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.

Cookie Making to overcome Post Craft Depression

So since HY and I decided to make christmas cookies, I headed to Joann's after work to get some cookie cutters.  But I found this CUTE wilton mini cake pan!  And after reading Becky's blog, I really wanted brownies.  So I bought it. As well as a few cookie cutters.

I just have to say..WHO knew decorating cookies was so hard!

After HY cooked us a great dinner (ground turkey with tofu and bokchoy stirfry yum), we started baking our goodies to decorate.

So who knows how to make brownies?  Not me for sure.  The only person I know that can make brownies is Lisette. Oh and Becky.  I cannot make brownies for the life of me. WHY not?  It's from a freaking box!  HY says she cannot either. One time I tried making brownies at lisette's house.  From the box.  And it turned out like chocolate cake.  I don't get it.  We kept baking it longer and longer, but nope, still chocolate cake.  How can you mess up boxed brownies?  Needless to say, our brownies turned out like cake again. And I don't like how it is dome shaped and not flat.  I think we needed those wilton strips to put around the pan. I don't know.  But I do have to say they are SO cute.

The cookies were even a bigger problem!  Seriously. Hahaha.  We got lazy and bought pillsbury sugar cookies instead of making our own dough.  The dough was so gooey we couldn't cut shapes.  So the first batch was a little weird.  It didn't work. So what we did was just put the dough all across the pan and then after it cooked, we cut the shapes really quickly.  When it cooled, we just peeled it out.  How in the world are you supposed to do this?  Next time, we will have to make our own dough that is cookie cutter friendly.  oh..and we definitely burned that junks.

Then we made royal icing to deocrate the cookies. I kept telling HY the royal icing recipe sounded so wierd because it was missing crisco or something.  In the end i realized there are different royal icing recipes for cake decorating and cookie decorating.  you're supposed to outline the cookies and let it harden before decorating so that it doesnt drip over the edges.  we did that to a few, but then we got lazy and didn't do that anymore.  By the time we started decorating we were SO tired.  I was about to pass out.

But TA DA!!!  They didn't turn out SO bad. Actually, all together they look pretty good.  yes, our gingerbread men are more like halloween ghost cookies. HAHAHA. 

When we are about to pack up and cover the cookies, I saw the sprinkles on the counter.  We forgot to use the sprinkles!  HY insisted we must add some sprinkles.  So as tired as we were, we refrosted somoe and added sprinkles.  My favorite is the christmas stocking with the sun.  (HY said it's a star. Looks like a sun to me. haha).  HY's favorite is the white ghost gingerbread man.  Don't you love the eyes? So fobby.

I totally love our brownie/cakes!  Doesn't the frosting look like M&Ms?  They are so cute.  We were too tired to do all of them. 

Next time we will have to do this on a weekend and spend a lot of time.  we were rushing and so tired and just wanted to finish. Haha.  And those cookies are NASTY. I won't eat one.  But I can't wait to scarf the brownies tonight!

Thanks HY!  I think this activity helped with my Post Craft Depression!  Don't leave me and go to Hawaii!

New snack find

Oh my. These are good!
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Post Craft Depression

source

Ever since I got back from Tucson, I've been a little down.  I got to spend time with mama and doggie for almost a week.  Now that I am back in my empty lonely apartment in this strange place called LALA land, I feel icky.  There's no food in the house.  I finished reading my 2 books that I was really into and I can't get into a new one.  Work is so busy too and I feel unmotivated after a long vacation.  And I hurt my back, so no gym after work with HY every day.  That means no endorphins to keep me happy.  I just wake up, go to work, go home and find something boring to eat and catch up on TV shows.  Today I told HY I feel depressed and I don't know why.  Maybe because the sun is not shining brightly today?  Do I need socialization?  So she told me to find a new craft.  After she said that I thought...BINGO!  I have post craft depression!!  Pathetic.  I finished my DIY christmas presents and sent them out.  After 3 or 4 weeks of constantly doing some kind of DIY project everyday after work, reading my books, hanging out with friends visiting (Michi and Dina), etc...I am hobbiless now.  So I asked HY if I can come over after work today and cook some dinner and bake brownies.  she suggested we make Christmas cookies!!!  What a wonderful idea!  I can't wait.  The only bad thing about decorating cookies is that ... that decorating frosting is nasty.  Who wants to eat that?  It'll be fun anyway.  And Jungeun and Newton arrive tomorrow!  That should get my mood up as well.  I hope so because I am starting to understand why people need anti-depressents.  And even electro-shock therapy (I saw that on Private Practice).  Man...I'm dreading post holiday depression after 1.5 weeks at home for Christmas.  I need a BF.

Sukiyaki Sushi

Yum!!!!!  I went to eat at this rotating sushi place in Irvine with Jackie before watching spring awakening.  that place is awesome.  It had pretty interesting things!  And everything was 2 bucks!  Wow so cheap. I had 2 plates of these because it was so good. I love sukiyaki.
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