Always Sunny in Berkeley

It was another sunny Sunday in Berkeley today. The last time I was at this campus was when @inokathome visited Bay Area two years ago. Today, Hubbostrich and I were on a trial drive for his upcoming Thursday interview. We left the house 10:30-ish and arrived within an hour to cover that 42 mile distance.



Morgan Hall, the home of UC Berkeley's Nutritional and Toxicology Department.

The post-doc candidate posing in front of Morgan Hall.

The lovely pregnant wife. LoL. #CongratsYouReAWhale.

I think I found the picture and the get up do me justice on being 22 weeks pregnant here. Finally.

We've heard the raves about an Indonesian restaurant in Berkeley. We were definitely trying it out today for lunch. It took us a 10 minute deliberation on what to order, the bule couple behind us took only 30 seconds. We got the following:

Mie Tek-tek (stir fried, the have boiled version too). I don't think I have ever tasted this particular noodle dish back home so I don't know how it tastes compared to the "original". Surprisingly, I like it better than any Chinese restaurant noodles I have ever had.

Udang Goreng Mentega. Not my favorite, but Hubbostrich enjoyed it so much, specially, after it's been sitting a while and got marinated.

Nasi Bungkus, a weekend special. It was a decent rice dish that comes with a trifecta of ayam goreng kuning (fried chicken), gudeg (jack fruit and tofu in sweet sauce) and rendang (beef curry, Indonesian style). It was also served with a hard boiled egg and green chili. Coming from Sumatra, the Jayakarta Nasi Bungkus comes a little less adventurous for my hot and spicy palate. Hubbostrich tends to agree with me. We like Southbay's Bay Leaf's Nasi Rames better since it comes with kale curry and spicier green chili.

and....Es Teler! I had a special request to add tape (fermented cassava) to this sweet concoction of jack fruit, shredded coconut, and jelly on coconut milk. The owner was so kind not to charge extra for it.

Bonus picture. Hubbostrich cranking the bird up on me because I took too many pictures of him and can we eat already? I used the spoon and the straw to frame his sweet adorable face and I got the bird? He's lucky I still shared that Es Teler with him. He loved it so much and sipped it till the last drop.

Please join Belindy and I in wishing Daddy Hubbostrich luck on his interview. You can do it, BB!

Masterbaker

There are reasons why couple ends up with other. In most cases, opposite attracts, in Hubbostrich and I case, it is the opposite. We are just so alike, except maybe temperature wise. If one is cold water, the other is a bit warmer. One significant example of being alike is that we are both enablers specifically in the field of gastronomy. The following examples are just covering today. But the readers should get the idea on how it goes most of the time in the N****n household.

Case 1, at the house

BB, I gained like 10 lbs now.

Oh, good.

Good,10 lbs? I still have 18 weeks or so to go.

Oh...Babe, you get to cut the sugar. Savory...I mean, I know you can't stop baking, it'll make you go crazy. So make something savory, a quiche! Yes, that should be your next project. There's a lot of fat but at least there are a lot of proteins too. You know you just need to eat a little portion of it.

Case 2, at the grocery store, walking down the dairy aisle

I need sweets.

Sweets? No!

My palate needs sweets after all those pizza you baked. Do you want ice cream? They're on sale!

Hmm...what about malted milk shake? Do we have chocolate syrup?

[Kiss him on the cheek]



Masterbaker, with his pizzas today. There were 1 supreme, 1 Hawaiian, and 2 pepperoni mushroom pizzas.



He made yummy meat pies yesterday.







One thing for sure, no cooking next week!

Ultimate Vegetarian Nachos

We finally finalize our vegetarian nacho recipe. This week's nacho night is the best one yet. It's the addition of cilantro and the fresh ground cumin that makes the difference. What happened was that we were out of cumin and had to grind the seeds on the spot. Don't forget to put the ground cumin back to fridge because once they air dried, they are not that flavorful.

