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Monday, December 10, 2007

Pam's Kitchen

As a bay area girl, I was an avid yelp.com user before coming up to Seattle. Once here, I discovered the local yelp to be less active than SF, and I have since posted reviews of restaurants to help the community grow.

Early this year, I reviewed Pam's Kitchen (a Trinidadian-Caribbean place in the U-District). I'll copy the review here for completeness:

3 star review
I want to love this place. It's family owned, and the people are so wonderful. The menu is small, basically it consists of the rotis with either meat and potatoes/chickpeas or chickpeas and potatoes. They do change their daily specials which helps liven things up.

Unfortunately, nothing is spicy here due to the Seattle clientele. BUT they make their own hot sauce (and they're talking about bottling it and selling it. I would definitely buy this!). It's tangier than other hot sauces I have tried. But it really really kicks it up. Man it's so good.

Their chicken dishes are white meat which makes things dry. I had a duck version of a roti plate, and it was mostly bones. I got the special jerk chicken. The chicken was really good (It was dark meat! a whole leg). Their spicy greenbeans tasted like/texture wise canned greenbeans, but the flavor was good.



Well, this morning I received a message from Pam's husband and restaurant owner, Patrick C..

I was absolutely shocked to see his message, subject "Get a life":
"Get a life and not a roti stay away".

Another three star reviewer was told by Patrick C. that he should "go back to India!".

I had written the above review to be relatively positive, but I cannot endorse going to an establishment run by people who use rude, unprofessional, offensive tactics. I am severely disappointed in this outcome.

As I mentioned above, the family owners originally seemed very nice. Having now been the recipient of their misdirected wrath, I can no longer recommend that others go here. Thus, I changed my review from three stars to one star, and I am hoping other web surfers looking for reviews of Pam's Kitchen consider whether they would like to support a business that uses such unsavory tactics.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Cell-fun

Clara-nobo, or wilkins-key?

Seattle food

Cheesecale flan at Brasa

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

House calls

 
The intense rain these past couple days caused some major floods in the Seattle area! My friend Leona's house got surrounded by water and she had to be lifted out of there! I'm currently catsitting her cute kitten Brandi. Brandi LOVES LOVES LOVES the bath tub. I don't quite get it. I thought it was really funny until I went to take a shower this morning and Brandi got really upset that I was in 'her' tub. I think she was actually screaming at me to get out. Okay, I still think it's funny. :)

On another note, we got our house keys from our realtor last night! Wahoo! We officially move the 14th!
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Friday, November 30, 2007

Seattle living

We have signed!

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Ribbit!

I'm sneaking on to Lori's blog to showcase her hidden talents!

ribbit_loridoodle_07-11-24

Found on our desk from Lori's pen.

Kitty display stands

My goodness asha is plump! She makes a good remote holder. Nikko looks pretty in his bow. I think i have too much fun when they nap.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thank goodness for foodie holidays!

Happy belated Thanksgiving friends! I hope you all had wonderful days filled with family, friends, and food! I spent the holiday with at my Auntie's house in Kirkland. They have just finished rebuilding their house, so we got to help christen their new beautiful kitchen!



The day was filled with dancing (ala Soulja Boy and a "Learn to hip hop by Kelly Peters" dvd). We also later watched "Stomp the Yard" which went along with the whole dancing theme.

Erica was the only one of us to get this Kelly Peters move down:


Of course there was delicious food! One of the most fun to make was the Cranberry Almond Tart from Martha Stewart Living's October issue.



Due to a minor mishap where the pate sucree was placed on top of a lit burner and burned through, I ended up using a different crust recipe than Martha's (because it's quicker)

Crust:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions
1 Pulse together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a food processor until combined. Add butter and pulse just until mixture resembles coarse meal with some small (roughly pea-size) butter lumps. Add egg and vanilla and pulse just until dough clumps and begins to form a ball, about 15 pulses.

2 Butter and dust with flour the inside of your springform pan. Press dough onto bottom and evenly (about 1/4 inch thick) about two inches up side of springform pan with floured fingertips. Chill pastry in pan until firm, about 10 minutes. Use with Martha's Cranberry Almond Tart recipe in place of the Pate Sucree.


