Mom and my Aunt are still in town. While they’ve been here, we’ve mostly eaten at home (along with the buffets around town, of course).

Yesterday, we stopped at 99 Ranch and picked up some crab. My Aunt showed me how to kill and clean them. Good times!

It was good stuff, and according to my mom, crab is cheaper here than in Hawaii (and more available than in Malaysia), which I thought was a little weird since we’re in the middle of the desert. It was about $3.99 a pound here. Our entire dinner fed four of us and all the ingredients cost a little under $15 bucks. Good times.

Anyway I’m going to take them shopping again. Mom wants to buy a turkey and cook it for us this weekend. Woohoo!

I had to try one because of those stupid commercials on TV.

It wasn’t too bad, but just tasted like a regular taco, but with a different kind of cheese inside. The black shell seems thicker, but not that different/special.

I also thought the commercial said it was only 59 cents or something, but it was listed on the 89-cent menu when I bought it tonight. Oh well, at least now I know!

Uncle Mike in Penang apparently makes a super good claypot chicken, but we never got to try it while we were in Malaysia. He did give me a short rundown on how to make it, and I gave it a try tonight, but used a rice cooker instead. Here it is:

Good times. An entire dinner done in the rice cooker!

Here’s Orochon Ramen. I found out about the place on Man vs. Food and even though I think Adam Richman is a total douchebag, I still enjoy watching the show from time to time. And after seeing the episode at Orochon Ramen, I really wanted to check the place out.

A lot of the reviews on Yelp said that the place was overrated, and not very good. I believed them, but still had to try it for myself.

When we got there, we had to wait about 15 minutes. After that, we ended up sitting outdoors in the sun, and shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers.

Anyway, in the pic above, you see all the people standing outside? All the white people, in particular? Yep that many white people in front of an ethnic restaurant usually means the food’s not that great.

And as good as it looks, it really wasn’t that great. The noodles kind of tasted like cheap chinese egg noodles. I ordered the #2 spicy bowl (#1 being the hottest) and it wasn’t anything special. Just go to any ramen place, dump chili powder in it, and that’s pretty much what you get.

If you’re curious, the “challenge” on Man vs. Food is to eat the whole thing, soup and all, in half an hour. I don’t remember if I’ve ever drank all the soup in Ramen. (Don’t people in Japan think you’re weird if you do that?) I didn’t even want to bother trying, either, since we were sitting out in the sun on a relatively hot day.

Anyway, I thought the place sucked, but it was still something I had to do. Thanks for nothing, Man vs. Food!

To add to the irony, we were seated next to a non-asian family who apparently also heard about the place from the TV show. I overheard them talking about how good the noodles were, and how the soup was among the best that the dad’s ever had at a restaurant. They obviously don’t eat Ramen very often, because I put the food at Orochon slightly below the stuff you get at Ezogiku back home — the one near University, not the one in Waikiki.

I really miss Tenkaippen now.

..And again, if you wanna see all the pics from the trip, here they are.

Took a while, but I finally got around to posting the photos from our trip to California last weekend. Here are a couple of em:

Joel(s), this one’s for you. OOOOOO BOY!

Our room at the Homewood Suites. The place was nice; there was a kitchen, 2 LCD TV’s, a bedroom, and a living room with a foldout sofa.

On our first day there, we had lunch at The Boiling Crab. We ate there once before, about a year ago when we first moved from Hawaii. It was one of the best things I ever ate. So when we came back to California this time around, we made it a point to eat there.

We got half a dozen oysters, a pound of shrimp, and a pound of crawfish. Man that was good eats. I wasn’t sure if we were going to finish it all, but somehow we did. And in doing so, I got about a year’s worth of sodium intake, and crossed off a few years of my life. It was worth it, though.

Hollywood Blvd:

California Science Center. The place was fun; like that kids’ section at Bishop Museum, but, as Joel put it, without the Kalihi:

Here’s Orochon Ramen, which we heard about from Man vs. Food. It was one of the things I wanted to check out, and ended up being a disappointment. More on that later.

Hollywood in the daytime:

Anyway, there’s a lot more I need to tell you, so stay tuned! In the mean time, wanna see more pics? Here you go!

Like salmon swimming upstream, we drove out to California this morning, going the opposite direction of all the Californians driving over to Las Vegas for the three day weekend. We’ll be staying here tonight and tomorrow night before heading back home on Monday.

Part of the getaway was to celebrate/test my new car (oh yeah, I bought this cheap Hyundai from some Armenian dude a few weeks ago). We also wanted to eat at The Boiling Crab again. We ate there about a year ago when we first moved from Hawaii during our overnight in California before we picked up Kerri’s car.

We ordered half a dozen oysters, a pound of shrimp, and a pound of crawfish in cajun seasoning. It was good eats, even though we took in an entire years’ worth of sodium in one sitting.

Afterwards, we were trying to decide what to do and ended up going to The Getty Center a little further up north. It was a long drive, but well worth it. That place was one of the craziest buildings I’ve ever seen. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that parking was free after 5pm, too (we got there around 6). Otherwise, I was prepared to shell out the $15 bucks.

On the way home, we drove down Sunset and Hollywood Blvd’s, but it was night time and looked a little too hectic/scary to get out of the car. We were getting hungry again too, and pulled over at some random pho place for dinner.

