Online Contest

I usually don't do this, but this blog that is supported by my favorite independent book store Hicklebee's is having an awesome give away! So here is the link to that awesome blog: http://bklc.us/2y

Fooood!!!!

Since Chris and I have yet to find jobs, we have quite a bit of time on our hands besides our schoolwork. Even though we are still actively seeking for jobs, we have also taken advantage of our free schedule by indulging on one of our favorite hobbies: FOOD! So here is just a "taste" (haha!) of what we've been doing:

Chris is the baker of the house and he's a gosh darn good one! Being exact with measurements drives me insane. Here he is proudly showing his yummy chocolate chip cookies.

This year Chris decided to try making pies. Here is his very first apple pie. It was just perfect with vanilla ice cream!

This is his lemon meringue pie. It is the first time I actually enjoyed this kind of pie! He has also made a banana cream pie that was excellent. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of that one. But our friends have been requesting Chris' desserts more lately. =)

I have been occupying myself with finding Asian recipes. This is my stab at Hamburg Steak, a Japanese dish that I learned from a great series I found on Youtube.

Here is our very Japanese Hamburg Steak meal complete with Ramune. The sauce is delicious!

A friend of mine several years ago showed me how to make kimchi stir fry. Chris loves this dish!

This was our Halloween meal. It was Chinese style chicken with a mix recommended by a friend. Then I just stir-fried some napa cabbage with some garlic and ginger. We also had kimchi on the side.

Chris treated me out to a strawberry shortcake from the Japanese Bakery called J Sweets. I love Asian pastries! You don't get a headache afterwards from the overload of sugar.

Pho! YUM!

One of the DEFINITE benefits of living in San Jose is the abundance of good Asian food everywhere and how reasonably priced it is! Chris and I were running late doing errands, so for dinner we decided to go for one of my favorites: PHO!

We found a place which specializes in Vietnamese chicken dishes with various chicken noodle soups or boiled chicken with special rice and etc. It's called Pho Ga An Nam. It was only a five minute drive away and averaged about $6 a per person, not too shabby. Be warned! If you are going to check it out, they take cash only and they do not have an ATM there.

What amazes me about Pho is the amount of flavor they are able to pack into the broth! Looking at this pic you would think that the soup was ok tasting, but take a sip and your tongue gets a multi-layered hit of sweet, savory and Oh-s0-goodness. It's the perfect thing to warm you up when the weather is cooling down....or if you are just having a bad day.

Chris also liked being able to watch Vietnamese TV shows while eating. The time we went it was the Vietnamese equivalent of Dancing with the Stars, only it was called Celebrity Dancing. It was pretty addicting despite the language barrier.

Ponyo

So Chris and I were wanting to see this movie since it came out in theaters a couple of months ago. However, whenever one of Miyazaki's films come out in the States I have a dilemma - I want to see the movie, but I want to see it with the original Japanese dialogue. The actors and actresses they have to dub it in English are talented, no question, but there's something special about seeing a film in the language it was intended for.

Thankfully, I didn't have to worry for too long. While we were exploring Little Tokoyo with my cousins we went into a mini-mart. There, just on TV was Ponyo even though the local theaters around it were still showing it. I guess it has been a year since it came out on DVD in Japan so not only were we able to buy the movie for a reasonable $13.99 but it's only in Japanese (with English subtitles of course!). It's a super cute movie. I enjoyed it, especially the scenes where they're eating ramen!

San Jose!!!

Yay we made it! We started out on Monday Aug 10th, stayed in Hood River Oregon for a day then headed down to San Jose! Our apartment is also finally set up, we're just waiting for internet to come and it's nice sunny weather. I guess my few complaints are:

1) It's scary to drive around here

2) Everything is expensive

3) It's a bit too crowded for me! (Surprisingly enough, I'm NOT a big city girl)

But I love the weather here! It has been sunny, but not ridiculously hot. I also love how everything (i.e. library, shopping, grocery) is only about a mile away from our place -AND- there's good food EVERYWHERE!! You can get really good Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and etc all within a few minutes! Well just to let you all know, we're doing well!

Oh my Gardenz...

My garden is in full swing this year. It helps that I had time to prep everything in the fall and early spring. Now it's looking pretty good. I have beans, corn, pumpkins, squash, gourds, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, bok choy, nappa cabbage, jalapenos, and watermelons galore! I'm kinda sad that we'll be leaving for San Jose before lots of it is ready, but I have more fun gardening that actually consuming what I grow. Although, nothing beats fresh vegetables out of the garden.

This last picture is an arbor I constructed for my gourds to grow up, and to let all the gourds hang down. It might also be a nice shady spot to sit in once they grow some more.

Ponds Away!!!

I've been wanting to build a pond for a while now. And I finally got my mom to agree with me that she should have one, and she financed the venture. (I don't have anywhere to put a pond yet, so it makes sense it should be at my parents house). Anyway, here are some pictures of my creation.

