The big apple

I went on a quick trip to NYC this week for a few client meetings

Good:
- Beautiful blue skys between the buildings
- Fantastic meal at Brasso 56 (I had the artichoke gnocchi special & gelato)

Bad:
- Hot temperatures 80'ish degrees at night, 90'ish degrees in my hotel room
- Hotel Dylan's A/C wasn't working
- I was forced to keep my hotel windows open and the hotel ventalation fans were located conveniently outside of my window.
- Presentation I was working on in my sweaty room crashed after I had finished it the first time.

Results:
- Two nights of 4 hours of sleep.
- Full stomach, and a couple good meetings.

Crab with a BIG C!

My Aunt Daisy and PoPo visited from Portland over Memorial Day weekend and requested a meal of King Crab. "But you can get crab in Portland!" you say? Yes, true, but to eat King Crab, you need a lot of people around to share in the goodness. How can you possibly eat 6 pounds of crab yourself?

So off we shuttle to Mission 261 after a (unsuccessful) day of outlet shopping. There were two weddings that night at the restaurant, but we walked quickly past the bride and groom's cheesy glamour photos to get to our table.

I waited impatiently for the crab to arrive. The appetizer plate came out, and while I'm usually one to hog the jellyfish, I didn't want to waste stomach space on those tiny sea creatures when their meaty cousin was coming out soon! The shrimp balls were enticing too, and I ended up cramming two in my mouth, but still - I was waiting for the main entree to arrive. I was nonchalant about the ensuing Fish Maw Soup and Abalone too (and got reprimanded for my indifference with the abalone) becuase dang it - I want crab.

And then, out comes Crab. Yes folks, this is no ordinary crab. It's so big it deserves the capital C. 6 pounds of Crab was steamed atop egg whites. Sounds weird, but OH SO GOOD. The meat was fresh, tender, meaty and mildly sweet. (I was surprised by the sweetness becuase really, crabs are spiders-in-the-sea and who thinks of spiders as sweet?) The egg whites too were fantastic: light, silky, with a slight taste of the sea. T-A-S-T-Y. I'd take one slurp of the egg whites, smile, and then go back to digging out Crab meat from the little nooks and crannies of the bones.

I wondered - how else do you usually serve Crab? Steamed with Egg Whites was a new one for me. With King Crab, it's usually steamed, sitting cold in a buffet line next to a plate of lemons and a bowl of cocktail sauce or butter. There's probably other ways to eat it too right?

The rest of the meal went by in a blur. I'm already thinking when's the next time we should have Crab? Seattle probably has better (fresher?) Crab since the city is closer to Alaska that LA is, right? I need to find a good chinese restaurant up there that serves this stuff. Put that on my list of "to-do's".

On a side note: the picture of the Crab makes it look teensy!

Indy-mania!

Today at work we celebrated the launch of the Indiana Jones "Summer of Adventure" campaign on Expedia. What better way to celebrate than going to the local theater and watching the movie?

With a Coke and popcorn in hand we chomped and watched the flick. Overall I give it a B+ . A bit too cheesy at points than I remember the previous Indy films, and the ending was nothing short of bizarre. However, it's a great movie to go with your family. Lots of kid oriented jokes (when you see the gofers you'll know what I mean).

I have to say, my favorite part was the spoof video the team created using the Last Crusade footage. Let's just say their was a Gnome and a Yellow suitcase, and the Yellow suitcase won. Hooray for the good-guys!

Strawberries!

We woke up bright and early on Saturday to drive out to Oxnard for the annual Strawberry Festival. We got delayed eating breakfast and sitting in traffic, and finally made it there by about 11:30. Despite the record-setting hot weather, we fought our way through the crowds to try Strawberry Nachos (basically churro-y chips with strawberries on top), Strawberry Smoothies, Strawberry Beer, build-your-own Strawberry Shortcake and grilled chicken. That last item was my dad's choice.

I know Seattle has great cherries, but SoCal has great strawberries! Boy, I'm going to miss them strawberries next summer!

Labor Day Weekend Plans

My good friend Diana, from work, has already reserved Labor Day weekend to come up and visit us. I'm excited - they will be our first visitors after I move up! Diana's birthday will be that weekend, so we're going to have to figure out a fun restaurant to go to. Any suggestions out there?

This also means that I started looking up public transportation choices, in case Scott and I are off to work and can't leave her a car to use. The good news is we have a bus stop about a block away so it'll be easy to hop on and get to downtown. The bad news is it takes about 30 minutes - much longer than I had thought since we're only a few miles from downtown. Cost: $1.75.

Useful links:
- Bus Routes
- "Free Ride" area map of downtown Seattle
- Trip Planner

Anyone else - if you want to come up, reserve your weekend now! =P

B-school woes

Weekend 1 down, 6 more to go until I finish my MBA from Pepperdine! These weekend courses are brutal, first it's a pain to fly to LA for class and second it's 13 hours of back to back strategy discussion. Overall the content is interesting, but it is moving pretty slow... one of those "everyone needs to put in their random 2 cents" type of class.

Good news, it looks like we have a pretty good team for our simulation project, the majority of which are hard workers (we have 6 folks on the team, so there is room for the inevitable slack).

Bite by bite

I flew in Friday night, and while Scott had to battle rush hour traffic to get me at the airport, it meant that by the time we drove back up, we were in prime happy hour time! So we parked (found a free spot on the street. yay!) and mosied around downtown. Pike's Market looked so sad and deserted with all the shops closed up, but as we were wandering around, we spied Maximilien's. $2.50 Moules and $4 beer/wine you say? Sign us up! Overall verdict: nice patio/view + cheap (albeit not the best) happy hour means we'll be back!

Then we walked over to Union, a 'small-bites' restaurant I've been wanting to try. Side rant: What's with every restaurant cashing in on the small plates craze? Unless it really IS small tapas-sized plates... enough already! Union's plates are not small, but one isn't going to fill you up, but two is sufficient. So... isn't that just considered appetizer and entree? Why don't you just call it that?! anyway.... Service was fantastic, wine list small but interesting, and my fluke was to-die-for. The fish was soft and flaky (a flaky fluke!), but each bite was intense with flavor - mostly lime and cilantro. It reminded me of ceviche and thai food and summer time all at once. Quite tasty!