We’re back in the room now, which is around Anaheim and really close to Disneyland, but I’m not sure if we’re going there.

Before we leave we’re still going to check out this place called Orochan Ramen, which was on Man vs. Food (as much of an annoying d-bag I think Adam Richman is, I still enjoy the show).

Other than that, everything is up in the air. I guess that’s the beauty of a non-itineraried vacation.

I finally got to try Olive Garden’s never ending pasta bowl last night. The last time we were at OG’s was about a year ago, back in November, and that’s when I found out that it was just a seasonal thing. I think it’s only on around August until October or something like that.

Anyway, I got to try it for the first time last night. And was a little disappointed.

So you can choose a couple of different pastas:
- Spaghetti
- Angel Hair
- Linguine
- Whole Wheat linguine
- Penne
- Fettucini
- this other one that’s big shells (I can’t remember the name but it started with an O)

And a couple of different sauces:
- Marinara
- Marinara with mushrooms
- 3 cheese Marinara
- Alfredo
- Alfredo with spinach
- Meat sauce

It’s disappointing because half the sauces were Marinara, which wasn’t good, and the other half are alfredo, which are really filling. Also, I don’t know if it was just our waitress, or because it was a busy night, but they didn’t take our second order until we were done with our first, so there’s about a 5 minute wait between orders. Plenty of time to let food settle in your stomach and for you to stop being hungry.

Kerri stopped at 1.5 bowls, and I stopped at 2.5 (I finished the other half of her second bowl). Still though, for $8.95, it’s one of the cheaper things on Olive Garden’s menu. But then again, for 5 bucks, you could buy ground beef, a pound of pasta, and a jar of sauce, and have leftovers for tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to eat oatmeal a little more often. I figure/hoped that if I just kept eating it, I’d eventually get used to it.

I’ve been trying to flavor the stuff with jam or honey, and I started getting sick of always eating it sweet. Then some days ago, I came across a recipe for savory oatmeal, which is just regular oatmeal, but cooked with sea salt, some green onions, and shoyu.

I tried it…dude. It’s good.

I mean, it kind of tasted like jook. I know the thought of salty oatmeal is kind of weird, but so is the thought of sweet rice. And people eat that, too.

I tried it again just now, and this time used yellow onions, a leftover hamburger patty, an egg, and even more white pepper. I shit you not, it tastes just like jook. Except it’s way faster to make, you don’t need leftover rice, and it’s a lot better for you. Try it. I’m serious.

Kerri turned 27 this past week. For dinner, we all met up at BWW and had some hot wings.

The rest of the week was pretty tame. I stayed at home for the most part and wasted my time playing Prototype, and then Red Faction, Guerilla. They were both decent, but I guess I was hoping for a little more. I was actually looking forward to Red Faction; I played one of the earlier RF games all the time when it was out on the PS2. The new one was…decent, but not enough to hold my interest for more than a few days. Plus, I hate multiplayer achievements (another reason why I think COD4 is one of the best games ever made, and I hope Modern Warfare 2 continues with the the no-online-achievements tradition).

My Xbox also red ringed a few days ago, so I had to port my profile over to Kerri’s console and I’ve been playing in the bedroom. The console’s right at the tail end of the 3 year warranty, but unlike the first time it bricked, I have to find my own box to ship the thing up to MS now. This would have been a lot easier if I were still living in Hawaii.

In other news, the weather’s been slightly cooler this past weekend, thanks apparently to some storm system around California right now. It dropped all the way down to the low 90’s, which meant that we didn’t have to use the AC yesterday. We also took a walk up and down the strip, stopping at good ol’ Casino Royale so I could double fist it with $1 Michelob’s. That stuff’s nasty!

Kerri had a hankering for poke today, and I realized I did too. When I was back in Hawaii, I didn’t really have too much, except this one time Lane and I went to Champions, and that other time, at Joel’s company party, which they let me crash. Kerri heard about this new place that opened, so we took a half hour drive up north.

The poke there was about $10-11/lb, which is a little more, but the stuff was really good. Plus, they had limu in their poke, which is way better than the chopped-fish-salad we tried back at L&L when we first moved here.

Other than that, it’s been a pretty tame weekend. The last time we were at the library, Kerri picked up this book called I Love Yous are for White People, based on the title, and I was reading it yesterday and just finished this afternoon. Real good read. It’s a memoir written by a guy about my age who escapes Vietnam with his family as a child, and grows up in LA. The guy’s been through a lot, and seems to have made so much out of himself despite all the opportunities he’s had in life to mess up. Shame on me!

I swung by Jazz Minds last night to watch Ikaika and his band play. It ended up a night of good music with a little added shot-taking and beer drinking.

I left the place around 1 and stopped by Zippy’s afterwards for a mushroom omelette, which is pretty much the only thing I ever get from there. The Kahala Zippy’s was full of dressed up kids and they apparently shut down the dining room at night now. I guess times is tough.

As good as it was, my omelette cost me about six bucks. Back in Malaysia, that’d buy you half a dozen char kway teows!

I never bothered to look, but they have char kway teow videos up on youtube. What the hell can’t you find up there these days?

When we were in Badasia, I asked my relatives to take me to eat char kway teow whenever possible. Just watching this video makes me salivate: