super-villain

I've made a horrible, horrible discovery -- homemade ice-cream sandwiches. Cookies. Ice-cream. They are two things that, independently, I already had a dangerous liking for. Dangerous, because I have no self-control when either of them are in my kitchen. Now that they have combined forces, they are like a super-villain, and I am powerless against them...



The cookies pictured above are among my favorites -- oatmeal -- very similar to this Betty Crocker recipe, but sans walnuts, and with cinnamon added. The ice-cream is Dreyer's Vanilla.

day-tripping in macau

My blogging record has been appalling these past few months... anyone who's still actually following this blog or checking from time to time for updates -- please accept my apologies. I've had plenty of blog-worthy material, but little time and even less motivation to get things up. Maybe this post will be the new leaf that is figuratively turned..


I went to Macau yesterday, with friends Mike and Ken. We joined a service project sponsored by Mike's church, and spent a couple hours at an English center holding a free English corner for local adults and teens interested in improving their conversational English. The experience reminded me of my time teaching in Xianyang, where we would hold weekly English corners for our college students. To be honest, English corner wasn't always my favorite part of teaching. If I wasn't prepared with some topics to discuss, I would get stuck answering questions that were all too familiar (i.e. "Do you know how to use chopsticks?" "Do you like Chinese food?" "Which is better, China or America?"). But anyway, I ended up really enjoying the English corner yesterday, and found myself actually feeling quite nostalgic for those days in China (I think the fact that I've started rereading River Town is also a contributing factor). I got to talk to two very nice Chinese ladies -- one was from near Shanghai, and the other was born and raised in Madagascar(!!). We talked about everything from family to work, history to travel. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos from the event, but might be able to add some soon, if friends are kind enough to share theirs. :)

After the English Corner, most of the service group took a ferry back to Hong Kong, but Mike, Ken and I headed to the Venetian -- the world's largest casino -- instead. I'd only ever seen the Venetian from afar, so was curious to go inside and see for myself what all the hype was about. We got there in time to get tickets for a matinee showing of the Cirque du Soleil show, Zaia. It was my first Cirque show, and wow, was it brilliant! But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, because if I'd been paying attention to the signs, I would have known that it's "the most dazzling spectacle ever staged in Asia." (I suggested that Mike and Ken strike Zaia-esque poses, but apparently, this is the best they could come up with.)


After Zaia, we spent a bit of time checking out the Venetian. You could easily spend a couple days in this place and still not see everything. Thus the map that Mike is studying in the photo below. We made it to the actual casino section, and I had my heart set on playing one of the slot machines... but couldn't for the life of me figure it out! Maybe I should take that as a sign from above that I should never gamble.

After my poor luck with the slot machines, I decided that we couldn't leave until we'd at least found the canal that the Venetian is so famous for. Here are Mike and Ken standing on one of the many canal bridges. I've never been to Venice, but I'm sure it's just like this...
Look, it's a gondola!

And us on another bridge. Check out the amazing blue sky!

Then we headed out to my favorite restaurant -- Fernando's! We had quite a wait, but I think it was worth it. They have the best tomatoes... and garlic prawns... and sangria.

We left Fernando's with a decent amount of time to get back for our ferry. We had tickets for the last ferry to Kowloon, and thankfully didn't put ourselves through the stress of cutting it close. After an uneventful hour's ride (no sea-sickness either way -- hooray!), we were back in HK.

So that concludes this post about my very fun day in Macau. I have some catch-up posts in the works, but am not making any promises about how many of them will actually get written. But stay tuned! :)

simply life

My mom and I will be leaving for the airport in a few hours, and then it's off to New Delhi! It's just starting to sink in that we're actually going to India, and we're both starting to get a little giddy with excitement.

In an effort to free up as much space on my camera(s) as possible, I'm putting a couple photos up -- both of food eaten at a relatively new restaurant in Festival Walk called Simply Life. A friend at school recommended the place to me, and boy is it good! They use high-quality, organic (I think) ingredients. I'm not much of a foodie, but even I can taste the difference! And the beauty of it is that Simply Life took over a spot where a McDonalds used to be. Anyway, it's so good that I've managed to go there twice in the past week... this could be dangerous!

