United but now I'm starting to think it's the Duty-Free's fault. I wants my booze back! Traveling with layovers sucks sucks sucks.

January of First

Ox Tail and Bone soup
















Then we went to Pacific mall with Ron who got a haircut. Then we got boba.

2008

Happy New Year. Seems like end of the posts and recaps are all the craze. Like the hula hoop. This was quite a bloggerific year with 256 posts versus 147 in 2006. 21.33 posts per month. 4.9 posts per week.

Eating. Cooking. Art shows. Music shows. Three weddings (Romy, Mimi, Scott&Crystal). BBQs. Birthdays. TFB movie nights. Thursdays at Ed's. Web-games. Tuesday night Xbox-LIVE. Deda's visit. Meeting Miyamoto. GDC. APE. Space Party. Pirate Festival. Tezuka Exhibit. New Office. Alaska. Cruise Eats. Opus. Watching New York Rangers online. Visit from Nio. Canada. Holidays. Blogging.

Earlier in the year, I said I'd go to 2 new restaurants every month but honestly I forgot about that at some point and haven't been keeping track of my new culinary visits. I suppose I could go count on my blog but =P. So maybe I'll try to start that up again this year. Maybe add to that, cook 2 new dishes every month. I'll have to think about what I want to do this year, but not unlike 2 new restaurants, I'll probably forget about it half way through the year.

Happy 2008.