Hair Cut and Ice Cream

Cloudy typical Seattle weather today - Sunday. It was chilly and I was not able to wear shorts, which I brought from NYC.
I had a hair cut appointment in Seattle at a Japanese hair salon I have been using a few times so far. Today's topic was Ichiro... I guess Seattle is a small town and everyone knows every one, while I have never met someone knowing Matsui when he was playing at Yankee's. It was JUICY stuff and I can't tell everything, but it sounds like his wife is NOT as nice as she looks like. Wasn't that the reason why he married to her - she can speak English. It does not look like that is true either. What a shame... She seems a piece of s***. AND he is very CHEAP guy, even he earn $$$.

Anyway, after this juicy talk, I headed to what else it could be - the ice cream shop. It is actually a bit far but it well worth it. It looks like they will start selling water melon flavor from July. I hope weather coordinates with this summary taste though.

Back in Seattle

I am back in Seattle...
It is SUPPOSED to be summer here but it gets COLD at night, especially coming from NYC.
It gets upper 60s (yup 60s) during the day, but it goes all the way to low 50s at night.
First weekend in Seattle, so what should I do???
I actually knew what I would do this weekend - Cuban sandwich and the doughnut.
While driving to the sandwich place, I found this very unique car - it says full electronic car... One not tiny lady was driving this eye catching RED car in the city. How cute this could get?

Today, the place was not packed, so I was able to grab the table - first time ever to sit down to eat at this place. Isn't it funny that they serve their food on "Chinese-ish" plate? Bread was super crunchy - thanks not to wrap it by the paper or wrap. I think this caramelized (you can see it is brown) onion makes total difference between good sandwich and awesome sandwich.

I needed some time to kill before heading to my NEXT destination so I stopped by at my favorite park right off the highway very close to University of Washington. It felt even cooler than a few months ago when cherry blossoms were in their peak. Not so many flowers but this guy got my eyes. It looks warm, but believe me, I needed scarf today.

Next stop - of course, I needed to have this, even the sandwich was very fulfilling. I could not get two, so I went with this twist today (as you can see black coffee, so I didn't need to feel guilty about having this HUGE doughnut). It was heavenly good. Surprisingly light and even this big guy did not need that much time to disappear.
What is next tomorrow???

Weekend in BH and Flight to Seattle

It was like middle of summer weather this weekend - high 80s without (Saturday)  and with (Sunday) humidity.
Enjoyed the weather by walking around the neighborhood - BH and DUMBO. Our lunch on Saturday was sandwiches from a French bakery in DUMBO - roasted vegetables and tuna salad.
There were so many people in DUMBO area and no place to sit, so we decided to go back to BH - actually sitting at the bench right next to the park where tree shades were perfectly covering us for more than hour.

To buy something sweet for after dinner, we went to a sweet store close to the edge of BH. On the way there, I found this beautiful flower. It should be in season in Japan as well, as it is a typical rainy season flower there - there are a few places famous for this, e.g. a temple in Kamakura.

Sunday was my travel day to Seattle. Sunday afternoon was not good day for travel, but lucky me, I was taking a business class. Decent dinner with some wine - not as good as a family dinner, but not too bad by considering they don't serve any meal or snack at free these days.
You will see more entries about/from Seattle this and after weeks, so stay turned!!
BTW, it is in mid 50s and you need a jacket which I did not bring from NYC.

Korean Town Hang Out

Before leaving the city (I will tell you where I will be in the following entries), I wanted to meet up with my friend B. to catch up. He had some errant in mid-town so we decided to meet at a Korean restaurant on the 35th street at 9 pm. Yup, 9 pm. As I may have had told you before, NYC's night life starts late, but I am so used to have dinner at 7 pm or even earlier than that, so I needed some snack and a nap in the afternoon for this late dinner.

We ordered potato pancakes, rib BBQ, and bean paste cold noodle. I think I have been at this restaurant before, but not sure what I ate at that time. It was just different from what I usually eat at different Korean restaurants, but they were good. I did not that much care about this cold noodle as it was like in soy milk with sesame paste based broth.

We needed some desert, so we walked a few blocks to this frozen yogurt place originally from LA per B. I had mango without any toppings - yup I am not a topping type of guy. It was good to cool down the spicy taste I had in my mouth.
It was fun to be out especially in the weather like this. See you B. later in the summer...

Another Beach Day Weekend

New template, but the same contents, if you have been following this blog. I hope you like this new template.

Our weekend usually starts on Friday evening once I log-out the company's e-mail - it could be at 5 pm or 7 pm depending on the week. This week, it came a bit earlier and we cooked simple dinner - Thai flavored chicken by using the paste bought at a Thai grocery a while back. We stretched the sauce by using a lot of chicken and veggies but the sauce was really HOT, so we wondered what would have happened if we used suggested amount of meats/veggies to cook.
We decided to go to the beach on Saturday even though it was not super clear day when we left the house around 8 am. Stopped by at a Dunkin Doughnut for TWO doughnuts and a large coffee (our tradition). The beach was not as crowded as it was over the memorial weekend, so it was easy to find a great spot to lay down. Variable breeze and limited sunshine was warm enough but we might have needed a light blanket.
Our next destination this time was the Korean town in Flushing Queens, where we can have a great chicken and a Korean grocery to buy something for dinner. Sorry but no picture of the chicken - whole chicken with TWO types of sauces, their original (mild) and spicy kind. Their double fried chicken was very crispy without having that much coating and it was not a difficult task to eat a whole chicken by two people.

After finishing the grocery, including their best Kimchi at H-Mart, we found newly opened Korean (with French name) bakery. We did not need that much bread/sweets, but we ended up buying FIVE pieces including this sweet potato with raisin which became our Sunday breakfast, and some other interesting pastries - pumpkin and strawberry with some sort of cream.
Not fantastic weather for the beach but surely the trip to the Korean town made up for it.

Humid Turned Superb Weather

It has been very humid like REAL summer till this afternoon when a big storm passed. Speaking of summer, first watermelon of the season... We were lazy to cut into the pieces, so we ate from a big wedge directly with knife, fork and spoon. Surprisingly it was very sweet, even though it should not be the peak of the season yet.

Sunday was another slow and lazy day after watching the French Open Tennis on the TV - congratulations to Rafael Nadal. You are the king of the clay.
Another trip for a store to search the perfect sunglasses for Miami trip but no stock there, plus a big storm was anticipated so we did not go too far.
Dinner time - home cooking using the items purchased at Fairway. Takikomi-Gohan, Japanese Mabo-Tofu and other dishes. All came out really good and a lot of left over, someone would love.

Warm but not a Beach Day

It was very warm - 88 degree with high humidity, but we did not go to beach, as the weather forecast said it would be thunderstorms, which did not happen. You can feel the humidity once you get outside.
What we did?
Well... our day was slow, as we had smoked salmon bagel lunch, which we bought at Fairway. Again their smoked salmon was one of the best, and their 50 cents bagel was not too bad either.
Someone is planning to go to Miami in June (yup in June) so we needed to do some shopping, that's what we did - shorts, t-shirt, slip-on shoes... We did not plan to buy that much, but there were so many deals we could not pass.

Dinner was home cooking as usual. We found Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) at Fairway yesterday. I thought it would not be good, as it is off season, but it was good surprisingly. We made Soboro Ankake.
I usually cook fish with Miso paste in the aluminum foil, but this time I tried Japanese traditional Nizakana.(simmered in the soy sauce or Miso based broth). Even though summer vegetables were not in the season, roasted vegetables are always good side dish at our place. Very healthy and yummy dinner...