jschyun

I went to Tin's recently,about a month ago, and I was a little disappointed, prob because I was expecting too much, someplace like Ton Kiang. I thought it was decent for a little neighborhood joint. I never got a chance to go there before the change in ownership though, unless it happened within the last month. I still have to get back to Gary Soup about Gold Mountain. Went there recently as well, but I was too late, and it was closing.

I sure hope you have two bathrooms. Or at least a separate shower.

Pan is right. All that revenge stuff just keeps him in your system. He's gone, you're still alive, time to move on to bigger and better things. Happiness is just around the corner, but you have to keep walking... I had a really bad, horrible relationship, but once we broke up, I found the man of my dreams. Just don't give back the Grey Goose. That would be truly insane.

You didn't give the Grey Goose back did you? That would make some killer drinks at the party you could have. Yeah! You got rid of his nasty ass! Frankly, this sounds like a time to celebrate if you ask me.

There are a bunch of California Wok's in CA. Unfortunately, I cannot recall ever having been to one, but it seems like the type of place that one could go to for lunch and not really think about it. I've been to plenty of cheap and cheerful Chinese joints to get a healthy veggie filled lunch. In my area, I usually go to Chin Chin or Panda Express. I know, not haute cuisine, but a girl's gotta eat and run sometimes! Here's one review. What someone said about one California Wok --edit-- A way long testimonial --/edit-- Hmm, several very positive testimonials.

Well, now that my cash flow is lower, thanks to my latest eating rampage, I suppose this is as good a time as any to try the Ikea $1.99 dinner special.

Use this site to check up on garden mail order companies Garden Watchdog (the link above) shows that people have had some bad experiences with Reimer. I wouldn't use them. Go with some of the other suggestions.

Fresh garlic? Dirt cheap? Yes, you should definitely buy it! Fresh garlic is awesome. You only need to dry it out for storage, really. Do as melkor says, or freeze it if you want (I have never done that, can't comment). If you grow garlic, it turns into a solid bulb which then sort of separates into cloves somehow. I am not describing it well. Anyhow, I like using the big solid head as well, just like normal garlic. Now that's pretty young garlic. Garlic greens are good too.

Well, I love Gustav Anders, but mostly I love the Back Pocket, because I wasn't usually rich enough to eat at G A. Yeah, they were empty often. But they did have excellent food. Of course, I have very little to compare it with. How many Swedish fine dining establishments in OC do you know? Apparently, they are retiring, and going back to Sweden. Sunday is his b-day so they're having some shindig and it's totally booked. I have reservations for fri lunch and possibly sat lunch. Read the bottom of this article. It mentions the closing briefly.

What, you don't lick the sides of the box?

LA Times Food Section -- February 25, 2004 Brief summaries and links to individual articles are provided below. The LA Times posts their restaurant reviews, and some other Food Section articles, in the Calendar section on-line even though they appear in the Food section of the print edition. Further, one is required to register separately to access the Calendar section and pay a fee if you don't already subscribe to the paper. An ode to the crunchy, green pistachio. Regina Schrambling writes a well researched piece which ends with recipes for pistachio-cranberry cookies, pistachio-crusted quail, pennette with pistachios and Gorgonzola. Awaziki, a combination of Greek tzatziki and the Ethiopian spice blend awaze, is an example of Papa Christo's version of the United Nations. Read here for Valli Herman's story on this venerable Greek market. You've had flans for dessert, how about savory flans? Susan LaTempa reports how vegetable flans are all the rage in L.A.'s hot restaurants. Included are recipes for La Cachette's leek flan, Bastide's eggplant flan with eggplant caviar and chips, and Chloe's parsnip flan with wild mushrooms and shallots. Cindy Dorn's Culinary SOS: recipe for Madame Matisse's beet-apple-walnut salad Former "exotic" model, now winemaker, Patricia Kluge brazenly tells David Shaw how she has big dreams and the pocketbook to make them happen S. Irene Virbila's WINE OF THE WEEK: 1999 Calera Mills Vineyard Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir. The debate over Whole-leaf or chopped Caesar salads. by Leslee Komaiko. Also, Gustav Anders closes after 23 years, De Mori closes. S. Irene Virbila gives three stars to Mori Sushi, where the rice is hand hulled at the restaurant and the wasabi grated fresh. Great omakase and sushi, around $100 or so per person. Read here for eGullet opinions on this restaurant. (hint: they love it!)

