use real butter

Recipe: pomegranate, orange, and jicama salad

We just got tickets for a performance I cannot wait to see. I am giddy. Giddy. And I just rearranged my pantry closets. More giddy.

Thanks to those of you who have commented on the Kyocera ceramic knife giveaway so far. I do read each one and have cooed more than one “awwwww” or chuckled out loud at several answers. These are great and I’m really pleased that so many of you can be in a Good Place. A couple of commenters were caught up in my spam filter which is set to *paranoid*, but not to worry as I do retrieve legitimate comments. For those of you who have commented multiple times, you will be counted once (that PhD is good for something… I can actually count).

Now that my pal has received this package in the mail, I can post a picture of what I made for her. It’s a relatively simple pattern, but I think it is especially gorgeous with any Manos del Uruguay wool (especially the multis).

Recipe: fried lemon slices with aioli

I am feeling particularly energized lately! So many things are converging to put me in a great frame of mind these days. My cold is kicked, the longer daylight hours are fantastic, I am making some professional inroads, tons of interactions with friends – old and new, and feeling like I can tackle just about anything. That’s huge. Lots of opportunities in motion and I’m stepping ahead into new territory. Even our unbelievably warm, sunshiny days have put an extra spring in my step as I rush around keeping busy (which I love) and out of trouble.

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**