white lotus

Sorry for late notice and many thanks Alex for remembering my presence at Gatherings of past. I will be attending with new friend & life partner, Farshid. Looking foreward to seeing old friends & making new ones ... cheers

Driving to Philadelphia & flying back for Heartland in August sounded like a good idea @ the time but perhaps it might be best to just continue this car trip on through to the Pacific NW. Thanks for your thoughtful feedback. By the time we get home to Seattle, it may not make much sense for us nor will be have to energy to fly back for the gathering. Dance, Masumi & I were really looking forward to joining you for the festivities. I especially am heart broken @ not being able to see old friends, make or drink tea with you all. I send you love & good thought, cheers wl

Greeting, wl here, sorry to break the zen-like silence but I have an inquiry and/or request. I will be in Philadelphia briefly around Memorial Day weekend with a car that my daughter has been driving across country. We will need a long term place for the car to reside for a few months until the great gathering in August @ which time we will return to retrieve it & continue on our car trip back to the Pacific NW. Any good suggestions as to a good temporary home in the area, hopefully in a secured location with nice people. It would make a great back-up or second vehicle to use for who ever volunteers to look after it. It even has GPS & satellite radio which we would keep activated for the duration...cheers

Many thanks Katie for taking on the reigns of responsibility for this years Heartland as well as those of you who provide valuable input & efforts towards the success of this event past & present. Also,a thank you to Chris for the green light for Dance & I to proceed in making our plans to attend. As usual, we will make sure to hold up our end that the tea world & other non-alcohol friendly beverages are taken care of for Saturday's feast. There is the possibility that our adult daughter Masumi may be free @ that time to attend as well. Looking forwards to meeting new friends, seeing our old ones & eating with you all. cheers, wl

Greetings, white lotus here from the Pacific NW... I would love to attend but was wondering whether bringing vegetarian/pescitarian, dairy (but not vegan) spouse Dance to would be an easy fit for Philiadephia. We have had wonderful veggie friendly experiences in past HEARTLANDS but a few of the Cleveland venues last year had slim offerings resulting one hefty dinner bill for a portion of salad & cooked greens. Since I have never been to Philadelphia, I was wondering how amenable your fair city would be for someone who was not carnivorous? Please inform... Regardless, I will make every effort to attend but would have a better time if I could bring Dance. cheers wl

apology for duplicate posts, will someone with more brain cells erase/fix this for me. BTW, Dance will not be at the Thursday evening event & will be flying into Cleveland sometime Friday AM. I on the other hand will be coming coming into Cleveland sometime in the PM on Tuesday, to join my roomies Kerry, Prasantin & +1 on Thursday. See you all very soon... wl

white lotus here, we just returned from Sri Lanka (which meant that have been having difficulties with internet abroad & also on the home front as well) a little over a week ago. My brain has been quite slow & thus we are just now reconnecting with you all here after a 3 week hiatus. Apologies for not communicating earlier. We will also be bringing some Sri Lankan estate teas as well as our usual tea stuff. By any chance, does any one have glass one gallon sun tea jars that we can use for iced tea dispensers. If we do not hear from anyone, we will bring 2 of them with us from the NW along with other tea paraphenalia that we don't expect most people to have readily available. Very much looking forward to seeing you all again & the fabulous food & beverages to come... cheers

Tammy, correct on Dance's food preferences. He will also be an appreciative audience for whatever mixed cocktail beverages you make up as he is a relative newbee to the cocktail world, thanks to the KC heartland adventure last year. Tammy, thanks for all the work you are putting into this...

Greetings Tammy et al, Sorry for radio silence. We have a few changes in our plans as all 3 (Dance, Masumi & I) of us will be arriving on different days & different times. That said, there will only be me for the Chia Shang Thursday in AA. Please cancel Dance's reservation for that evening. Hopefully you have received our remittance by now as we mailed it to you a while ago. For the FEAST, we are planning on being available for prep, washing dishes, or anything other duties where we can be useful. We are bringing NW smoked salmon to be used for the feast if any of you have good ideas for it. Otherwise, it could be put out for snacks. We are also packing our usual hot & iced tea stuff. Dance brought back some fairly good oolongs from a recent Taiwan tea tour. I will have my usual Japanese senchas/gyukuros as well. Looking forward to seeing you all soon. cheers, wl

