My Milk Toof - a new found favorite blog

My Milk Toof blog from Inhae Lee

Serious Eats did a post recently on "My Milk Toof", a blog about the adventures of two milk teef (baby teeth), Ickle and Lardee. They are the cutest ever.

The creator of the blog is a Korean American lady, who's also the author of a book of the same title. She and her blog has gathered a big and international following. There was a recent contest titled "Your Milk Toof" that called for all toof-related stories from all over the world to win a copy of her newly published book.

I'm addicted to her blog and the amazing creativity shown through the stories of the Ickle and Lardee. Hope you will check it out too. I know you will love it.

Oregon strawberries

Ever since we arrived, we've been expecting the strawberry season, which typically starts early June. Our friends, Louisa and John, have told us wonderful stories about Oregon strawberries and its superiority to any other variety in the country. This spring has been a cold one, so the strawberries came in a little late.

I also discovered that Nike campus has a farmer's market in the summer season. I need to find out the exact frequency of occurrence so I can better prepare for it next time. Today is summer solstice and turned out to be a beautiful day to kick off the summer. Everyone was eating outside.

I saw the strawberry stall and checked out their samples and immediately determined that these are in fact the same strawberries John and Louisa have told us about. They are on the smaller side with more tender flesh than typical commercial strawberries from California. The berries are also red throughout. I got a couple pints.

After dinner, we stood by the sink and ate the entire pint of it. No wonder Haagen-Dazs would buy an entire valley of Oregon strawberries just for their strawberry ice cream. The unfortunate thing is the strawberry season is only a few weeks. So we have to eat a ton of it now, or can them for later consumption. I'm already looking at strawberry jam recipes...

DJK Korean BBQ

The best Korean and Japanese restaurants can be found just west of Portland in Beaverton, a Portland close suburb, also known as Nike/Intel town where most Nike and Intel employees live. Nike's campus is also in Beaverton.

Craving Korean BBQ, we planed a visit to DJK Korean BBQ in a stretch of small scale malls along Canyon street. The restaurant keeps the temperature on the cool side to compensate for the heat from all the BBQ burners. Each of the BBQ tables has an industrial hood mounted above to suck up steam and smoke.

There were three of us. We selected three things for the grill, prawns, Bolgogi (marinated beef) and thinly sliced beef tongue. To round up all the protein, we also got a Korean seafood pancake on the side. Like all Korean affairs, we would start the meal with complimentary small dishes of kimchi.

thinly sliced beef tongue

There was also lettuce leaves for wrapping up BBQ'ed meats, along with sauces for seasoning. The beef tongue was very good, tasted like really lean meat. Bolgogi was exceptionally tender and flavorful. The prawns are excellent as long as you don't over grill it. If we had stopped there, we would've all been pretty full. But don't forget we also ordered a Korean pancake. It's roughly 15" in diameter, and cut to 8 wedges. It's a flour batter mixed in with veggies and lots of seafood goodies like octopus and shrimps. So very yummy.

Korean pancake with golden crispy crust and tender inside

We talked out of DJK with full bellies and smelly hair and clothes.

Portlandia in my building

On our way out to take a walk after dinner Friday night, I saw a guy coming into our apartment building lobby. I did a double take and realized that it was Fred Armisen from "Portlandia". He's also known as the guy who plays Barack Obama on SNL.

photo credit: Wonkette

Of course, I couldn't think of his name. So all I said was "hey... you live in the building?" He actually said hey back, and added "yeah, I live here... for now." He then proceeded to press the elevator button multiple times.

I had never run into any celebrity on the street before, not to mention in my own apartment building. I was quite happy with that, and turned to Jose and said "could you believe that?" He looked at me and said "who was that?"

A hike cut short...

A first Saturday that neither of us had any plans. Jose suggested hiking the Multnomah and Wahkeena falls by the Columbia Gorge.
We have done part of the hike last year before moving to Portland. I thought this could be a good opportunity for me to try out some camera tricks on shooting moving water. I always liked photos of water falls with long exposure that the water would look like white silk.
It's very sunny today, which isn't good for taking decent photos in my opinion. It's too much light and shadow contrast. A good day also means lots of people.

I took a few training shots at the beginning of the hike, and realized that I really needed a tripod for the flowy silk photos. But here are a couple that don't look too bad with just bare hands and breath-holding.

Then less than a quarter mile into the hike, I tripped on a pothole and twisted my left ankle, and subsequently on my way down I smashed my right knee on the pavement and dropped my camera. The camera is okay. I wish I could say the same about the left ankle and the right knee. With great effort and a bit more attention than I'd like from fellow hikers, we made it back to the parking lot and headed home...

Braised short ribs

I wanted to make something fancy for our anniversary dinner. Braised short ribs came to mind. I followed a recipe from America's Test Kitchen cook book. A very similar recipe can be found online, but it's not quite the same. For one the recipe from my book didn't call for gelatin.

I bought about 4lbs of short ribs. For most of the pieces, there was a considerable layer of fat on one side. I trimmed them off with a knife. Be very careful when you do that. I sliced my hand when the knife slipped.

First step is to sear the ribs to give them nice crusts and also to help develop flavor. This would render a lot of fat off the meat as well. I did it in batches to not crowd the pan. 

After the ribs were all nicely seared and browned, I took out excess fat from the pan and sauted some carrots, celery and garlic to "mop" up the brown bits from searing the ribs. I then added tomato paste and flour to the pan, before pouring in red wine and broth to build up a sauce. Once the sauce is simmering, the ribs would go back in. The whole pan would go in a 300 degree oven for 3 hours until the meat is following off the bone tender. 

The entire house was filled with that intoxicating aroma the whole afternoon. Once it's done, take out the ribs and set aside. You are supposed to strain the sauce and use just the liquid. For reason of laziness, I decided to forgo that step and just use the sauce as is with all the cooked up veggie bits. You could serve this with mashed potatoes or egg noodles. We decided to go with a slightly healthier option, brown rice. It was every bit as delicious.

For those who don't like brown rice, try Sweet Brown Rice from Asian stores. They are nutty, tender with a hint of sweetness and occasionally bitterness, in a good way. It's my favorite kind of rice.

Nando's Chicken

While researching for places to eat in Vancouver, I ran across this little fast food eatery, Nando's Chicken. I absolutely loved their website and thought we had to check it out when we are out there.

The story about Nando's started with the chili pepper, peri peri. They do chicken, as the name implies, and chicken only. Everything is flame-broiled. For people who are spice-challenged like me, Nando's has a mild lemon herb option.

It's supposely a "fast food" chain, but it's not like anything you expect. It's more of a casual eatery with a modern decor, clean and un-fussy.

We got a Variety Platter for two to share, which comes with two chicken skewers, four wings, two drumsticks and two breast pieces. Jose got the medium peri sauce on the side. The skewers, assuming it's breast meat, were juicy and tender. It's no ground-breaking food. But for chicken, they did pretty well for themselves. The wings and the breast pieces were nicely seasoned and never dry. There was a good deal of finger licking afterwards...