04.25.05
Art Show and Dinner Party
I had my first art show last Saturday. I’ll put up pictures as soon as my sister sends them to me. The show was from 12-5 and I was there around noon to help set up the food and to get the first look. It was great! Everything was displayed well, the lighting and the mood was excellent. It was pouring rain outside but warm and cozy in Jeanne’s home.
Our first guests were MK (my previous boss) and his family. It was a bit awkward for me because I didn’t know what to say about the show and about my work, but they were a good audience. Jeanne took over after a few minutes to explain the whys and the hows. After they left, a few more people came by and by 1:30, I had to leave to pick up my sister at the bus station.
We went back to the show around 4:00. I saw Francie with some of the ladies from the B’s-group from work. Jeanne, our teacher, told me that MM came by with his little girl, Ella, while I was away. I was disappointed I missed them, but I was having MM and his wife over for dinner, so it was okay. My sister and her friend Mia enjoyed the ‘country’ and my teacher’s home a lot more than they did the art show, I think. 
We left after having some cheese.
That night, I had 5 people for dinner. My sister, Mia, Manny, Mike, and Sarah. Here’s the menu (ala Daisy).
Appetizers:
1. Fried pork and leek dumplings
2. Pastry pocket with sauteed mushrooms, parsley and Gorgonzola cheese
Main Entrees:
1. Chicken Adobo with hard boiled eggs
2. Slow cooked beef stew with red wine
3. Potato Gratin Dauphinois (from Jeffrey Steingarten, and taste tested from Lyds)
4. Roasted veggies
5. Rice
Dessert:
1. Lemon souffle from Sarah
2. Rick’s homemade ice cream from Manny
You’d think having 4 filipinos and 2 Keene-ians would be awkward, but we had a really good time. We didn’t even have time to play Cranium. We just kept on talking until Mike and Sarah had to leave at 10:30. People said that the food was excellent, which was a relief, after cooking so many hours that day and the night before.
It was my first time to have people over, aside from family, so that was kind of cool. All of us ended up eating on the coffee table, with 4 people sitting on the floor. When later offered chairs though, M and S refused, saying they were comfortable.
So all’s good.
And I slept in my bed last night. I had a good night’s sleep comparable to the sofa’s. I think I might just start doing that regularly.
03.01.05
The Gates and other things
I spent the weekend in New York with my sister. It was great! We wore ourselves out walking all over the place, I lost a book, ate too much, and didn’t get to go ice skating. But other than that, we had a good time.
I got there late Friday night after getting lost for an hour and missing the train at New Haven, CT. Thanks to TB for navigating for me through Mapquest. I wouldn’t have found it otherwise. I lost my book, Bee Season, which I didn’t realize until Sunday morning. When I got to NY, we decided to get something to eat, at 11pm. Everything was still open. People were eating burgers and meals at 11:30 at night! Anyway, food was okay, nothing too special. It was a diner though, which is always a plus.
The next day we walked to Central Park to see The Gates. Now that was a pleasant surprise. It really is experiential art and interactive art. When I first saw their plans last year, I thought it was stupid and a waste of money. But it was actually pretty breath taking. There were gates everywhere you look, and the bold orange color (aka saffron according to the artists) were striking against the snow covered park. The wind, the birds, the reflection off the water, all magnified the experience. My sister and I both bought and took pictures but the experience was definitely on a different level.
After that we went straight to the Metropolitan Museum so that I could get inspired to paint. It worked. My favorite were the following:
1. Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses
2. Van Gogh’s Women Picking Olives
3. Monet’s Vétheuil in Summer
4. Monet’s The Path through the Irises
I especially liked Van Gogh’s whimsical brushstrokes and patterns, the happy colors, and most especially, the stories behind them. Van Gogh was hoping his mom and sister like his painting, and Monet, trying to capture the color and light, overwhelmed his painting with details. Of course, everything looks perfect to me.
Anyway, food-wise, we had a good weekend too. For breakfast, we had bagels (NY bagels are the best), for dinner, we had yummy Shanghai dumpling with the soup inside and fried duck. Lastly, on Sunday, we went to Minado’s - so far the best sushi buffet I’ve been to. Their NJ branch is the best.
Conversation could’ve been more positive at times, but that’s pretty understandable. Other than the reasons for my being in NY, the weekend was a lot of fun. I had a blast.