We love nacho night because it's actually a well balanced meal. You get vegetables, carbs, fat and protein. Well, maybe we need to work on portion control because it is still a lot of calories. You can probably use reduced fat version of the dairy products used here and low sodium corn tortilla chips.

As usual, I forgot to take picture. Use your imagination!

Viva la comida.

---------------------------------------------

INGREDIENTS

-for fresh salsa

1 serrano pepper
1 jalapeno pepper
1 pickled jalapeno pepper
1 tomato
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup onion chopped medium size
2 tbs cilantro
1/2 lime
2 tbs pickle solution (from the jalapeno pepper pickle)
1 tsp fresh ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
salt
pepper


-for main assembly

40 corn tortilla chips
1 cup Mexican cheese blend (Monterey Jack, Mild Cheddar, Queso Blanco, Asadero)
1/2 cup black beans

-for finishing

cilantro
1/4 cup plain yogurt


DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 400F
Mix all salsa ingredients together in a bowl
Cover a flat baking pan with some vegetable oil
Assemble tortilla chips on the pan
Pour salsa over the chips
Distribute black beans and cheese over the chips and salsa
Bake for 15 minutes
Take it out and cool down for a couple minutes
Distribute cilantro and yogurt on top

Red

Last night when I got home,

Xindy: What's for dinner, Babe?

Hubbostrich: Something with meat sounds good.

Xindy: Does chicken count as meat?

Hubbostrich: Yeah!

Xindy: OK, think exactly what you want for dinner while I'm excusing myself to the bathroom.

Hubbostrich: OK!

Xindy is back.

Xindy: So..?

Hubbostrich: Chicken with Aaron's famous rub, baked potato chips, oh, and some salad.

Xindy: OK, sounds good to me!

Hubbostrich: Don't we need wine?

Xindy: Hmm..yeah...

Hubbostrich: Wanna walk to Safeway with me? I have this one in mind.

Xindy: What is it?

Hubbostrich: Remember the spicy cabernet?

Xindy: Oh yeah, that'll go with the spicy rub, and it's cheap too. What is it called? I don't have it written down on my black book.

Hubbostrich: Hmm...I don't quite remember, it has red blots on the label and somethingCatholic.

We managed to walk to the store and,

Xindy: I don't know where it is, Babe.


Hubbostrich: Oh, it's somewhere in here. Ah, here it is.

Later that night he accidentally let out that he was at Safeway earlier that afternoon for something else but managed to browsed thru the cabernet section and liberally had this bottle in mind.

What is the point of this blog post you ask? Well, I just want to share that I used to have a 100% success rate in detecting Hubbostrich scams. This time I failed, I was scammed into thinking that it was purely his innocent choice of wine for the dinner we have had just discussed.

I should be more attentive. Clue number one, there's no way he remembers informations as trivial as those. And the way he said was a tad too coy. "Red blots"? It is actually called Red. "Something Catholic?" It is from St. Francis Winery. Clue number two, it was not more than two seconds between my question of the wine whereabout and when he found the targeted wine.

You know, Bibi, Tiger Xinda never makes the same mistake twice. She definitely will detect scam-in-progress better next time.

St. Claire Cooking

Tonight I discovered French provencale cooking by chance. A recent bout of vegetarianism leads me to buying a large eggplant thinking to make somekind of lasagna. Hubbostrich, though, had some craving for cheeseless, hence less calories, pasta dish. We consulted this indispensable book for an eggplant recipe and stumble on Ratatouille Provencale.

As always, yours truly and her partner in crime never stay true to a recipe. We modified JoC's recipe even added some ground beef (the vegetarian me is finally cured after a week) and some purple head cabbage to the hearty stew. I also boiled some elbow macaroni and toasted rye bread as side dishes.

I couldn't really identify what is so good about it. It's probably just the amalgamation of all natural glutamates in the tomatoes and the onion, shallots, and the sweetness and flavors of the vegetables including the eggplant and the beef taste in the background and the hint of vermouth.

