Left to right: Scarlet Runner Bean flower; Bell Pepper ‘California Wonder’ baby fruit!
Left to right: Cosmo with unknown name; Cosmo ‘Double Click Rose Bon Bon’
Left to right: Cucumber that is either ‘Straight Eight’ or ‘Homemade Pickles’; Thunbergia ‘Spanish Eyes’
Left to right: Mystery Squash flower and pollenator friend; Mystery Squash fruit! My guess is that it is a Kabocha. We’ll see!
Every home cook has an emergency back-up meal. This is one of mine. Boil the pasta, saute a few sliced sausages, throw in some veggies and toss in olive oil. Salt and pepper (and spice) to taste. A soupy version of the same thing is just as good- add chicken, beef or vegetable stock. Runners up are Instant Ramen with a Fried Egg and Cup-O-Noodles.
San Francisco natives almost only have scenic pictures if our relatives took them. This is one of mine.
A friend told me last week that she wanted to live where she grew up for the rest of her life. The idea seemed so limiting and I blanched at the thought. No sun for the rest of my life? And maybe not enough space to grow everything I wanted to. But that’s really it. Truth be told, the more time I spend away from San Francisco, the more I miss it. Both my friend and I were born and raised on the seven by seven, the peninsula, City by the Bay- but she couldn’t see herself anywhere else and ever since I could remember I’ve wanted to leave the nest and go anywhere but there. As it turns out, I was wrong. I didn’t want to be anywhere but in San Francisco. There’s no place like San Francisco. Home. I was just spoiled.
I miss the terrible yet convenient transportation system. I miss the abundance of diverse food. (And the food is good too.) I miss the culture and the culture clash. I miss the creative ideas and the passionate politics. But most of all I miss the people. The hipsters and hippies, yuppies and indies, vegans and carnivores.
I miss San Francisco and I can’t wait to move back closer to home. Even if it’s not for the rest of my life.
“Man, I’m hella craving Ong Choy!”
That was an old co-worker of mine and apparently a huge fan of Ong Choy. I mean, who craves a stir-fried vegetable dish after lunch while heading towards the DMV to get her drivers license reinstated? Well, she was out of luck. I was driving, and I liked having a job, so we didn’t go get Ong Choy.
As it turns out, Ong Choy is pretty popular. Its scientific name, Ipomoea aquatica, suggests that it grows in plenty of water- which I learned when my mom gave me a bunch of cuttings and suggested pretty firmly that I might want to try growing some. As a matter of fact, it’s quite like… spinach! It looks nothing like spinach, but the texture is pretty similar when cooked. One of its nicknames is also Chinese Spinach, but we don’t call it that.
On a recent detour to Ranch99 I couldn’t decide what to cook. Sick of Bok Choy, had string beans last night, zucchini? In the Summer? Are you insane? So I saw something I hadn’t cooked before, and although it nearly weighed a pound, I bought it.
And we proceeded to have it for three meals.
Why can’t Ong Choy be sold in half-pound increments?
Can you imagine sorting and then chopping a whole pound of hollow-stemmed vegetables with flimsy leaves?
Ong Choy is notoriously difficult to cook. It needs to be tender yet crunchy. I don’t know if I achieved that kind of excellence. I mean, do you trust the man that you feed or do you think he’ll tell you it tastes great so you don’t stop feeding him? Anyway, it tasted nice and crunchy to me and I got a nice photo out of it to share. But unless the markets start selling Ong Choy in smaller bunches, I don’t think I’m ever going to cook it again.
Oh no! 404!
My eyes are a bit fuzzy and my feelings are caught somewhere between irritation, frustration and resignation. I just spent the last two hours converting my photos (and descriptions) from Picasa to Flickr to WordPress in order to create the perfect presentation of my gardening history slideshow. Notice that the slideshow shown is the Picasa version. It’s the only one that allows descriptions to be shown in my blog. It’s not everything that I want, but it’s the closest I can get without abandoning all the social media tools out there and getting a server of my own. Does anyone do that anymore? I mean, not to share bittorrent files or host for Ventrillo, but for their own website? The Internet has gotten to such a strange and wonderful place.
More than a decade ago I fell in love with the Internet and its seemingly endless possibilities. To a fault, even. I blocked up the phone line with my 56k modem, filled up my 3GB harddrive with mp3s from around the world and chatted well into the night with people I had never met in person- on school nights. It was love. Passionate and all-consuming. The Internet gave me everything I asked for. And more. I should have known that HTML was trouble. A group of opinionated teenagers with a love for the keyboard armed with HTML skills. We pumped out websites like nobody’s business.