02.14.05
Snow, Chocolates, and Meg Ryan
I went snowboarding this weekend. I ended up going by myself because I wasn’t able to meet up with GS and his friends. Thanks, TMobile, great coverage. Anyway, I went to Pat’s Peak. It was the first time I tried my new snowboard and it was great! Could’ve used double socks though. Next time.
I decided to head to the very beginners hill. It was great because I was able to practice my heel and toe turns. After making it downhill doing consecutive S-turns without falling, I decided it was time to move on. Oh yeah, there was a big group of chinese college kids. Most of them were seriously wiping out, but most of the time they just hung out at the top sitting down on the snow. I felt like they were wondering why I was by myself. I very rarely see Asians doing stuff on their own. Anyway, maybe I was just paranoid.
I was deciding whether to go to the hill that had chair lifts or go to the slightly steeper beginners’ hill. I opted for the latter. The downside to this was although they had a lift, it was one of those where you have to hang on to it - easy for skiers, very difficult for snowboarders. With about 10 people on the line, I figured instead of waiting in line to find out that I can’t go up with a snowboard, I just trudged up the hill. Man, what a workout! I out of breath when I got up there. On every run, once I’d get down, I’d start up the hill again without pausing for breath. I must’ve done at least 10 rounds. At least.
Anyway, after maybe 40 minutes, the chinese group previously mentioned, moved into the hill I was on. They again congregated at the top of the hill and stay there for I don’t know how long. All this time, I was just practicing my turns, trying to make S’s without falling.
Well, at one point, while I was doing my toe turn, one guy wipes out to my left. I shout “I’m sorry”, sort of expecting an “It’s okay” from him, but I got nothing. He looks at me with a look that said, “Watch where you’re going”. I wasn’t going to fall but I stopped my run and sat down. I asked if he was okay and he said, “I was gonna wipe out anyway”. So, obviously he was blaming me for pre-empting that wipe out. Ugh.
His other friends started coming, one girl smiling at me sympathetically, conveying a “We know it’s not your fault”. The girls were actually pretty nice. The same girl said that they were on a steeper hill and that if he wasn’t comfortable there, he should join their other friends on the beginner hill. I just shrugged and went my merry way again. Only this time it wasn’t as merry anymore.
It happened again after a few more runs, to another of their friends. He wiped out next to me. I again apologized, not that it was my fault but because it seemed like the right thing to say. He was a better sport, shrugging it off, saying he was just going too fast. But at that point, I started losing interested and my energy had all but left me. So, after doing one last run without falling, I called it quits. Anyway, it’s your responsibility to stay clear of people IN FRONT of you. How on earth do you expect people to look behind them everytime they try to do something?
Anyway, there’s another thing worth mentioning. There was this cute fat kid with his hood up snowboarding too. He had a teeny tiny snowboard, and his face was so round inside the hood. Once, as I was going down, there was a lump in the snow - a jacket and a tiny snowboard. I was going to head over near it thinking it was somebody’s jacket when it started moving! It was the little boy! Sweet! Later on, I was sitting down after falling, when the little boy fell too. I looked back and said, “It’s pretty icy here”, and he was smiling and said, “I was just going too fast”. Aww.
Sunday, I was sore, but not because I wiped out. I hurt because it was a tough workout. I went to the office to do some work but couldn’t get in. I guess my key has some time coded in it or something. At least my Sunday afternoon was spared. After doing chores, I watched the Food Network. They have a chocolate festival weekend or something. They showed festivals in San Francisco and St Stephen in Canada. Man, it looked absolutely DELICIOUS!!! I started scouring my apartment for chocolate and found kisses and Meiji dark chocolate. I ate 1/4 of the box of the dark chocolate + 2 kisses. I had to stop myself, otherwise I’d have finished the box and stayed up all night.
After that I watched TBS with what seemed to be a Meg Ryan fest. I saw Kate & Leopold, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, You’ve Got Mail (yes, that’s 2x, back to back. I went to sleep while it was on the 2nd run), (woke up in the middle of the night with) City of Angels.
I think my favorite has changed from Sleepless to You’ve Got Mail. I like that it deals with books AND the Internet. It’s so good.
02.07.05
Food Trip
What a weekend I had! It was one of the most amazing food trip weekends ever!
