slow food day

today was absolutely gorgeous out! we awoke to the sun peeking in through the edges of our bedroom roller shades. i think it was the first day in a while where it's been clear and sunny out. and on top of that, temperatures rose and it was 30-40s out. it was delightful ...

while kevin had his pour-over stumptown coffee, i prepared pork shoulder (蹄膀) which would braise for the next eight hours, and pork rib soup (排骨汤), just like my mom used to. the lunar new year started on february 19th, and we didn't have a proper celebration this year, so i was planning out a mini-feast for tonight.

we ran a few errands in the morning, which consisted of the third trip to container store and adorama for the weekend, i think? ha. i love the bigso boxes of sweden designs so have been measuring and trying to pick up the right size boxes to organize some of the clutter on our bookshelves. unfortunately, the piano books which i want to organize are about 1/2" too long for the bigso file containers in the end. darn.

in the afternoon, we putzed around the apartment, unpacked a couple boxes, and i started preparing for dinner around 5 while glancing at the oscars red carpet in between. the dishes were ready to go by 6, so we skyped for a while with allyson and met baby dennis for the first time :D he is a beautiful, sweet boy, and was trying so hard to say "HI" at the tender age of six months. i think allyson thought we were skyping to share our own great news, but uhm, lol, we didn't have the news she was hoping for. LOL.

daisy arrived around 7 and kevin seated us in the prime positions at the dinner table to feast our eyes on the tv. daisy had seen a few of the nominated films, while kevin and i had seen none, so we were lucky to have her as our hollywood-oscars-celebrity-gossip guide throughout the evening. neil patrick harris was the host this year, and made a few memorable comments throughout the night.

my favorite: "she had to have a lot of balls to wear that dress" :p

it was a relaxing fun night, and it felt like we had front row seats at the dolby theatre! and i was totally stuffed.

menu

sauteed baby bok choy

luffa with enoki mushrooms (兹瓜)

egg with dried baby anchovies
braised pork shoulder (红烧蹄膀)
pork rib soup with kombu (海带排骨汤)
red bean soup with peanut and black sesame glutinous balls

getting to know our neighbors

today kevin did the unthinkable - he accompanied me to the divine trinity: bed bath & beyond, container store, and home depot, all in one trip! hahaha ... walked into bbb with the intention to pick up some pillows and sheets, and came out with those, as well as a red kitchenaid stand mixer. yay! last weekend when daisy and i made cookies, we used a mixer that i'd purchased straight out of college which probably cost me less than $15 and felt like it had the power of a construction tool, not a kitchen appliance. haha. time to get our bake on! kevin was grimacing the entire time - sorry hubbs! :) apple red, on sale, i basically SAVED him money by buying it.

also, CHA-CHING! found my bath waste baskets at containerstore! for some reason, public bathrooms (yuck) and waste baskets in general have a huge ick factor for me. so when it came to choosing a waste basket for our baths, i was having a difficult time. the opening on top has to be the perfect size! not too large or you'll be graced with a view of its contents and not too small because then it's impractical for nonchalantly tossing items in. no lid, because then you actually have to touch it every time you want to use it (ick), and to find a waste basket that's actually proportional with the size of the modern one-piece european-style toilets is actually not easy. it felt like everything we saw in bbb and container store were quite large - "american" style. most of the openings weren't much smaller than the toilet bowl itself lol.

anyways finally found these simple white plastic square waste basket from the containerstore. i removed the flip-lids and they go pretty darn nicely with the toilet brushes we got from muji too. done!! woohoo ~~~ mini challenge complete.

enough about baths and waste baskets. kevin and i spent the majority of the morning cleaning, setting up the guest bedroom, and stuffing packed boxes into every closet possible so we could make the apt somewhat presentable for friends in the afternoon.

oh and kev found time to make us this simple yet delish soba lunch :)

around 2pm, the doorbell rang and we were greeted by some cold guests: vadim, monica, john, sonam, thinley, and pema! kevin gave the adults the tour while i hung out with thinley and pema. they are so much fun to be with - not shy, very open and happy kids. afterwards we all naturally gravitated to the island (or perhaps it was due to the cheese, grapes, and olive bread), with the kids perched on the stools. it was really nice to see everyone, since the last time we really all got together was wow over the summer.

a little later in the afternoon, we had our second set of chelsea neighbors, kris and jessica, swing by for wine and yumm maison kayser desserts! they are about to remodel a loft just two blocks north of us so it was fun to hear about their process and hopefully pass on some lessons learned from our process (so that no one has to go through that again)! it turns out that jessica has a good amount of experience managing these types of projects in line of work and she seems much more level headed than me so i think they will be just fine.

rest of the night? pecorino, gouda, proscuitto, pears, apple, and gilmore girls. winding down and ready to start one of the last weeks of 2014!