Here's a delectable salad at last week's dinner. Prosciutto, rocket, tomato, mozzarella, and grilled eggplant. I'm not usually much of a salad person, but this was heavenly.
And eggs Florentine for brunch this morning. Yum.

scrabulous sandwich

This is what I ate while considering what my next Scrabulous moves should be. For a thrown-together sandwich it turned out really well. Starting from the top layer, it's mozzarella, basil, olives, chicken, and pesto. Yum.

monday meal

This was my Monday dinner with Daniel. We went to a noodle/tofu dive in Sham Shui Po, where we happened to be when we got hungry. I'd never thought of myself as a big fan of soy milk until I tried it at this place... delish. And such a bargain. Noodles and soy milk -- a HK$17 combo.

basil and mozzarella

I got home from hiking with an unexplainable craving for cheese. With a nice block of mozzarella in the fridge and some tomatoes on hand, I decided to make this salad. It's a lot like an Insalata Caprese, just arranged a little differently.

Ingredients: 1 tomato, mozzarella (amount may vary depending on how much you like cheese), fresh basil, drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I share this simple salad recipe mainly as an excuse to show off our basil plant. It has really flourished since being repotted and moved outside. It started out as a tiny little thing that I purchased from the herb section of City'Super, and now it's practically a basil bush!

rice paper

Some of us got together after summer school today for a little Athania-birthday-lunch at Rice Paper. What a great place! Thanks Athania, for having a birthday and giving me an excuse to finally go there! :)

I wish I'd turned the flash on for this one, but oh well... there are worse things than being back-lit.
Place setting.
Our food. Modern Vietnamese = delicious!!
The dessert setting. With pretty coaster.
Our desserts. We'd originally planned to just order four, but after seeing us devour the appetizers and main courses, our kind waiter recommended that we go with five.
Here are the two that turned out to be my favorites: the "French kiss" (with a nice view of the restaurant decor in the background)...
...and the sticky banana pudding. Wow... just looking at this one is making me salivate...
Happy birthday Athania!

the chris and athania restaurant

Helen and Mike sometimes refer to Branto (my favorite vegetarian Indian restaurant) as the "Chris and Athania restaurant," because Chris and Athania were the ones who apparently introduced them to it. This has always been a sore point with me, because if you go back a little further in Branto history, it was I who introduced Chris and Athania to the restaurant in the first place (although, if you go back even further, it was Joanna who introduced me to it, and someone else who introduced her, and so on). But in spite of my bitter feelings, I accompanied Mike, Helen, Chris and Athania to the Chris and Athania restaurant today.

Mike with a masala dosa telescope.

Athania with the chili lime (?) stuff that she so adores.

Chris with one of my new favorites, the paneer burjhi (thanks again, Erika!).

Helen with the vegetable makhanwala (a new dish that we tried today). Like everything else I've ever had there, it was tres yummy!

A perplexed Mike with the stuffed capsicum.

Athania, Helen and I after our meal -- stuffed and happy. Mike's reflection would be visible in the picture too, if it wasn't for the crazy flash-mirror combination. Our heads look like little planets orbiting the sun...

eat together

I went to crafty Sham Shui Po this morning, and managed to work in a meal at my favorite Chinese dive-of-a-chain-that-apparently-has-its-own-website -- Eat Together! Wow, and I just realized from looking at the picture below that it's a 24-hour chain -- I'll have to stop by for some late night/early morning meals, just because I can.


Here's the meal that I've come to love. Dam dam meen (or dan dan mian, for any Putonghua speakers out there)... not exactly sure how it translates into English, but it's a slightly spicy soup base with pork, pickled vegetables, a peanut-y sauce, and lots of cilantro thrown in for good measure. It might not look or sound very appetizing, but trust me, it's very tasty! And what could be better to wash it down with than a super-sweet iced lemon tea.
Besides all the positive attributes listed above, I think the coolest thing about this restaurant is the employee uniform. Yes that's right, it's all camo here, even down to the hat/hair-net combo things they're wearing.
I just checked out their website. Unfortunately, it is not very informative, though they do have an English page with a list of their specialties. Which brings me to this interesting tidbit: one of their specialties is imitation dog meat. Yes you read that correctly. Killing and eating dogs is illegal in HK, but I guess someone liked the taste of dog meat enough to want to experiment on creating a kosher imitation version that could be enjoyed in the HKSAR...

monday fun-day

We went for brunch at The Flying Pan this morning. Yum!
Then we made our way back home. I volunteered my babysitting services so that Amy and Aaron could go see Oceans 13.