Bibi and I each had to come back two more times for a total of six helpings between us (recipe was for 8 servings) and was left with small container for somebody's lunch tomorrow. If that is not enough to testify on how good the stew is maybe you should come visit us and we will cook it for you.

Without anymore ado, here is our recipe.

Xindy's Ratatouille St. Claire

On dutch oven,

heat up 1/2 c olive oil

pour in

approximately 2 c (1 lb) 1" x 1" cubed peeled eggplant
1 c julienned purple head cabbage

cook covered until tender, approximately 10 minutes.

Remove vegetables from dutch oven onto a dish.

Season with salt and black pepper.

On dutch oven,

brown approximately 1/4 lb ground beef

pour in 1/4 c dry vermouth

cover and cook with medium heat approximately 15-20 minutes (if started from frozen state).

Add

1 clove sliced shallot
1/4 c sliced onion
1 sliced red bell pepper (yellow will work too, this is mainly for color)
3 sliced cloves of garlic

Cook at medium heat for 3-5 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper.

Add to the mixture

1 can of Italian tomatoes
1 tbs of sliced fresh sage
2 bay leaves
1 tbs of fresh rosemary
1 1/2 c water

Cook for another 10 minutes.

Reduce to low heat, add the eggplant and cabagge mixture, cover and cook for another 20 minutes.

Bon appétit.

The Making of Donuts

Idea for homemade small ring-shaped cakes fried in a fat aka donuts stroked Hubbostrich one Sunday morning. We used The Joy of Cooking recipe for sour cream donuts. It was not going to take that long if we didn't have to walk to a nearby grocery store for cooking oil.

After gathering wet ingredients, mixing in the stand up mixer and a bit of folding of dry ingredients, Hubbostrich went to roll and cut the dough. We substituted some of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour. We regretted this decision later on as the donuts came out a bit bread-y.



Rolling and cutting. Rim of glass of appropriate size can be used instead of a biscuit or donut cutter.

I cut the inner holes to complete the donuts using the rim of a shot glass. I then transferred the cut donuts and the holes to a flour covered wax paper on top of a flat surface.



Waiting to be fried.

The oil was heated to 375 degree F. Hubbostrich has such thermometer handy to monitor temperature before and during frying. Cooling rack was positioned near the fryer. Also, we resorted to use the smallest of our pans to save oil.



The fat of choice was this blend of canola and vegetable that was on super sale at the grocery store.

Glaze and toppings were to follow once the donuts were cooled for safe handling. Here we also used The Joy of Cooking recipe, it was translucent glaze. I used brandy for liquid and some lemon zest. The choice of toppings were chocolate sprinkles and mixture of roast walnuts and almonds.



Brandy glaze and yummy toppings.

The final products needed to be guarded from donut-predator. Where is Billy The Exterminator when you need him? Next time we will omit the whole wheat and try to make it a little cake-y instead of bread-y.



Left over donuts.

Bonus:
Daddy donut with his daddy.

Introducing...

The Rotisserie Chicks!

Baking Frenzy

Continuing with keep-the-refrigerator-clean theme, I have just baked a Banana Blueberry Bread tonight. Yes, I store bananas in the fridge to keep them from ripening, I love the raw taste. Unfortunately, banana bread recipes usually require ripe ones. Since, there was no spare bottle of acetylene around, I microwaved the banana to induce ripening, of course, it did not work.

I have just enough of the required (despite fresh) second name sake of the recipe. On another note, I have been unfortunate with blueberries these past two weeks. They were tasteless, as in there were not enough of tartness or sweetness. I will mix some spoonful of sugars and splashes of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar to alleviate the dull taste of the berries next time.

The recipe I used is courtesy of this website. Now that I am rereading the recipe, I found out that I forgot the oats. I like the moist texture as it is, I might not incorporate the oats on purpose on the next try. Also, I will add more salt to keep it interesting mix of tart, salt, and sugar.

