Monday, November 15, 2010

A Foodie's Wedding in San Francisco

People say that they remember exactly what they were doing and where they were during seminal events. JFK assassination. When Obama was elected. My event: When one of my best friends, Cat, got engaged to Brian. I was studying immunology with my study group in their Somerville house. I'm also pretty sure I unleashed a scream so loud that they came running to see what was wrong.

Fast forward to October 23, 2010. Dan and I had (1) attended our friend's LA wedding (see previous post) the weekend prior, (2) Dan had just completed his 8-hr written exam monstrosity, and (3) celebrated my mom's birthday. I flew up to San Francisco after all this to hang out with Cat, help out, and generally be an annoying nuisance as the matron of honor. See the compromising position that Brian and Cat are in?


Here's what this entailed: Multiple trips to Home Depots / Michael's / San Francisco's Flower Market / SF Public Library, a very painful Brazilian wax where I only understood every other word that the Vietnamese lady was saying, lunch w/ one of Cat's ex-coworkers, cooking fish and about a ton of bok choy for a stay-at-home dinner, getting our nails done, and multiple jokes about Kristie T's role as "deputy marriage commissioner". Along the way, we also managed to have a delicious Italian dinner out, try a sandwich called the "Menage-a-Trois" (not a joke), and scope out the food truck scene at Fort Mason. Below is a pic of Cat w/ her ex-coworker's new baby.


Daniel came up Thursday morning to hammer together lots of wood planks for the frame underneath a graduated display of a bajillion desserts. The week passed in a BLUR, and it was Saturday before we knew it. I used airbnb to find a fantastic studio steps from the Ferry Building for ~$100 / night. So for Sat breakfast, we met up with our friend Winnie to eat our way around Embarcadero and the Ferry Bldg Farmer's Market. By conservative estimates, we had a rotisserie sandwich w/ 8-hr caramelized onions, fresh mussels, enchiladas, pluots (plums + apricots = the most DELICIOUS fruit I have ever tasted and now I lust after them), strawberries, cheese, huge chili polish sausage, macaroons, among other things.


Kristie T and I ran off to the St. Regis to hang out with Cat and Mommy Ng around noon. Cat attempted to write her vows, while Kristie and I were creating a baller dance playlist for later that evening. Mommy Ng was especially entertaining because she had to nap in positions that required her right leg to be perpendicular to the rest of her body, straight up in the air. Here's a pic of Cat after she put on her makeup. I told her to cake it on.


While Kristie, Cat, and I were dilly-dallying inside the sweetest hotel room I've seen in a long time, our respective partners were running around the venue (The Box in SoMa) putting up autumn-colored paper lanterns. It apparently took a lot longer than expected (5 hrs), and Manish (Kristie's beau) and Dan bonded.
Their efforts paid off, however, since the space looked stunning.


Here's Kristie in the foreground and a blurry Manish running around in the background. Probably still putting up lights. He was going a little lantern-crazy.


It all came together for a gorgeous, very SF-like event. The food was delicious (carnitas, comfort Mexican food, etc), there were 12 types of alcoholic beverages including a free-flowing '93 Dom Perignon. Brief aside, Dan was determined to try all 12 types. He did manage all 12, had 1 more, then decided that 13 was a bad number so should have more. Towards the end of the evening, there was a lot of touchy-feely things going where Daniel was rub up against me, then flash his wedding ring with a "I'm married, okay?" Better that he loves rubbing against me than other people.


Cat looked gorgeous. The ceremony was short and sweet. Kristie T talked about how it was "all about the little things". Cat and Brian both read their own vows. Cat's was off the cuff and full of levity. Brian's was pre-written, touching, and hilarious. The tea ceremony was a nice homage to Cat's Chinese heritage. [Note: the bridesmaid dresses were from Target and our shoes were from Payless. I love value sourcing.]



The next day, SF was in a complete downpour so we ended up completely soaked after our Yank Sing upscale dim sum lunch w/ Winnie. We blazed through Ghiradelli Square and the phenomenal Exploratorium, went the wrong way on the subway and ended up eating all the pluots and strawberries, and got delayed by 3 hrs because of the torrential rain. Daniel found an abandoned, new plastic poncho on the ground and I wore it even those it was a kid's size because I was getting COMPLETELY soaked. It only went down to my hips as opposed to my knees.