Have you ever seen that jam anywhere else?

Crap.

Here's some pics of our Bouchon Bakery breakfast the other day. One of our "American" eclairs. gnawed on chocoate caramel tart. The caramel might have been salted but my memory is too bad to be sure. Pate de Fruits. Yes, they look like Sunkist fruit gems. Pear tart, Reeses Timbale. Hmm, Reeses looks like no jam on cardboard, but you can see it on the bottom of the Pear tart one.

I've noticed here in CA that if you wait until the end of the season (I think around May, but if I have time I'll check my receipts) you can get ranunculus and other bulbs dirt cheap. I get them for $1 a bag. I forget if ranunculus has bulbs, but this is a nice deal for those of us who want lots of bulbs for little money. Just check over the bags to make sure you're not getting rotten or dried up ones. Hope you can get these deals in TX. I recall seeing it most at the large chain garden centers like Lowe's. What really angers me is that they throw out the leftover veggie seeds at the end of the season and don't care if some group would like to take them.

I have been able to get perfectly new (in the box) Donvier ice cream makers from Salvation Army and Goodwill here for $5 - $6. I got 3 this way. My sis got a mini one for $5 from Goodwill one time.

You can go across the border to Rosarita for $10 lobster, if you're so inclined.

Hmm, yeah we figured it was to keep the thing pretty as it got bumped around in the customer's boxes. But in all the time I've had wonderful/good/okay/mediocre/spit-it-out pastries, I have not once seen this done. It's logical, but I've never seen it. My main problem was that my pear tart could not be eaten out of hand because (and I blame that jam) the crust was kinda moist (refrigerated) and stuck to the cardboard when lifted so the whole tart started to collapse on itself. I just left it on the cardboard and sort of gnawed it off. Not my favorite way to eat, but it worked. The crust of the chocolate tart was crisper, probably because it hadn't been refrigerated. But it was still kind of hard to get off the cardboard and then you had to deal with sticky fingers. Luckily, they have a tap outside where you can wash your hands. You can get napkins inside to wipe and then there's the fancy wooden trashcan to throw away sticky cardboards.

On Sat before the potluck, we went to Bouchon Bakery to get the peanut butter chocolate mousse cake for the party. However, we were lured into buying all sorts of unnecessary goods by displays of all the pastries. We had for breakfast (in no particular order): Pate de fruits: they had raspberry, cassis and something, and mango and apricot. They were molded in a round lozenge shape. The raspberry had the lush texture of the ones I had at Chuao Chocolatier in Oceanside, last year. cassis as usual was my fave. chocolate Bouchon: Basically this is a 2 inch long, cylindrical Valhrona chocolate cake with little Valhrona chocolate chips in it. I ate it, and it tasted just like a brownie. A tasty, dark, chewy brownie with little chips in it. If you like your brownies kinda crusty, this is it. Financier (apricot almond): very cute and tasty financier, with apricot a nice complement to the almonds in the cake and sliced on top. They were little oval cakes as opposed to the rectangular, gold brick shaped cake of tradition. Tiny, about 2 inches or so long. I like fruit financiers actually. Seems less boring than just almond cake. Chocolate Dutch (?) doughnut: this was Mark's doing, not me. It was a good chocolate doughnut that didn't taste stale the next day. Riesling Pear Mascarpone cheese tart (I think that's the name): Mascarpone was delicate filling, nice with the pears. Would have been my favorite were it not for the sticky jam that cemented the bottom of the pastry to the cardboard round it sat on. I've never seen anyone do this. Is this normal around here? Gah! Chocolate caramel tart: They use Valhrona chocolate here and I have to say I usually like it better than El Rey or Scharfenberger, because it doesn't taste as bitter and weird to me. I just can't get myself to like Citizen Cake's chocolate stuff, prob for that reason, or maybe because I'm a bad person. That said, I thought this tart was a little too sweet, but nothing a good cappucino couldn't solve. This tart would have been great if we had not already stuffed ourselves with other stuff. Tart was stuck on carboard round with jam, grr. Reeses timbale: This was basically a scaled down version of the peanut butter mousse cake we brought to the potluck except the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter here was higher, with a little disk of I think shortbread on bottom. This was very cute,delicious, with smooth light mousse that was eaten in a flash. shortbread disk was stuck to cardboard with jam, gah that is so annoying and it makes the crust go limp faster. "American style" eclairs: This means that the eclair was split in half and filled with cream, like a sort of cream sandwich, as opposed to french style where you pipe the filling in and then glaze the top with the appropriate flavor glaze. We had the chocolate and chantilly cream versions, and both were nice, with a layer of what appeared to be chcolate or vanilla pastry cream and the whipped cream piped on top of that, then the top half of the eclair on top of that. chantilly cream was my favorite. Side note: Pascal's Epicerie in Newport Beach, CA does a very nice (french) eclair IMHO, but they only have coffee and chocolate. Both are delicious. I had a caramel macaron. I hate to say this, but I thought the macarons here were too big. I think the size compromised the texture a little, because instead of a tender, moist, ethereally light cookie sandwich, I got a sort of heavy and pasty one. When I buy macarons, I usually buy one or two of every flavor, but I wasn't really tempted to do that here. Anyhow they only had a couple of flavors. They said caramel was the most popular. Rounded out with a latte, all this junk made a very sweet breakfast. I figured I would go back and grab some croissants but never made it that far. I'll have to eat here a couple more times, it's really a nice place. You can tell rich people live here because the trash cans had wooden facades to make them look nice and less like trash cans (I'm guessing). No indoors eating though, only outdoor seats with umbrellas. Maybe the next time I'll do the multi day croissant tour of Napa/SF. But why limit to croissants? Pics forthcoming