1 stick of butter
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 extra large eggs
1 cup ripe bananas
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
1 tsp Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. In medium bowl cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Mash bananas until smooth and add to sugar mixture.

In large bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt together. Add in oats and mix well. Fold banana mixture into flour mixture. Stir in Watkins Pure Vanilla Extract.

Sprinkle 2 tbsp. flour over frozen blueberries and mix until all blueberries are covered. Add to batter.

Transfer batter to the loaf pans. Bake between 50 and 60 minutes. Let cool slightly and serve warm with your favorite whipped cream or ice cream.

I am sparing officemates from this baking experiment since I deem the bread pretty successful and thus needs no outside forces to devour. I hate throwing good stuff out. The brownies two weeks ago, on the other hand, were slight disappointment.

Another Recipe

Wow, I finally had a chance to clean up the refrigerator. Practically, more than half of them are thrown away. Yuck. How did I amass this mess? Easy, it's because I never did any cooking when NY and Mama were here and I didn't resume cooking after they were gone. I didn't aware of the state of my own refrigerator.

Among the perishable, I found a bag of washed spinach still intact. It has been almost three weeks since I bought it. It had been intended for me to get back to salad-for-lunch bandwagon, but it has never happened. Amazingly, the spinach leaves in bag were still fresh. I also found a can of fire roasted tomatoes and a half pint heavy whipping cream. An idea for some kind of spinach pasta sauce comes to my mind.

The other day I watched Julie and Julia and was amused to find how their cooking adventures got so integrated in their daily lives. I wish I have that much passion for cooking, for now it is just a mean to survive and to cut cost. The only thing that tied me with the Julia Child phenomena is the dutch oven I used to whip up this sauce. My mother and NY gave it to us for our wedding gift.

Without further ado, here is recipe, from my kitchen (with half junk full of a refrigerator) to your kitchen.


Spinach Tomato Sauce

Half a bag of 9 oz washed spinach (trick is spinach has to be fresh)
1 14.5 oz can fire roasted tomatoes (preferably chunky)
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 jalapeno pepper
1 sweet pepper
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp onion
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp sea salt

On food processor, put the spinach, tomatoes, jalapeno, sweet pepper, garlic and onion. Puree accordingly. Do not over puree the mix to a thin liquid consistency.

On skillet or sauce pan, pour the spinach-tomato-peppers mix and heat up to medium heat. Add the heavy cream and water. Add spices and salt. Stir. Adjust spices and salt to your own taste.

Pour over pasta. It should work well for dipping sauce too.

Picture below is of the sauce sans pasta. I had lunch already when I cooked this.



Baked fish fillet crusted with cheddar, parmesan cheese and panko bread crumb to eat along with pasta and the sauce above. Modified from this recipe.



Crunchy oven baked croutons from left over sourdough, maybe I will eat salad again one of these days. Recipe here.

Recipe

Apparently, I am not dead yet. So while I am waiting for husband to call (I doubt he will, this is already close to 1 AM his time), I have a pseudo recipe for a flatbread pizza. Speaking of the devil, here he is calling!

To be continued...

Here it is. Note on why I call it a pseudo recipe. All ingredients are store bought so it is not even qualified as a Semi Homemade recipes like those of Food TV's Sandra Lee's. Also, where you get the stuff determines the end results. Me of course, I got mine at good ol' Trader Joe's.
Another thing, even though there's no meat used in the recipe, I still refuse to count its calories, fat and sodium contents. It's just way delish to be worried about all those.

Try it!

Ingredients:
1 flatbread or pita bread
1/2 cup of any kind of shredded cheese (blended Mexican is recommended)
1/2 cup canned heart of artichoke
1/4 cup roasted red (or yellow or both) peppers
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped jalapeno
2 tbsp pesto

Direction:
Smear pesto on to bread. Cramp all ingredients except for the cheese onto smeared bread. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake on a cookie sheet at 350F for 20 minutes.

