Warriors vs. Blazers and a Trip to the Nike Employee Store - Portland, Oregon

Last month, my husband Phil flew to Portland with his friends for a weekend trip. I asked him to take some photos and do a few guest posts for me. Here's the first.

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With a family hookup at the Nike store in Portland, I was able to visit the Nike Employee Store and everything I got was 50% off along with no sales tax.  Here are a few pair of shoes that I got for Ngoc and myself.  Not pictured are the clothes that I bought for us as well as Colin's few pair of shoes.

The total damage after purchasing everything was a bit over 1k.  It was not easy to come back with all the shoes and boxes.  I had to break down the boxes and put the shoes in individual bags.

The whole point of the trip was to travel to another city with friends and watch a Golden State Warriors game in someone else's house.  It's an awesome feeling to rep your team, especially when they're the champs.

My friends and I got into Portland early and randomly walking downtown, we noticed a crowd.  It turns out that the Golden State Warriors were staying at a nearby Hotel.  A few of us stood there for about 20-30 minutes to catch a glimpse of the Warrior players slowly exiting the Hotel.  Here's a photo of Andre Iguodala.  As far as I know, he was the only player to sign any autographs and he only signed two.

Here is a picture of the guys walking towards the Moda Center.

Here is picture from our seats, which was at the very top.  Can't complain about $35 tickets.  I was lucky enough to buy the tickets before they doubled in price.  There were a lot of Warrior fans in the crowd and in fact, a lot of people I met on the trip flew in from the Bay Area just to watch the Warriors like us.  It's hard to see, but there was a lot of blue and gold in the crowd.  I would say at least 30% of the crowd was Warrior fans.  Warriors won and everyone won free Jamba Juice,

What a good night.....

Din Tai Fung - Los Angeles - Guest Post

Hello! Sherry here, bringing you more food reviews and photos. Last weekend I went down to LA and (finally) visited Din Tai Fung, a dumpling house chain from Taiwan. Now, I love dumplings and pretty much grew up eating them (in fact, I have a freezer full of them homemade by my parents in case I start starving at home). There is so much technique and thought put into making a good dumpling -  the perfect dumpling skin, putting together the right ingredients, wrapping them such that the content or juice of the dumpling don't spill out. Din Tai Fung's signature dumpling is my all-time favorite xiao long bao. Flavorful juicy pork (or occasionally other types of meats will be used), a pocketful of juice or "soup", and a thin skin that can hold all of that without being punctured when you pick them up with your chopsticks - that is what makes a good xiao long bao.

This is their menu, which includes nice photos of all their offerings in case you're not sure what you're getting yourself into. Browse closely and you will notice some repeat of photos. 

We started out our meal with this cold dish/salad. I liked this a lot. It was light, simple, slightly vinegary with a kick of spice without overpowering its main ingredients. This was a good start before our "heavier" items arrived. My only comment: a bigger plate for 5 people would be nice. :)

Next came the Shanghai (or would it be Taiwanese?) rice cakes. The texture of the rice cakes were good and there was just the right amount of sauce. Nothing too too special about this, but it was cooked well and definitely tasted yummy. 

First batch of pork + crab dumplings! These were absolutely (do I sound like Gordon Ramsay now?) delicious! The skin was a really thin, yet durable texture that held all of the ingredients inside without any leaks. The filling was a nice balance of pork and crab, and there was just enough "soup" inside, so that it does not feel too "fatty." 

These are their mini pork soup dumplings. There's actually a bowl of soup that comes along with it, but I think you can do without it. Similar to the crab and pork dumplings, these were very flavorful and juicy. Although it was a nice, bite-sized piece, I think I still prefer the regular sized dumplings, similar to the ones in the photo before this. 

Peanut sauce noodles - another simple, yet very tasty dish. I am going to assume these noodles were handmade. I enjoy sauce-type noodles a lot, such as Korean jajangmyun or the Northern Chinese versions. Sometimes the sauce from these types of noodle dish can be overwhelming, but this one at Din Tai Fung was not. There were no other meat or veggies, but I didn't even give that any thought as a nom-ed away at these. 

Pretty!

Of course, we saved room for dessert. Pictured above are two of their dessert dumplings - the taro dumpling and black sesame bao (?), both equally delicious. As you can see, the taro one is wrapped similarly to all their other xiao long baos. I love the way they wrapped this since I've never really liked any type of bao/dumpling that has thick skins. And I love black sesame-anything! Now, if only they can make a black sesame dumpling with the skin of the taro one, that would be perfect... :) 

Overall, I really enjoyed my meal at Din Tai Fung, and look forward to returning during future LA trips. There are definitely a few more items on the menu I want to try. I used to rave all about the xiao long baos ("xlb's") from a number of restaurants in New York, but I have to say the ones here are actually at the top of my list. The NY (i.e. Joe's Shanghai) xlbs definitely contain more soup, but that can be a good or bad thing. Their soup is tasty, but because a good amount of is from the pork fat, it can feel pretty heavy after a few dumplings. I'm sure Din Tai Fung is one of those places some may label "overrated," but I think this is a must-try, especially if you're a dumpling fan like me. Excellent service, decently priced, good portions, and great-tasting food, what more can you ask for?