The liner and plants came from a pond store in Redmond, they had a lot of cool stuff. I would love to build something like their koi ponds some day. I guess I'll have to wait until I have a house or something. I built the fountain out of bamboo that we bought at the Bamboo gardens. I used my geometry skills to make the octagonal border out of cedar. I really like working with cedar, it smells nice. Tomorrow Katrina and I are taking Hayley to chinatown to pick out a couple of goldfish to put into the pond. It's gonna be a party.

What Chris has been up to... and other exciting topics

What haven't I been up to? I guess it's been a while since I made any posts, so now it's make up time. We'll start with the state of the art chicken coup I built.

I didn't build the actual coup, it was a playhouse given to us by a friend several years back. I did all the modifications and chicken yard construction.

This is Easter sitting in one of the nesting boxes, which is easily accessible through a hatch on the side of the coup.

This is the feeding area. It rains a lot here, and it isn't much fun to clean out the food when it is soaking wet. So the chickens have a nice covered area in which they can eat.

The black and white chicken is Wanda the Wyandotte. She's my personal favorite. I saw wyandottes at the Puyallup fair last year and thought they looked really cool. So I had to get one.

Knitting, a very addicting hobby

I have a cousin that knits and I was always in wonder at the things she made. I finally had a chance to learn from Chris' grandma. Chris also picked it up as she taught me so we both started knitting. Ever since then we have been adamantly supporting our local knitting shop.

Chris was the first conqueror of knitting hats. This one is for his mom with Alpaca/wool mixed yarn.

It turned out great and she loves it!

We got a small Japanese book with cap patterns and Chris whipped this one up for me using Alpaca/Peruvian wool. He's still going to add a flower on the top. It's super warm!

One of our cats Yumi has also taken to knitting. If anyone is knitting in the house she will sit in their lap. Actually right now as I am writing this she is sitting in Chris' lap watching him knit a scarf.

This is my second project, my second scarf. It's simple with just knit and purl stitches, but I like the way the texture turned out. It made it for Chris!

So Chris and I are cautious with knitting. There have been times when we thought to ourselves, "I'll just knit a row or two" and end up spending hours upon hours working on a project. It feels sooo good to create and finish something!

Wild Wet Adverntures in the Northwest

It's been forever since we last posted but I thought I might include this interesting story:
Around November it had been raining non-stop, Chris and I barely came back from a night out. I was walking across the laundry room in my socks and I noticed my feet were very cold and soaking wet. Worried, Chris checked out the storage room which is in our apartment and this is what we saw:

Water was seeping through the walls in our basement apartment quickly. Our landlord (Grandma) Kevin and Dad came over and we started battling the flood waters with towels, a water pump and the boys digging a little ditch with a pump for the water under the house to drain.

We worked until midnight and finally beat the water. Chris and I were still able to sleep in our apartment that night, but in the living room since the carpet in the main bedroom was damp.

Woo hoo for adventurous times!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays!

Ok it's been forever since we've updated. Christmas was great. Chris and I were spoiled silly. We got gift cards galore, awesome cookbooks, games, money and DVD's. Chris also made me a kitty scarf and adopted a polar bear in my name through WWF. I made him some artwork, a Wii game and Threadless t-shirts. New Years was easy going and quiet. Anyway, happy belated holidays!

International Cinema to DA MAX!!

I've been frustrated that Facebook doesn't have an application where you can list all the movies you've seen. Sort of like how in Visual bookshelf you can list all the books you've read....anyway...

Movie: Jodhaa Akbar
Language: Hindi
2008

My co-worker is from Nepal and she knows I'm a Bollywood fan so she passed this recommendation along, I'm so glad she did! In addition to being a visual spectacle this movie has a cute love story, an interesting plot and enough fighting and blood to satisfy the menfolk. I really loved this movie and the music was good in it too! For those of you who are unfamilar with Bollywood films, this one would be a good one to start with. Make sure you have enough time to enjoy all four hours of it. Also, most people aren't used to the musical structure of dancing and singing in all Indian movies but in this one it fits well with the overall tone of the film. It won the Audience award at the 32nd film festival in Sao Paulo.

Stars: Aishwarya Rai & Hrithik Roshan

Halloween Pumpkins

This year we carved pumpkins that Chris grew out of his garden. I have to brag that he's a pretty good gardener! He ended up with about 169 total pounds of pumpkins. He had a couple of giant ones and then about 29 small sugar pumpkins.

Chris also went all out with his carving skills! He took lots of time and care to do this one. His pumpkin inspiration is Ichigo, a character from the anime Bleach. As much as it is cool looking I think it's rather scary.

This is my pumpkin. It is much simpler in design and carving requirements, but I think it's just as twisted. My pumpkin inspiration came from my brain.

