You can’t tell, but 3 seconds earlier the crowd was “Yay”ing the Jumbotron with its big pic of the Atlantic City shoreline and the words “New Jersey” scrawled across the bottom…
Devils won, 3-0, very exciting 3rd period.
Woot!
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!!!
So it’s been brought to my attention that my blog has been showing up funny on some browsers (notably, I.E.), with a big line down the middle, the blogroll disappearing, needing to scroll sideways and gigantic pictures with lovely closeups of a pimple named Jean-Pierre.
I’ve tried to fix the issues, which I believe were caused by my incorrectly resizing the pictures. For some reason, it shows up just fine on my computer — I use Firefox (and have NO IDEA why it works for me but not for anyone else…)
If you notice a problem now or in the future, would you be so kind as to comment and let me know? It’d also be helpful to let me know which browser you’re using (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.).
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
-dina-
Finished the last minute Stuffed Mushrooms!
Ingredients:
-Lots of medium-sized mushrooms with stems
-Bread Crumbs (Italian-seasoned is nice)
-Parmesan Cheese
-Parsley
-Garlic
-Olive Oil
-Disposable metal pans
-Fry pan
-Bowl, spoon, spatula, all that jazz
1. Wash dirt off mushrooms, let drain in colander
2. Pull stems out of mushies and put on chopping board
3. Add some oil to a fry pan
4. Put de-stemmed mushies bottom-side down in fry pan and let sautee
5. Start chopping up the stems. This is where you wish you had a cuisinart, and tell yourself that things taste better when chopped by hand.
6. Flip mushies top-side down, let sautee. Cover the pan.
7. Start chopping up the garlic. Remind yourself again that things taste better when chopped by hand.
8. Break down and borrow mom’s cuisinart blender attachment to grind the parsley.
9. Take out 1/2-done mushies and put into disposable tin pans
10. Add a little more garlic to fry pan and sautee garlic; when garlic is getting a little translucent and/or brownish, add the chopped up stems and sautee. At some point, you may want to cover the fry pan to speed things up.
10. Take out the now mushy stems-n-garlic mixture. Put in bowl. Add bread crumbs. It is more Italian if you mush this up by hand, but I prefer to use a spoon to resist licking said mixture off my fingers.
11. Add parmesan cheese and parsley. See #10.
12. Spoon dollops of yummy mixture into the cavities in the mushrooms. Make nice round mound on top.
13. Add some water to the bottom of the tin pan so mushies are sitting in small layer of water.
14. Bake at about 350 for about 30 minutes.
YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sadly, we were out of parsley because I foolishly used it all up for the Seafood Salad, but hopefully, what with a) GARLIC, b) OIL, c) CHEESE and d) MUSHROOMS it will all still taste amazing.
CAMERA PHONE MUSHROOMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Finally done:
-26 lbs of seafood
-Juice of 24 lemons
-2 bunches of parsley
-1 head of garlic
-Sprinkle of olive oil; mussell “juice”
-sprinkle of red pepper (added before served)
Giving credit where credit is due, I could not have finished this in such record time without Mom’s help and her amazing little gadgets! (Last year I squeezed all the lemons by hand — ugh!) Thanks, mom!!!
So it only took me 4 1/2 hours to clean, cook, cut, and shell all the seafood, juice the lemons, chop the parsley and dice the garlic last night.
-6 lbs of Calamari, as previously documented.
-2 lbs of Scungilli, a.ka. conch
-4 lbs of Shrimp
-8 lbs of Mussells, pre-shelling
-6 lbs of “Poop” (”pulpe”), a.k.a. octopus (4 seperate octopi, for those who want to know…)
TOTAL: 26 lbs of seafood for… I think 20 people. Heheh. We a hungry clan.
I never feel so Italian as on/before Christmas.
I just cleaned and cut into circles 6 lbs of calamari (squid).
Yes, 6 lbs.
Next up: 6 lbs of octopus…
So I had a pretty good weekend, quite busy, which is always nice. Friday was Kris’s b-day (see previous post) which was a fun time of Mexican food and Margaritas. [As an interesting aside, this blog is getting a lot of hits from people who search for “shaved head”. Suddenly, I am popular!]
Saturday was also busy — I slept late (as those in the know understand I am wont to do) then headed out to meet up with Dana. We had lattes and lunch and chatted for a couple of hours. Then, Christopher showed up with my desk from Santa Cruz — he lives down that way, but his girlfriend is in the Bay Area, so he offered to get it for me; I owe them lunch at some point, it was really nice of him to get it for me.