Friday, November 16, 2007

Lori humor

I must be really funny

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Three original gangsters Going 2 see american gangster. Btw the ballard movie theater is really nice! Nice stadium seating.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

House on a hill

We are buying a house!

Woohoo! We should be closing early December. I have to admit, I'm really enjoying thinking about revamping the yard and kitchen. I think for the yard, I want to put in a French Drain (because our neighbors house is at a higher elevation, and all the rain in Seattle will make my hill soggy), and I want to terrace our backyard slope to make great areas to grow my veggies and cutting garden. I've already decide I need a cherry tree, apple tree, italian plum tree, lilac tree, some roses, hydrangeas, lots of lavender, and seasonal veggies and herbs. I also want to install a new stone patio (in place of the backyard lawn). I've been going through back issues of Better homes and gardens to look for remodeling and gardening ideas before I recycle them all.

Yay home! And I'll get to take Buddie (the family dog)! He'll love it in Seattle--it's such a dog town.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Elliptical

Blurry went to the gym pic. Yay for a quick workout.

Halloween treats!

My sweet potato pie for the office. I am so festive!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Ms chef!

Chef Clara in the kitchen. She and ervy made delicious curried food friday while i 'read' for class.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Hot n spicy!

Evan going crazy on the food at clara's house

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Halloweenie

This house by green lake was remodeled all summer and it looks really cute... Except they have a life-sized Death hanging above their house.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Workin fly fashion

Mr zach 'stole lori's stunner shades' dude.

Gotta represent yo!

Why the heck would u have such a pot-bellied mascot? This is the retired sonics mascot, the weedle.

Mascots

How do i measure up? Btw, no one knows what a sasquatch is. The women team, storm, has doppler after the weather radar thing.

4 ur consideration

Evan considering the sonics half time stats like a true fan. We are big fans of sasquatch. Is he some weird kind of wookie?

Basketball suites(sweets)!

My dessert plate @ the sonics suite. My substitute 4 garlic fries.

@ the sonics pre season game vs rockets

Can u tell which is yao ming? He is sooo tall!

Let's boogie.

Clara and casey @ the go map party - gettin their groove on! I forgot dancing could be so fun!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Diversity in seattle?

@ the go map diversity 'get connected' event

If people haven't been able to tell, I finally implemented blogger's 'moblog' deal where I blog with photos from my phone! I just realized I could change the subject on the mms so that the posts don't all say multimedia message. I still can't get vertical photos to work correctly when posting, so for now, I'll only 'moblog' horizontally :)


On the subject of diversity in Seattle, Evan just sent me this link showing the historical segregation maps of the region.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

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Today's fog beats yesterday's fog hands down

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Today i got to seven as gorgeous george was leaving. I've learned the chocolate man's name is gregory.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

cupcakes

Eating a banana frosted chocolate cupcake go the bellvue mall. I cant believe view got rid of the gourmet ice cream place

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Goat cheese salad. 14 diff types of micro greens

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Delicious shepherds piefrom the ale house

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@ 74th st ale house 4 lunch. Bearded evan in tow

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The view from top pot donuts downtown. Mmm raspberry old fashioned!

FW:

Asha wants 2 blog 2!

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Asha wants 2 blog 2!

I love the fog



I've been waking up pretty early (for me), and it of course carries over to weekends. This is somewhat fabulous, because waking up early on the weekends means I have time to read/work while Evan is asleep (which means I don't miss out on quality time while he's awake). This morning I went out to walk to the mail drop box to send off another batch of wedding thank you's. Look how fabulously foggy it was! The best thing was that all the spider webs (and believe me, there are many) were lined in beads of dew, and each one was absolutely breath taking!



I took this foggy opportunity to head out to my favorite neighborhood coffeeshop Seven (right around the corner from my favorite neighborhood brunch place, Pete's Eggnest). The "Chocolate" Man (i.e., maker of all things chocolate in Seven) makes chocolate delicacies on the weekend mornings. Today I had a grilled chocolate sandwich with pepperjack cheese. Sounds like a bit of an odd combo, right? Well, it was scrumptious! The bread was buttered and browned on a pan, leaving the sides rich and a little salty. This contrasted nicely with the rich Belgian chocolate he placed inside and melted against the cheese. The cheese was surprisingly not disturbing in conjunction with the chocolate. It added a nice texture and savory quality to the whole experience. He finished off the sandwich by chopping it into four cute triangles and dusting it with powdered sugar. Yumm-O!