As previously mentioned, we were all supposed to get together this weekend to get some concert action, although, after listening to Low, it didn’t seem like it there wouldn’t have been a lot of action going on.
Anyways, due to ticket buying problems, we had opted to just hang out at Daisy’s and Lydia’s and get some good food and conversation going.
So on my way down, I stopped by the farm to get milk and cheese. Unfortunately, the milk is sold on a pre-ordered basis, and the cheese store won’t be open until March. I could’ve gotten meat, but not having a cooler, I decided against it. I got to Casey’s around 2:45 and we just hung out at his place until close to 3:40 maybe. So by the time we got to Daisy’s, after like a gazillion ‘traffic circles’ (aka rotundas, roundabouts), it was already maybe 4:20.
After buzzing us in, we got into the stairway and the aroma of browning meat was so amazing and so strong that I wanted to do nothing else but eat that meat. Turns out, she had just finished browning the 9 short ribs that she had gotten for the four people having dinner that night. Each of the ribs was 2/3 of a pound each, by the way. I really don’t know what had gotten into Daisy to think that four people could eat 6 pounds of beef along with all the other yummy stuff she was cooking up. At this time, she was already sauteing the veggies for the sauce of the casserole-like dish.
While she was letting them get a bit soft, she showed us all the fabulous breads she had brought home from the bakery. She had 5-6 different kinds of bread and Casey and I tried at least 4 of them. I hadn’t eaten lunch before leaving Keene, so eagerly went to try the bread. The first one we had was a bun with red bean paste inside and black sesame seeds on top. Casey and I had 1/4 of the bun each. It was good. Very Asian flavored. Apparently, it was the Japanese baker who made that. After that we had this bread topped with fennel, tomatoes, and feta cheese. That was my favorite. I had so much of that. It was a notebook sized bread and I probably had 1/4 of that too, or more. I continued eating this until Daisy told us to try the breadstick too, so she heated that up for us so that when she took it out, it was as good as if it had just come out of the oven. This was really good too, I think it might be my 2nd favorite. Lastly, the last bread we tried was the mushroom shaped bread with a very unusual, but pleasant glaze. I don’t want to say what it is so as not to ruin the surprise in case should you get the good fortune to to try it someday.
Around 6:20, Lydia finally got home after working the whole Saturday. After we rested for a while, not that Casey and I needed any more resting, Lydia offered to cut up some cheese. We were already full and dinner was about to be done, but, sure, why not? We’ll try the cheese. Actually, it was more like, we’ll have some if you’ll have some. So we all had some. It was good cheddar and even better goat cheddar. We kept munching on these throughout dinner.
Soon after, the meat got done, but Daisy still had to reduce the sauce. The turnips were done and the mashed potatoes were done as well. Before serving it all, she made some spinach too. So while she was reducing the sauce, we went ahead and ate, deciding that we’ll have the reduced sauce later. I didn’t think that would’ve made that much difference anyway.
The meat was tasty and falling off the bone. The mashed potatoes were the perfect complement, the turnips had a creamy, broccoli-y taste to them, and the spinach cooked and seasoned just right. We were all starting to lean back a little, me and Casey especially, and when I saw that he wasn’t finishing his meat, I left a little block of meat on my plate too. I didn’t think I could eat any more of it anyway, regardless of how good it was.
But when the sauce was reduced enough, Casey got up to get more potatoes and try the sauce. When sounds of delight came from him, I decided to do the same and finish up my meat. I was delighted and horrified at the same time. It tasted soooo good! I just felt bad that I couldn’t have more of it because I was so full. Man, reducing the sauce made so much difference! It was sweeter and thicker, and just more tasty. Soooo good.
After dinner and not a little urging, we all got up from the table and moved to the dining room to play Cranium. We had such a blast! Good thing we were all dorks. Here are some highlights:
Daisy: “It’s Magic” (with a Dude-cut-the-crap look)
Lydia: Dilettante - T… AND James Bond
Casey: Sculpturades
Me: Jacky Chan
You have to have been there to understand. Anyway, Daisy and Casey won, just by one turn. So it was a close match.
Finally, after all that, we had tea and cream puff pastry. I’m not even a fan of cream puffs, or any pastry with cream in it, and I loved this one. It was soft and flaky on the outside, and soft and dense on the inside with a just-sweet-enough cream.
