Thursday, June 01, 2006
We're back from Maine, tanned, relaxed, and full of shellfish. It's amazing how a trip - no matter if it is a mere hour's worth of driving - tricks your brain into thinking you're far away from home, and so how cleaner the air, how bluer the Atlantic, how colder the beer, how tastier the food, so that you must order one lobster at every single meal and not feel even slightly guilty for the indulgence. Vacations put this weird happy smog in your head that makes you think you're full of cash and enough digestive juices to break down the bite after biteful of sweet lobster flesh. I mean lobsters can be had just as easily in Boston, but only on vacation would I ever consider having it for THREE MEALS IN A ROW. It seemed like such a good idea. But though you might not feel that twinge of irresponsibility, your colon will. Your poor, twisted colon will.
I could go down this road further but I think I'll just stop right there.
We totally lucked out on the weather this weekend. You never know what you might get at the end of May in New England, even if summer is technically only a few weeks away. It was supposed to rain on Saturday, the day we set out, but luckily weathermen are idiots and I bet my cats could forecast the weather just as well by reading the patterns they make in their litterbox. After Kitty and Tomcat arrived in Boston, we hustled to Ogunquit and made it there in just over an hour. We checked into the "resort" (really a timeshare of condos) that turned out to be thoughtfully stocked with a huge lobster pot in the kitchen, and was only a 1 minute walk to the action. We walked down the driveway way and across the street, and before we knew it we were looking at ocean.
Later that night we had our dinner out Arrows. FaaAAAaancy. It was dark by the time we got there, otherwise I'd be showing you pictures of me trying to eat the wisteria that were blooming deliciously over the entrance of the farm-house-turned-restaurant. We had a table overlooking the large backyard garden and even in the dark I could make out the bushels of lilacs lining the yard. Wisteria and lilacs drive me WILD. Frothing-at-the-mouth kind of wild. I missed lilac season in Boston when I was down South, but Maine is just far up north enough to be 2 weeks behind schedule, so there were lots of lilacs still in bloom.
The food at Arrows was easily the most expensive I've ever had, anywhere in the world, and logically you would then think it was the best food I've ever had anywhere. It was great food, but I can't say if, considering the price, it was the BEST I've ever had. If you were to graph the price of an entree against its tastiness, I think at the $26 mark, the line on the graph would just plateau. After $26, you could put one more ingredient or one million more ingredients into the entree, and it would probably be just as tasty as if you hadn't at all. Know what I mean? And the starting price for each entree were way over $26...
This was my dish:
Soy lacquered Tai (snapper-like fish) with Thai eggplant, baby bamboo in a grilled shiitake mushroom sauce with a hot and sour lobster broth and daikon dumplings. Accompanying the broth was a quarter-sized dollop of sambal which the waitress told me was made from "like, 50 different spices." The dish was delicious but I'd bet that 3/4 of the price was in that small bowl of broth and that tiny plop of sambal, not the fish.
It is however the little accents like that that I end up remembering most about a dish. Duck and I had dinner once at No.9 Park in Boston two years ago (very highbrow), and the ONLY thing I remember about our entire meal was this shot of tarragon frappe that accompanied my dessert. It was strange and amazing and I can still taste it. The lobster broth and sambal were small but wonderful, so I'll probably be thinking about them long after the main fish.
Sunday was a glooooorious sunny day. A perfect day for long, ankle twisting walks along the rocky beach, a yummy lunch of lobster roll and rum punch by the ocean, then a Booze Cruise along the coast with more rum punch. While we were waiting for our cruise to begin we found out that President Bush the Senior had lunch at the restaurant across the one where we were and we probably just missed seeing him by a few minutes.
The boat ride was nice until I started to feel queasy with 1 hour and 28 minutes to go. The cruise was 1 1/2 hour long.
By this time we had long abandoned our plans of cooking lobsters ourselves. Really, who wants to cook while on vacation? So we didn't. More lobsters for dinner at another oceanside restaurant. Kitty and Tomcat had theirs baked and stuffed, I had mine boiled over a bed of steamers and mussels - and to start with, a really thick and hearty bowl of clam chowder - and Duck was the odd bird out with his bowl of scallops swimming in this bacon and bleu cheese sauce. Oh. My. By the end of this meal we were all clutching our sides crying. Why Lobster why can I not say No to you?