Back then you grabbed a free server account on sites like Tripod, learned a bit of HTML, found a photo-editing software and the website became a full-time hobby. It was pretty easy, and fun, until the third website and you decided you wanted all your websites under one domain. Your own domain. A lot of people I knew rented server space and bought domain names. A few extremely eager people learned to set up their own computers as servers and left it on 24 hours a day. I was never knee-deep in the action but I watched with drooling envy. To this day one of my goals is to have my own website. About what, I’m not sure. And now the question of “how” I’m not sure either. The old fashioned free server websites have become difficult to find, and when the “knowing HTML” fad turned into DHTML then skyrocketed to CSS and Javascript/Flash/Perl I jumped ship. If I wanted server space without ads I would have to pay for it and I would have to learn a whole lot of coding to catch up. Unless I wanted a text-only website. Which I don’t. So was it the blogging tools, the photo sharing tools and Youtube that killed the personal webmaster? Or was the webmaster getting tired and these specialized entities stepped in to save the day?
Nowadays publishing tools are so plentiful, and mostly free if you don’t mind an ad or two. They’re versatile too! Personalize, edit and embed all you want. To the limit of the partnership of the two services you are using. And then you’re stuck trying to figure out how to get a Flickr-looking slideshow to show descriptions like Picasa and put it on WordPress without using Vodpod. And you figure out that you can’t. So you stick with the lesser evil. Unless that one post means so much to you that you would find a available domain, buy it, pay GoDaddy, and say goodbye to your free time, cause you belong to Lynda.com now, baby.
My dad was a farmer and my mom was a well-off girl who kept her flowers in containers in the courtyard. Today I am trying to figure out the basics of designing a garden. All the material I have come across so far either: a) assumes that the structure is in place and you’re just setting aside a plot for flowers or vegetables; or b) explains all the parts but never really puts it together in any kind of sequence. Also, there is apparently a difference between “landscape” and “garden” and it’s beginning to drive me crazy. I’m really close to having some semblance of an plan, but now I’m at “what plants look good with what?” Since I have nothing new to post, I thought it would be a nice time to step back and take a look at how far I’ve come. Something to feel good about while feeling lost, right?
Heck, let’s take this a little further and make my first photo slideshow online!
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Clockwise from upper left: on the way there and feeling brave; sunny day in San Francisco guarantees a great turnout; she looks like she's smiling but she's really saying that it's way too hot out and there are too many people; giant wool Totoro!
We spent a few hours at the Nihonmachi Street Fair in San Francisco yesterday. The weather was exceptionally fine, the music was blaring and stuff to eat and see were everywhere. We had TeriBurgers (Short for Teriyaki Burgers, for those people I overheard saying, “What an unfortunate name for a burger.”) and Yakionigiris. The types of food to be found were nowhere near extraordinary. Your standard fare at the fair plus some Onigiris. But! This festival at least tried to keep the food within the theme. No hotdog stands, thank goodness, but Saigon BBQ was there again! (Saigon BBQ is at almost every fair. The food concession business is suffering from a complete lack of imagination. Conformity has pushed out any ingenuity by way of profit margins, but that’s a story for another day.) One of the best things was that a lot of the food stands and even some of the stands selling wares benefited the local youth groups. That’s some feel-good money-spending.
Ruthie made a lot of progress with socializing. Every human-packed event we go to she gets a little better. Even if she did snarl at a husky that got too close while I was sitting behind her. We know better next time. She met my friends and let them pet her- even asked for pets, began to focus more on following us instead of freaking out, took food from me when we were seated and even smelled things! A few more events and she may even begin enjoying herself.
Good day yesterday. Now my Sunday is boring.
My first two cucumbers and oddly enough a bell pepper. I was pretty sure the pepper plant was supposed to produce Jalapeños, but the shape didn’t register in my mind until I snipped the “deformed” fruit off. I prefer my bell peppers nice and red, so I’m really hoping the plants will produce more before the season ends.
My first eggplant! It makes for a very odd photo, but that’s nothing compared to the insides. When I sliced it open the flesh was green. Yeah, obviously another case of happy-go-lucky harvesting, right? There were fully mature seeds throughout the entire length. This anomaly was caused by this year’s odd weather. The first fruit had set before Summer officially began, so the fruit hadn’t matured until but it was on the plant so long that its time had run out. Funny thing. I painstakingly took out all the seeds so it tasted fine.
Yesterday was the first time I visited a private garden for a garden show and tour. It was fantastic and inspirational. An old friend invited me to join her, so rather than looking like a creepy paparazzi armed with a digital SLR, I opted for a nonchalant point-and-shoot. Boy was I both glad and disappointed. Most people were clicking away with their iPhones so I was already photographically overdressed, but the photos that came out were pretty mediocre. Maybe I’ve learned my lesson and won’t care about wearing my geek flag next time. I’m sure the photos will be worth it.
Walking into Mr. John Ward’s garden was like opening a gardening magazine and stepping inside. Beautiful use of vertical space, small-space raised beds and green, green everywhere. The above two photos I’ve seen in my landscaping books and in- like I said- magazines, but never have I seen it in person. The amount of plants packed in there was incredible, and without illiciting a jungle-like feeling. (Actually, in my mind I wouldn’t mind living in a jungle. Don’t grant my mind any wishes- it could be dangerous.)
