Denver trip, part 2

After lunch at SALT, we walked around the Pearl Street Mall, an outdoor walking mall closed to traffic similar to 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We made a few observations about the stores we saw. For one thing, there were a lot of shops for outdoor activities. That's totally understandable as Boulder is right next to the Rocky Mountains. There were several exotic stores with world/ethnic clothing, accessories, knick knacks, etc. We also passed by multiple "apothecaries" that sold herbs, spices, oils, etc. It felt like a concentrated Berkeley-esque hippie land tucked away in the mountains.

So, after the late lunch (we didn't eat until close to 3pm), we drove back to Denver and walked around the Cherry Creek mall until it was dinner time. Lawrence wasn't particularly hungry so we eventually decided on sushi for dinner.

We went to Sushi Den, one of the top sushi bars in Denver. They fly their fish in from the Nagahama fish market in Japan. Their selection is uniquely exotic for prices that are extremely reasonable. We wanted to take advantage of that and so ordered several fish that we don't normally get the chance to try, including Tilefish, Needlefish, wild Yellowtail, Golden Eye Snapper, Spanish Mackerel, Japanese Shad, Albacore sashimi, and Royal Miyagi Oysters sushi-style. They mixed up an order and we actually got an extra order of salmon for free.

Denver trip, part 1

Lawrence and i were in Denver last week. We flew in Friday night and after checkinng into our room we went out to grab some food. We didn't have a car yet so we walked several blocks through downtown to the Denver Diner. They served fresh cooked diner comfort food and the place was packed. The biscuits and gravy Lawrence ordered were surprisingly light. The fried chicken tenders I ordered were very juicy. It was a good hearty meal for a pair of weary travelers at 1am.

Saturday we rented a car from the closest place we could find that still had a small sedan available. It was still halfway to Boulder, so we drove on up to check out the area. We walked around the Pearl Street Mall and had lunch at a place called SALT. It was a cute space and they gave 2 types of salt to try with the bread. One was a black volcanic Hawaiian salt, and the other was a French fleur de sel salt. They cook seasonally and source locally, organic, and sustainable whenever possible.

Lawrence ordered the Rotisserie Chicken Pot Pie. It was certainly not traditional. The chicken and vegetables came in a wide shallow bowl and looked like a sort of creamy chicken stew. In the middle, a large square of puff pastry sat on top. I ordered the Butternut Squash Cannelloni, which came with "garlic seared chard" and sage brown butter". It was similar in concept to the traditional butternut squash ravioli in sage brown butter, but in the cannelloni pasta it practically oozed butternut squash everywhere. It was very good and in fact, Lawrence liked my dish better than his chicken pot pie.

For dessert we got the Roasted Local Honeycrisp Apple. It came with cinnamon puff pastry, brown butter walnut ice cream, and a caramel sauce. The tanginess of the apple went great with the sweetness of the other components.

Overall, we had a very enjoyable meal. Portion sizes were relatively large (I would have been super full if I had finished my entire entree). I would come back if I were in the area, but at the same time I would not necessarily go here over trying another good local restaurant.

thursday workout

135lb Deadlifts
14kg Kettlebell presses

50 SF Treats to eat before you die

http://www.7x7.com/eat-drink/big-sweet-sf-50-treats-eat-you-die

I've already had a few items from this list -

- Egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery - Sadly, they're not the same as they used to be before their pastry chef died.
- Sam's Sundae from Bi-Rite Creamery - DELISH! Didn't realize that Tartine was right next door too.

While I haven't had the items on the list, I've had other items from these purveyors of desserty goodness:
- Three Twins Ice Cream
- Humphrey Slocombe
- Chow
- Dynamo Donut

New music

The latest new music I've been listening to is the Tron: Legacy Soundtrack! Daft Punk did a great job. I only wish the tracks were longer and that there were more of them. My favorites so far:

The more clubby tracks are:
Castor
Derezzed
End of Line

The tracks that sound more like soundtrack pieces are:
Flynn Lives
Encom Part II
Fall

I wondered why the older actor guy from the original movie seemed familiar... he's The Dude!!!

soo behind...

... on everything!

