obsessions of the day

the avett brothers cd I finally bought and downloaded, I and Love and You. Incredible. Everything I love in music - dance-able, deep and witty lyrics, acoustic instruments, southern accents, killer harmonies and punk sensibility (they scream a little, love it!). They even have a song about falling in love called Kick Drum Heart, it made me swoon a little.

browsing random people's fashion blogs. like here and here.

maybe i'm getting too into project runway? Or just on a heeled knee-high boots over jeans and down-coat overload and seeking some visual style stimulus. that's pretty much all you see here from Novemeber until April because no one ever takes their coats off.

the imperial diced chicken (lit. translation) dish from the restaurant that is literally right downstairs. I mean literally - the kitchen has a door into our elevator lobby. It was so good tonight for dinner - being hungry sure helps, but man, it was tasty! You might have had this dish on the other side of the pond under the alias of kong pao chicken. But believe you me - you've never had it like this - heavy on the peanuts and featuring a sauce made from pickled red chilies and a ton of ginger. yum!

ok, that's all for now. signing off.

edible ramblings

At a recent group hang out at our favorite Irish pub in town, Justin asked everyone to respond with two life goals: the first to accomplish within the next two to five years, and the second by the time we reach 50(ish). My answer to the first was to start my own garden and grow some veggies! To the second, it was to get a masters, eventually. But that one is far less fleshed out and for another post.

I believe that a kitchen garden could be feasible even within a city context, but don't quite have the gumption to try my black thumbs at anything more than small potted herbs in our apartment here. (3 mint plants down already. But I do have a thriving lavender plant going right now!)

However, while I haven't done anything drastic yet to try and realize my 'foodie/green/I'm young and rediscovering how cool farming is' aspirations in Asia, I wile away the time reading about such topics. And eating amazing food, available everywhere, freshly made with (to the best of my knowledge) mostly locally grown produce (albeit, definitely not organic, but I take what I can get) for cheap prices. Eating is definitely one of the best things about where we live. There is literally a whole world of food that my eyes have been opened to since living here. And none of it can be microwaved.

Anyways, you can imagine, given all this latent Asian food love/locavore obsession thing I've got going on, how happy I was to find several of my favorite topics all featured in a recent New Yorker article I just read on my Kindle. (Thanks Stephen!) Not only was the article about foodie die hards, so into eating they'll follow a chef around not only restaurant changes within a city but between several states, it also featured other favs of mine: spicy Asian cuisine and Charlottesville, Va. All in one article. (It even started in Fairfax.)

In other realms of food for thought, I also read this article today from the NYT. I thought it brought up a lot of interesting ideas and trends. Any responses?(to pique your palate - the article is titled: The Femivore's Dilemma)

p.s. Although it may seem incongruent, the photo is indeed of me eating a hot-and-now krispy kreme donut. Seriously, they're good. Especially when it's the first of its kind to open over here. It made me proud to be an American.