2 things i love

I found an absolutely wonderful pad thai recipe at chez pim's blog (food chronicles of a cute epicure who has judged for Iron Chef America). The secret ingredient is tamarind paste (I made by squeezing preserved tamarinds by hand; painful but worth it.) I have tried many pad thai recipes before, but I can stop now. This is the real thing, this is as good as pad thai from Boston's Nud Pob or Pad Thai Cafe. I love that my mom's kitchen has every possible kitchen implement I've dreamed of, and I could grind my own peanuts for the garnish (mmmm, the smell of freshly ground peanuts).

Here are the results:






I'm not ashamed to say I had a crush on Batman when I was 5. Needless to say I have been super excited about The Dark Knight. I finally watched it on IMAX with Kenton a few days ago. I love what both new Batman movies have done to the Batman universe. The Joker is treated as an incredibly complex villain, the best treatment I've ever seen for a villain before. And he's totally creepy, the kind that gets under your skin. It was a huge cinematic and artistic achievement.

southern food

Today Mikie and I went to Main Street Market Cafe for lunch. It was nice catching up, and I was delighted to find such healthy (i.e. not dripping with grease) and delicious Southern cuisine. Until today, I thought the 2 were mutually exclusive.

Later in the afternoon I went along with my dad to a soup kitchen, which he's been doing semi-monthly. I was moved to find that there is something that unites Southern people of all ages, shapes, and socio-economic backgrounds-- and it's their love of sweet iced tea =P. Also, I think I will have to steal the recipe for hashbrown casserole.

swimmingly

I spent the weekend at my little brother's state swimming competition. Watching people swim is relaxing-- kind of like watching fish in an aquarium, which I love to do.



Oh, and I should also mention that my brother is pretty awesome and brought home 4 1st places, 2 3rd places, 1 4th place, made his first AAAA time, will go to the sectional competition, and was really cute about shaking hands with other swimmers.

skype pal

Yay for skype! And Mixxer. I've been doing language exchanges with Japanese people that I've found through the site. Tonight was the first time I've gotten to talk to a girl, however, which I was really excited about. Japanese has feminine and masculine ways of saying things, and I'm afraid of picking up male speech patterns and making jaws drop when I talk (in a bad way.)

The girl I talked to tonight was super adorable in all the stereotypical ways of a Japanese girl-- our conversation started off with her being very nervous and giggly. When she was finally able to talk, she told me that my online profile was so cute and that she's been waiting for days for me to come online so she could talk to me. If it were a guy saying that I might be weirded out-- but hearing it from her made it cute. Another way in which talking to girls makes me more at ease. And after reading NANA I'm quite set on finding a female friend in Japan =) which I might otherwise have a problem with, working in an engineering research lab...

time to read

Airplanes are a good time for reading. Two books I've recently finished on flights are After Dark by Haruhi Murakami and Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. After Dark is a book with such vivid and haunting imagery, and such clever progression (there were not chapters, but rather, the book was divided into times of the night, how cute is that?) that I spent a lot of the time while reading just gawking at the beauty of it. Not an emotional or touching book. More like a painting of night time and the strange beings that come out at night. Also, makes me want to go to a Love Hotel in Tokyo with a friend just to see what they look like =P

I've heard so much about Cat's Cradle. It's very funny, and intelligent, and at the same time incredibly sad. I found myself feeling empty at the end of it, but also, laughing. I liked the occasional interjection of Bokonist proverbs, and also the fact that chapters were very short. I was amused that it mentioned ice-nine, since I just recently learned about the different crystalizations of water.

bananas flambe

Pierre Louis was a French grad student doing research at my dad's work place this past spring. One night, he cooked for my parents: ratatouille and bananas flambe. "No fair!" I whined to my mom when she told me. But luckily he left the recipes. I have yet to try the ratatouille, though.

Bananas Flambe

4 bananas, each sliced lengthwise into 2 pieces
3 Tsp butter
2 tsp granulated sugar
1/2 to 1/4 cup of rum

1 pan
1 saucepan

1) Melt the butter in the pan.



2) Sautee the bananas in the pan until soft and a bit golden brown on the outside.

3) Remove the pan from the stove.



4) Pour the rum in the sauce pan, and heat on med-high for about 2 minutes.

5) Remove the saucepan from the stove.

6) Light the rum in the saucepan using a long match or candle-lighter.

7) Quickly pour the flaming rum into the pan with the bananas. (sorry, no pictures of this, but it was a pretty, blue flame!)

8) Wait until the flame dies out. (Isn't the tiny rum bottle cute? It held 1/4 of a cup of orange flavored rum, which was plenty, actually.)



9) Serve with vanilla icecream.



Yum!