I need to
- clean the apartment
- do laundry & put clothes away
- clear out the fridge
- bake cookies
- come up with (late) Christmas presents
- finish knitting my left mitten
- finish the shawl on the triangle loom
- start a new lace shawl - Jared Flood's Juneberry Shawl
- hem pants
- dry clean pants
- farm mats for tailoring & alchemy transmutes
- organize yarn stash
- start cooking dinners again
- exercise
- get birthday presents
- organize financial stuff
- work on side programming projects
- work on planning for a website for dad

Cookie Baking

A little while back, I bought the Martha Stewart Cookie book. The lime meltaway cookies that I made from a recipe on a cooking blog I follow was based on the one from Martha Stewart's book. I wanted to make my way through lots of cookies (probably not all as a few of them require specialized molds). I started off with 3 - the Honey Florentines, the Gingersnap Palmiers, and the Cornmeal Thyme Cookies. I made these on Thanksgiving morning with the idea that I'd have some to give out to family later that day.

The honey florentines seemed a little bit off... too sticky and not crunchy enough. I wanted to try adding chocolate to them. It seemed like a good idea at the time... but then I realized that I didn't have enough time to let the chocolate harden enough so it wouldn't get smeared, or even (if I were overly ambitious) to attempt to temper the chocolate so it wouldn't melt at body temperature. So in the end, these were a failure. Lawrence and I ended up eating these.



The Gingersnap Palmiers were interesting. They weren't completely made from scratch as they called for frozen puff pastry dough. The sauce used to glaze the dough had raw grated ginger, molasses, and black pepper in it. After the dough was brushed with glaze and rolled up, it had to be wrapped and frozen for a few hours. Then, it was sliced. My first batch, I let it bake for slightly too long because I was pressed for time and had to shower. I was mad at myself for making such a stupid mistake. These failed too, but I still ended up eating them. I think the molasses glaze made them look darker and they weren't actually as burnt as they looked. I didn't take any pictures of these. I did bake more later, and those turned out beautiful. I brought some to Lawrence's family's Thanksgiving dinner. I also gave a bag to my parents when we went out for my brother's birthday. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the good ones!

Third was the cornmeal thyme cookies. I had to run out on Thanksgiving morning to buy the fresh thyme and dried currants used in these cookies. Other than those ingredients, these were a breeze to make. I used a medium grind cornmeal that I had in the fridge for a while. These cookies were surprisingly good, though the cornmeal was a little too coarse. I wrapped these up and gave some to my aunt and uncle as well as my parents. They don't look particularly great, but they were interesting to eat.



Lastly, today I tried making a classic chewy chocolate chip cookie. There are three kinds of chocolate chip cookies in the Martha Stewart book - soft and chewy, thin and crispy, and dense and cakey. I made the first because that's how Lawrence likes his chocolate chip cookies. At first I thought the butter might have melted too much before I started mixing in the sugar but the cookies didn't spread much so I guess not! They looked weird when taking them out of the oven - thick, brown along the bottom and edges, but undercooked-looking on top. What caused the thickness, I think, was the large sized chocolate chips I used. There was also an over-abundance of chips. I halved the recipe as I only had one cup of chocolate chips so I only made 16 cookies. Some of them also may have been a little large as the original recipe says it makes 3 dozen. Sorry the light in this picture is pretty bad. I would make color adjustments, but I don't think it would make these pasty-looking cookies any prettier.

Recent Cooking

A month and a half ago, Lawrence got into making pizzas. We already had a brand new, beautiful Emile Henry pizza stone to replace the tile I was using previously. Our first attempt was a flop, literally. As Lawrence was trying to slide the pizza onto the stone from our bamboo cutting board, half of it got stuck beneath itself and the mozzarella and tomato sauce got seared to the 500F pizza stone. Thankfully, Barkeeper's Friend was able to get all the burned sauce and cheese off. The amount of dough we had was enough for 2 pizzas, so I slid the 2nd pizza onto the stone and we enjoyed a beautifully cooked pizza.

monday workout

Deadlifts with 135lbs x5

Squats with two 12kg kettlebells x10

Presses with two 12kg kettlebells x10

Windmills with an 8kg kettlebell x10

Push-ups x10

Adobe MAX

Going to industry conferences is really inspiring... I should definitely try to go more. I guess I had gotten into kind of a funk about learning new stuff on my own. I'm probably going to sign up for lynda.com. I really want to learn more about user interface, interaction design, and graphic design too. Right now I don't have enough confidence in those areas to really push my point of view.

thursday night workout

5 sets of 10 reps using the barbell:

- deadlift
- row
- clean
- squat
- press

5 reps using these rolling dumbbell things:
- one arm
- other arm
- both arms

monday night workout

Repeated twice:

5x - Deadlifts, at first 50lbs + barbell, then 70lbs + barbell
5x - One-handed presses, each side, with a 12kg kettlebell
5x - Assisted pistols on the Smith machine, each side
5x - Assisted pull-ups on the Smith machine (first time one-legged; second time cross-legged), each side
5x - Push-ups
20x - Double-handed swings with a 16kg kettlebell

Lastly 15 rollouts on the ab wheel.

