Sunday, June 14, 2009

gG's Paws

I don't know what it is, but gG's paws always give me very special feelings. It is almost nostalgic, as if I am reminded of some sweet memory with feather-like touch to my heart. Is it because he got these extra soft and pure snow white paws? I just love them!

gG'sPaws

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Another Yakitori Night

We had another yakitori night. This time, I made some turkey tsukune (meatballs) as well. Ingredients for turkey tsukune are: ground turkey, green onion, mushrooms, egg, breadcrumbs, miso, ginger, soy sauce, sake, and salt. What you have to do is: 1) mince 1-2 green onion and 1-2 mushrooms, 2) put ground turkey (1/4 pound) and an egg in a bowl, 3) put 1) in the bowl and mix everything (lightly please and don't mush them), 4) in a separate bowl, mix miso (1/2 table spoon), soy sauce (1/2 table spoon), sake (1/2 table spoon), ginger (1 tea spoon), and a little bit of salt, and 5) dump the mixture 4) into 3) bowl. Mix well but don't mush. 6) add breadcrumbs little by little until it forms enough consistency to make balls.

Once the mixture is ready, you make it into balls and sautee them for about 2 mins in a pan and add water, put a lid, and boil them for about 5 mins. And, it is ready to be skewered! All you have to do is grilling them with the rest of skewers

IMG_2729

Major Haircut

The previous owner of our house did a wonderful job planting trees all over on our premises, but they never stop growing! The olive tree in the back grew so tall that the branches were spread widey because of the weight of overgrown twigs and leaves. And in front, we have so many plants, you could never see our house from the street, or likewise, I could never see the street from my house, either.

It was definitely the time for a major haircut! Our gardeners worked for 3 hours on Sunday cutting leaves and branches off the trees. Now trees look very clean and rejuvenated.

TreeTrimming-B-horz

TreeTrimmingA-horz

We also replanted some of the plants in the front to several pots and placed them on the front porch and backyard.

TreeTrimming-C-horz

Friday, June 5, 2009

Found a great Peruvian restaurant!

Ever since my hubby visited Peru, we had several chances to visit different Peruvian restaurants in LA. Recently my hubby found an article about a new Peruvian restaurant close to our house (and yes, it means close to USC), so we decided to check it out.

The restaurant is called MO-CHICA. Is it only me? It sounds very joyful to me. It is in a food court, so the ambience-wise it is not so spiffy, but wait until you taste the food! Anyway, unlike some restaurants which have hundreds of menu items, the number of dishes on the menu was just right, which I really loved. The menu basically has "Starters" and "Main Course." The "Starters" contains 4 dishes. Each costs only about $3-$5. And the "Main Course" contains 8 dishes ranging from $6 to $13. Great deal!! What intrigued me was the presentation of each dish. They were presented as if you were in a high-end restaurant where you are typically charged $30/dish.

I followed my hubby's suggestions, and we got 2 starters and 2 main courses. Yes, it was more than plenty, but we wanted to try as much as we can :). 2 starters we got were Papa ala Huancaina (roasted potatoes, boiled eggs, huancaina sauce) and Ceviche del Dia. I am not a huge fan of creamy stuff, but even I could enjoy this Papa ala Huancaina. The sauce had a mild spice to it, and it wasn't as creamy as it looked (loved that!). We also got a glass of Chicha Morada (purple corn tea), which was very good, too.

Just by the time we are done with our starters, our main dishes were served. Great timing! We ordered Quinotto (wild mushroom, quinua grain rissotto, crema fraiche) and Seco de Cordero (Lamb shank, canario beans, salsa criolla, cilantoro beer sauce). Quinotto was served with green salad and Lamb was served with rice (with corn in it!). Both looked and tasted amazing. I was indeed astonished with their price performance!!

I would definitely go back again and would also recommend this place to anyone. If you are interested in, check out their web site: www.mo-chica.com

Finally done with the Community Site

I couldn't update the blog as I had been bogged down with Drupal in order to build a community site for my neighborhood association. I started to work on it (or I should say I took over the work after my hubby sat on it for a year) in April. I had no knowledge about Drupal then, and I certainly did underestimate the magnitude of the project.

As a product person, I had to create a requirement document. So, that was the first thing that I did. Conceptualizing what people are hoping to accomplish with the site, and writing down the requirements. But that is just a beginning. Adding frame to it and sculpting it takes long time. And, yes, it did take two full months. I took 1.5 weeks off due to my family visit, but I was pretty much working fulltime on it. And now, I am happy to announce the version 1.0 is done!!

One thing I realized about Drupal is that it is a wide-open-source. It seemed to me like everyone is working on random things and all the information is all over the place. People keep saying how robus and wonderful it is, but I really have to scratch my head when I hear that. I mean, yes, it has lots of themes and modules available, but different versions of Drupal and modules and updates are all nested and you need to spend quite a lot of time sorting things out (if you encounter issues).

After all, though, two months of struggling with Drupal surely gave me lots of insights and knowledge about Drupal. Another site with Drupal? Ah... don't want to think about it for a while. I am moving on with my life!