Giovanni's Shrimp Truck - Hawaii

Before heading to Hawaii, many people around me suggested a visit to a "supposed" famous shrimp truck near North Beach. This shrimp truck is called Giovanni's.

Literally a truck on the side of the road with a lot of markings on it. I wish I had a pen, I would have written "I like boobs."

Closer look at the side of the truck. Surprisingly, no drawn pictures of weiners or boobs to be seen.

Procedure is, you order in the right window and they serve you in the left window. Each side was probably 20-30 people deep.

When we first arrived, we were all the way at the end of the area.

Getting closer to the truck, I start to decide what to have. They have three options, scampi, hot & spicey, & lemon butter. The scampi is considered the "known dish."

After ordering, there was a 20-30 minute wait to get the food, so Sara was messing around with my camera. Random fact, I forgot to pack all my shirts for Hawaii. Hawaii is probably the only place you can get away with 2 t-shirts(I had to buy one to juss mix it up)

Finally!!! The famous garlic shrimp scampi(and I thought scampi meant pasta).

The full plate. This was $13. You get 12 shrimps and two scoops of rice. Each order they take, they make individually so that explains the delay, but the wait is totally worth it. The mixture of garlic, lemon, oil and whatever else they have is perfectly mixed with the shrimp. The sauce also gave the rice a lot of flavor as well.

Overall, this shrimp is awesome. I would definitely recommend a visit to this truck at least once if you go to Hawaii. The flavor of this shrimp is something I'll remember. I would like to say this was the best flavored shrimp I've ever tasted.

I would yelp it a 5 if I wasn't lazy. Yes, there is a long wait, but there's a good reason.

The Shack - Hawaii

Hello all,

Phil again. Back from Hawaii after a nice trip with some HS friends. On the first day to Hawaii, we arrived around noon, but didn't get settled in till close to 3pm. At that time, we were hungry, looking for something to eat, the Hotel Concierge pointed us to "The Shack"

As you can tell, we made it to "The Shack"

Here's the group walking to our seats, we were one of the only people there, but of course we were there at 3pm might play a part in it. We would end up coming back here a few nights later to drink......good times, maybe pics to be posted?

The first of two dishes I ordered. This was their lunch special. Chicken Katsu and Teriyaki beef with two scoops of rice and a scoop of Mac salad for $10. Very good deal quantity-wise, but the chicken katsu was overcooked. The Teriyaki beef was real good though.

I got duped into this shit. Their supposed "famous" curly fries. Their description on their website "A HEAPING HELPING OF OUR FAMOUS CURLY FRIES." I would have preferred Jack in the Box's curly fries. These were dry and had no flavor. It was happy hour so I only had to pay half of $5.25 for this. For those with math problems, that is $2.625 for this appetizers. Yess, pennies can be split.

Anyways, those are the pics from our first meal. No pics of the drinks we had, but we had this tequilla called "hella grosso." Not too shabby at all, I don't have those pics with me though.

I'm glad I wasn't the only girl to bring a camera to the trip, I should have more pics soon.

Love,

Phil

Brownies

Hi all,

This is Phil, Ngoc's lesser unknown half. I have hacked into her account and treating you all to a guest blog! You may know me from such famous blogposts as "the proposal."

Anyways, my friend recently had a Thanksgiving potluck, all the typical Thanksgiving foods were already chosen, so I decided to bake (FYI, I do not bake).


Went to my local grocery store and bought the best looking box cover they had. Turns out it was this Ghiradelli double chocolate. Thank goodness too because the vanilla cream was right next to the brownies....how convenient! I bought the ones with sprinkles too, wanted to give it a little flare.

So with the ingridents of water, oil, and egg, I throw them all into the bowl and at this point, I'm thinkin "this looks pretty darn plain.....fail"

I throw in the brownie mix and start mixing, after 2 minutes, nothing is changing and my hand is getting tired. I got a little out of control and whisked some of the mix out of the bowl.....only if I had a special whisk..................

Now it's starting to look legit! After another 3 minutes, the ingridents finally start to form into stuff that looks like brownies.

After mixing, I start to fill this thing with the brownie mix. I'm thinking "omg, how am I going to feed 10-15 people with this? This looks like nothing!" Then I realized why it looked kinda low....................

I couldn't stop eating the brownie mix!

After 45 minutes in the oven...BAMMMM....I feel like a proud parent who just gave birth.

After letting the brownies settle for a bit, I placed the frosting with sprinkles on half of the brownies. I was trying to be nice. I knew there would be girls at the potluck, so I was thinking for the people on a diet, they can have the side without the frosting.

Now here's the big mistake I made......Don't bake items 7 hours before they're needed. These brownies turned to almost stone-like material by the time I brought them to the potluck. I will say, these brownies were really good, but I had to microwave each piece for a few seconds to re-soften the brownies. I only wish I grabbed a piece of the brownie fresh from the oven. I should've cut the brownie into pieces and grabbed one piece for myself. No one would've noticed anyways.

The moral of my story is......brownie mix is damn good even before it goes in the oven.