All Things Chill

To start, I found some notes in a journal that I keep in my bag for randomness:

A chiffonade of mint to a staccato note to a twitter post (short, succinct but important).
An e-learning flash module to a fugue to an osso bucco. (scenes and layers, episodes of voices, layers of flavor)
A cassette tape to espagnole to PowerPC (surpassed by CD, surpassed by demi-glace, surpassed by Intel chips)

Random streams of consciousness. I’m in bed, looking out of my window and into a sky that has a washed out “paint water” color about it. The nights are warmer now, so the comforter and pillows #3 & #4 will eventually be pushed onto the floor by morning. I’ll be working the holiday tomorrow, so by 7:30AM at the latest, I will be in the shower singing songs from Boyz II Men’s CoolyHighHarmony album. I’ve been adopting more organic and skin sensitive products because of the damage my hands have received from being in a commercial kitchen and culinary school. S’all good. Should be going to an allergist the next day off I have.

Allergies. I really don’t have many worries in my life (which may or may not be a good thing), but the one thing I fear are undiagnosed allergies that I’m afflicted with. Jaclyn knows what I’m talking about. What if I am unable to eat shellfish? No shrimp paella, fish tacos, sushi, caviar or clam chowder. If I’m allergic to mangoes… there goes certain ceviches, fruit salads, delicious desserts and mango lassis.

Honestly, I’d rather not know. But what if I’m just afraid of the unknown in general? Well, no, I doubt it. I *did* move to SF in a month’s time and I *am* living with a girl in a new city that I honestly didn’t know for more than a year (and substantially less in a romantic fashion). I think I actually *like* jumping into the abyss. Making new friends, absorbing new cultures (in this case the endlessly interesting fashion industry) and adding another reference point to perhaps triangulate what I want out of life.

But what is it that I want? 2 years and 2 cities later, I have chunks of my life that I’d like to be realized, but there are so many things in the air right now… so many paths to take… so many ways to live. I know I can succeed. I’m able to put my head down and work, but I’m also able to keep my chin up and lead. My mind is craving something bigger than myself. I want to be planning while I’m doing laundry. I want to be calculating on the bus ride home. I just want to work.

Wish me luck sleeping through pre-4th firework antics. Hee hee.

G’nite

~Spec

French Toast pudding with Butter-Rum Sauce and Freshly Whipped Cream

Larger view here. Liana randomly brought home a free (as in beer) huge loaf of bread from a local bakery earlier this week and as much as I like bread… I can’t eat it everyday (it cuts into my weekly 9lbs. of rice a week diet lol). So, figuring that I only have a little bit of time left before this bread goes bad, I chose to do what anyone would do with old bread: FRENCH TOAST (or as the French call it “pain perdu” or “lost bread”). LANGUAGE LECTURE OVER. NEXT!

I was pretty sure that I had an idea of how many people would be in Liana’s office today, so I busted out these really cute mini-dutch ovens to make French toast pudding. Oh, Liana, you might want to consider skipping this recipe.. it’s not very healthy. LOL.

Ingredients:

French Toast Pudding
6 slices thick-cut white bread, cut into cubes
4 Eggs
1 pint (2 cups) heavy whipping cream
1 c sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
4 tbsp. cinnamon

Butter Rum Sauce
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar (white can work too)
1/2 cup cream
1 tbsp. vanilla
3 tbsp. rum

Fabrication

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk all ingredients together and pour mixture over bread cubes. Stir gently. Let sit at least 10 minutes or refrigerated & covered overnight. Spoon into heating vessel (a lightly buttered pot, mini dutch ovens or ramekins) and bake for 40 minutes.

For the sauce, melt butter in pan over medium-low heat. Add the sugar, cream and vanilla and stir occasionally until well combined. Pull the pan off the heat and add rum. Let simmer for 1 minute and serve.

When bread pudding is done, portion out onto a plate (perhaps with a ring mold) and spoon rum-butter sauce on top and a dollop of whipped cream. Serve for dessert or a naughty breakfast. Hee hee. Honestly, it’s a really easy recipe that served 6+ people and only cost me $6 (with the free bread). YAY.

Sex-ified French Toast!

~Spec

I’ve been twittering this whole saga from the beginning, but if you didn’t know… Liana (she blogged recently!) and I recently swapped couches with a neighbor. w00p w00p! Why? Well, they’re selling their place soon and they’d like a smaller couch to make their living room look bigger (recommended by their realtor). So, after talking it through, they asked us if we wanted to swap couches straight-up. Here were the terms:

HELL YES. It really was a no-brainer. Our couch has no real cosmetic issues and still has that “new couch cushion springback.” Their sectional is HUGE, with a great broken-in feel. Now Liana can veg and watch TV and I can surf on the net without burning her face with the bottom of the laptop. LOL. We’re all jazzed how everything worked out. YAY WE CAN HAVE SLEEPOVERS NOW. LOL.

