use real butter

Recipe: pomegranate lemon panna cotta

Pom poms. I was not and could never have been a cheerleader in high school. I did not wear a skirt and bloomers in the fall. I wore a kilt and bloomers (boxers if coach let us) and shin guards and a mouth guard and I carried a big stick. I played field hockey. In college, I traded my shin guards for knee pads and played volleyball… A LOT. Indoor sixes, fours, triples, doubles, and outdoor grass doubles. It’s the California way. And while I miss the burning lungs from summer smog and playing an entire tournament on half a bagel and a banana, my jogbra tan – which I thought was permanent – has finally faded away. But, I am never wanting for things to do around here.

Recipe: chocolate mousse bombes

FYI: For those of you asking about the scarf in the last post – it is the My So Called Scarf pattern and it’s easy to knit and simply gorgeous.

V-day is coming. I am admittedly not a romantic, as most of my friends know. In my mind, romantics are always setting themselves up for disappointment. I’m a pragmatist. I get shit done (or I try to anyway). It works for us. Just last night I tried to schedule a party with several of my tele betties and Jeremy casually reminded me that one of the dates I suggested was our anniversary. Oops!

Winter is back, as are her winds. We have a movie of non-stop horizontal snow speeding past our picture windows, stripping away any heat in the house. Kaweah is cuddled up in the office on the luxurious faux fur/fleece blanket I made for her in December (and now wish I had bought enough of that awesome faux fur to make one for us because there isn’t any more!)

Recipe: chocolate bag

Ahh! Finally, I can sit down after a whole day of cooking. In the morning, I baked. Starting from noon until now, I’ve been slicing, dicing, mincing, wincing… Chinese New Year’s Eve is tomorrow, yo. That means I must dedicate at least 24 hours of my time to chopping vegetables and tofu and all manner of Chinese ingredients for the big feast. I guess it’s to preserve my Chineseness since my Mandarin is in the shitter.

Okay, two points.

1) I know a lot of bloggers have this problem and it crops up from time to time for me too. While I was searching online today for a good wine recommendation to pair with Chinese hot pot, I found a PDF with recs from Simon Tam who I think is in Hong Kong. Great! I open the PDF and what greets me is a collage of MY PHOTOS from this post on Chinese hot pot. The fuck?! What is it with folks who ignore the copyright notice, don’t have the decency to ask permission (I usually say yes if you ask first), and then post my photos without giving credit? Jerkwad fuckheads. *Edit: Turns out it was Macau Closer – a glossy magazine – who stole my photos and not Simon (Simon is a nice fellow – he emailed me). That’s great – magazines stealing from bloggers. You assholes.*

2) In my about section, I have a few guidelines about interaction on this blog. The fifth one down states, don’t be rude or nasty. My litmus test is: if your comment was said to my face in my house and my reaction was to 1) haul off and punch you 2) give you the verbal smackdown or 3) kick you out of my house, then you probably violated the fifth guideline. You wanna be an asswipe? Get your own blog and be an asswipe there. That’s what I did.

Yesterday was a squirrel day. I covered a lot of ground in search of ingredients for our Chinese New Year’s celebration. It was a tad frantic at the H Mart in Denver because we were on time constraints and it’s a Korean market, so when I asked where x, y, and z might be, the little Korean employee smiled and then asked me to ask someone else. I say we, not in the sense of the royal we, but as in myself, Manisha, and Kitt. Oh yeah, that same little Korean employee flagged me down and asked me to help another customer… it turned out to be Manisha! Hi-larious. Yeah babe, I know where the dried shrimp are.

**Jump for more butter**