Wednesday, August 14, 2013

what a gorgeous day!! august has been like september so far, and it's been amazing... my favorite kind of weather today - breezy, cool, dry and just plain gorgeous out. we couldn't help but jump on our bike and take a little excursion since i hadn't been going far outside the neighborhood lately.

we went over the bridge to chinatown, walked around, popped in and out of weird shops with mysterious animal parts cooked in awesome sauces, stopped at bakeries to stock up on our favorite cheap chinese desserts, then ended up at cutting board again. this time m ordered spaghetti with meat sauce (bolognese like but with more veggies and a sunnyside up on top!), AND an appetizer plate of spare ribs - and i tried their omurice with beef curry. the spare ribs were amazing - the meat fell off the bones, they were cooked tender and sauce was right on the spot as well. the pasta was cooked perfectly  like last time, maybe a teeny bit past al dente, and the meat sauce was tangy and meaty and all that's good. the curry omurice was interesting - the "rice" part in omurice is usually some kind of tomato-based fried rice like this, but this was just simply rice fried in butter, i think. so the flavor was a little bland, with the curry not really giving much of a high-note flavor or any kind of punch this kind of needed. we tried the meat sauce from the pasta on the omurice and it was actually perfect (which i would've gotten with the omurice had it not been for the meat sauce pasta we'd already ordered). so next time we'll know! 

 then after we walked off the fullness of the dinner, we walked around the eastern chinatown (my favorite) under the bridge, and looped back around for some dessert at a new dessert joint, indessert.
we got green tea shaved ice - shaved ice topped with green tea ice cream, red beans, mochi, and grass jelly, sprinkled with condensed milk and honey. it was really yummy except for the goopy mochi.
next time i'll try the tropical fruit shaved ice here now that i know they use real fruit!

one of the bakeries we stopped by was called audrey bakery, with a big grand opening sign. i popped in their to pick up this twisty donut, which the girl with the tray (somehow chinese bakeries have this now where you can't pick up baked goods yourself, they come with a tray and help you get the goods to the register) nicely shoved into this little waxed paper bag. even the cashier girl was stunned at this, the girl who did it was just shrugging, and i thought it was so funny. so chinatown!
what a great day.