 September 08, 2009 - A "different part of the stomach"
This is the second food-related blog entry in a row after a year hiatus and I admit to considering starting a food blog, but I'm going to keep it here on my personal blog for now and we'll see if it actually develops... My sister-in-law was talking about having dinner at my mom's and having yaki niku (Japanese-style Korean BBQ). Not only did I get jealous, I got reminded of something that intrigued me a little while ago. I don't know if it's a common saying of if it was just within my family, but whenever we had a large meal, but accept when offered dessert, or if we ate a TON of something, one of us would chime in saying that it goes to a different part of the stomach so the storage capacity was different. Ever since I was a kid, Japanese style curry was that way to me. For some reason, even if I weren't RIDICULOUSLY starving, I could eat about two full plates of it. That's pretty unheard of for me as I can get sick of eating fairly easily (i.e. I stop eating, not because I'm full, but because I'm bored of it). I've added another food into this "different part of the stomach" category. I've gained an IMMENSE appreciation for Korean BBQ (kalbi) recently. One of my friends from school, M, is a foodie like me so we love trying, cooking, sharing, and going out to eat delicious foods. One of the best places she introduced me to was a Korean BBQ restaurant. Ever since, I crave the stuff about once a week or so and am able to indulge in it in some form every so often. One of my forms of indulgence is through Marination, a Korean and Hawaiian influenced taco truck. I learned of them because they share our kitchen space at work. Yay for insider info! ;) When I saw their menu, the stuff looked pretty interesting, but as soon as I had a chance to actually have some, it became damn near an addition! My favorite has been kimchi fried rice with egg and kalbi. OMG. :O~~~~ Kalbi beef tacos are amazing as are spam sliders. :9 But anyway, back to kalbi, I get Marination whenever I can and love the foods with kalbi. My gaming friend, A, once brought over some kalbi marinated steak he picked up at a just plain old QFC. We grilled it up and it was quite delicious. It was just a plain flank steak so I got the idea to make my own. I got a recipe for a marinade, picked up some short rib steaks from Costco and had J grill them up after marinating for a LONG time (about 3 days or so, and it was unintentional; we just couldn't get around to a grilling dinner at the time!). It was quite delicious! My whole point of bringing up kalbi is that it has become one of those foods that "goes into a different part of my stomach". I can't believe how much of the stuff I can eat without feeling full. For instance, you can take the same cut of meat (we use a better cut usually), the same portion, but cook them as traditional steaks with our special herb rub and seasonings which make for a delicious steak and I'm full after one portion. I had THREE of the kalbi steaks! The Korean BBQ restaurant M and I go to (along with any friends we can drag along) is notorious for their GIANT portions. But man, can I put it away! :O Thanks to my kalbi-steak experiment going well, I intend on keeping it on hand on a regular basis. Kalbi is DEFINITELY better when it's the super thinly sliced meat, but that stuff tends to run a bit pricey for my budget so it was nice to know that I can get a massive amount of plain steaks and still replicate kalbi to an acceptable level!
August 26, 2009 - Good design and brand loyalty at work
Wow, it's been almost a year since I last posted. I'm a horrible blog writer. Normally I'd do a big rundown of what I've been up to the last year (if you have no other means of keeping up with me, which is doubtful since I'm always writing SOMEWHERE), but I'll skip it since there weren't that many big things and too many little things. The basics are that I'm still in pastry school, doing very well, successfully completed a year, and have a part-time industry related job. What compelled me to actually post was a second visit to Top Pot Donuts. Several friends had raved about them before, but I didn't really pay any attention because I'm not really a donut fan. A couple weeks ago, I went out intending to get breakfast with a good friend, but because we were crunched for time, we decided to just stop by Top Pot instead of a restaurant. She LOVES the place and I was excited because it was my first visit. Of course, the first thing I noticed was that they had good design. Logo was clean and had personality (which I think is the best form of marketing). The interior (we were at the downtown location) was of note too as I have a soft spot for modern design. :) The coffee and donuts were good, but nothing particularly earth shattering. Over the next few weeks on those supremely rare occasions I found myself craving a donut, I was looking for ways to make it to Top Pot. I finally had a chance to pay a visit to the Queen Anne location this morning. I stand by what I said about the actual donuts: they're most certainly good, but they're just donuts. Nothing to get fanatical over. But I AM a fan of the company because the employees (especially this morning) were very kind and cheery, have good atmosphere, and specifically, because they have good design. I know I'm a sucker for good design and I suppose it's a given since I've been a designer for several years (and though I've gone through a career change, I still take on interesting projects on the side). I personally am a big fan of the faux-retro theme they have for their corporate branding (I especially like the Locations map). Because I like the look and feel of the company so much and because their product is pretty good, it's a crystal clear example of marketing at work. I know that if someone were to ask me where to get good donuts, Top Pot would be the first place I recommend.