I had fun with the kids. Anna had a bit of a hard time though. Amy called after the movie was over, asking how the kids were, and as I was speaking to her on the phone, I looked over and noticed that one of the cats was right next to Anna. The next thing I knew, Anna was pulling hard on his fur. As I was yelling for her to let go, Jock (the cat) started biting. His biting didn't seem to produce the results I assume he was hoping for -- Anna started screaming, but continued to hold on tight. Finally they separated. Anna cried for a couple minutes, but was soon following Jock around again. Not sure how much his bite really hurt. He's about 11 now, and missing a lot of teeth. But still, what a fearless little girl.

Here are Anna and Jock about 10 minutes after their face-off. I like these pictures. They're pretty retro, what with Anna's orange rick-rack outfit and the yellow kitchen cabinets. Very 70's.

turning twenty-seven

I turned 27 last Friday, but the celebrations were saved for last night. Here's Olivia and Anna playing "Happy Birthday."
What talented nieces I have!

Olivia and me with possibly the best cake I've ever eaten -- Irish Cream bundt cake (recipe here). Yumm! Thanks Amy!

lunch at burger king

My sister and her family arrived today from Tianjin. Aaron is scheduled to have knee surgery at the end of the week, which is the main reason they're here, but we should be able to squeeze in some fun things as well. Amy and the kids will be here for two weeks, and Aaron will stay a few weeks longer, so that he can do physiotherapy here.

I met them at the airport this morning, and we decided to stay for a Burger King lunch (I was surprised that the airport McDonalds has been replaced by a Burger King -- one of only 2 in HK -- big news!).

The kids' meals came with stuffed endangered species toys. Here's Gabe giving his parched aye-aye a refreshing drink of fanta.
And here's Olivia letting her jaguar nibble on her cheeseburger.

Anna and Olivia with their mommy.

Olivia making a jaguar face. I love this picture!

carrot ginger soup

I'd been wanting to try my hand at soup-making recently, namely the hearty soups that require a blender. I've come to really like the carrot ginger soup at Pret, and so decided to give that a try. Here is the result. I realize it bears quite a strong resemblance to baby food, but it tastes pretty good (if I don't say so myself!)... which is fortunate, because I made enough to last a while.

brekky at the flying pan

"Brekky" isn't a word I use very often, but in honor of my lovely Australian friend, April, "brekky" is what I ate this morning.

Jon, April and I wanted to get together sometime while they're both still in HK, and seeing as my afternoon was booked up with more tutoring (will it ever end?), we opted for breakfast at the Flying Pan. (On a side-note, the Flying Pan's mascot is a winged frying pan, but yes, it is very likely that the name is also an allusion to the r/l mix-up that plagues many Cantonese speakers.)

Here are Jon and April with their matching eggs benedict(s).
April and me. You can just barely see the edge of some of my bacon. So in case you were wondering, no, I haven't made the leap to full-fledged vegetarian yet...
I felt that it was necessary to devote an entire picture to our food. I think I could be happy living on breakfast food for the rest of my life... love it!
A couple times during the catching up and high school reminiscing, we questioned how it could possibly be 9 years since we graduated. My how time fries...

of cinnamon rolls, idols, and facebook converts

Last night I went to an American Idol/very-important-football-match party at Sal and Kai's place. I knew that I wanted to contribute some type of edible sustenance to the get-together (it was going to be a long night), and finally decided to try my hand at cinnamon rolls. Two months ago, I attended a little cinnamon roll tutorial taught by the cinnamon roll goddess herself, Mari H. But even with Mari's expert advice and recipe in hand, I still felt my usual yeast-induced nervousness (will the yeast work? will the dough rise?) .

Despite of my worries, the whole process (though quite time-consuming and a little messy) went very smoothly.

Here's a picture of the dough rolled out with all the appropriate tools and ingredients. Rolling pin, flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon, dental floss. The dental floss is a little tip from Mari -- you use it to cut off each individual roll. I wanted to take more pictures of each individual step in the cinnamon roll process, but found the dough a little messier than expected (my mom took the picture above because my hands were covered in flour). I was also afraid of shocking readers (especially those who actually consumed the rolls) with the inside knowledge of how much butter and sugar went into them... trust me, it's better to be ignorant on this...

Before baking.
After baking.

Jon and a hungry Sal.

Cinnamon roll with gooey frosting...

While waiting for the 11:30 showing of American Idol, those of us with Facebook checked our accounts.

And those of us without Facebook were persuaded to sign up for accounts.

I left before the champion's league game started (so didn't see Liverpool's defeat -- sorry Kai and Mike!). But with a successful cinnamon roll experiment, American Idol, and a couple new Facebook friends, it was a very good evening.