I love the feel of Seattle neighborhood (of course, I'm specifically inclined to love MY Seattle neighborhood, Phinney Ridge/Greenwood). While I was in there, the people of Greenwood neighborhood came in and out. George (of next-door restaurant's Gorgeous George's fame) came in and brought the Chocolate Man some bagels for his special grilled chocolate sandwiches. When asked if he made the bagels, George replied, "No, I got them at Safeway. I am a normal person." I suppose it's very random conversation, but there's something really wonderful about sitting in your neighborhood coffeeshop with so many happy caffeinating neighbors surrounding you. Many of them this morning were shaking their heads at the front window of Seven which had recently been tagged (aka, someone scratched their name across the glass of the front window). Apparently, (according to the baristas), the tagging community normally doesn't hit small business owners. So they supposed this was some teenager (who didn't get the tagging community's memo on the ethics of tagging).

Monday, October 08, 2007

ACK!

Everyone around me is sick!!

gotta gobble up my vitamin C

Is it time to get a flu shot? Do I even have time to get a flu shot?

yikes.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

I blame evan

I blame evan for all the cheesy hippie use of 'Zen' in the last post. He kept talking about my terrarium building as similar to doing a Zen garden, and I think it was the only adjective floating around my brain....

classes start tomorrow...

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Alternate realities

I've discovered a totally Zen past-time. Friday night, I ended up waking up at 4 am with an intense urge to plant (I'm such a weirdo). So I repotted two plants that needed to move to larger pots, and then (still feeling the gardening urge) I picked up my book on houseplants that I'd gotten at the used book store down the street.

At around 6am, I'd gotten to the part where the author was talking about bottle gardening! Planting a whole little garden inside of a bottle! The concept is like building a ship in a bottle, except with plants (hence making it much more Zen and much cooler).

"Bottle Gardening" as a Google search didn't turn up a ton of results, but "terrarium" did. Ooh ooh! A new hobby!

Lemme show you some neat ones I found on the web. (some by Ann Wood, Hello Yarn, and Paula Hayes)

The best part of making terrariums is collecting the moss from the neighborhood. I collected some off the stones from outside my front door. There was a huge blanket of moss around the telephone poll across the street. It's so cool to get it, because it comes off in one big sheet! It's like a rug! I took it home and put it in a tupperware with warm water to get rid of ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifny buggies. It looks fabulous in my terrariums. I now keep a little plastic bag with me so I can keep an eye out for cool things to put in my terrariums.



Composing little scenes is incredibly soothing. And I can't stop looking at these little worlds. Supposedly, once you get an enclosed terrarium stable, it can sustain itself for a good while without additional water, fertilizer, etc. As soon as I make sure I am okay at sustaining them, I want to try doing this with small necked bottles so I can finally make my bottle garden!




Make some too!


To make your own terrariums you need some kind of clear glass vessel. Goodwill is fabulous for this, but I also have some extra quart size canning jars that I thought would fit the bill.

Pour in a bottom layer of pea sized gravel (this will help with the drainage and provide a good reservoir for the water your little world.
Pour another small layer of activated charcoal over that. (both of these items can be found at a garden center near you). It's recommended that you put a layer of moss over this so that your soil doesn't wash into your gravel layers (but I skipped that step).



Add a small layer of dirt. Plop in any cool stones or wood and then start laying down your moss and putting in your plants in cool arrangements.
Buy some cute inhabitants for your world. Position them in your new mini-garden and add your lids. Voila!

Lori's terrarium web album

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Power thoughts

I was scanning google news for the headlines and read a bit about this student that was tasered at a university Q&A with John Kerry. The news sources seemed to cover the scene objectively, but I then watched the this video of the student asking his questions and the ensuing police ordeal.