Dan and I feel truly blessed to have had such an awesome vacation attending and assisting Cat' and Brian's wedding. We ate lots of delicious foods, hung out with best buds, hugged each other a lot, and generally thought we were the luckiest 2 people alive today.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A Walk in the Clouds: Wedding Numero Uno

It was mid-summer when Dan and I realized that we had 2 weddings in 2 consecutive weekends in California. "Why not take the whole week off?" A wonderful, albeit rainy and cool week was puncutated by these 2 weddings, and my Mom's birthday thrown in for good measure. Celebrations!

We flew back to LA on the 3rd weekend of October to attend Patty & Chris' wedding. Patty was a good friend of Dan's from high school onward, and this wedding was a DIY extravaganza. I would not be surprised if they DIY'ed the tables because Patty was crafts extraordinaire. The wedding itself was on the cloudiest, foggiest day in LA I had seen in a while. Dan and my brother-in-law, David, and I started refering to this wedding as a "A Walk in the Clouds".

(Tangent: That movie, YES, that movie with Keanu Reeves, is one of the all-time favorite cinematic masterpieces in South Korea. True Fact. When Dan and I were in Korea, we ran into no less than a dozen restaurants named "A Walk in the Clouds." They LOVE that movie. They are puzzled if you do not wax rhapsodically about it.)

Patty had sewn together purple flags with various celebratory words, and placed them on chairs for us to wave throughout. A DIY masterpiece. See David and I with aforementioned artwork. We also started riffing a la Lil' Jon with "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" I'm sure Patty totally intended for us to start rapping extemporaneously.



Because of the rain/clouds, the ceremony was relocated from the grounds of the La Canada Flintridge Country club to an indoor banquet room. Nevertheless, it was just as moving.


The reception was held in an adjacent ballroom. Each table was named after a specific type of candy (e.g. "gummy cola", "kit kat", "cashew candy"), and the centerpieces were large glass jars filled to the brim with the table's candy. In lieu of a traditional wedding cake, Chris actually created the cupcake "tree" with his mad metalworking skillz. Completely impressive.


Dan toned down his exuberance a bit, since his 7-hr written boards were the next day. Nevertheless, with the Arcadia gang back in one place, he couldn't help but enjoy himself with espresso martinis, gummi colas, and lottery tickets (courtsey of the winner of the garter and bouquet tosses). I actually won $3 in the California lottery.


And, of course, Patty was always obssessed with photobooths at other people's weddings, so it was no surprise that she had her own. The best part was the random props you could use to spice up your pictures. The photobooth spit out 2 copies, 1 for the bride + groom, 1 for the guests. A clever take-home memento to remind us of Patty & Chris' wedding. Congrats to the beautiful, happy couple!



Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Really, Totally Awesome, Rad, W-O-W Yosemite Wedding

I was totally stoked when my bachelor friend de jour announced he was getting married late last year. The consummate good guy who never got the girl, he finally found a beautiful Vietnamese woman who was the Asian female version of himself. Ann is about 90 lbs soaking wet, and could easily pass for a co-ed. Then Sean told me they were planning to get married in Yosemite. Yosemite, for me, falls somewhere in that vague ambiguous area between the West Coast and middle America.  Lucky for me, it's in Northern Cali. Even better, I would get to reminisce with a few of my best MIT girlfriends and be openly geeky in the most beautiful natural setting I've seen in America.


Because the ceremony & reception were on Sun night, I spent the majority of the weekend as the most gosh-darn cool third-wheel to my best friend, Kristie T, and her Obama-look-alike boyfriend, Manish. Also, flying into SF and driving to Yosemite is a serious endeavor. I calculated that, door-to-door, it took me about the same transit time from my Chicago home to the Wawona Yosemite Hotel as it did to fly from LAX to Sydney, Australia. Kristie T and I agreed that the Wawona was a shoo-in for the Poconos resort depicted in "Dirty Dancing", aka "The Best Movie of All Time."



