Chopped Up Omelets Are Not Scrambled Eggs!!!

I just got home from my trip up to San Francisco and Napa in time for New Years Eve. I had a lot of really good food during this trip that I will definitely be blogging about for the next week. But there is one thing I just wanted to get off my chest before the year's over. For some reason the people up in Napa Valley thinks chopping up an omelet equals scrambled eggs. At first I thought it was just this one place, but apparently it's a common occurrence. I suppose I can't say it's exclusive to Napa as I have experienced it elsewhere before. It just became very apparent to me how some restaurants end up serving chopped up omelets as scrambled...

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Old Country Cafe Isn't So Old

I have been church hopping on Sundays for a few months, but the last couple of weeks, I have been returning to a couple of churches some of my family attends just to be in familiar settings during this Christmas season. Last Sunday I went to my brother's church Chinese Mission Bible Church in Alhambra. Generally after church I would eat out with my brother and his wife, but this past Sunday his wife was busy and so it was just my brother. He suggested that we go to Old Country Cafe in Alhambra. After so many years here in the San Gabriel Valley I am always surprised to discover some new hole in the wall places. There are just so many and some...

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Homemade Chocolate Dipped Fruits

Last week I started making a few batches of chocolate dipped fruits. I wanted to do a little post specifically on them. I'm all about giving things a try. One of my best friend this Christmas received a batch of chocolate dipped chilled dried mangos from a friend of his and said they were fantastic. So I immediately went out to make a batch of this for someone I was dating. The things I would do for my dates. Truth be told I would do this for any friend if they happened to be there and they are willing to be my guine pig. (Chocolate Dipped Frozen Bananas and Apples) I figured it would be pretty simple, just like chocolate dipped strawberries...

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Christmas Day Dinner Extravaganza: Vietnamese Style

Wow, where do I begin? I have a lot of uncles and aunts around the world. My parents' siblings and their descendants span across four different continents. My Dad's parents actually live right here in Los Angeles. On occasions some of his siblings would come in town and visit. One aunt of mine from Canada visit quite frequently since she's rather close. I always look forward to her visits because I know I would get some really good homemade Vietnamese foods. The irony is that I generally do not crave Vietnamese foods, though lately I ate a lot of Vietnamese foods because I dated a Vietnamese-Chinese guy for a short while. This...

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Mountain High Rip-Off Chowder Bread Bowl

I was up at Mountain High snowboarding today on Christmas day. I normally don't eat up there cause I know their food is overpriced and nothing spectacular. But today I went with my brother, sister-in-law and her brother and they wanted to get some food. We got to the resort at 8am in the morning. You heard right! I woke up at 5:40am just so we could be on the road at around 6:30am to avoid the crazy traffic if we went any later. After a morning's worth of runs down the slope, we decided to break for lunch. We saw a few others having clam chowder and my brother and his wife both had had it before. I also happen to love clam chowder. One summer...

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Geoduck Saved My Christmas Dinner

My parents dragged me out to dinner tonight with some friends. To be honest, I wasn't in the best of mood today because of some personal things. It wasn't a big deal, just was a bummer. But I decided to go just to get out of the house and have a good dinner. Fortunately the friends had a kid who is possibly the happiest and most talkative kid I have ever met who managed to make me laugh and cheered me up. The kid was non-stop laughter. Laughter is truly contagious. (East Gourmet Seafood Restaurant) The restaurant was pretty busy on this Christmas Eve night. I suppose a lot of families like to do Christmas Eve dinner at home, but we ended up...

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Cold House; Hot Pot - Easy Meal For A Lazy Day

It's cold outside and it's cold inside. It's just plain cold right now. When it's cold, it's time to bring out the hot pot, also known at a lot of places as Shabu Shabu. Not only is it a convenient way to cook with very little prep time, it also serves as a heater for my chilly dinning room. It's very simple to prepare. We have a half and half pot. A lot of people do a spicy and a non-spicy soup. We instead did a tomato and non-tomato soup instead. Unlike a lot of fancy restaurants, we don't do anything fancy to the soup base, just water and salt. On one side we threw in a bunch of tomatoes right away so they would be boiled to smithereens to...

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My Love for Riesling

I really don't know much about wine. I've only recently started getting into them. I am starting to enjoy them a bit more than I used to. But I doubt I would ever be a true wine enthusiast. I just like the occasional glass of wine with my food. But lately I have been infatuated with a specific white wine: Reisling. (Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling) The first time I have ever had a bottle of Riesling was earlier this year on a train ride from Seattle back down to Los Angeles after a week's cruise up in Alaska. I was on Amtrak's Costal Starlight for 36 hours. They had a wine tasting at around 4pm each day. The first day they served a Washington...

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