Katrina's Recommendations for November

Movie: Persepolis

It has already gathered a lot of attention since being released last year 2007. It was the official jury selection at the Cannes Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. It is a French film animated in primarily black and white. It follows the life of a young girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution. She travels abroad to France but is trying to make sense of her life and identity. It's is based on the life of one of the directors. It does deal with more adult themes of war, rebellion and the people she interacts with. It is funny as it is poignant.

Book: The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin

I picked this one up at a school book fair I was volunteering at. (I'm such a sucker for book fairs!) I wish I had this book while growing up. Pacy or better known by her American name Grace, is an Asian American growing up being the only Asian in her school of New Hartford, NY until Melody moves in. They quickly become friends and together try to figure out how they are so Chinese at school but then are so Americanized with family. It also has neat tidbits of culture in there. I related to many situations in there and I think everyone will appreciate the charm of it all. It's for 5th-6th graders and up.

Movie: On a Clear Day 

Jury prize winner at the Sundance film festival in 2005. It's a Scottish film about Frank, who after decades of dedicated work is laid off. He finds himself unhappy with not only dealing with unemployment but his estrangement to his son and distance between him and his wife. With nothing left he decides he wants to swim the English Channel with the help of his off beat friends. This film was just plain funny. Chris and I enjoyed the quirky humor and Scottish accents.

2nd Anniversary: We're still in love

We celebrated our anniversary a little early since it actually fell on a weekday. The weekend before we stayed at Embassy Suites in Bellevue. We enjoyed swimming (their pool had a small waterfall in it!) They also upgraded us to an executive suite for free when they found out the occasion.

Chris is enjoying the free drinks at the hotel. 

This is me enjoying the free breakfast at the hotel. (We like free things)

So our day of celebration was this: we got to the hotel, swam, then dressed up and went out at a nice Italian dinner. We also went shopping at the nearby mall and we ended up getting held up at Banana Republic because a seller there decided she wanted to dress me up in all the dresses in the store to see how they look. Finally, we grabbed some dessert at the Cheesecake Factory, their cheesecake is crazy rich man! It was a great anniversary. Chris and I enjoyed just being able to spend time together. I can't believe it has already been two years! Love you honey!

SALMON DAYS IN ISSAQUAH!!

It has been a while. I think I still need to do a post on our anniversary which was... two months ago. Anyway, ignore the lack of chronological order and enjoy! I finally was able to experience Salmon Days. Every year on the first weekend of October the whole town of Issaquah celebrates the salmon's heroic struggle returning to their place of origin to spawn.... and die. Kind of depressing come to think of it, makes for an awesome two day celebration of food and crafts though.

This is one of the most delicious desserts I've ever had. It is an apple dumpling, which is a very warm whole apple baked in a cover of fluffy pastry covered with a special cinnamon sauce and served with vanilla ice cream. It was yum.

This is one of the hundreds of salmon that could be found swimming in creek nearby. They are HUGE! And it was fun to see so many of them.

The entire downtown of Issaquah was converted into a huge open market. They also had this ridiculous food court complete with huge desserts and international food!

So my verdict of my first Salmon Days: It's GOOD! I guess the rain just comes with the package.

Aki Matsuri (Fall Festival)

Time to party like it's fall.  Oh yeah.  Well, not so much in the way of party.  But it was fun.  We went to the Eastside Nihon Matsuri Association's Aki Matusri (visit them at enma.org).  It was pretty cool.  Lots of demonstrations and displays of traditional Japanese crafts and arts.  Everything from Ikebana to taiko to sumie.  It was fun to look through it all.  We even bought some art to decorate our humble abode.  Here's some pictures to look at.

Myself and my masterful brush strokes.

I thought this bonsai was pretty amazing.  It's growing around the rock!

And what festival would be complete without Kitty-chan?  

And kendo.  I really want to try it sometime.  Whacking someone with a bamboo sword just seems so much fun.  There were many martial arts demonstrations like aikido, kenjutsu, judo, karate, kyudo, ect.

The Joys and Woes of Gardening

One of the things I was most excited about when we moved back to Washington was the prospect of growing a big garden full of delicious things.  I guess I forgot about all of my natural enemies that exist here in the Great Northwest.  It was all worth it.  I tried growing a Japanese variety of corn called Mirai, it is really sweet.  Doesn't need any salt or butter, just pure deliciousness.  So here are some pictures of the Sunflowers, pumpkins, corn, birdhouse gourds, and everything else I got growing.  Enjoy.

Huge sunflowers (they must be 12 feet tall)

My hyotan (birdhouse gourd)

Big pumpkins

Watermelon

Strawberries and tomatoes

Monstrous zucchini ( I didn't even get pictures of the really big ones)

And of course damage due to my enemies.  Deer and chickens.  I'm thinking about putting a bounty on their heads.  This was a 24.6 pound pumpkin, and it would have kept growing.  I'm still mourning.