Make 1 serving

Happy Thanksgiving

I said before and I said again. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Partly, because it is celebrating life, friends, and family and also because everybody celebrates it. The celebration transpires beyond age, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, and [insert other other socio-economic, socio-politics attributes we use to classify ourselves].

This Thanksgiving I am celebrating it away from family, and sadly, Fiance. But I got a nice wake up phone call from the dude. It is like cuddling but on the phone--sorry, can't help to give out a TMI. Anyway, he woke me up to assist me on making a cornbread oyster dressing.

Bibi made this dressing for his church group dinner last Sunday. I just had an idea to bring it over to a potluck dinner tonight. Baking and cooking are perfect channeling of inner domestic goddess in me and of course I have a hidden agenda to show him off thru his recipe to the folks at dinner.

"Oyster? On cornbread as dressing?"

"It is a southern thing. Paula Deen makes it," he said on the phone.

I just couldn't believe myself for not knowing the existence of such dressing despite of electing my as an honorary Southerner. Also why are we calling it dressing instead of stuffing again? A little bit of education here. Compendium of people in the internet say that what the northern people call dressing, the southerner stuffing. However, the correct answer is that stuffing is when the bread mixture is stuffed inside the turkey, while dressing is when it is baked separately like casserole .

Two batches of dressing are done now and ready for the dinner tonight. Suffice it to say that it is rank up there on the list of meals I can eat everyday. I also made a pecan pie (with store bought pie shell) and green beans casserole (this one is totally from scratch) for the dinner. Both are using recipes from Cook's Illustrated that are spread illegally over the internet. I am thinking to subscribe for the magazine. Their recipes never fail to amaze me and it is such a joy to read it with all the illustrations.

I am going to have a mini work out in preparation of all the food before me tonight. And then I am going my way to drop off all the food at the host's before fleeting away to San Francisco for a 1 hour A&M-T-sip football game watching with fellow Aggies. It is gonna be a busy Thanksgiving but I am hoping I am experiencing a memorable one, my first one in California.

I am thankful for this year that are just filled with abundant blessings. For Fiance, family, friends, job, state of mind, health, adventure and chance to develop into a better human being.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Saturday in November

To have myself content with life is always simple.

A fall cleaning on Saturday with classical music playing in the background resulted in a better organized closet and mopped kitchen and bathroom floors. It gave me a chance to enhance some musical sense as I've never listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons as a whole before. I feel completed to experience the progress and movement from one season to another and found them therapeutic.

Back at the closet, tops in hangers are now organized by colors. Folded tops, exercise clothes, house clothes, jeans and shorts are consolidated in one closet and refolded. Pants are hanging in one end of the second closet, skirts next to them, and dresses on the other end. What small amounts of towels and linens I have are placed on the farther side. This way, NY and Mama will have space for their clothes once they get here in January.

With the re-org (ha, eat that, company!) I get to see that I have too many clothes, yet I wonder why I never get satisfied. This was after gathering two full bags of throw away as they are just not passing for donation.

Mopped kitchen and bathroom floors attribute to a renewal feeling of the space. I always leave the blind open to display the beautiful autumn view from trees and falling leaves outside and also of the pots of Rosemary, Snapdragon and Marigold on the patio that somehow survive my so called green thumb. The soft lights from the lamp on the corner of the dining area enhances this comfortable ambiance. I am a homebody at heart.

As I was enjoying this serenity while munching on procured tacos from a nearby joint, I found out that gametime for one of the almamater's most anticipated games was an hour earlier than what I had thought it would be. I had to race myself to a sportsbar 15 miles away to watch it with fellow Aggies--an always amazing lot of over-educated people. It is not too over the top when Fiance pronounced this place Nerd Heaven.

After the game, which was unfortunately a sad one, I managed to gather the ingredients for a yummy toffee-almond-crackers concoction, recipe courtesy of a certain lady with unquestionable fascination towards pre-historic creatures. It had caused a bad case of toffeenza since.



