In Pursuit of Chinese New Year In Dallas

Happy New Years everyone! The Year of the Dog. Yummy. I mean, um, great! Today Shoko and I tried to get our Chinese on by searching for the day's celebrations.

Our first stop was downtown at an event at the Trammel Crow of Asian Art. We were kind of hungry and expecting stalls of great food. We were wrong. We did, however, get fortune cookies and some really terrific live music. The fortune cookies didn't quite cut it though (even though the fortunes were very good) so we headed up to Richardson's Chinatown.

We got there just in time to see a big lion (fueled by two human units) and a smaller one going from one restaurant to the other and doing the famous lion dance. Chinatown (well.. actually Richardson's Chinatown is more or less a relatively small outdoors strip mall) was very busy but despite that were able to secure seating at my favorite place for dumplings, Jeng Chi (see pics from a year ago here). We had the yummy dumplings and one of Shoko's favorite dishes there - pork with a root that I had never heard of before - but it was very good.

So there you go - celebrate the year of the dog! Arf Arf.

Press

This And That (w/ Jeff and Pat) gets a mention in this interesting story about podcasting in England's Guardian Unlimited.

Why We Are Getting Fatter

This from Nutrition and Health News:

John Lennon 1970 Interview

I just finished listening to about 2 1/2 hours of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from 1970. The interview is available in five installments through a podcast though you can also just listen to it (or download it) from the net at Rolling Stone.

Here are the direct links to the MP3 files for those that don't know how to subscribe to podcast feeds:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

It was a great interview and really gives you a sense of who John Lennon was when he was about 29 years old. If you are a Beatles fan, it is a must listen. If you are a musician it is worth it to hear his thoughts on creativity, musicianship and artistry.

Highlights to me were:
* He thinks of himself as a genius
* You have to be a complete jerk to make it in the music business
* The dynamic between him and Yoko was not what I expected - she seemed very willing to yield to his thoughts and he seemed easily to discard hers
* He is all over the map, frequently contradicting himself
* He is astoundingly honest, sharing his primal emotional reaction to many things
* Though he didn't go into it too much because Yoko was there, it is interesting to hear how the early Beatles were complete jerks and partyers before their managers 'cleaned' them up. And the women...
* He displays hatred for George and Paul and in different statements, admiration
* His takes on Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Eric Burden, Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh and others are illuminating
* All good artists and creative people are pained in some way
* Dichotomy between the relative immaturity of a 29 year old vs. the maturity of a guy who has seen much of the many sides of many experiences at such a young age
* He never likes not being with Yoko
* His favorite songs with the Beatles included Help, In My Life, Yer Blues, Strawberry Fields Forever, Girl and few others I can't remember now - all because they are honest and about him and his experiences.

Anyway - go listen. It's greatness! Like a good book, I wasn't ready for it to end. Many thanks to Rolling Stone for making these available.

Stephan Pyles Restaurant Review

Last Friday, Shoko and I went to the renowned chef Stephen Pyles new restaurant aptly labeled "Stephen Pyles".

For those who aren't familiar with Stephan Pyles' work, in Dallas he was responsible for Routh Street Cafe, Baby Routh, Star Canyon, AquaKnox, Fishbowl, Taqueria Cañonita an Dragonfly among others.

The setting was stunning. Very modernistic, but modernistic in a warm way. We were a litle worried about the noise level as I sank into a Tanq-Ten martini (Shoko tells me my home-shaked ones are better, by the way) in the bar area but found to our surprise that it was much quieter once we were seated at our table. Interestingly, our table was not that far away from the loud central area - they must have performed some acoustic tricks!

The service: spectacular. For this type of upscale restaurant, you expect great service. This was even greater service. The waiters and staff were extremely attending while not being obtrusive at all. Even master chef Pyles, himself, came to greet us.

Of course what really counts is the food. We decided to go all out and do three courses (not including dessert). We regretted that decision a bit and would go with two courses (and maybe dessert) in the future as our stomachs were filled too much with three.

First course - appetizers - I had the Pulled Spit-Roasted Suckling Pig with Apples, Cardamom, and Mint (A young suckling pig is marinated with orange and lemon zest, cardamom, thyme, chives, ancho chile puree then roasted over hickory on the rotisserie until tender. The meat is pulled and heated in a mixture of apple cider, onions, cardamom and veal stock. Half a green apple is caramelized in brown sugar and butter and stuffed with the pork mixture. Goat's cheese and spiced walnuts top the pork and the plate is drizzled with a sauce made from a reduction of the apple cider, cardamom and veal demi.)and Shoko had Tres Ceviches: Honduran Tuna in Coconut, Ecuadorian Shrimp with Orange and Popcorn, and Salmon Veracruzano. Both of these were delicious. Mine had a combination of tastes that was very unique and different than anything I had ever had. But it was very good. Shoko's were very tasty ceviche's and the seafood was very fresh.