September 18, 2008 - Adventures in shopping for baking
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am about to be a new pastry and specialty baking student at South Seattle Community College. With that came a huge list of supplies I needed to get, half of which I hadn't even heard of before! I had quite the adventure shopping so I wanted to relay my story. Before setting out on my own shopping adventure I tried Googling to see if any other past students had any input and came out with none. Since I have a forum to say so, hopefully with me posting this, a future beginning student can glean some advice from it. :) I had some wonderful friends give me a gift card to Williams-Sonoma for my birthday so that was my first stop. I went to the one in Pacific Place. The staff (at least the ones who I dealt with) were SO incredibly helpful!! A wonderful lady, who coincidentally was a pastry student herself at AIS for a couple quarters, helped me out tremendously. She helped me pick out a few items that added up to the gift card amount and gave me some advice on where to go for the things they didn't carry. The cashier (and the manager, I think) was super friendly and even made a mention saying they were going to start hiring for their holiday help soon and that their best employees are culinary students. Maybe I was just charmed by the whole experience, but I ended up agreeing to take home an application. XD I gathered up a few more things at the local Fred Meyer (I had some Rewards coupons so those purchases were free to me) and some kitchen stores at the nearby outlet mall. I made a trip to Sur La Table as well, but that ended up being more disappointing than I thought. Though they have a LOT of stuff, the store is super crammed and crowded with tourists since it's right in front of Pike Place Market. The employees were cordial, but not nearly as informative or friendly as Williams-Sonoma nor the place that inspired me to write this entry: the Seattle Restaurant Store. Culinary students, do yourself a favor - unless you have gift cards or other means of getting equipment for free, save yourself a TON of hassle and pay the Seattle Restaurant Store in Shoreline (right on 99/Aurora Ave) a visit. The staff there are SUPER knowledgeable, and they even go as far as to have your entire equipment list on hand so they know exactly what you're looking for. They've built plenty of student kits before so they can get you everything you need in about 15 minutes. They also don't just try to push the most expensive thing onto you. If what they push is a little pricey, there's good reason behind it and always say that you can opt to go cheaper if you wish. I only needed a few more things by the time I got there and I found myself thinking (and saying) that I wish I'd just come there in the first place and saved myself all sorts of hassle! At least now I know exactly where I'll be turning to when I need more supplies! I know I must probably sound like they paid me to say all this, but believe me (and my bank account, especially after all this shopping), I was sincerely just impressed at how helpful and resourceful they were. So if anything, I hope some aspiring student does what I did and searches for stories like these and comes across this one. :) Good luck to you and in the meantime, good luck to me!
- Helloooo out there!