This afternoon, I decided to plastic bag about 10 of them and put a silver ribbon as embellishment on each bag. Some lucky group of people will have them distributed to tomorrow night. As for myself, I cannot be left with these sweet concoction alone. This was what was left from my personal size pan within three hours of making.



I rest my case.

Hollandaise Sauce and Eggs

Egg has always been my favorite food item. As such, it is naturally that I am drawn to Hollandaise sauce.

A couple of favorite Hollandaise ladden meal (to be fair, I've only tasted these five so far, and they all made into the list):

1. IHOP's Spinach and Mushroom Omelette
2. Atlantis Hotel brunch buffet's egg benedict
3. Cafe Amelia's Salmon Omelette (Bibi and my favorite)
4. Some fish (forget the species) we baked for dinner one time
5. Denny's Slam Burger (hmmm...not sure if it was cheese sauce or Hollandaise)
   

Last night, after a dream of munching on #3 with Bibi, I gave up and made my own Hollandaise sauce and recreated #2 sans muffin (and ham). Instead, I pan-toasted Trader Joe's sliced wheat bread. I poached an egg succesfully in my opinion, considering it was my first time poaching eggs.

Here is the Tyler Florence Hollandaise Sauce recipe I used. Half cup of butter, you said? I know! But it is worth it.

I had a microwaved egg with hollandaise and herb mix salad with cranberries and balsamic vinaigrette for lunch today. Uhhm, yummy!

Pollo Desperado

I had heard about a recipe that somehow results in many boyfriends' proposals to their respective girlfriends. So after taking the idea into the pensive, I decided to give it a try, just to see how it tastes like.

The recipe calls for a 3-lb chicken, two lemons, salt and pepper. I, of course, modified it with more seasonings for the outside part of the chicken and some onion. I added significant baking time as the bird was a almost a 5-lb one. It tasted so good, I probably will marry myself, I told Bibi on the phone.

One day, he asked if I am ever going to make him the Engagement Chicken. "Are we going to be part of statistic?" I texted him back. "It could be fun," he replied. So yeah, I decided to cook him that--with some other side dishes yet to be determined--for his upcoming visit.

I made another tryout two days ago. This time with a smaller bird since I found a mere 3-lb stew hen on a local Asian grocery store. It tasted even better this second time around. Although, I regretted my foolish decision to cook a stew hen for baking. The meat is rubber-like. Also the feathers weren't plucked properly. Ah, well, you couldn't expect much from an Asian grocery store. You do get what you paid for.

So will this result in a proposal? We will see. Bibi did ask for my ring size last week.

Back Log: June 18-24

Let's see, too many things to recount. Caveat for the readers, the following rambles are mainly for self-notes. I should have been more persistent on picture taking. It just escaped me.

Texas Trip
What follows is my account on what happened on this trip after the hilarity that was on the last post. But before we began, I wanted to state that I forgot how 100 degrees weather feels like. Tank tops, shorts, skirts, and summer dresses, SPF 50, minimal to no make-up are fashion staples I anticipated for this trip. I am glad NY has a lot of cute things to borrow to maximize my inner fashionista wannabe. As for the trip, I did what I came for: Bibi's prelim, a friend's wedding, and visiting the siblings.

Bibi practiced the slides for his presentation a couple of times that Thursday night and then once in the morning. "There's a lot of shit going on in this slide," we were hoping he can preface the last of his four topics.

The day of the prelim, Bibi refused to dress up in a suit/jacket, and instead don on his nice dress pants and shirt. He still looked smart nevertheless, LOL. We walked to school around noon. I played a good caterer and media tech while Bibi preparing his paperwork and whatnot.

When he was fighting at the frontline, I spent some time to exchange news and weather with my friends in the department. I excused myself two hours later to think that he must be finished by then. The waiting can be described as parallel to husbands waiting outside for wives delivering their first baby. Bibi finally came out of the room looking a bit worried and relieved at the same time. A minute later, his advisor when out to call him in. He passed!

