Nothing new today, just a few things I’ve cooked over the last month or so.

I’ve been living in Boston now for about 9 years (can scarcely believe it) and I’ve never done any of the 4th of July historical stuff, tours and such. I’ve done the fireworks on the Esplanande, it’s like one giant picnic! Also did the Pops dress rehearsal which actually was a ton of fun. We did get rained on but the concert more than made up for it. And seeing the cannons fire live during the 1812 Overture was pretty neat. I’m a classical music junkie so I ate this all up.

That being said, I’ve never actually done a tour around the historical sites in Boston since I moved here. Sure, I’ve walked the Freedom Trail in chunks but it’s not quite the same if you don’t already know all of the history behind some of the sites. It might be blasphemy to say so, but walking by Paul Revere’s house is pretty uninteresting without any accompanying narrative other than bits and pieces of the poem I read years ago. So I went on the tour, one of my better decisions lately. And then one of my worst? Forgetting sunscreen and wearing sandals (Walked probably about 3-4 miles on the day total).

>

On the side, I just started reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. As only I can do, I managed to read the first page and then forget the book at someone’s house. Hopefully I’ll finish it in the next year =P

I can’t get enough of this stuff! Cooking Ma Po Tofu around once every 4-6 weeks (that’s pretty often for me) now.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately (but this one will have to be short too) but life’s gotten a little busy lately. I’m hoping that as the weather gets cooler I might have some more time to cook (and try new recipes) but right now if I have a chance to cook, I’ve been going back to the well of recipes I’ve built (“The List”). If you haven’t had a chance yet, check it out here. It’s due for an update with a bunch more recipes, I’ll get to that soon =)

No new recipe this week, just a few things I’ve cooked recently (that are already posted). Since it’s getting close to the Holidays (and travel-time), I’ve been trying to cut down all the stuff I have in the freezer (not as easy as it sounds). So while I’ve been getting some decent enough meals together, in my haste, they’re probably not really post worthy =P

I am, however, still drooling over a ton of the recipes out there for the winter. Looking forward to trying to make pulled pork (and the Chinese braised style!), numerous roasts and oven-based things, and lets not forget staples like meatloaf and mac & cheese!

More on this soon! And have a great Thanksgiving!

H-mart opened this past weekend in Burlington and like a good consumer, I was there opening weekend. H-mart is a Korean specialized supermarket but also stocks most of the other Asian groceries. They’ve also got a small food court and a small set of other stores (for one stop shopping I guess!)

Spent about 2 hours there, wading through the ridiculous crowd and trying just about every sample they had (Even the preserved delicacies of indeterminate origin). The prices are pretty darn reasonable and I ended up with a few pounds of marinated meat, some of which I cooked up in the picture below. They’ve also got a huge selection of frozen goods, stocking more fish cakes than you can shake a fist at! The seafood and meat sections are also impressive, stocking just about anything you’d want for hot pot or BBQ.

Below I cooked up things I mostly got at H-mart: Pork Belly, kimchi, and a crab stick salad among the notables.

If only H-mart weren’t 30 minutes away!

This post is a little late (read : 6 months) but it’s about time I finally got around to it. Back in January, my sister was in town for a short visit and baked two very awesome desserts (in addition to the usual cookies, which is for a later post, once I get off my butt and actually bake them), her own special cheesecake and a fruit tart whose ingredients were cobbled together in the 11th hour.

Even though not being much of a baker, it was hard not to appreciate the meticulousness and patience that baking can require (making custard can be a very time consuming task!). For the most part though, I was relegated to measuring flour and crushing graham crackers, something I figured I could manage

Got a ton of new things to upload but I’ll have to get to that another time. For now, here are a few pictures of things I’ve whipped up in the past few weeks, many of them are of recipes I’ve already posted. Salmon teriyaki appears a lot these days, it’s fast, easy, and pretty healthy to boot, though I’ve started branching out from just rice into soba noodles.

On a side note, had a nice big BBQ over Memorial Day, my contribution was a few pounds of steak tips marinated with the Kalbi marinade from a few posts back. Going to be grilling a bunch this summer so we’ll see if I can come up with some more interesting things to write about =P

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a complete noob at making sushi. Love eating sushi, but when it comes to rolling maki or making nigiri…let’s just say it was probably better that I paid someone else to do it.

Back in New Jersey, mom made California rolls now and then and she had the method down pat. I remember happily wolfing down piece after piece back in the day. My experiences rolling maki? Not so good. I used too much rice, I didn’t keep my hands moist, I overstuffed the roll and well, you get the picture. Think of a roll that looks like a lumpy potato in the middle =/

But, I decided to try making nigiri and it actually turned out well. Got the roommate to cut the fish while I rolled up the rice. The rice wasn’t the best, probably should tweak the sauce mixture a little bit, but it turned out alright as a few friends and I gobbled up every piece!

And the best part of it was getting the fish itself. I drove it back from New Jersey in a cooler =P

P.S. The title has nothing to do with the similarly named arcade game.

Quickie today, real post coming tomorrow, but I needed an excuse to post this and mention that I’ve gone insane.

Not pictured are the 4 other bars I added, plus the bag of Taza chocolate covered nibs.

Whoa!

Furthermore, apparently WordPress supports this thing called Gravatars (Globally Recognized Avatar) for the comments and profiles. Basically, your gravatar is a small picture that gets tied to your gravatar account and is accessed on gravatar-enabled sites (Also any WordPress blog) when you list your e-mail address in the comment field. Pretty neat idea, little bit of a pain in the butt to figure out all the tidbits about it, but it was interesting at the very least.

Anyway, I’ve got a few good (I hope) posts coming up in the very near future as last weekend, I was extremely adventurous and tried making 3 dishes I’d never attempted before. So that means the dearth of posts (mainly because of A, my laziness, and B, the lack of cooking any new dishes) will have a hopefully indefinite hiatus.