Since we had all trekked considerable distances for Sean's wedding, we decided that the appropriate activity for Saturday would be a hike. I mean, how would you feel if you went to a place as beautiful as Yosemite and never walked amongst MOTHER NATURE. She would hate you. We decided that a leisurely 1.5 mile walk would do the trick. As the navigatress, I failed to follow the easy course and led us on a 4.5 mile to a lake that didn't exist. Way to pull a fast one on us, Mother Nature. On the positive side, we felt immeasurably accomplished and very hungry.


As photographer extraordinaire with a camera the size of a 1-mos baby, Kristie T diligently documented our trials and travails as we braved the wilderness. The wedding was simple, the scenery stunning, the company priceless. I enjoyed hanging out with the sorority sisters I never get to see (Teresa, Cat K), agreeing to be silly AND amazing at the same time, and seeing how happy Sean and Ann were to be together. Mazel tov!

Labor Day Getaway to Traverse City

And........we're back!

Speaking of which, we have done so much between our last post and today that to cover it all would be overwhelming. First off, we road-tripped it to Traverse City, Michigan for a rainy Labor Day weekend. If you're anything like me, when I think of "Michigan", I think "Detroit". This conjures up unattractive images of boarded up ghost neighborhoods, urban blight, factories, and other depressing ideas. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, on the whole, Michigan is beautiful.

Traverse City is a 6 hr drive according to Google Maps, which I always take as a challenge to "beat" this number. With the impending storm, we saw lots of beautiful clouds on the road like these:

Lots of our colleagues had grown up/summered in various lakeside Chicago towns, and gave us enthusiastic recommendations for various eateries. Us being the couple who focuses on the local food more than any other attraction, got to work very quickly at an adorable French eatery.  (Dan is eating chicken pot pie. I went with the flatbread pizza.)

We drove up Friday during the day, and were pretty wiped out by the long drive. Our bed and breakfast was literally the only one in Traverse City proper that had any availability left for the holiday weekend. It was also the oldest B&B, with 2 amiable and adorable senior citizens who ran their cozy inn. It definitely smelled like "old people" and we swear we never saw the husband proprietor change clothes, but it had character!

The next morning, the downpour had really kicked into gear, so we made a strategic decision to spend our day indoors. In wineries. And sampling rooms. Along the way, we "re-discovered" that Michigan is all about the cherries. Note the cherry apron that Dan is modeling. Great Christmas present idea! Cha-ching!

 
We ended up traveling all along Old Mission Peninsula, hitting up almost all the wineries on that small piece of land. Starting early in great spirits, we learned all about the kinds of wines that the land/weather lends itself to (white wines like rieslings, Gewurztraminers, roses). And every permutation of cherry wine you can think of. Note the picture was taken at 10am in the morning. And already we're happy.

After about the 5th wine tasting, we got very happy. We might have misbehaved on a vineyard / winery tour by climbing on top of the grape crusher and trying to squeeze into a fermentation tank. I'm not saying we did. I'm not saying we didn't either. Below, a picture from one of the tamer moments.


The weather cleared up and Dan got the great idea to sneak into one of the great sand dunes of Lake Michigan and climb it to watch the sunset. Great idea, bad execution. First of all, the wind gets pretty merciless on the shore. Second, it is a serious hill with some bad ass angles. The payoff only comes at the top after you've huffed and puffed and shot evil looks of DIE! DIE! to your oblivious partner who is scampering up the sand hill. It also got cold very quickly. As Numero #1 wuss, I didn't wait until the sunset, but we did take in the beautiful scenery.


The next day, we went hiking along the (easy) Empire Bluff Trail. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and reminds me of the northwest coast of Kauai. Still very windy, but the view is completely worth it.


After that, we made our way home (surgeons don't get Mondays off). Other highlights of the Labor Day Weekend included eating at Stella, an amazing restaurant in Traverse City, touring their former asylum turned commercial / retail shops, coming back to Chicago and heading straight to the Vampire Weekend concert with matching red Converse shoes, trying Al's #1 Beef for the first time, trying to not scare young children at the Shedd Aquarium with our verbal predictions of whether any particular fish was "delicious", and eating Korean BBQ at Cho Sun Oak and ice cream floats at Margie's Candies with Suj, Shamita, and Amee. Dee-licious.