I am so proud of him having to deal with such a tough and respectable research subject. Biology used to be my forte, I am glad I have somebody who possesses a better understanding on living objects--and most importantly, has good ideas on how to manipulate them.

We celebrated the prelim at O'Bannon's and a dinner at nearby Mexican place. Speaking of viva la comida, I also made panada and pastel from scratch for everybody's snacks on two different days. They got NY's seal of approval. I didn't realize that using rolling pin to make something is a good abs exercise.

The following Saturday, we had a wedding to attend. We arrived at the ceremony thirty minute late due to a planning mishap, i.e., no map. Who doesn't know the way to Waco? Only Bibi and yours truly apparently. Good thing my friend wasn't pronounced a Mrs yet. I am sure Bibi realize the ulterior motive of dragging him to the wedding, that is an exposure to Catholic wedding mass. The reception following the ceremony was in the mixed style of Mexican fiesta (the Mariachi and the food, groom was of Mexican decent) and the usual wedding party activity (the open floor with DJ, the bouquet throwing). Everybody had fun.



On Sunday, Bibi, the siblings and I went to Texas Road House to satisfy everyone's crave for a good steak and for a little bonding time. Then I went to St. Mary's 7 PM mass. Later that night, Bibi and I went to Northgate for his Sunday night poker league.

All in all, it was a good and compact visiting week. I did manage, though, to throw a breakdown tantrum on Bibi two days before leaving CS. That morning, Bibi and I went to the Rec Center together. I went to St. Mary's afterward with mi amiga G to get some ideas of things I need to prepare for a Catholic nuptial. It was an overwhelming experience to realize that my timeline (for a December wedding *gasps* Bibi needs to propose first, no?) is ambitious and has already passed its expiration. I am putting my--I mean, our--plan all on God's hand. Maybe sometime next year is best for everyone. I can spend some time with Mom, we all can have a better planning, and not to mention, it will be more feasible on the financial side. I am hoping NY get a job here, I can't do this without my dearest sister.

I flew back to SCLA on Wednesday ready for the last three days of working that week. The next week was another shutdown week.

--to be continued

Back Log: May 31st

The grad school advisor:
"So, can you speak Chinese now? You have missed on the opportunity while you were in grad school. Don't miss out on it now that you have many Chinese colleagues at work."

Me:
"Uhm..."[damn it, what should I say, why do I need to learn Chinese anyway, you foo'...]

GSA:
"Or maybe you should find a Chinese husband. So you can learn and speak Chinese all the time!"

Me:
*fainted* [BF would definitely not appreciate that patronizing comment, but you know, BF, he's The K**].

A blurry picture from around the moment the above conversation happened. The GSA was visiting for a conference. We (former students) went out to eat with him at a Korean Chinese restaurant at Japan Town. How sick was that such place exist? LOL. Food were good, though. This picture, however, was by a coffee shop still in Japan Town where we were for an after-dinner coffee session, his treat!



PS:
I have always thought that this will be a nice starter bling, or better yet this. I am tired of being cameraless. The 1S has met its unfortunate fate sometime last year. Alas, all semblance of personal economic welfare these days needs to be channeled for more important causes.

Fine Saturday

Life sans laptop is just unbearable, specially when there is need to catch up on gossip time with a certain someone, winks. As a temporal solution, I needed to fire up that old desktop unit. Little did I realize that it lived on the dark age technology that are eight years behind and had no recent anti-virus updates.

On Saturday morning, I opened the tower only to find a total of 256 Mb at 266Mhz RAM, at least they are already the 168 pin type. No wonder it was slow. Lo and behold, there were two RAM sticks magically lying around. The use of these two sticks would effectively double the memory storage and almost double the speed. First attempt on installation failed. Soft pounding here and there solved the problem.

Next was the anti-virus installation. Luckily, my fantastic cable/internet provider provides anti-virus software at no extra charge. I adventurously chose customized setting. It would've been easy if I optioned in on all but the parental lock option. In the end, I had to download the .exe for a total of three time to have both firewall and the anti-virus properly set up.