Wow. It's been SEVEN MONTHS since I updated this... Truth be told, it was weighing pretty heavily on my mind, but things just kept spiraling! How do you dust off something and try to pick up where you left off after it being so long? Because of that, I kept getting intimidated and pushing it off even further. Then I had something profound to say that I specifically wanted to say on a site that Google will turn up as a search result so here I am, dusting off the... dust. ;) This turned out to be a longer post than I intended so let me spit out the catch up first. So the major events that have happened in the last few months are... - Chuu and I split. I hinted at this in previous posts, but I don't think I came out and said it. We both are seeing other people and are still great friends. I'm actually pretty good friends with his new lady friend. :) He's always going to be my Chuu. <3 - Since early December, I've been dating Jason. We became very close very fast and it's been an amazing time. He's made my board gaming habit even worse and has gotten me into several new hobbies such as tabletop gaming, Magic (the Gathering, not tricks), and crafty projects like building miniature buildings or painting tiny figures. We have a great time together, he's taught me a lot and a lot about myself, and I <3 him very much. :) - I moved to Seattle proper in March. I was always a suburbian girl, but I never knew what I was missing out on. I LOVE the city! Granted, it's not like I live downtown, but I've come to realize just how much I love my Seattle and I really enjoy living so close to the heart of it. - In April Jason got us a Wii. It's been the only next gen system I've been interested in. I seem to have lost my spark for games in general though; I just don't have the time nor energy to sink into a 60 hour epic anymore. :( The only games we play are music games like Rock Band, Karaoke Revolution, and SingStar. - Over Memorial Day weekend, my family met Jason and me in Vegas for our family vacation. It was my first time there and though I had fun, it really isn't my kind of city. I felt uncomfortable at times because I felt like I was being surrounded by the dredge of society - the drunks, the attention whores (and just plain ol' whores), and the addicts. I do want to go back just one more time 'cause there were a few things I didn't get to do while I was there. One of the things I really enjoyed was going on the gondola ride at the Venetian with J. :D - In July I got myself an iPhone. It rocks. - In late July I got laid off from my job due to lack of work. It didn't phase me at all since I considered it a blessing. For a long, long time, I was completely miserable there and was trying to claw myself out. I sincerely hated a few people in management, thought plenty of others were horrible managers, people got SUPER defensive and catty too easily, and NOTHING I was doing was portfolio work and thus mine was becoming stagnant. So it was good riddance and I was off to bigger and better things. - I signed up for not just another half marathon in August, but TWO. I'm registered for the Seattle half in November and the Rock 'n Roll Seattle half in June of 2009. I have my races planed out until 2010. :) I started training for them a couple weeks ago. - The state offers training benefits to those unemployed by paying for tuition for approved full-time courses. I just went in to South Seattle Community College one day because I was curious, thinking I'd just get some information. I ended up leaving the building as a fully registered full-time pastry and specialty baking student! When other kids in my elementary class were dreaming of being firefighters or astronauts, I wanted to have my own bakery. So since the opportunity was there, I decided to give it a chance. I'm not sure what this means in the long run, but I might as well see if I like it by going to school for free. :) And since the profound thing I want to say relates to this last point, I'll leave this post off here and write it in a separate entry. Hopefully I'll be better about updating this... If you stuck around, dear reader, thanks. :) <3
February 20, 2008 - Feelings
I'm not an intellectual. I've never been good with academia. One of my least favorite subjects in school was history. There's nothing to do in history classes except to sit and memorize past events. Science was fun because of labs and the like where you DID stuff. I didn't mind English because I like reading novels and literature. Hell, even in math you solve problems and are actually doing something. It doesn't matter what kind of history it is; I find them all pretty dull. This is true even for design history. Sure, I think it's mildly useful to know a few things, but I want to actually DO the designing rather than sit there and memorize who invented the letterpress. I have an equally hard time sitting there and listening to lectures/presentations, regardless of who it is. If it's some famous designer, I want to visually admire his work, not listen to him talk. I have full appreciation for how something looks/feels, but I really don't care about how he did things; I'd rather do it myself, even if it means making the same mistakes he's already made. I learn better that way anyway. As I was thinking about this, I realized that a LOT of my actions and preferences rely on feelings rather than logic or reasoning. There's a part of West Seattle that I've been to only once and I fell in love with it. There's just something about the stores that are there and how the place looks that I liked. Whenever I cook, I never measure things; everything is made by feel. I knew a man I fell in love with, only for a very short time, but there was something about him that resonated with me so I went along with my heart. I make several decisions based on gut feelings rather than logic. I've been called intuitive, perceptive, and wise several times in my life. But yet, even with all this, people think I'm crazy for being different. They berate me for not wanting to learn. I want to learn plenty; I learn by doing, not by listening. Some people are the neurotic note-taking, researching, fact memorizing type. I'm not. I do things. I try things. I learn from my mistakes. People learn in different ways; leave me be. P.S. I retook the Myers-Briggs personality type test and ended up an ENFP. I've ALWAYS been and I-something. Strange how I've changed over the years. :)
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