A few things strike my curiosity. As a poor homeowner, the deterioration of my property is at the forefront of every decision. Like here, will the structures holding up the containers against the walls finally give out eventually and rip holes into the fence? If the screws are not deep enough the apparatus won’t hold, but if they are deep enough, won’t the neighbors experience a nasty surprise every now and then? And finally, humidity. Now, I have no scientific backing for this but I believe that a healthy dose of humidity keeps the wood strong. Too little and it will crack, too much and it will rot. Vines and terra cotta planters against the fence: how long until the fence goes soft? Beauty is so worrisome.
There were a lot of wonderful metal and wired structures. A good bargain hunter will probably be able to get a ton of these easily over time. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I suppose I will have to learn. As it turns out, metal structures are just as wonderful as wooden structures when it comes to utilizing vertical space. As long as you don’t mind the rust. (I don’t, but the Mister might start hinting pretty hard.)
I learned a lot of things on this tour, and I am already working to employ the most sincere form of flattery. Hope to have photos to show soon!
Tonight I was treated to a meal that was absolutely no stranger to me, but, as it turned out, has been sorely missed: a good ol’ Cantonese restaurant dinner. There is a definite difference between a restaurant meal and home cooked dishes. I miss them both, but the former has been a lot harder to come by these last few years. (Especially since home cooked… I could do myself.) So I thought tonight I would reminisce and share the goodness of a Cantonese restaurant dinner with those who know it, and explain to those who have yet to try it.
I apologize for the lack of visuals- it would have been really awkward in tonight’s company. If I come across the dishes again later I will try to take and upload some photographs.
First, Roasted Suckling Pig!
I don’t think I know any meat eater who doesn’t like this dish. The coveted crunchy skin has been a childhood favorite for myself, my siblings and cousins. The unspoken rule at the table has always been that the youngest ones be given priority to this crispy treat because adults simply did not care for fried food. (This was a lie! I found out not too long ago that my parents love fried food. They simply had better restraint and felt the pressure to set an example for healthier dieting.) As I grew older I slowly and unwillingly became one of the adults who placed the morsels on my little cousins’ plates. Tonight, however, I was the youngest, and I ate it up!
The best roasted pig is a suckling, but don’t expect to find it at your local Chinese delicatessen. It’s much more pricey and usually a special order item, although it has become more readily available at restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area than years ago. Roasted pig is offered at all the good delicatessens, but finding a well-seasoned and perfectly roasted slab has become very difficult to find nowadays even in Chinatown.
Second, the Clay Pots!
Ah, I love a good clay pot dish. They are so versatile. Rich or poor, we all use them! From the cheap one-pot meal “Clay Pot Rice Dish” to the classy and expensive “Seafood Clay Pot”, we love our clay pots. My favorites are the “Braised Tofu Clay Pot” and “Beef Flank Stew”. Tonight we had a “Braised Oyster and Tofu Pot” as well as a “Lily Stamen, Cloud Ear Fungus and Beef Stew”. Both agreeable, but as always I probably had most of the tofu. (Tofu and recipes containing it has become popular during the last few years [I still remember the days when people in America turned their noses at the bland “bean curd cakes”. It wasn’t that long ago.], but in my opinion, truly understanding the awesomeness that is tofu comes from trying it in the various ways it has been cooked for centuries.)
Now, sure, you can find a section for “Clay Pots” on many Cantonese menus, but a lot of places cheat. They stir fry the dish and dump it in the clay pot. Some people are smarter and heat up the clay pots separately before dumping in the contents. Actually, most places are smart enough to do that, but not the place we went to tonight. The aroma and taste is completely different when the food has actually spent cooking time in the clay pot. If you get the clay pot within minutes of ordering, it was definitely stir-fried. Also, the cooking staff was too dumb and impatient to wait and at least make it seem as if your dish spent time in the pot before serving. A good clay pot dish is rare.
Last, a vegetable dish!
All the Cantonese families I have ever dined with will choose at least one vegetable dish for every meal. My mom always cooked that way and I adopted her ways. This has always been the most boring selection, but without it, just as it is without rice, the meal is incomplete. Don’t get me wrong- I love my veggies. My dad is constantly suggesting that I becoming a monk because I eat so little meat. Nevertheless, the poor dish is always the necessary afterthought and receives little fanfare. Tonight we had “Dry-Sauteed String Beans”. Sometimes it might be “Bok Choy and Black Mushrooms” or” Steamed Yow Choy with Oyster Sauce”. These poor vegetable dishes also translate over to home cooking, so really, I didn’t miss it as much. But it was good!
Thanks for staying with me on this nostalgic trip! More to come, hopefully. My taste buds certainly agree.
emm.yan 