Happy Easter!

Easter morning candy treats.

Sue and I had never actually had Cadbury creme eggs before... Thank You Easter Bunny!!! Brawk, brawk!

Brunch at Lola's

Fresh donuts with some strawberry stuff and mascarpone cheese.

I got some sort of egg and yogurt and octopus and greens mixed-up thing. Fairly unique among breakfast/brunch options. A little too much lemon I think... too tart for breakfast.

Rat City Rollergirls!

First time ever seeing roller-derby!

Hot-dog stand in the parking lot. Despite being called "Dante's Inferno Dogs," they didn't actually have any spicy hot dogs... what gives?

The dog was still pretty good though.

The line waiting for the place to open up.

Warm-ups.

Cool blurry action shot.

Introduction of one of the teams (Derby Liberation Front).

More girls whizzing by.



Grabbed a light mini-dinner afterwards at a Mediterranean restaurant in the U-district.

Sue got some weird fruit soda.

Zesto?

Sue and I really like Zesto's in Atlanta. This had made me do a little research into the chain. It used to be a national franchise, but the franchise apparently went out of business and then the remaining privately owned stores kept going on. As a result, they have all evolved slightly differently over the years. I want to try out as many as I can (there are about ten-ish states that have Zesto's still).

Outside. From what I can tell, most still have vaguely similar logos. This one, however, has an espresso bar which you will not find in any Atlanta-area Zestos. The whole thing feels sort of like Darwin's Finches to me... they started off from the same ancestry, but then took different paths.

Milk shake!

Burger and fries.

For dinner that night, we ended up at the Elysian Brewery, which is just a few blocks away from Liz's place.

A form of bangers and mash.

Japanese Food (round 2)

We made a visit to Kisaku, my current favorite sushi joint in Seattle. We had found this many years ago just by accident I think.

Fried shrimp heads from the amaebi.

(Clockwise from top-left) Spider roll, amaebi, salmon, salmon and yellowtail (I think?).

(back to front, L-to-R): Kisaku roll (scallops, aspagus, tobiko, in soy wrapper), spicy tuna roll, tomago, ika/squid, and more yellowtail.

(Clockwise from shiny fish in top left corner): kohada/gizzard shad, sockeye salmon, red abalone, amaebi, futomaki, uni/sea urchin ovaries.

(L-to-R): aji/spanish mackerel (I think), tuna, and I forget.

Dessert 1.

Dessert 2.

Dessert 3.

Crystal Mountain, Hot Pot

Sue's team had a group trip to go skiing, and I got to tag along.

The uber-expensive Starbucks brand coffee makers at Microsoft.

We got some serious snow in the afternoon to the point of it being almost white-out conditions. It got hard to see the terrain at times, but I liked it quite a bit! Sue was less happy with not being able to see where you're going.

For dinner, we went to an old favorite: Old Szechaun where they have all-you-can-eat hot-pot (including all-you-can-eat pot stickers as well). Soup is divided into regular and szechuan death (I think they actually turned the heat down as it wasn't nearly as spicy as I had remembered).

Pile o' meat!

Pot-stickers, tripe and more meat. The hot-pot also came with this funky peanut sauce that I don't recall ever having had with hot-pot (it's that bowl of yellowish stuff in the top left corner of the photo).

Japanese Food (round 1)

There used to be the best teriyaki place near where we lived downtown, but it sadly closed down and has been replaced by a nail salon.

I just tried this random place for lunch. Hard to say no to a place called "Teriyaki Madness."

Teriyaki bowl. Somewhat disappointing. Not enough "char" flavor and the sauce was too sweet.

For dinner, we ended up back near where we used to live and stopped in a Koji Osakaya where we used to visit a bit. We liked this place because they have a decent non-sushi menu.

Pork-bone ramen. Not shown, but we also ordered some oyako don, some sashimi, and I think one other rice bowl.

Cherry blossoms.

Happy St. Pat's!

We dropped by our friends Marion and Paul's place on the evening of St. Pat's. We picked up some corned beef and cabbage at this Irish restaurant.

Probably one of the stranger combinations... Irish + Cajun? I guess that has you covered for two of the bigger drinking holidays (the other of course being Mardi Gras). Not as weird as the Irish+Chinese restaurant that was around when we were growing up called "McWang's" (I kid you not).

Post dinner bubble tea stop. I actually got a durian smoothie instead of tea.

Steven's Pass

We used to go to Steven's Pass a lot when we lived in Seattle. We went back several times this trip since Liz has a season pass there.

Sue taking a rest along the side of the terrain park.

Random lunch-time shot of everyone looking in different directions.

Me and Sue.

I don't think Jeff Foxworthy is 96% fat free, nor is he big nor tender. Not surprisingly, the jerky was only so-so.

Had dinner at a Thai restaurant.

I got a whole deep-fried fish (I think it was trout). It was a little over-fried.

Desserts. Black rice pudding of some sort, and coconut milk and sago/tapioca.

Spring Break in Seattle

Sue had to head back to Microsoft for a week, and since it was during my spring break, I decided to tag along. We stayed at our friend's Liz's apartment.

Aerial view of dinner preparations.

Super-speedy Liz!

Sue with her dinner. We made some gnocchi.

Bawang!

I bought these back in August when we went to Seattle... I finally cracked the bag open. I had no idea what would be inside here, except that I expected it to be garlicy in flavor. The full text reads "Boy Bawang/Cornick/Garlic Flavor." I couldn't say no to the punching cartoon head of garlic. It turned out to be like corn nuts, but smaller, and coated in some sort of salty garlic powder. Sue said it was pretty powerful based on how my breath smelled... so it must have been potent. (It was pretty good, though)

Post-Cruise

After the end of the cruise, many of us went to my Aunt's place over in Bellevue for lunch. Before eating, we had to go out and procure some foodstuffs...

Very good price for dungeness crabs. I wish I had known of this shop when I lived in Seattle. (For comparison, the crabs at the fancier Asian supermarket Uwajimaya were selling for $5.99 per pound.)

Tank of abalone... these are expensive! (we didn't get any.)

Oyster shucking (dis)assembly line.

Ready to go!

My aunt makes this great dish where you take spot prawns, stick 'em in ice and booze, basically freeze and poison the shrimp with the alcohol, and them eat 'em raw.

The booze for the prawns.

The victims in ice and booze. Technically, most of the prawns are actually still alive (but barely since they'd be severely alcohol poisoned) when you eat them. You basically just use your hands to tear their heads off, peel the shell off their backs, dip them in some soy sauce and wasabi, and then it's good eats! Probably not good for the squeamish eaters out there.

Otoro sashimi, very thickly cut.

Table shot. Clockwise from top left: steamed spot prawns, sashimi plate, pork and mustard greens (for cold noodles), and the previously shown otoro sashimi.

Nat's first raw oyster ("tastes like ocean").

On the Sunday that we left, Sue, my brother and I visited Pike Place Market.

Nat ordering a taro flavored bubble milk tea.

In an Italian market, Nat found some kind of bitter-orange San Pelligrino that he had had some variety of in Italy. So he snagged two bottles.