Thursday night's workout

laddered sets of 10 kettlebell swings:
8kg -> 12kg -> 16kg -> 20kg (omg 44lbs!!!) -> 16kg -> 12kg -> 8kg

10 assisted pull-ups on one leg
10 inchworm push-ups
10 chair pistols on each leg

Repeat all that again, but with the kettlebell swings going:
20kg -> 16kg -> 12kg -> 8kg -> 12kg -> 16kg -> 20kg

and the assisted pull-ups on the other leg

Monday night's workout

Three sets:

- 10 single-handed swings on each side (16kg kettlebell)
- 10 kettlebell squats (single 16kg kettlebell)
- 10 single-handed presses (12kg kettlebell)
- 10 reverse rows on the Smith machine
- 10 kettlebell lunges each side (passing the kettlebell between the legs)
- 10 push-ups

late night cooking

Late night cooking = bad idea. Especially when it's something I haven't made before. I had been meaning to make some Chinese pan-fried chive dumplings for a while now. Apparently for too long as the chives I bought were partially rotting. I had to go through each stalk, not just to wash them, but to pick off any slimy rotted portions. This took a LOT longer than expected. I started at 10:30pm but did not finish until 2am.

This was the recipe I followed: Stuffed Pancakes with Garlic Chives

The dough calls for boiling water. Why? I don't know. I didn't have any pork on hand so mine only had vermicelli, egg, and chives as filling. The second most time consuming part was wrapping the damn things. When a recipe calls for 1 lb of flour for a dough that then needs to be divided into small chunks to wrap things with, that should be a clue to either cut the recipe in half or not start it at 10:30pm.

Silly me, I made the entire portion of dough and separated it into 16 balls. I continuously wrapped until 2am, by which time my back and legs hurt. I couldn't even try one because Lawrence didn't want me to fry them up that late at night. Instead I got up extra early this morning to fry some up. I made them last night so that I could bring them for lunch so I better have some for lunch.

I was a little bit skeptical because the chives & vermicelli were not cooked before wrapping but they steamed up nicely inside the dumplings while they were being pan fried. It actually turned out pretty good, but I think I'll try cooking the next batch at a medium-high heat instead of full on high. I think the outsides got too dark before the dough could fully cook. However, the one I ate seemed cooked through so I don't know if it's even an issue.

Three pan-fried chive dumplings + 3 slices pan-fried turnip cake with sweet chili sauce = nom nom lunch!

weekend

Saturday
- went to a patternmaking class at the Urban Craft Center in Santa Monica (was almost 1.5 hrs late but I caught up)
- went to the LudoTruck (doing well, food is awesome with just a few tweaks needed and consistency issues addressed)
- went to see Muse at the Staples Center (great show, my 2nd? stadium concert EVAR)

Sunday
- played WoW ALL DAY (got my warlock from lvl 13 to lvl 20)
- did laundry, including hand-wash clothes (I won't even say how long it's been)
- washed dishes & prepped lunch (go me!)

stair climbing

67 floors, up and down!

Kinokuniya's crafting section

So usually when I go to the Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo, I browse the Japanese knitting & crocheting books. Today I happened to be browsing around the other random things at the front of the store and found, OMG, a crafting section right at the front! They have these Hamanaka kits for a bunch of different crafts...

There were whole kits for these amigurumi animals, either as small stuffed animals or keychains, for $14.45 each. They even had tools, like the pom pom maker I bought a while back, as well as a needle felting starter tool kit, a felted ball maker, crochet hooks, clay sculpting supplies, bags of different colored wools for felting, pom pom animal kits, and these freakin' basketweaving kits to make these cute little piggy baskets.

workout

3 sets of:
- standing cable rows, as many as possible, one minute each hand
- standing cable presses, as many as possible, one minute each hand
- jump squats, as many as possible for one minute

Total that was only 15 minutes of exercise, but I must have taken 15 minutes of rest because I only got through 3 sets of that. It was tough, tiring, and I tried not to get nauseous. It really did not help that this was a morning workout and I wasn't able to eat early enough beforehand (what I did eat was only a cup of yogurt). Plus we went to sleep at 3am last night, and right before that we had pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns, and sausages at IHOP for dinner (at 2am).

kettlebells!

Last night:

18kg kettlebell~
- 40 swings
- 30 swings
- 20 swings
- 10 swings
(100 total)

- 5 on each side - squat, transitioning into a press upon standing back up
- 10 on each side - rows

The entire set repeated twice, and then just a third set of the swings (300 total swings in 30 minutes!).