Lobster Four Ways: in a roll, boiled with drawn butter, bisected and stuffed with breadcrumbs and more lobster, as beer
We ended the night with a game of Trivial Pursuit. Boys vs Girls. Obviously the girls won, decidedly. Look at our huge brains, enhanced by lobster tail.
Monday morning Duck made French toast for breakfast. We were all crazed for something uncooked and crunchy. Nonetheless, after Kitty and Tomcat had to leave to catch their train back home, I got another hankering for a lobster roll. After this last indulgence did I finally learned my lesson. That night Duck and I went to the grocery store, bought two ears of corn, boiled them and ate them plain. We couldn't even handle a pat of butter. For dessert, grapefruit. So nice on the digestive system!
The Bush Compound in Kennebunkport
Duck and I stayed for a couple more days. We took a drive to nearby Kennebunkport and without meaning to, meandered by the Bush Compound. It's huge and sprawling and stands on its own peninsula. The Texas flag waves from out front, right next to the Saudi flag. Ha ha.
I took a couple of pictures from across the water and when I got back into the car, Duck told me that while we were snapping photos and idling around, each of us were in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. Do you think?! I said. SO COOL. I suppose that makes sense - but for an ex-President? Oh so ex-President but father of very unpopular, could-really-do-without-him, current President. Yes it does seem plausible. I suppose instead of pulling out a camera I could have pulled out a missile launcher from my purse. Luckily for me I left it at the hotel. I wonder what I look like through a scope?
Perkins Cove at night
Knitting content coming...some day!
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Ogunquit
Thursday, May 25, 2006
 Is it the weekend yet? So close we're so close! For Memorial Day Weekend we're going to Ogunquit ME, and my sweet Kitty and her boyfriend will be joining us from NYC.
Do you know how huge this is? Do you know how many vacations Kitty and I have planned together over the years that ultimately never happened? How many tears I've wept? And do you know how many times it was her fault? (All of them.) I should really start calling her Kitty McFlakesters.
I had put money down that she would back out of this trip (like she did with our most recently defunct plans for Napa Valley this past spring), but to my amazement she has done the complete opposite and already purchased train tickets to Boston. But that's not even the best part! The best part is she put together a Powerpoint presentation of things we'll do. Powerpoint! There were all sorts of matrices and grids and charts. Clearly the girl needs more free time on her hands like I need more sock yarn.
To kick things off, we're having dinner at Arrows the first night. The 2001 issue of Gourmet mag rates it #25 on its list of best restaurants in America. La! But after that we'll be cooking in - the place we're staying has a full kitchen - trying some things we've never cooked before...
Kitty: We will COOK like little MONKEYS.
Me: Maybe I'll bring a big big pot in case. To put live LOBSTERS in.
Kitty: I've never cooked a lobster Cat. I'm scared.
Me: Neither have I!! So we need to look up how before we go. Mm...I may not be able to do it. So cruel. My mom boiled live crabs while I was home and it was sad. Delicious, but sad.
Kitty: I was at the fish store last sunday and there was a girl who worked there who was laughing about a lobster that she poked in the back of the head the way you're supposed to to kill it and it kept MOVING for like HALF an HOUR. She was like, Ha ha ha what a crazy lobster.
Me: Maybe we'll just do clams.
Kitty: Mussels and shimp and clams.
Me: If we can't cook the lobsters though, I'm having trouble picturing the guys being able to. We're all wussies.
Kitty: I think Tomcat would do it. I'll ask him.
Me: I picture us dropping the lobsters and screaming.
Kitty: And them grabbing our faces with their claws (bring the OLD BAY). Latching onto our arms and lips.
Me: ooo la this is going to be GREAT.
Kitty: By the way I can't eat really big shrimp.
Me: Hahah what?
Kitty: Because they're too BUG like.
Me: Hahaha WTF.
Kitty: The BIG ONES.
Me: You're an idiot.
Kitty: You bite into their BIG BUGGY flesh.
Me: BUGGY FLESH you are so stupid.
Please don't rain.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Ogunquit
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Folds in half lengthwise, then in thirds widthwise.
Four 4-inch wide pockets, and four 2-inch wide pockets.
100% cotton fabrics and ribbons on sale at Hancock.
Total price: $3, maybe? Awesome.
Behind the Scenes: Mom prototyping on a piece of newspaper. Everyone wants to help.
