http://www.sfgate.com/cgi…&sn=001&sc=1000
I just read that my car has been voted the “Greenest vehicle of 2008” for the fifth consecutive year.
Having a car that runs on natural gas hasn’t always been the easiest thing but at least when I need to drive somewhere, I don’t feel quite so bad.
http://www.sanrio.com/characters/
I forgot to wish my favorite character Hello Kitty a happy birthday! She turned 34 on November 1st!
Our friend Susan invited us over for a homemade Korean dinner. She’s been so busy with work and school that we hardly see her so she wanted to have dinner and hang out. She picked up all the ingredients from a Korean supermarket in Daly City, I’m assuming it’s Kukje Super Market on Junipero Serra Blvd. She made us duk bok ki (the Korean rice cake stir fried with kimchi, pork, fish cake, and spicy sauce.) For appetizers we had edamame and kim bap (Korean sushi, sesame oil instead of rice wine in the rice). Both were pretty good.
We also had kalbi and bulgolgi, both premarinated from the supermarket. The kalbi (ribs) were really good but the bulgolgi (marinated thinly sliced beef) ended up being too tough, all the meat juices oozed off the broiling pan and pooled at the bottom so the meat got really dry.
Susan’s fiance Ken brought over his Playstation and a game called Rock Band 2. They were already playing before dinner and couldn’t want to play some more after dinner.
At first, I was a little bit afraid to play it but after a while it got quite fun. The game has four instruments, the drums, guitar, bass guitar, and a vocalist. I tried the drums which were really hard considering there are four drums plus a foot petal and the guitar was even harder with many buttons and sticks to press… I’m not very coordinated! So I stuck with singing and if you know me, this is a big feat for me. The game only listens to pitch so you could be saying as much nonsense as you want or just keep on saying “la la la laaa” depending on the length of each tone. Sometimes the words would be going by so fast that I couldn’t catch up so just said “blahblah blaaah blah” etc. Quite hilarious I must say. Ron had a good time with the drums, it makes you feel like you’re a real drummer although you’re probably really hitting a lot of nonsense.
Susan’s sister Sally’s stage name was “Salicious”.
My stage name was “Juicy”.
It was a good way to burn some calories as the drums and guitar require a lot of movement and you’re also very tense when playing because you want to hit each note just right. With the singing, I just had a really dry throat and exercising my diaphragm with the long notes.
I think Ron is considering getting the game for our Wii… except then we’d need to buy all the accessories… yikes!
I haven’t baked in a while so I wanted to make some Halloween treats for my co-workers. A few weeks ago, I bought the Halloween edition of Martha Stewart Living magazine and there were these really cool chocolate madeleines with skull marshmallows. I got a madeleine pan from V last year so thought this it’d be a good time to break it out… I think this may only be the 2nd time I used it.
While I was at it, I made peanut butter rice crispy treats made in a shape of a pumpkin, using Twix for stems and chocolate Skittles for eyes.
Turned out pretty cute, don’t you think? I think everyone at worked enjoyed them, they went pretty fast 🙂
We didn’t know anyone having a party tonight so we just went out to dinner with a few friends. My co-worker recommended this restaurant in Japantown called San Wang for good jia jiang noodles. I had mentioned to her that I really liked ZaZang Noodles on Geary and she said this one was good too.
I looked on Yelp for other recommendations for dishes. From Yelp, the restaurant had mixed reviews but I thought it’d be worth a try anyways.
We ordered the spicy noodle soup which wasn’t very spicy but the hand pulled noodles were good.
The jia jiang noodles were only okay. I was a bit disappointed so probably won’t go back. The onions and pork were in big chunks instead of small pieces like I think they should be. The noodles were good though.
To round out our meal, we also had the pea sprouts. It has garlic and mushrooms, this I actually really liked.
Lastly, their dried fried chicken. I think people would like it if they like it salt and with garlic and onions. I think our palates prefer the sweet and spicy of San Tung Restaurant on Irving.
So a quiet Halloween evening. Just as well since I’ll be working tomorrow in Oakland Chinatown.
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5165490
I came across this great website where you can buy or sell homemade things, it’s called Etsy. They have jewelry, clothing, paper crafts, and whatever creative thing you can think of.
My particular favorite right now is a seller called molecularmuse which brings out the nerd in me, remembering molecular shapes. The designer makes molecule necklaces and earrings of caffeine, estrogen, dopamine, and more. Pretty cool… I’m gonna think about getting something for myself… if only there were rings!
I’m looking forward to exploring the site for more cool stuff.