I have to admit, I think the police way over reacted in this case. It's a university forum afterall. Shouldn't students be able to ask questions like these without being pounced on? And honestly, I know that the Darley and Latane studies all showed that diffusion of responsibility, but it's freaky, really truly freaky to watch that video of this guy being dragged by the police, screaming for help with a full auditorium of students not budging to intervene or even pay attention to him! I can't completely blame them. They were probably afraid of the police given that the treatment of the questioner. But it's scary what will happen when people aren't willing to object when another person is being mistreated before their eyes.

Yesterday, I was listening to Marketplace's radio piece on the RIAA's sometimes mistaken lawsuits. Like the video of the tasering, this also frightened me. That a group with so much power/money can completely wreck people's lives--incorrectly or not--without conscience seems utterly senseless to me. Even when wrongly accused, people are told they should settle and declare bankruptcy! I know the world is not just and fair, but I still can't help being outraged by this. I hope that the class action suit against the RIAA gains speed on this, because it's damn scary that a group like this isn't kept in check.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Squirreled away

 
Last week we had a squirrel incident. I would walk outside, and suddenly I had a squirrel hopping next to me, barking and wagging its tail. Honestly, I didn't know what was up its butt, although it reminded a lot of the angry squirrels at Stanford (except less black).

Watching the squirrel, I noticed that it ran up and down the ladder my neighbor had placed up against his house. It wasn't until later that night when Evan came home, did we notice why. By the evening there were shrill shrieks coming from the rooftop of our neighbor's house. Apparently, the squirrel had made a nest in the attic of the house next door. Our neighbor had fenced off the opening with chicken wire so that the mommy squirrel couldn't get back in....BUT there were two baby squirrel trapped in the attic!

We went next door to tell our neighbor about the babies--i mean surely no one would want the babies to die up there! But in actuality, he did know the babies were trapped up there. He apparently had some traumatic rodent incident as a child that rendered him non-sympathetic to any creature of that category. But, at our (and his children's) request, he removed the wire. One of the babies jetted out and down our driveway (away from the direction of its mother who was shouting at us from somewhere in a chestnut tree in the backyard). I have never seen such a small squirrel! It was immediately followed by the neighbor's dog and cat. Yikes! I'm not really sure what happened to this one.



The mother squirrel didn't return until the next morning where I saw her reunite with the last baby squirrel in the attic. The baby crawled over the mother and they bounded away from the house...so at least i know one of the babies survived!
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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

look new glasses!

 

Woohoo! I look kinda emo now. They're prodesian, and they're the first glasses i've gotten in five years! I had to wear them today, because yesterday i chopped some peppers from the farmer's market. My hand burned all night! And when i tried to put my contacts in this morning, it was seriously burning! So i figured i'd better wait for this pepper stuff to wear off.
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Monday, September 10, 2007

W(h)ining and dining



The erv and his mummy at our rehearsal dinner.

The M's are in town!

I really like my in-laws, and I know I'm definitely lucky in that respect. They've been in town for the past few days which has given us a wonderful excuse to go out and have good food and drink good wine! We did go out to Woodinville for wine tasting, and I have to say, Woodinville wineries sux0r compared to Sonoma wineries. First of all, they charge you for a tasting so it can get expensive to try a bunch of wines. Secondly, even though we were paying for tastings, they poured barely enough wine for two sips! How am I supposed to taste the wine if I can barely freakin' moisten my lips with it? And I should mention, it's not like the erv and I are trying to get drunk off the tastings, but we are looking for tasty bottles to buy. I left Woodinville extremely disappointed.

We did try a great wine the other day at dinner by Cadence winery in Washington. We had their 2005 Coda. I thought it was a delicious drinking wine on its own. It didn't stand up well to the food we got (I had a wild boar dish with gorgonzola), but I'm still very interested in trying some of their other wines!

I'd rather be playing bocce



There's just something so wonderfully simple and fun about tossing colorful balls and walking upon green crunchy grass under a warm sun with friends. It just reeks of a great summer day.



I love the sharp shadows across the grass! Everyone has their own 'technique.' Some people look like they're dancing, while others look like children just learning how to bowl.



I can't believe classes/the academic year start again in two weeks! I'm not ready, I'm not ready! I still have too many research projects to read up on, plan, and finish. A recent visit to my advisor's office led to some gentle-ish nudging to get my projects finished up and ready...things I have been trying to do! sigh

Still, I want to enjoy my summer a bit more still. Anyone up for bocce?