Last week there was a transit strike when I was supposed to get together with V (formerly of Mekong fame) before she goes on a 6 month trek thru South America. I really admire people that can just pick up and go like that. She’s just gonna head down there, stay in a hostel and wander wherever her journey takes her depending on the people she meets along the way. V is a funny one; very cool personality, definitely one of the guys, and a self-deprecating humor about her. Anyway since there was a transit strike and traffic into the city was all messed up, we decided to meet up in her neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s pretty ghetto down there, especially near the overhead subway tracks, but as she put it “nobody gets their cars broken into here, they just get robbed”. Cool, at least my car would be safe! Anyway, we went to a cool hipster divey place called Moto, literally right under the subway tracks. Pretty good food there- the artichoke was particularly tasty but the highlight was the dry-rubbed ribs. Another winner was the dessert item- a fudge like square of chocolate with nuts embedded into it. It was so rich and and soft and would melt on your fingertips as you tried to eat it. It forced you to lick your fingers after each morsel which somehow made it feel even more sinful. Terrific stuff.

Had a very pleasant Christmas this year (once I got all the gift shopping/wrapping out of the way). Relatively low stress this year because the family agreed on a very smart thing, to do a secret santa along with madatory wish lists for the adults so that it would reduce the number of gifts that needed to be purchased and increase the dollar value of each individual gift so we’d all end up with nicer things that we really wanted. Without being tasked with shopping for so many adults, we were better able to focus on shopping for the kids, and after all, that’s what Christmas should really be about. And boy did the kids make out like bandits this year! 🙂 Probably the neatest new toy I saw this year was the Doodle Bear; a teddy bear that comes with glow-in-the-dark markers for drawing on it. The markers come with cool lighted tips so that when you draw on the bear, the ink goes on glowing super brightly. Very ingenious, and I think the girls loved their Doodle Bears more than any other gift. We had hot pot for Christmas Eve dinner, always a treat, along with two deep fried turkeys which went mostly untouched because of all the food we had for the hot pot. For dessert I brought four items from the CCG Patisserie, a terrific bakery just up the street from Hajime. The owner there is a graduate of the cooking school formerly known as Peter Kump’s which is the same school Jones went to. I bought a decadent flourless chocolate cake, a raspberry linzer torte (a little too sweet for my taste), an Italian plum tart (perhaps my favorite thing at CCG) and a pumkin tart for my nephew because that’s the only dessert he really loves.

So that was my Christmas Eve, lots of eating, followed by opening gifts and watching the kids play. The coolest thing I got from Santa this year was a multi-piece pressure cooker. Awesome. Now I can make things that I would never have considered making mid-week due to the amount of time it takes to cook; things like oxtail or osso bucco. Good winter-time stuff. Only problem is that I’m totally out of storage space for all my kitchen stuff! Good problem to have though, eh?

Christmas Day I pretty much just lounged around recovering from my food coma and waiting for the 5p football game. I needed Bears D to put up some points to beat Sterl, but of course I came up short and lost by a few points. That evening I went to the always reliable Kam Gang San in Korea Town with my new favorite co-worker H. Had kalbi and seafood on the grill and all those delicious panchan dishes which I love even more than the main entrees. Ordered some cold sake which was not very good, but what did I expect, ordering sake in a Korean restaurant… Afterwards we met up with K&R for a few good drinks at Angel’s Share. The next day I was back in the city for dim sum at Dim Sum Go Go with K&R, R&L and K’s sister J. Good dim sum there, but the best thing about that place is the atmosphere is bright and clean unlike most Chinatown dim sum places. They do things with the sheets you fill out instead of having old ladies push dim sum carts around which I guess for some people makes the experience less authentic, but I like it because the food is good and it’s a much more pleasant experience not having people constantly bumping their carts into your chair.

Later that night R&L invited me over for some poker on their fancy new poker table (only $20 from BBBY!). Played a mini 6 person tourney and I lost most of my chips making a move trying to steal the antes with a low pair only to run into two callers each with higher pairs! I eventually busted out with big slick in a 3 way hand when the board completely missed me. Oh well, it was a good time, and the best thing was that my Allegra held up for the evening (R&L have THREE cats!!).

All in all a very enjoyable three day weekend. There should be more fun to come this week as Dawg is back in town and New Year’s eve will probably be a small party at Wong’s. Hopefully Mun, our resident Iron Chef Chinese, will be doing the cooking.