The blazing weather outside reached the mid 90s as I spent the productive afternoon hours working on fixing up the old computer. Going swimming seemed to be a good idea. Plus, I have always wanted to devirginize that apartment swimming pool, so to speak. I mixed a little concoction for a little after swimming treat--notice the word after, I am a safety oriented person. It consisted of mainly grapefruit juice, some rum, and sugar. BF would have been proud. I swam a total of 16 x 25 m laps (free-style and breaststroke). Those were some challenging manuevers I performed to survive, among others, babies learning to swim and 15 year olds having fun in the pool. I dipped myself on the bubbly hot tub for a while after and parked myself on a poolchair with my drink. A good book would have made the day even better.

Recent Update

Being laptop deprived since Friday has resulted in nights and weekend sans internet. The situation can easily be relieved if yours truly got her ass sitting in front of the desktop unit. She has been just too lazy to do that. Instead she's been focusing her mind on watching endless TV. She would be really happy to catch reruns of any of Star Trek series, but sadly, none of them were on during her waking hour. Instead, she settles on reruns of 3rd Rock from the Sun. Apart from being one heck of a funny series, the celestial body animation in between its scenes kinda reminded her of said series.

In other news, Aunt Flo decided to drop by last night. At four in the morning yours truly woke up with such a pain. Chocolate (and aspirin) has been proven to be a perfect remedy for time like this. She heated up the non-stick pan and made a grilled meisjes sandwich. Apart from the hint of chily oil taste, it worked wonder. Note to herself: get a sandwich toastmaker or dedicate a pan to make dessert like items.

In yet another news, "The One Who Got Away" is getting married. She feels nothing but pure happiness for him and the bride. Congratulations.

Weekend

It's been a while since I've been involved in any type of volunteering work. The last time was visiting a retirement community back in good ol' CS. This Saturday, I went with a group of church friends to Oakland to work at a kitchen for the needy. We served gumbo with wild rice with a side of salad and bread, and donut or cake for dessert. If nothing else, the experience made me realize that we sometime forgot how grateful we are to be blessed with the ability to provide for ourselves. I like this kind of volunteering and have been considering doing it more frequently, at least once a month.

Serving the gumbo made me crave for a homemade one for dinner. I then called the BF for ingredients list and recipe. He used to work for a seafood place in his hometown during his high school years and might know a thing or to about making a perfect gumbo. In the middle of my cooking preparation, the BF texted me that he too was craving for some. We ended up cooking gumbo at the same time but 1000 miles away. Through out the cooking, we updated each other's tribulation: the roux took too long, mine is not dark enough, etc. I finished first and was planning to wait until he's done with his so we can eat the gumbo at the same time but my hunger took over. When he's done with the cooking he called me and we talked for more than an hour. It was just the cutest date this LDR had so far.

This afternoon, I went to a Mass said in my native language in a Mission church 20 something miles away from my place. The Mass was a celebration of the founding of the bay area Indonesian Catholic community as well as for an early Thanksgiving celebration. There was some kind of a worship dance performed in the middle of Mass. I'm not too sure what my feeling was about the appropriateness of this kind of activity. But at least the dance, the costume and the music were moderate enough to tone the effect down. Another worship activity was presented some time after. This time was in the form of a ballet performance. Needless to say, that for sure should be put into another time and place.

All in all, this weekend has been effective. I am looking forward for Monday. I am wondering how many people can say that they are looking forward for Mondays.

Gluttony is the Sweetest Sin

These past few days taught me good things come to those who wait. The questions are how patience you are and how big the "stake" is.

Anyway, gluttony is the sweetest sin:

Japanese/Chinese buffet (Saturday lunch)
Mr. & Mrs. S wedding reception (Saturday dinner)
BBQ (Sunday lunch, courtesy of Mas & Mbak O)


A couple more pics of KKCS' "reunion" over the weekend. Unto the next wedding...