After many years of using blogger and not actually doing much customization to this website, I have decided to start using wordpress!  It’s a bit more customizable than self-hosted blogger and I sure need to brush up on the php skillz.  Excuse the mess right now, things will look better eventually… I hope!

Pictures are a little off alignment right now due to some whacky importing thing!  BOOHOO.

find fail, or descriptor fail? :(

Have you ever taken a piece of fish, topped it with a bunch of crap and took a picture?  I have!  This was pretty darn tasty as well, it’s fresh, light, and super good for you!  Next time I promise to plate better.  Recipe from epicurious.

Ingredients:

• 1 blood orange, Cara Cara orange, or regular orange
• 1/2 cup 1/3-inch cubes avocado
• 1/3 cup chopped red onion
• 2 teaspoons minced red jalapeño
• 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 6-ounce mahi-mahi fillets

Last weekend I hopped on a plane and went to Cali!  I went to see Stacy in San Diego, and then we took the train down to LA to visit Ronnie. 

In San Diego, we went to the beach where the seals took over. 

And we went to the San Diego Zoo!  I didn’t drag my big canon camera out so pardon my pictures! :(  We saw a lot of monkeys and I didn’t get a single good shot of them because they are TOO FAST!  Stacy probably has all the good ones. *pout*

And in LA, some interesting things happened.  Apparently our hotel was hosting an anime convention, I got a picture of the pedo-bear.

 

and we saw a dog on a skateboard…

It was great seeing my BFFs!  What a fun trip.

I attempted to make duck fried rice today but failed miserably.

First I dropped my spatula on the ground, and little bits of rice fell all over the place and got stuck to my socks.  Have you gotten rice stuck to the bottom of your socks?  It sucks, it gets all mushy and gunky and your socks stick to the ground when you walk.  After I cleaned that up, little bits of rice started to stick to the sides of my wok.  Once rice starts sticking, it’s all downhill from there, and after much analysis, dropping the spatula was definitely the root cause of this mess.  I blame it on this stupid wok that I got for free via some slickdeals.com scam!!  I figured since I’m this far, I might as well finish this stupid dish, but I was mad and unfocused and added the eggs uncooked to the rice!!!  You might think the catastrophe ends there, but oh no.  I wanted to add 2 more eggs (but scrambled this time) so I tried a cool Ellie Krieger trick.   You shape your cooking rice into a donut, crack the eggs in the middle, scramble them there, and then incorporate into the rice.  Cool trick huh, well that ended up burning more of the stuck-on rice and introduced a very nice BURNING flavor into it.  It was subtle enough that I didn’t care and served it anyway.  EAT MY BURNT RICE SEAN.

I threw away that wok in a fit of rage.

And now, this is how you are suppose to cook duck fried rice…

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup duck fat (or just vegetable oil)
• 2 or 3 cups of old crusty rice from a few days ago (you can use takeout rice too, just make sure it’s cold, you can’t make fried rice with freshly cooked rice)
• 1 cup frozen veggies (peas only, or peas and carrots, whatever you have in the fridge)
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• Leftover duck bits cut up into cubes
• Scallions
• 3 scrambled eggs

Directions:

1. Heat up oil in a wok.  Preferably a wok that doesn’t suck.
2. Wait until the oil is smoking, add the rice and fry it up.  You want some crunchy pieces of rice.  Keep the rice moving or else it will stick.  Make sure you don’t drop any rice and then step in it.
3. When the rice is nice and hot (about 4 minutes) add the duck bits and frozen veggies and soy sauce.  Stir fry some more.  If you don’t stir or fry, it will burninate.
4. Add scrambled eggs.  Don’t just beat up the eggs and add them in like an idiot.  They need to be scrambled first in another pan.
5. Garnish with scallions.
6. Make better duck fried rice than me. :(