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

August Comings and Goings

Where did August go? I did intend to post weekly, but with all the event and travel every weekend, updating this blog has slipped. Never fear, I intend to get right back into the thick of things.


For the month of August, we checked out the excellent Girl and the Goat, the new West Loop restaurant by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard with our good friend Lolita, hung out with old and new friends at the always superb Bristol Lounge in Wicker Park, found a secret, shady, elevated, well-ventilated spot in Lincoln Park to watch the Blue Angels scream past at the annual Air and Water Show, trekked to a hippie farm in the middle of corn field Illinois to eat a delicious 5-course Berkshire pork dinner underneath the stars accompanied by a half-dozen local micro-brews, got rained on during the outdoor performance of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road ensemble at Ravinia, and flew to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for a relaxing weekend trip.



In addition, we biked to Lollapalooza to hear Lady Gaga and MGMT play, twice ooh-ed and aah-ed at the Saturday Navy Pier fireworks where we could smell the acrid odor of firepowder we were so close, ate fresh Caprese salad with truffle oil about a thousand times, successfully created tonkatsu pork dishes with the bajillion lbs of pork product we purchased from Peoria Meat in Fulton Market, got a haircut, took full advantage of the bountiful farmers markets, hugged each other a bunch, and generally thought we were the luckiest people on the planet.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

I Just Might Wet My Pants With Excitement

The conversation started innocuously enough.

Dan: "I'm thinking we need a larger hard drive to store all our media."

Me: "I thought we had sufficient space scattered across our computers."

Dan: "But we're getting more movies and music and will run out of space soon."

Me: "Why don't you spec it out and see how much it will cost."

Dan: (already running off to his computer) "Okay."

(I had already forgotten this conversation in the next 5 minutes. My mind is like a sieve except it's not like the baking ones you use to sift small particles like powdered sugar or flour. No, it looks more like a drunk trunk driver rammed a Mac truck through it. That's my memory.)

We were sitting down to dinner the next day when Dan mentioned casually that he had bought a "two terabyte hard drive for only $100 dollars" and was blissfully dancing about how happy the computer was going to be to get this awesome add-in. 2 terabytes (TB)? 20 TB would hold the text content of the US Library of Congress. 10 of these babies and we'd be able to store most of modern knowledge encapsulated in written form. Hot-diggity-damn.

When the 2 TB disk arrived, you'd think it was Christmas morning in the Kwan-Chang household. Wowzers! "Can you believe it?" Dan would say, smiling and shaking his head. "2 TB for $100!" I, being the lapsed engineer, was equally excited. 2 TB seems like a heck of a lot of space. Like a bottomless well clamoring to be filled with delightful electronic water. The joy was short-lived, however, when Dan began the process of installing the HD into what he affectionately dubs the "entertainment center". I call it the "computer that holds our music and videos and connects to the TV and projector." TomatO, TomAto.

Long story short, the 2 TB hard drive nearly broke the computer, what with all the formatting, and installing, and porting, and whatcha-ma-call-its to make sure that we didn't lose the existing data. It took Dan almost a week's worth of man hours and a living room strewn with computer parts to configure it properly. The living room/bedroom looked like two computers had entered an Ultimate fighting ring and torn each other to pieces. Very sexy stuff. Every night I came home from work and asked, "Is it working yet?" and Dan would reply, "Yes, but...". Poor guy would fix one problem to have another magically appear, like evil fairies.

The moral of the story is that when your husband turns to you and says, "I'm thinking of getting more computer storage", start cleaning out the living room floor. You're going to need the space.

Monday, August 2, 2010

"All I Need is You and Cheap Mexican Food"

About 2 years into our dating relationship, Daniel took me to a favorite cheap Mexican haunt next to the University of Chicago called Maravillas. This is the kind of place favorited by cheap college kids and starving residents. In short, its Dan's kind of place. If my memory serves me correctly, we ordered approximately 47 tacos and 234 enchiladas. More or less. On the ride back home on Lake Shore Drive, Dan turned to me with the utmost sincerity and uttered, "All I need in life is you, and cheap Mexican food."

Since then, we have been a mission to discover all the hole-in-the-wall taco joints in Chicagoland. No crumbling storefront or suspicious signage can deter us from discovering and devouring delicious cheap tacos. We recently discovered Tierra Caliente, a nondescript tacos restaurant in the middle of a very homey Mexican convenience store.  You know a place is good when the patrons are either working-class Mexicans or hipsters.


