I met Santa Clause

I went to Jin's Patisserie to get some macaroons for some friends for Christmas. I got there right when they opened. There was another customer there with me. He was very Venice looking. Dressed pretty grungy with long curly grey hair and a santa belly. He was buying many boxes of their delicious french chocolates. We had a short conversation about the chocolates and how I never had them. He ended handing me a whole box and said Merry Christmas! A 25 dollar box of chocolate. Who does that?

So I wanted to wish my Santa Clause a happy new year and many blessings for 2010. Time to pay it forward.
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First LA Birthday Celebration!

In the words of Sai: "you are only 28 +2 days"

First I want to thank everyone for a really wonderful birthday. I love birthdays. Everyone should look forward to birthdays. As selfish as it sounds, with all the craziness in every day life, it's so nice to have people pamper you on your birthday. It's just one day out of the year where you are the star of your life. I got so many packages in the mail throughout the week from friends back east and a weekend full of fun fun and more fun. So thank you thank you thank you.

The weekend started off with a nice dinner in ktown of shabu shabu with some of my new small group friends. We celebrated December Birthdays. It was great food, great company, and great conversation. Then we ended the night with a little bit of rockband!

I was a rockstar on my birthday! Presenting...the Chive5!

Then on saturday evening HY, Annie, Linn, and Insun took my to dinner at the Yard near the promenade. I chose this restaurant because it's walking distance and Top Chef contestant CJ is the chef! Yum. But, if you're hungry don't go here. I suggest going for happy hour only.

Thanks for spending time with me!

I wore my boots with thick socks thinking it would be chilly. Turned out it was 70 degrees and I thought I was going to faint from all the heat building up in my body. I was forced to take off my shoes and socks in the restaurant.

Then us 4 girls headed over to the Terrace Theater in Long beach to watch the Nutcracker!

The little angel kiddies were SO cute. The flying big angels were SO freaky.

I chose to watch this Nutcracker because Ade, Melissa, and Jason from SYTYCD were in the ballet! So exciting. They were really good. This is the only good shot of one of the SYTYCD stars Ade.

Then we headed over to Gaam in ktown. Gaam...Our LA ARA.

With my Virginia family right here in LA.

My OC hotties who came all the way to ktown to celebrate with me.

Thanks everyone for making my first birthday in LA a memorable one! See you on your special day!

HELLO TWENY NINE

Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday Dear Me. Happy Birthday to Me.

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Sungsill's message. Probably her balcony.

Jungeun's house

Mari's house

Rebecca's house

I was so happy in my delirious state with a big smile on my face. Thinking about snow on my birthday and how it made me so happy. Then I looked out my window and it was 70 degrees. POOP!

But I can't be sad on my birthday. Especially when you hear this!

(More people sent singing VMs but this was the first one. Thanks for your beautiful voices. kaka)

And I got to read THIS from my old roomie and dear friend Annie.

Last night a few friends bbmed me pictures of the start of the blizzard in VA. I was having a wonderful birthday dinner with small group people, where many are from VA and passed around the pictures. Everyone was so excited.

Miriam going somewhere

Mari's front yard. I have parked in that spot so many times

So waking up this morning to awesome snow pictures and then being so disappointed at the sunny weather I almost got up and went to big bear to see snow and go tubing. I was 99% ready to just get in the car and go. But then Hye Young called. She said we need to go to the beautiful beach in Malibu instead. Ok FINNEEE.

Happy Birthday to Me again!

Thank you all for the best wishes! I love you so much!

GOODBYE TWENTY EIGHT

age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number age is just a number

Today is my last day being 28 years old according to the western calendar.  Since my birthday is so close to new years it has always represented a closing of one chapter and opening of another.  A year older and a new year.  I've had a big transition in my life.  And I thought it appropriate to reflect on this past year. 

28 Most Memorable Moments of being 28

1.  Of course I have to start off with my 28th birthday party.  It was my last birthday living in Nova and it was probably the most memorable one.  After a great dinner at heebeen we went off to ARA, annandale's very own korean cheers, where you will always see your "sam, woody, and norm." The next day the girls surprised me by taking me to Dr. Fish for a pedicure. Yes, Dr. Fish.  I think it is so memorable because it was the first time I was ever surprised. 
2.  I did it!  PRK!  (painful corrective eye surgery).  Poor Dina stayed with me while I was drugged out in bed in the most physical pain I think I've ever had in my life.  (But who actually remembers physical pain.) 
3.  Obama's Inaguration!  Right smack in the middle of DC.  Peace Love and Happiness