Filed Under: Completed Projects
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A couple nights ago I was relaxing on my parents' bed, watching TV and knitting (another) Pomatomus sock, with Mouse the cat alongside keeping me company. Every now and then I'd stop to show her my sock progress and she seemed duly impressed.
"Cool huh, Mouse? Don't you wish you could knit?"
Then I left to go to the bathroom.
"I gave it a whirl while you were gone. Bored now."
I was gone for maybe two minutes.
So disrespectful.
Filed Under: Cats | Socks | Pomatomus
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Left: My grandmother with her children (my mother is the one in the back, head poking out)
Right: My mother as a very fetching 21 year-old
Mom at 27 with her first (and only!) baby.
Duck flew back home last week, and my dad left on business in Uganda the same day, so it's been an girls-only slumber party down here. It's been really nice spending time with my mother. She makes breakfast every morning - bowl of fruit, pastry, a cappuccino - then I work for a few hours, then we go out to a long lunch, or shopping, then we talk about what we're going to have for dinner, then knit while watching Pride & Prejudice (movie version) on DVD.
The past few nights we've been going through boxes and boxes of old photos, all musty and curled from age. My goal is to take a bunch home with me, scan and archive them for prosterity. Those photos don't deserve to waste away like that. While it's been fun to see pictures of me back in the day in various stages of my growing pains - the missing teeth, and the 70's fashion sense, the 80's big hair, the BAD high school graduation photos - it's been much more fun and interesting going through photos of my mother back when she wasn't one yet...photos with her own mother, with schoolmates, and group trips with college friends which included one very smitten and very skinny future husband (haha Dad you were so funny-looking!).
I got a weird little sniffle in my nose and a small burning sensation behind my eyes as I went through all these old photos of my mom. She was so. Beautiful. My mommy!
I just hope she's enjoyed being a mom, to me. I don't think it was always easy, or fun, due to that requisite period when I was a complete and utter snot. But thank god teenagers are not teenagers forever.
Although I wish I could have seen my mom as one. Look how cute she was!
Mom (second from left) in high school.
***
And now...knitting content!
My mom's been making this crochet shell from the Kidsilk Haze I bought her ages ago. She had tried to knit with it first and couldn't understand how I ever managed to produce Butterfly ("So many haaairs! Is so steecky!!"), and declared me the superior knitter. Hee hee! She tried crocheting instead, we picked out a stitch pattern together et voila!
We went to Hancock Fabrics yesterday for fabric and ribbons. She is also making me a needle case. Yay!
 
And I'm making her a summer sweater. The stitch pattern is from my book, and I'm using Hempathy (hemp/cotton/modal blend). It's going to be Orangina and Celia-like, with raglan shaping and small sleeves. I could have done this in one piece, top-down but don't have long enough needles and didn't feel like buying any. She's really excited to get something handknit from me, her little knitting protégée.
Filed Under: Life
Sunday, May 07, 2006
We're having a jolly time here in the South. After a weekend with the parents, Duck and I headed to Savannah for a couple of days, then to Jekyll Island, then to Okefenokee Swamp, and then we got tired of driving around and headed back to Atlanta a few days early. I meant to update here more regularly but am trying to make headway in my very neglected photo album. So far I've only pics up of our trip to Jekyll - take a peek.
This past Friday for Cinqo de Mayo we headed with my high school peeps to some bar in Buckhead for some Mexican food, but all they were serving were drinks. Margaritas all night + no food all night = Tim puking out the car window on the way home. Ha ha ha! This is funny really only to me because in all the years of partying, I have never ever once seen him lose equilibrium even slightly, while he has seen me more than I would like to admit. And always with a gleeful, self-satisfied glint in his eyes. So yes I was rather enjoying myself watching him sick out the front seat, even though the mess came back and splattered my side of the window. I have pictures of this too but you probably don't want to see it.
Happy Cinqo de Mayo!
The night ended with a late late dinner at Waffle House, a greasy sort of joint that you'd only voluntarily step foot in if you were 1) a truck driver, 2) really stoned, 3) really drunk. Hashbrowns smothered in cheese at 1 in the morning never tasted so good.
Ah yes, we are all in - or approaching - our 30's. The fun never ends.