Thanks guys!

~Spec

Via Skratchworx. Midi controlled sexiness. I love my Technics 1210’s, but I’d love a separate scratching gizmo to take on the road with me.

SELL THIS PLZ!

~Spec

Now reading: Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking. Ruhlman wrote about staple meals, and I couldn’t get my mind off a perfectly roasted chicken. So.. uh… I made one (just like before) and served it with oven roasted new potatoes and steamed broccoli. Hee hee.

That is all.

~Spec

Sometime last week I had a hankerin’ for some Benihana - You know, the place where people in white chef uniforms who come to your table and cook whatever you ordered right in front of your face. Cool, yes? Yes. Does it get old? Ye… well… in the midwest, it never did. HEE HEE. ANYWAY, is it expensive? Hell yes. Well, what’s a boy to do?

COOK IT. I mean, it’s a great place and all, most people come for the “show”… AND it has good food… but at its very core, it’s just great ingredients seared with a lil’ bit of butter and/or Asian accoutrements. Plus, every time I went there as a child, I made sure to take mental notes to see what they did. I mean, the menu changes, but the show pretty much stays the same, AMIRITE? Hee hee.

Well, I found myself in the seafood section of Uwajimaya (Japanese grocery store to Seatte-ites) and I happened upon calamari steaks. EEEEE. If you’ve been to Benihana, you know what I’m talking about. Mainly, it’s the rings / tentacles that are battered and deep fried at your local pub… just HUGE and served as main protein. Think one REALLY flat scallop, or something. MOVING ON.

Since I wanted to be all up onz the decadence, I figured I’d take this meal surf & turf-y with a decent ribeye at the local market in my neighborhood. Honestly, I’d bust out a recipe, but all I did was pat both the calamari and the steak dry with a paper towel, seasoned with salt and pepper and seared both sides in their own pans on medium-high heat finished with a little nub o’ butter on top - I finished the calamari with a bit of lemon and sprinkled some more toasted sesame seeds on top. After 10 minutes of resting, I then proceeded to cut everything into 1 inch cubes and served on a plate.

I also found a recipe of their hot mustard sauce on the Internet, which called for whipping cream of all things. SKIP. I used the same ingredients as the recipe here, but without the whipping cream - it just seems so damn unnecessary.

5 Tbsp Dry mustard
2 Tbsp Hot water
1 Tbsp Sesame seeds; toasted
1/2 Cup Soy sauce
2 Garlic clove; crushed

Mix mustard with hot water to make a paste. Then, throw everything in a blender and pulsate until smooth. Serve with any simply prepared steak, seafood or chicken.

I also altered the ratios of the mustard and the garlic cloves since I wanted more of a pronounced flavoring ’cause I was eating it with white rice. Also, I’m secretly trying to expose the delicious dipping sauce that Fu Man Dumpling serves at their tables. It’s like CRACK.

So there you go. Simply prepared proteins with white rice, a hot mustard sauce and a few other veggies you see at everybody’s favorite “American-Japanese” (not the other way around) restaurant. Also, at the fraction of the price. Easy peasy. Eating it all outside while having a beer is also a plus. Hee hee.

YAY Benihana at home!

~Spec

Youtube link here. @ Yosemite, trying to video blog the entire journey… and failing at the first scheduled rest point. LOL. WHERE ARE WE???? Jade wins!

(As always)

~Spec

You can find the photoset here: Half Dome - Yosemite California. There’s WAY too much to post from last weekend (not to mention it’s 3AM already), but here are some deets:

• I didn’t make it to the top of the hike, but Liana and I pushed through 15.5 miles.

• We hiked that distance over 10+ hours.

• No blisters, cuts, scrapes. Liana did, however, get a small insect bite.

• I managed to shoot 31 memorable shots with Liana’s camera.

• We went through 5 granola bars, 4 cliff bars, 2 pb&j sammiches, 1 turkey sammich and a handful of beef jerkey.

• We washed that down with 4 32oz. Nalgenes of water.

• When we got down, we celebrated with a perfectly plump $3 hotdog and a large (iced tea/lemonade).

• I went without Internet for roughly… 48 hours 29 minutes 39 seconds (lol) and survived.