This just put me over the top and sadly, I couldn’t finish my the good melts-in-your-mouth dense center. We topped off the evening with Napoleon Dynamite quotes, planning on a ND party complete with tater tots and chips.
Anyway, I had loads of fun. Some details like the toilet adventure and pocket protectors have been omitted. I knew the toilet lesson would make it to someone’s blog.
This has gone on for too long. So I’ll cut short Sunday’s food trip with Casey to this: El Pelon fish tacos and taquittos and Cold Stone Creamery. Oh yeah, and Casey, I topped that off with excellent ramen. I used one of the fancy ramens from S88 and I could definitely tell it’s better and worth the extra 30 cents. It was good. The whole weekend was good.
08.04.04
Updates
So, it’s been a week. Wow. Here’s the highlights of the past week:
1. Minado [food] - Oooh, delish Japanese buffet! I used to say it’s a sushi buffet, but it’s more than that. There’s one row of just sushi, one row of hot entrees, one row of salads, and one row of desserts. If you like sushi, this is the place for you. I mean, there’s so much stuff you can try, it’s not even funny. It’s only $15.95 for lunch and really, one full plate of sushi is worth that at least, and then you get to have other stuff too. Everything is fresh, contrary to the buffet stereotype where things get stale or ingredients are substandard. Everything feels nice and fresh and hot and crunchy and ooh. This is definitely highly recommended.
2. Curiosa Festival - This is my first concert festival, so I’m no authority, but, oh my gawd, it was sweet. Muse was sooo cool. It was just awesome, I was so speechless, so high and so overwhelmed right after the set. Too bad it was such a short one. They only did about 5-6 songs, I think. But still, Muse alone made it worth my $60 bucks. I was rocking along with the rest of the crowd, it was awesome. I was flowing.
3. Keene - I checked out my new town this weekend too. I saw one other asian guy in the Thai restaurant and he was a waiter. That’s it. Yeah, I’m sure I won’t be discriminated upon. I mean, everyone I met from my future company has been extremely nice. There was this one scene though, that keeps bugging me. TB and I were walking along Main street and somebody hooted at us for some reason he and I can’t figure out why. That was slighly unnerving. Being the only two non-white people there, I can’t help thinking it might be because of that. Oh well.
I got so depressed though, when we were eating at Bickford’s. I mean, I’ve always lived in the city, even in Manila, and in Boston, there were always so many different kinds of people around me. Keene is a really, really small American town. Oh well. At least I’ll get to do hiking and biking and snow boarding. Maybe even kayaking. Who knows. Whatever.
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [books] - I looooove Harry Potter books. I woke up this morning feeling so bad for Harry Potter and just thoroughly hating Professor Umbridge. I was so disgusted imagining her toad-like face until I realized I had to get out of bed. I don’t even know why I was thinking of Harry Potter, first thing in the morning! No, no, no, it’s not like that. I’m no Michael Jackson. It’s just that I’ve gotten so involved within his whole story. I re-read the books one after the other again so that I can read book 5, and oh my, I’m flowing again right now!
5. The Village [movies] - I thought this movie was okay. I was expecting more from it. I think, I expected it to be more thrilling and to have a bigger twist in the ending. It wasn’t bad, it was still pretty good. I still like the Sixth Sense the best of Night Shyamalan’s movies.
07.18.04
Cold Stone Creamery
Amazing ice-cream!
It’s like having little chunks of slightly-melted heaven!
I shared the gotta-have-it Founder’s Favorite with one other person and we barely got through half of it. It was like having bottomless ice cream in a waffle cone!
It’s a new joint so the wait was a little long. But it’s definitely worth the wait and the calories. Trust me. The line was actually useful because you need time to decide on the right flavor. They’ve got 41 different ‘flavors’, but you can make your own as well.
Once you’ve decided on what you want, they’ll actually make it right there in front of you. The guy before me had half a snicker bar crumpled in his. Ours had a whole brownie, pecans, fudge and caramel! It’s so worth your money. They don’t skimp on the ice cream or on the mix-ins.
The service was pretty nice. None of them seemed overworked, even though they put in a lot of muscle into those ice cream creations.
They certainly need more seating space though. We ended up eating our ice cream standing up. Wasn’t too bad, but it’s not as good as sitting down. It was slightly stuffy in there too.
All in all, ahhh…..
