Category Archives: posts by j

soboro rice

we have a new favorite restaurant on sawtelle: yakitoriya.

here’s how we made it at home (march 29):

  • 8 TBSP sake
  • 4 TBSP soy
  • 4 tsp grated ginger
  • 2 TBSP sugar (use 1)
  • 4 TBSP mirin plus some (maybe 5)
  • 2.35 lbs chicken
  • N.B. was too sweet

online learning

i’m on my third week of “Seeing Through Photographs” provided by The Museum of Modern Art on coursera.org. After a slow start due to more reading and fewer videos and more work keeping me from said elective online course, i am finally caught up and starting lesson 3: Documentary Photography. so far, this lesson is my favorite because it underscores the “production” that goes into a photograph by the photographer and the choices in subject matter, color, framing, and public sharing that the photographer makes every single time s/he presses the shutter button.

the lesson resonates with me because, although i take photos for many reasons, i take photos to document the moments of life that will never happen again because recreating those moments, as far as i know, would be physically impossible. my approach to the world — my predilections, my organizational habits, my photography, and the way i conduct myself as a web developer — is to “curate the world one pixel at a time” and to record those moments for posterity. i admit it: i am a life hoarder.

pita master

i’m so glad i make bread now because i’m not afraid to try to make any bread and i have just enough knowledge to make the dough work even if i didn’t get the recipe quite right. which just goes to show you that dough is very forgiving and you shouldn’t be afraid to make dough/bread. tonight i made pita to go with m’s shawarma. whoa. mind blown. we may never have to go to zankou chicken ever again. 

  

home improvement

remember that vine we cut down in april 2013? with the help of mama bear, we finally updated the paint job on the garage where the vine used to be. we also covered other stucco patches and other exposed areas that weren’t beige (i.e., dunn-edwards pigeon gray).

vietnamese spring rolls

vietnamese spring rolls

banh mi venice makes awesome fresh spring rolls with shrimp, rice noodle, bean sprouts, lettuce, and mint with hoisin almond butter dipping sauce. m thought we could do that at home and after months of asking me to make them, she took matters into her own hands, ordered the noodles and rice paper wrappers from amazon, and we bought all of the veggies today. she even made almond butter from scratch for the homemade hoisin sauce.

here are some other websites she consulted:

kofta curry

our third day of cooking indian food (specifically from the Phaidon India cookbook). the sauce for the kofta was amazing even though it separated. we saved it by whisking cornstarch into yogurt and incorporating it into the not-quite-warm sauce.

  

wat thai temple

is baaaaaack!!! but they wouldn’t take my old tokens from 2007. the token takers in the token hut giggled when i asked if i could still use them. the food is just as good as it was and just as inexpensive. even at 11 am, the crowd seemed mostly thai and was very low key. i wonder how long this will last. next time, try the sausage from the vendor closest to the parking lot and the fried mussel pancake. (really?!?)

valentine’s day shortbread

m made me homemade shortbread cookies a la martha stewart for valentine’s day. we made jelly sandwiches out of them (polish blackcurrant jam tasted the best). they were very tasty and i consumed them within 2 days, but they are a b***h to make so perhaps we will let the professionals make them from now on.

shortbread