4.  I've had so many goodbye parties my friends tell me they will never throw me one again.  But sure enough, they did and this was one of the craziest at John's MTV cribs. 
5.   HELLO LOS ANGELES!  Dragging my huge suitcases up the stairs at Oakwood apts in Marina Del Rey to check in for my month long temporary stay.  It was the Italy train station stairs all over again.  Blah!
6.  Driving around LA half blind because of my PRK.  It's amazing how helpless you feel when you lose one of your senses. 
7. Having total painful indigestion problems from who knows what
8.  Living with Annie and Linn for 5 months.  Always coming home to a clean house and dinner on the table.
9.  Miriam's Bachelorette in Las Vegas and still being sick and Jisun trying to "sohn ddah" and slapping my back.  Hahahaha. Have to laugh at that
10.  Miriam's outrageously fun wedding back in Virginia.  Who knew JMU and Tech could get along.

11.  BBQs at Kevin's house and trying on military gear
12.  Annie's beautiful wedding in Hawaii

13.  Seeing an errupting volcano

14.  Swimming with dolphins in the open water

15.   Taking Sora to the dog beaches many times and watching him have so much fun.  And him trying to fight coyotes and then running away.

16.  Kim Gun Mo concert where I saw mom go crazy

17.  First awesome bonfire at hungtington beach which Mike invited us to

18.  All those fun trips to San Diego visiting Susan and Dorothy and SORA of course

19.  First trip to Disneyland as an adult with Dina. Oh those caramel apples

20.  Sharon getting married

21.  Bike riding at venice beach

22.  Sailing at the Marina with Jackie

23.  My mom buying 1000 polos in Fashion District just because she's a korean ajuma that can't help buying "sale" things

24.  Michael Jackson Karaoke night with HY, Ruth, and Brian

25.  Gtown cupcakes at my front door

26.  Spectrum with HY stalking JMU guy

27.  Enormous amount of visitors!  Mari, Lisette, Sungsill, Dina, Michi, Miriam, Jun, Jungeun, Newt, John

28.  And the most memorable for this year is...the crazy talks, venting sessions, brunchcapades, and church hopping with Hye Young.

So thanks for a great year twenty eight.  Goodbye forever. 

2nd December Visitor

Yup...2nd weekend in December = 2nd visitor.  John came to visit this weekend.  Downside, it rained all weekend.  Our tourist accomplishments: the palm tree outside Jean's balcony.  Sean also sort of visited.  Since John was here, he crashed with us all weekend too. 

But look what we DID accomplish!  Well, me and sean accomplished. 

We took a nice stroll through ktown plaza and then gallaria since there was nothing else to really do.  At gallaria these college art students were selling some crafts.  One girl was giving clay lessons for 5 bucks!  So of course...I sat down and made something!  I made John and Sean sit next to me and wait the whole time.  Oops...sorry.  But I freakin' had a blast.  Didn't even know they were there.  Hahaha.  Best moment of the whole clay session was this conversation with my college student teacher:

College Student: "So are you in High School or College?"

Need I say more?! 

In ktown plaza Sean found a gundam Toy.  Hahahaha.  He had to buy it and make it. 

This is how we played with our new friends:

This is what John accomplished.  Threw everything into my room to prepare for the arrival of my new roomie.  I just watched.  Thanks for your labor Johnnie.

And yes their stay was paid for by vacuuming the whole apartment!  Cause well...we all know no one can vacuum better than John.

Even though we did absolutely nothing, I had so much fun. Thanks for visiting!  Another re-union to come in March.

J&N's first visit to the Golden State

It's interesting why California is called the Golden State.  You would think it should be the Sunshine State. But that's Florida.  Florida should be the hurricane state.  I'm assuming it's called the golden state because of the gold rush in the 1800s.  But in modern day society, the only thing I can associate to California and Golden is the golden gate bridge in SF.  Anyways...i digress.

J&N came to visit the first weekend of December.  This post is a little late.  It was good seeing old friends as always.  I took my first ride along Venice beach and my first visit to Zuma beach in Malibu with them.  Thanks for visiting!  I wish you could have stayed longer.  They even cleaned up my living room very nicely, just in time for John's visit.  Warning: If you visit your payment is made in cleaning.

Momofuku in Santa Monica?

source

I love when Michi sends me emails of stuff she will know I would want.  Today's finding...MOMOFUKU COOKBOOK! NICE.  Thank you!  Since Momofuku is no longer near me, I will have to bring it to my own kitchen!  I will have to decide if this is a necessity or not.  Kekeke.

*EDIT: Dina just called frantically (sort of frantically).  She already got me the momofuku book a month ago! Now she is trying to get it autographed.  KEKEKEKE. YAHOO!  Thanks dinals.  Wow someone actually reads my blog!  other than Michi that is.  This actually reminds me of standing inside the momofuku bakery with Dorcas with David Chang standing 10 feet away from me. Dorcas and I were plotting how to make him my husband for about 15 minutes. Outcome: Just walked out the door.

