jschyun

I have squash out (Zephyr, Johnny's), along with the usual spring garden: carrots, mesclun, turnips (harvested young), beets (all colors), spring onions. put in snow and regular peas (green arrow i think). most eaten by rats here. Started Costoluto Fiorintino, Kellogg's Breakfast, and Jelly Bean tomatoes have all sprouted. I usually hold off until march or april to transplant. They usually just sit there if I do it earlier. Brandywine and Marianne's Peace doing nothing. Starting Petit Gris de Rennes, and Blacktail mountain melons. Tons of cukes. I can't take care of it all so entrusted others to care for garden. Asian eggplants from Renees seeds again, the tricolor pack. Lilac peppers from Johnny's. Basil also gets killed here. they'll go till sept and then gone. Korean mint doing well, one was killed but other survived. english/lemon/ caraway thymes all doing well. santolina doing well and needs haircut. all mints killed by drought except spearmint.

Mmm, icebox watermelons. I got some seed in trade last year and was meaning to try growing them in a month or two. I got a charentais melons called "petit gris de rennes" and a watermelon called "blacktail mountain". I wonder how they'll do. Last year, the rats ate up all my melons. I had trained some up a trellis but the ones that were on the ground grew the best. I got to eat one of my melons (cantaloupe) and it was very sweet, just wonderful. I only got 2 melons on that plant, and I left the other one to ripen a little further, but the rats got to it first. I garden in a coop garden that is surrounded by an open field filled with gophers and rats. Ah! Sometimes a coyote will come by and I pray that he eats up a lot of gophers along the way, but housing here is crowding them out. 20 years ago, this city used to have some open land and you could ride your bike down to the farmer's shack to get groceries. Now, there's no such thing.

Alright people, keep your pants on, here they are: (Unfortunately many of the photos were really bad. Here are the best ones I could get.) This post is going to be heavily edited to add more stuff. This is the helicopter we flew in. It was really small but a surprisingly smooth ride and we maneuvered around the air like birds! Just to clarify, Chris is the one on the right and the helicopter is the one on the left. We flew around to the beach and back. Chris put on the infra red scanner so I could see all the Valentines lovers on the beach. I had a small monitor in the back where I could see everything. Here's a horizon shot. This is mostly what you'll see at night, sans the red blotch. Another horizon Check out the upper middle part of this photo. Chris shined his spotlight on it so I could get a pic. I forget which restaurant this is because I was so busy trying to get the stupid camera to work right (Chris, help?) but it was early on in the tour. We touched down at LAX at one point to get this shot. We are standing on the helicopter pad. We slowly flew over people in the terminals and I could see everyone going in and out of the Bradley (is this right?) terminal. Flying in that little craft was like being in the movie, The Fifth Element.

Morton's is also good, just had it Sunday night. However, it's a chain and quite expensive. Double cut filet mignon. Mmmm. Also, haven't been to Luger's (yet) so can't compare. I think Flemings is homegrown Californian, if you're interested in that stuff. Paul Fleming also started P.F. Chiang's (shudder), and perhaps some other ventures that I don't care about.

Took the helicopter tour of South Bay, with Chris Cognac, police detective cum food writer. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write a full on report right now, but suffice to say, there is a lot more coming in a few days. Aack! Must go.

mmmm, bread

Wow, thanks skchai. I should learn to search as well as you. So jeibi churi is neck meat then? The dish looks familiar, but then it looks like yet another plate of beef. I'll start keeping better track from now on. The yang, tripe, you were talking about, I think gras double refers to the regular smoothish tripe which is known as double tripe. I think that's right. A lot of times, I see honeycomb tripe, but also the smoother, firmer kind, which I'm not sure is double tripe or blanket tripe or what else. I'll look for websites, if anyone is interested. Here we also see book tripe, esp where there's Vietnamese, I think there's more, but I haven't done a comprehensive survey of tripe offerings.

skchai, where do you get jebi churi? I don't think I've ever had this.

Yeah, look what you started adobohead! Hmm, good name.

Thanks FoodZealot! I'll check them out. Dunno the places in Daly City, actually, but I know there is a large population of Filipino pps there. I was going to ask someone I know who lives there, where he would go, but the Filipino people I know seem to cook everything at home. I've had fantastic lumpia in the past, but it was homemade. Ditto for pretty much every other Filipino dish I've had, which is not that much actually.

Oh wait, I just remembered. Daly City.

I wonder if you could cook the cranberries with the sugar and butter in a separate pan and then pour it into cake pan, then pour on batter. 1 more pan to clean but the pic shows an evenly red top which to me suggests that the cranberries somehow had time to spread out in the caramel somehow. What do you think?

Lately, I've been interested in the Filipino places, after reading about someone who wanted to find a good Filipino restaurant in Irvine. I've expanded my search to all of CA. Does anybody know of a really great place in CA? Is CA the place to be in the U.S. for Filipino food? Thanks.

Hi jamesaru! Welcome to egullet and glad to see another Irvine person. Haven't been to Melting Pot though. Sorry. Not my thing right now.

Anyone growing melons this year?

Fantastic job on the review/writeup. You're making me hungry

Kron Chocolates (Dianne only not Tom) in Beverly Hills sells chocolates that are supposed to lift the woman's libido. Never had them, but I like her overpriced truffles. The best deal here is to come into the store, eat up as much of the free samples as possible, and then leave. But the sex chocolates are probably going to be popular for Valentines.

In Lora Brody's "Slow Cooker Cooking" she has a recipe for rice pudding. I imagine you can look at it and compare to a regular rice pudding recipe and make adjustments in your original kheer recipe. I trust Lora Brody because she wrote one of my favorite cookbooks "The Chocolate Diet".

mixmaster_b is definitely right about the cooked dishes being better than the sushi. I had forgotten that. That said a couple of times, I had some really nice yellowtail there. --I'm talking about Ita-Cho. my bad. --hey ErinB, IMHO, you might as well get some dim sum before you go back to NYC. I was asking around and even NY people agree that dim sum here on the Left Coast is much, much better.

Bulgogi is easier to make than galbi. Also, if you weigh the portions, I bet you get a lot less meat with bulgogi. I would guess that's why galbi is more expensive. When I make galbi i have to make sure no bone bits, maybe butterfly or use the precut strips, and have to pound it or at least get your hand in there, marinate it, then cook it. Pain in the you know where. Bulgogi just pour on the marinade before cooking and then grill away. In my experience, and perhaps it's atypical, but the less time it sits in the marinade, the more tender it is. I know that's contrary to what you would intuitively guess, but that's what I found. Then I quick cook it and it stays very tender, instead of taking on that hard, overcooked stringy quality.

Ita-Cho is decent. Been there several times. Mountain yam is kind of...sticky? Slippery? I don't know how to describe it. They have decent sashimi, at least when I've been there. Someone showed me the little sushi place, Hirozen Gourmet, in WeHo, which I like too.

Yes, yes, keep it up mongo_jones.

Two Fat Ladies (pretend they're both alive) Calvin Trillin Dick Cheney (maybe it will kill him!)

What about mangga Grill inTustin? I ate there a while ago, but I'm not that familiar with Filipino food so I'm not sure if it was good or not. They had a piano player if that floats your boat. --edit Mangga Grill 341 E 1st St , Tustin 714-730-1332 No guarantees. You might find some other places around OC that are better, but that's the closest to Irvine. --end edit

Thank God for small favors. --edit No offense to the English, you understand. But who can resist curry and a papadum? --end edit