Afterward, I finished up some boring work and then got ready to go out to an early cocktail party my roommate was having with her friends. It was in the Mount Davidson area, which is up on a hiiigh hill overlooking the south of the city. Her friend’s house was unbelievably nice. A modern, box-shape style with an entire wall of windows in the living room overlooking the city. Here is a camera-phone picture of the view out her window; apparently the brighter row of lights is Ocean Avenue. Yes, I know it’s an awful picture, but you get the idea:
The cocktail party was nice; I chatted with a few of my roomie’s friends who I’d met before, which was fun. The food was great — roasted red peppers and portobello mushrooms as well as stuffed mushrooms and grape leaves were my favorite of the offerings. I stuck to one small glass of wine, since I was driving, and headed off to Krystal’s for hockey.
The hockey game was great — Sharks vs. Anaheim — and an exciting game, too, where we kept catching up from behind. Our final shot was an amazing goal, with my favorite player, Jonathan Cheechoo, looking very exuberant. Twas a very exciting game. It was also fun to watch with more than just Nicole and Krystal — K’s roommates cooked sausages and watched with us. The dynamic was different than when it’s just us girls, but when they ran out to get some more firewood, we quickly reverted to rating our favorite players on looks and not long after that the conversation degenerated into talking bras. Ahhh, girls watching hockey…
The exciting thing about Saturday night was that after hockey, I had a bunch of things to choose from to do. Since Santacon last week left me a bit weary of the party-like-a-rock-star scene, I decided on a mellower night, and headed over to a small get-together in Berkeley to hang out with people I met a few weeks ago with J. It was a nice, chill evening and definitely what I was in the mood for.
It was also nice to crank up the music and drive somewhere. It felt vaguely like driving out to Jersey from NYC, which amused me for no real good reason except that it did. My next trip anywhere will hopefully have the TomTom GPS Navigation system (with John Cleese add-on, although there are a variety of accents to choose from…) so I can be told in a sexy British accent exactly where to turn and not have to rely on my shoddy, copied-down Google maps directions.
Sunday was… well, Sunday. I got up late, late, late, and when I finally pulled myself together it was around 2. I called a few people, decided to skip out on shopping with Dana, and headed to the Park for some leftover burrito (better than it sounds) and the Sunday Times. Eventually I got a manicure, talked some more on the phone, hung with the roommie and her friend, sorted through and got rid of an enormous box of papers and unpacked miscellaneous items, crawled into bed, surfed the net, read more paper, and went to sleep.
Heading back to the East Coast in just a few days, for lots of family Holiday time. I’m a little bummed to be leaving just as my social life in SF is becoming more satisfying, but at the same time, it will be fun to be home and see everyone.
And, what you’ve been waiting for, the requisite what’s-on-D’s-nails picture. “Wicked”, by Esse.
So last night was my friend (by way of Ashley) Kris’s birthday. They decided to have dinner at a great Mexican place way out in the Richmond, an area of the City between the north side of Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. Basically: really far away from me.
Since Mexican dinners usually involve copious amounts of Margaritas, I decided not to drive. I tried to take the 33 bus, which 511.org assured me would come at 6:35, and every 20 minutes thereafter. I left the house at 6:25, and got on the phone to chat with mom for 10 minutes. Make that 20 minutes. 30. 40. The bus simply did not come. WTF??? I was getting grumpier and grumpier and more and more frustrated. The public transit in this city is (excuse my French) for shit.
So, I headed a few blocks away for the 22. I saw it pull up, and ran as fast as I could, made it across the street, went up to the bus and… the driver would not open his doors. “Take the next bus,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for 50 minutes! Please let me on the bus!” He took off, and I just lost it. I kicked the fence a bunch of times, and a nice but smelly transient-sort came over and tried to make me feel better. The next bus actually came much sooner than the supposed every-20-minutes (thank God) and I settled in for another nauseating MUNI ride across the city.
Ashley had mentioned that Kris shaved her head recently, so I set out to finishing up a crochet beanie for her (a girl with a shaved head can’t have too many beanies.) It turned out really well, and Kris was thrilled with it. Here we are for a laughing birthday kiss on the cheek and Kris in her new beanie.
So, tonight we went to Hog Island Oyster Co., in the Ferry Building down by the water (”Embarcadero”) in downtown San Francisco.
The Ferry building was gorgeous, with huge, high cathedral ceilings and the best stores EVER: a fancy cheese shop, a Sharffen Berger chocolate place (made in Berkeley, supposedly the best chocolate EVAH), a caviar shop, you name it.
Anyway, I went with Emily and her two friends to try oysters for the first time, and they were delicious! And yes, I ate them raw. We squeezed lemon juice on them, and spooned on a lemony-oily-oniony-cilantro-pepper sort of dressing onto them, and I even chewed, they were that good. We had a bottle of German Reisling and a bottle of California Charodonnay between the 4 of us. Emily and I also split the Oyster Stew, which was a delicious, delicate but rich, creamy soup with a few cooked oysters in it. Next time I am trying the clam chowder for sure!