*Edit #2: Yes michi - you have redeemed yourself from the last momofuku scandal.  What was the atrocious email sent to me by Michi?  An article entitled NEW MOMOFUKU something something something.  Of course I instantly assumed Momofuku was opening in LA!  I almost did a layout double twist from my office cubicle.  Until I dove into the article.  New lunch specials at momofuku.  My layout double twist turned into a flop on my bottom with a disgruntled reply back to Michi.

Georgetown in Los Angeles

Last week Miriam told me she was sending Hye Young and I a surprise!  Hmm...wonder what it could be.

Then she said "it's perishable." And then DING DING DING...GEORGETOWN CUPCAKES?!?!?!

She said no. But I just had this feeling.  What else could it have been? A cheesecake? Omaha steaks?  A giant fortune cookie? (har har.) 

On thursday Miriam said it looks like my package arrived!  Me and HY rushed to my apt to see our package.  We had this great plan to video tape our reaction to our gift. If it was gtown cupcakes like we guessed, we would send her the video.  We even had a plan to cover the package and not read the box so we can go inside and get my camera.  But...there was no package. We were really sad and walked away with our heads hung low. 

Finally...the package arrived on Friday!  But HY went to SD so we couldn't open it together. But Guess what it was?! YUP!  GEORGETOWN CUPCAKES!  O M G!!!!

I don't know when the cupcake craze started.  But there was sprinkles in LA. And magnolia in NYC.  And then cupcake shops were popping up everywhere. THEN we got georgetown cupcakes! I remember when it first opened I was SO excited.  I can't remember who I ventured there with first.  It was with someone who was visiting me in DC.  After that, we were all crazy about gtown cupcakes.  My favorite is strawberry banana and then Red Velvet. But really, ALL their cupcakes are good.  Why gtown? I hate buttercream frosting.  It's really nasty.  I think I hate it because I took cake decorating with Rebecca and we had to make so much buttercream. The ingredients are pretty unappetizing.  I never ever ate it. But georgetown's frosting is just so good.  They have many different flavored icings.  Out of the 20 or so cupcake shops I've tried, gtown is STILL my favorite. Hands Down!!

My cupcake adventures actually started with Miriam.  In Winter of '05/'06 Miriam made me walk about 50 blocks and wait in line for an hour in NEGATIVE 20 degree weather for Magnolia cupcakes.  WOW - am I a good friend or what?  I had Magnolia before, but I never waited in line for them.  See Miriam with the cupcakes?  (Wow...this was 4 years ago!  you can totally tell by how young miriam looks.  Where has your youth gone? haha jk.)  We were frozen solid that we just ran into any restaurant and ate a super expensive dinner because we were so cold we couldn't go outside again.  But it was OK cause James paid.  =P  AND Miriam and Gtown cupcakes definitely go hand in hand. When Miriam and Jun started dating, Jun would go to gtown at least once a week and buy her a big box of cupcakes. And yes she ALWAYS shared! So I got to have a cupcake every week without even going to gtown. Sometimes twice a week. keke.

The long awaited gtown cupcakes!  HELLO OLD FRIEND!

Isn't the box SO pretty!?  I'm definitely doing something with this.  (Now HY will see this pretty box that I secretly KEPT!)

This box is also so pretty.  Another great storage container. (Sorry HY.  KEKEKE..do you want the box?)

A very sweet note from Miriam.  Written by some gtown cupcake employee with bad handwriting.  Miriam has beautiful hand writing.  This is definitely not written by her. haha.

AND...THE CUPCAKES! OOO THE CUPCAKES!  There is chocolate peppermint, gingerbread, red velvet, and vanilla snowball (cocunut).  I only ate half of a gingerbread cupcake so far.  It's so sweet that I can't finish a whole one in one sitting.  I put 4 in the freezer and gave the rest to Hye young.  Gtown says you can freeze it. Then defrost it for 3 hours before eating. But do not refrigerate.  I think I will try a chocolate peppermint today.  Man I will be staring at a melting cupcake for 3 hours.