Just a little note on the Sea Harbour trip, we had some pretty great things, but did not, I repeat, did not get the fois gras wontons (duck liver wontons on the menu). I keep meaning to order that, just to see what it tastes like. But $16? for wontons? gah. My fave this time was the sharks fin seafood dumplings, but they only put on a couple threads of sharks fin, which kind of annoyed me. Nevertheless, the dumplings are two bite wonders with juice pockets at the bottom, not as juicy as a juicy dumpling, but still juicy. Of course the bitter melon balls are always good. With the black sesame filling, I think ErinB liked that one al ot. Erin's friend Alicia (did I get that right) ordered an eggplant noodle dish that I had to restrain myself from grabbing from her. Her man ordered some pork chop dish that everyone liked, but I was too full to eat it. As usual the egg custard tarts were not that great here, but this time, they sucked in a different way. This time the crust was Golden Gate flaky,with all the layers distinct, but the filling was just a pasty dot in the middle, so you mostly got a mouthful of flakes, which isn't so bad really. But they didn't suck as bad as at koi palace, so I felt better for that. I could comment on the rest of the parade but I think my mind glazed over after the 20th dish or so.

I'm actually starting to like Ango Tei better than Wasabi. Wasabi serves very small pieces and you're at the mercy of the sushi man. Also, I can never get bluefin toro there for some reason, whereas I had some excellent bluefin toro at Ango Tei yesterday. However, Ango Tei seems to be a magnet for disgusting old white men in heat. Ugh. Unfortunately, you will get these coming after you, if you are a single female at the bar. Yesterday was awful. I got the hard sell by a 48 year old guy who told me he is divorced, will never marry again, and is currently not into white women because they are too much trouble. He said he only goes out with Asian women now, because they know their role. He proceeded to try and find out everything he could about me, where I lived, how much money I made, and gave me his business card in case I was ever interested in going out with him. Gross! I told him that he shouldn't date Korean women. They're too much trouble. Another old white man took his place after he left, but he was actually a normal person and did not harass me. As an experiment I started a conversation about the restaurant with him and he was perfectly normal, only commenting on his favorite dishes and how he's gone there for 20 years. A nice antidote to bachelor #1.

It's very close to the Stratosphere actually. It's only like a mile away. If it's not too hot you can walk it.

By the way, thanks to you Texas gardeners that let us 'foreigners' to invade your thread. I love gardening! Finally a thread is starting on the CA forum, but I expect it to die a fast death. It's too damn early.

