I really didn’t like eggplant much as a kid.  I mean, come on!  A purple vegetable?  Gross!  That being said, I think a good part of my dislike of eggplant was the fact that I had only had poorly cooked, tough-skinned, American eggplant.  You know, the big, fat, bulbous, so-dark-the-purple’s-almost-black kind.  As I grew older, [...] Read Full Story

Cindy is the eldest cousin on my dad’s side.  She and Tom recently got married at Berkeley Gardens, and, as I said in my last entry, my father and my brother both flew out from the East Coast to join in the celebrations (unfortunately, baby bro just started high school, and so he and my [...] Read Full Story

My cousin, Cindy, got married last month (August 30, 2009!), to a wonderfully tall British boy named Tom.  To celebrate their wedding, my father and my brother flew out to California from Maryland the prior Friday. I went to pick them up, then took them to dinner with my friend, Lisa.  We went to the Inner [...] Read Full Story

Korean food is possibly one of the healthiest cuisines I know (with the exception of the fatty pork, sam keup sal, and other assorted barbecues).  But the regular dishes that are eaten by Koreans on a normal basis – kimchi being a staple side dish- are usually vegetables.  And the vegetables are usually pickled (the [...] Read Full Story

I love eating mung bean soup in the summer.  It’s cold, slightly sweet, and a little bit grainy.  I know most people don’t really jump at the sound of a bean soup as dessert, but I love mung bean soup. People drink this soup to lower their body’s “heat,” thus it’s an ideal soup to drink [...] Read Full Story

Korean barbecue has a dear place in my heart.  I may not be Korean, but whenever my family has a barbecue in the summer, instead of the traditional burgers and hot dogs, we inevitably have kalbi and bulgogi (Korean beef ribs and thinly-sliced beef pieces respectively).  I mean, we generally have homemade potato salad, sometimes [...] Read Full Story

I actually didn’t cook all that much when I was in Irvine.  I spent most of my day at work, and by the time I got back from work I was too pooped to make anything other than my regular stuff.  Plus it’s super hard to cook for one and not cook too much.  The [...] Read Full Story

On Father’s Day, June 21, 2009, while I was out for a run and minutes before I was planning to call home to wish my father a Happy Father’s Day, I received a call from my mother, who seemed distraught. “I have bad news, Jeanne.”  I stopped cold.  It was not good news.  It never is. My [...] Read Full Story

This was actually the second time I went to Habana, a restaurant featuring classy Cuban food which is located in The LAB, an “anti-mall” located in Costa Mesa.  My first time wandering into this hip little center was when my friend Priscilla and I went to dinner together after work.  I don’t remember what we [...] Read Full Story

My friend Sara came to visit a couple weeks ago (for her friend’s wedding, I believe), and I headed over to her friends’ place to have lunch.  Her friends Cathy and Janie took us to Alhambra to eat at a restaurant called Tasty Garden.  It was quite tasty. The above dish was sauteed fish and vegetables. I don’t recall the actual name of the dish anymore, but most of the time Chinese dishes tend to be pretty descriptively named and not too whimsical. This was shiitake mushro... Read Full Story