THANK YOU SO MUCH MIRIAM!  This was a great surprised! Sorry we ruined it by asking if it was gtown cupcakes every 10 minutes.  =P

Dogtown Dogs

I took jungeun and newt to get some Kogi tacos and the dogtown truck was also at the Brigg. So I passed on Kogi and tried it. I got the california dog with avocado, tomatoes, and onions with some yummy aoioli. It was pretty good. Not menoush or Grey's Papaya, but better than Pink's. I would give this a Levi's rating!
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Los Angeles = Food Truck Capital of the world

There has been a huge food truck epidemic in LA. There is a new food truck grand opening every other week. It makes me think about all those business classes I took studying when to enter an industry. Should you be the first or the last? The innovator or the follower? Who will make the biggest bang? We’ll see in the next year or so who is still around. The first thought that crosses my mind when I think of food truck/cart/vendor, essentially street food is cheap eats, but these LA food trucks don’t come cheap. They are not like those $2 hot dogs and knishes in NYC. Sometimes it’s worth whipping out the big bills in your wallet, and some are not even worth a George Washington. Here’s why…




I picked Dina up from the LAX and went straight to the Brigg in Venice to show off our “LA food trucks” to the crazy new yorker who loves Halal carts and the famous dessert truck. Kogi wasn’t there and she was quite dissapointed. We had to make due with the others there that night. For me this was great, I was excited to try new food trucks.

Frysmith

It was Frysmith’s grand opening and we got a red balloon as a parting gift. Frysmith has a selection of fries topped with scrumptious ethnic soul foods. They were actually closing up, but were nice enough to keep the grill going and serve us some food. We were starved so we picked the Rajas Fries because it had steak on top of it. As Rachel would say, it was YUM-O. And that’s saying a lot since there was cilantro all mixed in which is my least favorite herb. The portion is ginormous. Between the two of us, we ate 1/5th of it. But we were also saving our stomach for more delicious trucks. Next time I’m going to try the kimchi fries and the chicken sweet potato! Thank you Frysmith! I will definitely be looking for you again.

Flying Pig


I was SO excited, jumping for joy, yelling my yippees when I saw that they had a pork bun on the menu! Just like momofuku, my all time must eat when I venture off to NYC. We ordered one pork bun and one pork taco. We had to get a taco since Kogi wasn’t there. My review…I’m so sorry Flying Pig with your cute pink truck, but N-A-S-T-Y! I can’t not think of a better word to describe it! I SPIT IT OUT. BOTH of them. Need I say more? The hoison sauce on the pork bun was really potent. It was like I was pouring imitation hoison sauce in my mouth. I can’t even remember what the taco tasted like. I may give them another try one of these days. Maybe they had a bad night. Maybe the person cooking just got in a fight with their spouse. I hope this was only a one time incident of having to spit out my food.

Get Shaved


After spitting out Flying Pig, we turned the corner and OH MY! SHAVE ICE! AND you can add the azuki beans AND the ice cream. AND they even had the snowcap! I was so excited. I wanted to be back in Hawaii again. I told Dina we HAD to get one even if we didn’t want to eat it, which we didn’t. We were disappointed. The snow cap (condensed milk) tasted a little off. It was either not sweet enough or too sweet. Something was just different about it. The fruit flavored syrups were too sweet and artificial tasting. I took one bite while in Venice. Then I carried it all the way home because I just couldn’t let go of the thought of shave ice. It ended up sitting in my sink overnight and then into the garbage. Very disappointed. VERY. There were many people around the truck enjoying their shave ice though. I could think it’s just me, but both of us did not enjoy it. It also irked me a tad bit that they call it shaved ice and not shave ice.

In the end, Frysmith was our only great find that night. One out of three is not bad. There are still so many trucks to hunt down! Here’s my list:




Nom Nom truck

Vietnemese Banhmi

Because anything on good French bread is worth eating



Buttermilk Truck

Breakfast

Because I love breakfast and biscuits



Marked5

Japanese Burgers

I want to know what meat on rice crackers tastes like. And it was one of the first trucks like Kogi.



Fish Lips

Sushi

Because I need to find out how sushi can be served from a truck



Asian Soul Kitchen Truck

I don’t so much want the food, but I want to see how they serve it. It looks like restaurant food from the website



The Sweets Truck

Desserts

I don’t care to look for this truck, but I want to do it in memory of SS and HY for their unfathomable love of this stuff



In San Francisco:

Waffle Mania Truck

Crème Brulee Cart



In NYC:

Chicken and rice: Can you believe out of all those crazy nights in NYC, I never went to the chicken and rice man? I was so obsessed with Grey’s Papaya I couldn’t go to the dirty man!

Pommes Frittes: And everytime I was in the village and would say I want pommes frittes, I would pick falafels instead.



So after having all those with dina, dosa truck with susan, and kogi multiple times…my favorites, in this order, are…



DC’s Manoush!!! what happened to you Manoush? You left us high and dry.

NYC peanuts!

NYC knish with lots of mustard. reminds me of my childhood

Kogi!

Frysmith

Everything else…erased from my memory.