• Of the entire group of 14 people, 9 or 64.2% made it to the top.

Congrats to the peeps who made it! I’m 100% certain that Liana would have made it to the top had I not cried uncle 5/6 of the way up. She was totally rockin’ with the “fast” group the entire time and had to encourage me (the old man) to get up even that far. LOL. PATHETIC TAGHAP. PATHETIC. Thanks sweets! Also, the top of John Muir trail has the most refreshing tiny waterfalls to cool you off midway down the hike. <3 <3 <3!

Making our way down earlier did have its perks tho! Hee hee. DOMESTIC BAERS AND HAWAIIAN PIZZAZ FOR THE WIN. lol.

OOH OOH. Just got the e-mail from someone else from the trip! You can find Johnny’s web album here. You’ll see some pretty funny pics in there, including… a group picture, crazy amazing scary as hell shots and breakfast the next morning. WOOP WOOP.

Meeting new people and hanging out in California makes me miss SF so much more. Here’s to visiting down south more often and doing outdoors-y kinda things. YAY. Thanks to Jade for masterminding the trip, Steve for driving the 3+ hours both ways, Joveth for being great company and everyone else for making the trip wonderful. Hee hee.

YIPPIE!

~Spec

Liana and I are all packed and ready to go to Yosemite via Oakland Airport. See you on Monday! Expect pics and embarrassing video soon!

~Spec

(via Samuel) You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. One weapon.
2. One song blasting on the speakers.
3. One famous person to fight alongside you.

Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

—

1. A Pokemon: Torchic

2. Incubus - Pardon Me (”while I buuuurrssttt into FLLAAAMMEEESSS”)

3. Keanu Reeves or any of his movie characters: Neo (obviously) from the Matrix or the guy from “A Walk in the Clouds” (lol)

Random, I know

~Spec

Deb, Matt, Stacy and I celebrated Liana’s birthday yesterday! WOO HOO. Among other things, we had dinner at Umi Sake House, which is a pretty hip sushi joint in the Belltown district of downtown Seattle. It’s got a really chill vibe - wood flooring, live plants as dividers and lots of sunlight coming from the windows in the ceiling.

Liana opened presents (YAY SHE LIKED THEM), we ordered a LOT of food (almost too many “fruit + fish” rolls) and definitely had way too many drinks. Good times, good times.

Happy birthday sweetheart!

~Spec

I ordered the Antec earthwatts EA380 380W ATX12V v2.0 Power Supply earlier this week on Jason’s recommendation because my desktop PC was dead. Honestly, I built the thing from Jason’s leftover computer parts WHILE HE STILL LIVED IN ROSELLE. WOW.

Two major city moves and close to 5 years later, the thing is still pumpin’ away. I use the programs that I need at the versions that I’m used to, so there’s not real need to upgrade the PC. It’s a blogging machine, and as much as I’d like to join the Arstechnica Staff’s MACBOOK AIR CLOOB (Jacqui Cheng presiding lol), I’m still trying to get all the mileage from that Dell monitor that I bought in DEKALB so many moons ago. If it works, it works right? LOL IM SO CHEAPS.

The new power supply had well covered wire connections and is 80% quieter (no joke) than my old one. It’s purrin’ like a happy kitty. w00p w00p! As far as the topic of upgrading… That’s Apple’s job. Hee hee.

YAY Power Supplies!

~Spec

While the day at the Fremont Solstice Festival was nice an warm, the afternoon was quickly covered by clouds. The temperature must’ve dropped around 15 degrees - light hoodie weather. S’all good, I picked up chili ingredients! Thanks to Gary and Jason for the verbal support. Hee hee.

First I diced a large onion and a chopped red onion and put that in a preheated soup pot with a bit of oil. 10 minutes later I added minced jalepeno, garlic, 3 tbsp. cumin, 3 tbsp. chili powder and 1 tbsp. oregano. After 2 minutes, I added 1 32oz. can of diced tomatoes, 1 tbsp of tomato paste, 1 cup of chicken stock and a can of kidney beans. I brought everything to a boil and brought it back down to simmer for 1 hour for the flavors to mix, giving it a stir every ten minutes or so. It looked a bit soupy, so I added a 1/4 cup of cornmeal to thicken it a lil’. Before I served it, I added some already cooked chicken (leftovers poached earlier yesterday) and Kosher salt. Easy peasy!

I topped my bowl with some guacamole and torn cilantro with a few corn tortillas with melted cheese inside. Nothing warms the heart like a hearty soup! YAY.

YAY CHILI.

~Spec