We also ventured out to Peoria Packing Butcher Shop, which is not in Peoria but in Fulton Market. It's the place I'd vote for as "Best Place to Hang Out on a Humid Chicago Day if You Got No A/C". It's also the vegetarian's version of hell. Meat in all delightful shapes, sizes, and packages fill the rafters. Bacon, pig feet, shanks, sausages, wings, drumsticks, thighs, pork butt, fish, chicken nuggets, short ribs, etc. The smell of clinical carcasses fill the air, and I tend to shiver a lot in the ruthlessly efficient refrigeration. We were there to purchase pork tenderloins for a Sunday dinner we were planning to cook for some of Dan's work colleagues. We also saw some rad-looking devilish fish, like ones you might see in Disney movies.


On Saturday night, we made our way to the Kenmore Live Studio for Argentinian night. A housewife-turned-entrepreneur demonstrated her famous empanadas on Live! Facebook! TV! In addition, she was making alfajores, which is a traditional Argentinian delicacy, kind of like a crumbly, buttery cookie sandwich with dulce de leche caramel and coconut topping. Really outstanding and airy. But the way she was pronouncing "alfajores" sounded like "alpha whores". Dan turned to me amd said, "Isn't that a madam?" At which point I punched him in the arm since the HUSBAND OF THE CHEF was sitting next to us.

We got our comeuppance in the break when an Argentinian dancing duo were demonstrating the tango and invited audience members to participate. Since no one was voluntarily subjecting themselves to the very real specter of public humiliation, the husband pointed at us and said loudly, "THESE TWO WOULD LIKE TO DANCE." Since we have no shame, we jumped up and started dancing very badly to tango music. On Live! Facebook! TV! Y'all, we have never been so famous. As a revenge for calling us out, we stole one of the alfajores that was sitting on the pristine Kenmore countertop.


Sunday was another low-key day that where we strolled around Chicago's Maxwell Street Market stuffing our faces with enchilades, tamales, flavored shaved ice in lime, mango chile, and guava flavors, and many, many tacos. Our friends Lolita and Lee A. were delighted by this enchanting slice of Mexican life in the Midwest. It was a beautiful Chicago day and needless to say, topped off by churros.



Sunday night, we went to Dan's co-worker's apt in Wicker Park to cook a Southern meal complete with cheesy grits, collard greens, pork tenderloin, corn, and pina coladas! I'm not sure if pina coladas count as Southern fare, but I'm sure if alcohol is involved, the South has something to do with it. Martha busted out the blue glasses, and Akilah made sure we were having a good time. Dan's eyes got very big when he learned that there was an old-school Pacman machine in the next room. I'm sure if I hadn't been there he will still be there, playing the game, and yelling at poor Mr.Pacman.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

It's All About the Food, Full Stop.

By now it should be pretty clear that we are crazy about food. We plan our days around what we're going to eat. Entire vacations have been given over to culinary gluttony (Exhibit A: Napa Valley and Tokyo). We don't like "foodies" to describe ourselves because being a "foodie" implies that we like haute cuisine and trendy restaurants. I think "equal opportunity eater" is more accurate because we are just as likely to enjoy food trucks as we are Michelin-starred restaurants.

Let me give you an example of how we anchor our weekends around our search to source delicious foods. Last Saturday, we made our bi-weekly pilgrimage to the Green City Market. The GCM is one of the largest and well-known farmer's markets in the country, and thousands of people visit every Saturday to enjoy the locally grown (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin) produce and fruits, chef demonstrations, and a host of local bakeries and usually some live music. It is the place to be on Saturdays morning.

We then wended our way, munching on ridiculously flavorful Flaming Fury Peaches from Michigan, through the free Lincoln Park Zoo, the adjoining Lincoln Park Arboretum, and then walking back along Lake Michigan. We had a BBQ to get ready for!


We headed to Oak Park to our friends' Lolita and Lee A.'s house to get ready for a BBQ! Lucky for us, they had bought enough massive sausage from a very special meat vendor to feed a small Third World country. We promised not to divulge their source of this divine meat, but heavens, it was delicious. I believe we did not stop eating from 3pm until around 7pm.