Dance & I are in for everything but the bread class, because I am lazy in the morning. I am not sure how Dance (pesca-vegetarian) will do with the bacon breakfast. He seemed to do okay with the BBQ tour in KC last year. My daughter, Masumi will also be joining us for Saturday & Sunday. She, like her father is a veg & will not eat meat flesh but does well with eggs & dairy. Our Saturday potluck contribution will be making teas, hot & cold, plus citrusaide of some sort. Some of us are available for kitchen duty of some sort as needed, i.e. knife skills, washing dishes & general clean-up. We can bring smoked salmon, seafood from the NW if there is interest. cheers,

Many thanks Tammy & everyone else putting in effort for the gathering. Tammy, the above mentioned program sounds incredible. All the events sound fabulous. Confirm Dance & I for all the tours, meal/eating events. Our daughter Masumi may be ariving from from Madison, Wisc. late Friday PM via Amtrack to attend the Saturday potluck. Like Dance, she is a veg but pretty handy in the kitchen & an accomplished tea youth as well. We will let you know after her travel plans are confirmed. Dance & I are so looking forward to coming.

Anytime July-August except for the weekend of July 24 will make it easier for Dance & I to represent the NW part of the country & bring any goodies, requested or not. We would also love to experience Ann Arbor as we had missed out on the earlier gatherings. Besides, We are curious to see if there is sign of Asian tea-life out there, if not, let's make it happen... I still have my well worn SEVA restaurant vegetarian cookbook. It has been over 30 years that I was a student there briefly & remember Jane Fonda stopping there overnight for an anti-war movement meeting. Things have probably changed since then. Hope to see you all this Summer. cheers, wl

menupix.com duly noted and surprised that I am just now aware of all these foodie tools to put on my computer bookmarks. EMP, Aquavit, Marea are now on my personal short list. I am just now starting to make a small dent in reading your NYC forum & other websites, for reviews, etc. This is getting to be a little overwhelming but I will survive. I am also getting a sense of the Manhatten geography which I know for you is probably a no-brainer. Your ideas are invalueable to me, please continue... sincerely, wl

The $60 - 80 is food only. Tax, gratuity, drinks, cocktails cost not included. Sorry for not including those important details. Hopefully, we still don't have to compromise on the visuals and most importantly, the ultimate yumminess. Again, the venue does not necessarily have to be Asian. Not that I would "cave" for non-Asian in-laws but my friend (childhood friend who comes from much better family than I) is a much nicer person who is trying his best to make this occasion special. Hopefully, this ease in budget makes it a little easier for the discussion. Thankyou for the heads-up to the menu.com website. I have printed out some of the menus, read reviews and started following-up on some of your leads. To say the least, this is also invaluable in structuring my own personal food crawl while I am visiting your locale. Keep the discussion going as I am finding your comments valuable and a great place to start the search. edited to add budget specifics and clean up grammer/typos...

Greeting, I am white lotus from the NW forum. I have met some of you on your visits to Seattle & @ the Heartland Gathering. I hope you are able to give me imput on a dilemma. My dear friend who is throwing this party for his long time partner is having difficulty figuring out the right restaurant to have this dinner for about 14 to 18 people. He lives in San Francisco and folks will be flying in from all around the US for this. I have looked at your forum index of restaurants which although interesting, did not assist me in getting any new ideas as to give helpful imput. He was originally thinking about possibly something like Jewel Bako. BTW, I just heard that this venue may no longer be a great place. I digress, anyway, non-Asian family members of the birthday person informed him that they "don't do any raw fish" so now he is in a quandry as to what kind of place to book. The venue doesn't necessarily have to be Asian. He wants the place to be elegant, modern, visually stunning & of course, have yummy food. The budget for the dinner will be about $60 - 80 dollars per person. The dinner will be on a Monday evening in sometime in July after the 4th. Thankyou for your time and thoughtfulness in advance. Also, as I will be traveling by myself, any ideas where a mature-ish Asian-American should park her accomodations without loosing her bank account (I am still having to come up with one more year of college tuition for my kid). Since this is not food related, would you mind letting me know about any good websites or other leads via PMs or email. I hope that I can meet some of you & return the favor if/when any of you visit us in the NW. Many thanks again. Cheers, wl