Next - soups and salads. Shoko had the Caramelized Pumpkin Soup with Lobster, Duck Bacon, and Pomegranate Foam (Pumpkin is roasted then cooked in lobster stock, garlic, and aromatic vegetables and pureed. The warm bowl in brought to the table with a mixture of diced lobster meat, Duck Bacon, peppers and herbs. A soup tureen with the pumpkin-lobster liquid is also brought to the table and ladled into the bowl. The soup is garnished with a reduction of pomegranate juice and crème fraiche.) and I had Stephan's Original Southwestern Caesar Salad with Jalapeno Croutons and Parmigiano Reggiano "Chicharron" (Traditional Caesar salad dressing - invented by Caesar Cardini, an Italian in Mexico in the 1920s - of olive oil, lemon, vinegar, mustard, anchovies and eggs is expanded to include tamarind, chile powder and chipotles puree. The salad is served with fried jalapeno polenta croutons and a crisp parmesan cup). I didn't try Shoko's soup as for some reason I'm afraid of pumpkins (with the exception of pumpkin pie). Shoko left the bowl clean so I'm assuming that it was very good. My caesar was so good with a little spice from the chile and chipotle. I realy liked the parmesan cup too!

For the main course I had the Hoja Santa Salmon Packet on Golden Crabmeat Paella (Salmon fillet is brushed with pecan and garlic butter, wrapped in Hoja Santa and steamed and served on top of Paella made form Arborio rice, corn, garlic, onion chorizo, saffron, Madeira and crabmeat) and Shoko had the Chilean Sea Bass with Fava Bean-Arugula Stew and Aji Marisol Rouille (Sea bass is sautéed and served on a broth, or stew of fish fumet, fava beans, tomatoes and arugula. The dish is garnished with roasted garlic croutons and rouille - spicy garlic mayonnaise - made from Peruvian Ahi Marisol Chiles). These were also delicious with the Sea Bass and the Salmon cooked just right.

(note all 'technical' descriptions above are from the Stephan Pyles website!)

This was a great restaurant with great ambience, great service and great food. I highly recommend it. It is located just west of the Dallas Museum of Art on Ross Ave.

Senseo Review

I got a Senseo coffee maker for Christmas this year. For those that remember, last Christmas I had bought a Nespresso C-190 which is a great coffee maker. In fact, after sipping coffee at many cafes in Paris in November, I realized just how good my Nespresso was. So why try a new coffee maker?

Well, I thought that since the coffee itself was quite a bit cheaper than the Nespresso coffee, it would be worthwhile to try. I wasn't expecting coffee nirvana from it, but from everything that I heard, I did expect a cup of coffee a step ahead of drip.

Boy was I wrong!

Here are the problems that I had with this machine:

1. Not hot enough. The coffee that came out always needed a few seconds in the microwave after brewing. I'm not a 'heat fanatic' but it came out at an unacceptable temperature.

2. After use, there was always water on my countertop. It leaked.

3. The 'crema' was comprised of large bubbles. This didn't look, feel or taste like the crema at a real cafe or the crema from my Nespresso. It was embarassing looking.

4. Bottom line and most importantly: the coffee tasted very weak and bitter.

Now, maybe I got a hold of a defective machine. Perhaps the water found on my countertop was indicative of a machine that had a pressure leak somewhere. Perhaps this lack of pressure led to bad crema and bad coffee. Perhaps. But there were so many negatives associated with this machine that I decided not to try another and we just got our money back.

If you have had good experiences with the Senseo, do let me know!

We're Back!

With a new host! The company that I was hosted to (Host Excellence) stopped working with Blogger for some reason. After a month I finally made the plunge and changed over the site to a new host. Every year they get cheaper and provide more storage and bandwidth so overall, it's not a bad idea. This time I went with BlueHost and the setup has been very easy.

Actually I first selected a host called PowWeb. But to host multiple domains (I have three) and subdomains they made you go through server code to to do it. Now that in itself is not too bad - I'm no dummy. But, the documentation they provided was laughably horrible. In fact at one point, the documentation even says "sometimes this doesn't always work right. In that event you have to tweak the code a bit..." and "don't do this if you don't know what you are doing, you can really mess things up"! Ha - for something as basic as hosting multiple domains. Give me a break. My new host and my old host allow you set up domains and subdomains with easy-to-use menuing.

Changing a host is always a pain. You have to download all your directory structures to your computer (just to make it easier on yourself), set up the host, upload all the files, change the name servers on your domains (sometimes easy, sometimes hard depending on who your domains are registered through), set the new host configurations for multiple hosts and subdomains, and test. Then it usually takes 24-72 hours or so for the new site location to propogate on all the DNS servers around the world.

All this just because Blogger stopped working with my old host for unknown reasons.

But, we're BACK!

What a Game!

Did anyone else see the Texas-USC game last night. Now THAT was entertainment and Vince Young was a superstar. Rarely is a football game so entertaining.

As you can imagine, here in Dallas there are a lot of UT fans and alumni. I'm a fan but not an alum - though there is a lot of burnt orange around the office today.

Office buzz? Let's see...

1. Matt Leinart's unsportsmanlike comments after the game
2. Vince Young's coolness under pressure
3. Vince Young's talent
4. Adrenalin of game carried over to loss of sleep

Congrats Texas!