I have no problem with internal organs. I don't really like brains becuase of the BSE thing, but otherwise don't mind. I like all sorts of extremities like feet and ears and trotters. Yum. I will eat all sorts of bugs, as long as it's not a maggot or a grub. Esp deep fried. Live, not so interesting to me. I pick out grubs from the garden all the time, and their squishy texture, and squirmy movements just don't sex me up. I will never eat dog. I have several dogs and it's just not going to happen.

Some commentary on our trip The helicopter takes 62 gallons of fuel and is so compact. Mark the (Angry Armenian) mechanic went through a quick drill with me; he told me where everything was, what to use, what not to touch, and most importantly how to leave the craft without getting my head cut off. Mark(Angry Armenian),Jim (nice pilot guy),me,Chris As a side note, I only had to read and sign one piece of paper. By contrast, when I went skydiving, I pretty much had to sign my life away multiple times, and had to initial in a dozen different places that I would not sue the company, etc. Once that was done, I got in the craft, Chris Cognac took a couple of pics and then Jim the pilot started the engine. At first, we hovered only a couple of inches off the ground, then we swooshed in the air and left the ground and the mechanic behind us. It was like riding in a car, except we were in the air, wearing noise cancelling headphones, and the smell of fuel was thick in the air. It was amazing how fast I got used to it. Valentine's was a quiet night. We went to the beach a couple of times and Chris, as mentioned above, turned on the infra red for me to check out all the Valentine's sweeties there. It was kind of weird flying over the beach, seeing the waves so close beneath me. I felt a pang of guilt as I realized I had ditched my Valentine's sweetie to go on a foodie helicopter ride. On Valentine's Day, no less. I am a horrible person. But..helicopter...adventure... Chris talked nonstop about his favorite places to eat. "Let's go to B & R Burger! It's in a little strip mall. Oh man, their burgers are the best! " is basically what he said (I had no tape recorder). He proceeded to talk about the softball sized burgers and how he took all his police buddies there and they loved it. We circled around this little strip mall as Chris shined his police light on it and it so I could take a pic. I scrambled to take a pic but I couldn't get it in time. Anyhow, I couldn't figure out how to turn off the damn flash so I had to fix all the photos in Photoshop. This may or may not be B & R Burgers. I can't tell. Chris! We flew around various restaurants (Las Hamacas! "Their mole is the best!") and Chris would yell for me to take a pic while he had the spotlight on it. Meanwhile, I'm still struggling to take a decent pic with a camera whose manual I've never read. Agh. Damn flash button ended up being the one I was supposed to press twice to disable. Double Agh! We also flew over Western in Gardena, where a lot of the Korean restaurants are. Chris talked over the intercom about Heung Boo Nae (sp) and a casual family style place, either the one that used to be yet gol, or sam oh jung, I forget. Some talk of going to a soft tofu joint near there with Korean co-officer in the know. Suddenly there was a call and Chris gave me the "wave" that signaled that I had to stay quiet so he could hear the other people. Within seconds, we flew over the city and found our destination. Apparently, some crazy/drunk guy rammed into the gates of the Air Force base and was holed up inside his truck, within the compound. In the space of a second, Chris went from bubbly food man to serious police guy and started talking on the radio to various departments, telling the police cars on the ground where to go. We could see everything, and Chris kept an eye out for places the guy could run to. We circled around the base until the ground cars got the guy out of the truck. Chris said the guy was lucky he didn't get shot when he rammed through the gates, a thought echoed by someone else as well. There were a couple of other arrests, including one where we circled around this arrest of 2 guys and there was only 1 officer dealing with the situation. Chris yelled when the officer turned his back on the 2 guys ("You're not supposed to turn your back on them, you could get killed!") When backup came we flew on to more food sites. We touched down at LAX and tried to take a pic of the restaurant there but camera wasn't doing very well. See pic in earlier post We passed by hustler's casino a couple of times. Very bright and gaudy place. I also extracted a promise from Chris and friend to go to dim sum. Apparently, Chris was scarred from an earlier experience at dim sum, having seen chicken feet being eaten. I love chicken feet, but did not mention this as I did my best to convince Chris that dim sum is not "slimy". I extolled the virtues of things I thought he would like: warm barbecued pork buns, little shrimp dumplings, flaky custard tarts, but his pursed lips looked unconvinced. It's a work in progress.