We were so exhausted from all this eating that we fell into a true food coma when we returned home. The next Sunday morning, Daniel decided to make fried chicken from the Zatamaran's box with questionable expiration dates.


Is there a better way to start Sunday morning than homemade fried chicken? Well, maybe if there was a congo line, but incremental added value. We ran some errands and came back home to get ready for the World Cup Finals between Spain and Netherlands. Since we weren't partisan to either country, Daniel wore this shirt to Old Town Social to watch the game in a yuppie crowd of Chicago-ites.


For Sunday dinner, we biked to Takashi, where I was hoping that their noodle brunch would still be available, but didn't. SUCK. Funny enough, we had gone to a restaurant that had been Takashi's predecessor when we first started dating called Scylla. We had not been impressed, but turns out that the chef of Scylla was none other than Stephanie Izard, one of the winners of Top Chef. We tried their homemade tofu (okay), their chicken hot pot (decent), the sweetbread (good), the yellowtail (good), and their chocolate chewy cake (okay). Lucky for us, it rained all the way back and Daniel had to survive me shooting Looks of Death in my rain-soaked dress pedaling furiously in the rain.


Between last weekend and this past Thursday, I was away for business and sadly missed the Green City Market's Chef BBQ, where all the great chefs of Chicago come together for a knock-your-socks-off BBQ in Lincoln Park. You name the restaurant (e.g. Bristol, Lula's Cafe, Peninsula, Rick Bayless, Four Seasons), they were there. Because of weather issues, my flight landed in O'Hare after the event ended, but Daniel managed to smuggle all of the dishes for me to try at home. I'd like to think that his past life as a spy assisted in the food collection efforts. The picture below is that of large glass dining room with EVERY SQUARE INCH covered with food.


I had a bite of each before I passed out from another food coma. Daniel spent the rest of the evening sprawled on the bed complaining "I'm so full! I'm so full" and rubbing his belly. The next morning was still a work day for me (Friday), so Daniel made me a coffee with cinnamon art and a delicious scrambled egg breakfast with a beet salad and capers. Whoever said that Chinese husbands cook well was absolutely right about this stereotype.

Saturday morning, we biked to the Lincoln Park Farmer's Market on Division and Armitage, one we'd never been and were eager to explore. We were fortunate to find some delicious Mirai corn, the kind that are so sweet you can eat them rare. They are nature's candies and we were on a mission to find some. We actually procured some full samples and ate them animal-style while we strolled around the market.

We also bought blueberries, Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, and dried morel mushrooms. Daniel got a few compliments on his threadless t-shirt, but I thought mine was just as clever.
After the farmers market, it was another pilgrimage to the Cheese Warehouse with our friend Lolita A. It was screaming hot this past weekend, so we stopped to get flavored snow cones. Lolita got her favorite, banana, while Dan and I got fruit punch. It made our tongues bright red, and we spent a good 10 minutes sticking our tongues out at each other like teenagers.
It was way too hot during the day to do anything outside, so Dan and I ended up enjoying the creature comforts of AC until the evening, when we made our way to the KenmoreLive studio on Wells Street to eat free samples of ice cream samples from Vosges Chocolat (flavors: chocolate jalapeno, curry, and vanilla bean, chocolate nut), watch Mindy Segal from Bleeding Heart Bakery make a bourbon-caramel and butter-thyme topping for ice cream, and eat endless amounts of free sugar. Legal chemical highs are nice.

Sunday morning, Dan made breakfast again with a knock-out truffle oil infused scrambled egg with chiffon-ed-basil, "bandaged" cheddar, quartered Sun-Gold cherry tomatoes, cheddar sausages, accompanied by a fresh burrata with sea salt, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. It is summer in your mouth. Is your mouth watering yet?

Daniel did some surgical work on a torn part of our couch while we stayed indoors to stay cool. We did run errands to Costco and Target, and it seemed like all of Chicago had descended upon these stores. I definitely do not see signs of lessened consumer spending when I go to these places. For dinner, Dan busted out with Thai basil rice with shrimp. Now you see why I've gained 5 lbs since moving to Chicago? Not that I'm complaining about the food.