3 posts tagged “home”
I have a decent repertoire of entrées and side dishes that I can cook. I think most of them taste pretty good (to me.) I don't really pay too much attention to the food's presentation. My sister reinforced this point to me a few years ago.
We were slicing ingredients to make pancit (Filipino noodles) and she pointed out that I was chopping up one vegetable out too finely and another too coarsely. She wanted the ingredients more proportionate in size, which makes sense if you think about it. I just didn't think about it enough. My main concern was and usually still is that the proper ingredients are added correctly so that flavor is right. I didn't care too much what it looks like.
When I click through some of the food blogs that are out there, I think about posing some of the meals and dishes that I make. This week would have been a good week to show off some savory goodness that exited my kitchen (and entered my tummy.) Some of my dishes over the past 7 days include:
- dungeness crab feast
- pan fried steak
- scallops wrapped in bacon
- Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce
- baked chicken with KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce
- stewed apples*
- roasted pork shoulder
- crab cakes*
- fried shrimp chips
- soy sauce chicken
I suppose I could also add rice cereal* to the list since we introduced our 4 1/2 month old to solids this week. Savory goodness? Yes. Photogenic food? No. Too bad my food isn't pretty.
*a Kanto first
A sign by the elevator in my condo complex promised free cake, champagne, and door prizes. Both my wife and I like free stuff. Plus, Joanna's self-proclaimed favorite food is birthday cake. With this in mind, we made last minute plans to go to our building's 25-year anniversary and annual homeowners association meeting.
Having never gone to a homeowners association meeting, I didn't really know what to expect. My hope was to be entertained; like at a Stars Hollow town meeting. Looking around the room before the meeting, Joanna and I could only eyeball one or two people that were possibly in our age bracket. The majority of the room was probably over 55. I started to have doubts as to whether I would enjoy the meeting at all. It turned out that the 90 minute agenda was not too bad.
The board breezed through association business: past voting results, acknowledging the minutes, budget plans, etc. Then they unintentionally hit on a topic that made the night worthwhile: they mentioned the existence of an insurance policy option to cover in-unit upgrades/modifications that were not part of the original unit. This perked the room up and many attendees (including us) jotted down notes and wanted to ask questions. Apparently it’s a standard insurance option that many of us may not have. They referred us to our individual insurance carriers for more info. The Q & A session with the board was uneventful. Members complained about slow elevators and non-deeded parking, nothing controversial and, apparently, nothing that the board hadn't heard before.
The meeting wound down with the 25th Anniversary hoopla. Long time residents waxed nostalgic about this and that. It turned out that every unit owner in attendance received a door prize. Ours was a $50 gift card to Trader Vic's, the upscale Tiki-themed chain restaurant less than a block away. The cake, unfortunately, was just blah. It was a 3-tiered white cake with lemon gel filling. The presentation was nice, but the cake itself was bland and overpowered by the lemon. We skipped the champagne.
All in all, it was worth the swag.
How well do you know your next-door neighbors?
Not at all. I'm cordial enough to say hello if I see them in the laundry room or at the elevator, but I don't know any neighbors by name. In fact, I probably would not recognize them outside the context of the floor of this building.