There has been some knitting. Some. Mostly the only person getting any quality play time with yarn is the cat. Mouse loves to play with yarn. And rabbits too. She brought one home the other day, much to my mother's displeasure. She's really sprightly for a middle-aged cat.
"Did you know I crochet too? Claws make for great hooks. As do incisors."
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Atlanta
Monday, May 01, 2006
Our first two days in Atl has so far predominately featured marine life, both the living...
Scenes from the GA Aquarium: School of sting rays, a leafy sea dragon from outerspace, and a whale shark (a fellow Taiwanese!)
...and the not so much...
Cajun-boiled blue crab, salad with mango dressing, linguini with little neck clams and basil, and strawberry shortcake (my contribution, along with the mojitos)
I will eat anything and everything my mom cooks up and ask for thirds. She's probably an odd bird in the world of Asian mothers in that she does not cook very much Chinese cuisine. I have however commissioned her to make five-spice beef noodle soup. But then also her signature chocolate profiteroles for dessert ;)
Tomorrow we're off to Savannah!
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Atlanta
Friday, April 28, 2006
I've started another pair of socks using the other skein of Sundara Yarn I have, in colorway Troubador. Again the colors are super saturated and super shiny, like silk almost. How'd she do that?
And yes I'm on a sock-knitting rampage ;)
Well it appears that this skein of yarn is much less variegated than the one I used for the Spring Anklets (colorway Fern). In fact the color changes aren't quite so random and are more distinct, so much so that I was getting quasi-striping in the toes.
Striping on the sole
Then as I got to the foot, massive external bleeding of the color blue. Gah! I suppose this is what you sock experts out there call pooling?
My initial start of the sock had the blue pooling precisely on needle #1 and only one needle #1, every single round. Couldn't have done that if I had tried.
I ripped it out and tried again, this time casting on at a spot several inches further in, to maybe break up the pooling or at least to have the pooling be distributed on two needles like an instep and a sole. This time I got a diagonally traveling blob of blue, pictured above. Kind of cool.
The original stitch pattern I was going to use to with the variegation didn't work with Troubador, so I switched to the Pomatomus pattern. It looks funky no?
We're flying South tonight. I'll be in Atlanta for nearly three weeks. It's been nearly a decade since I've been home that long. (Oh god really is that true? I'm so old.) But I'm going home with a new attitude, my friends. I'm going to treat my hometown as a tourist attraction. Me the tourist, Atlanta and environs the destination. In reality I don't know anyone who would ever voluntarily pick Atlanta as a vacation spot - it's so corporate and new and flat despite all the Coca-Cola carbonation - but I'm going to overlook that sad fact for this trip. The goal is to see/learn/do/eat/appreciate things I never did before.
I will have to find some yarn stores too.
My mom is a knitter and a fantastic seamstress. Perhaps I'm ready for her to teach me how to sew as well...I want to make a needle case, especially with all the DPN's I've aquired lately. Hm.
Nah, on second thought, I just now searched deep within my soul and am not yet truly ready to learn how to sew. I'll just commission one from her, heh.
Filed Under: Life | Socks
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Spring Anklets
Yarn: Sundara Yarn in Fern, one hank at 185yds with several yards left over.
Size/Needles: 30 stitches instep, 26 stitches sole = 56 stitches on US2
Here before you are my own Spring Anklets, using Sherman Heel and a leaf pattern from my Japanese pattern book. Leaf pattern is obscured by the variegated color which I knew would happen but decided to do it anyway. I had started off using a mini-cable pattern that looks like the stitch from My So-Called Scarf I've seen floating around the internet. It was really flattering with the variegated yarn. The way one stitch stretches and crosses over another made the individual colors pop, but it was a total pain to execute. I think I'm going to try it again though on my next pair, because I'm still rather 'eh' about the way variegated yarns knit up straight.
The yarn was scrumptious though. Colors were shiny and intense and the wool so soft.
I will also take care to really decrease for the ankle area. It's a bit roomy, even though I went down a needles size and did a 2x2 rib. If I decreased the number of stitches as much as 20% it would be nice and tight.
Check out the pretty Sherman toe and heel. No holes!
There was more than enough yarn in the one skein to make a pair of anklets. The colors of the greens in the yarn are the same shade of those of the spring blooms popping up, hence the name. Fresh, vibrant and new.
Today is my and Duck's happy 4th anniversary! As usual we have nothing planned. So romantic!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks
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