Getting Old..

The night before my birthday went like this.

Theresa and Angela gossiping in her room. I walk in. I hear the last sentence that Theresa says, which is "ok lets go there tonight then.." Then they both look up at me and stop talking.

Me: What are you talking aboouutt?

Theresa: I'm just telling angela I wanted to take will to this one place... ::smiles::

YEA RIGHT BITCHES!! heheheheee

We went to the Balcony in diamond jamboree plaza to get shaved ice. It's not shaved ice, it's actually called shaved "snow". And it's wonderful! It melts in your mouth and there's no annoying chunks of ice, just smooth silky ice cream texture but even softer....yummyness. We got a strawberry one and a green tea one. Stick with the strawberry! SO much better.

Then they all ordered me my first legal alcoholic beverage! A rasberry lemondrop martini. Hehe it was strong so I used the shaved ice as a chaser.

The sugar rim was pretty!

the end of a fun night! Thank you my friends!

Fukada

The day before my bday my awesome roomies and I came to Fukada, a udon and soba noodle place to eat. Long wait....even on a tuesday night. And service sucked cuz there was only two waitresses and way too many tables. Theresa ordered the udon noodles, which I of course then tried and then ate a lot of hahah. The broth was really subtle and not that salty which was really nice.

I ordered the Sashimi Salad. Big fat pieces of raw fish in a salad with miso dressing. Since it was like 90 degrees outside, it was the perfect type of food to eat on a hot summer day!

The egg thing and spicy tuna over rice were sides and they were whateves. Go for the udon or sashimi salad!

Farmer's Market Findings

I went to visit my mom in Monterey on tuesday, and they have farmer's market that day! yay!! Fresh fruits and veggies and a variety of different foods. My mom stopped at every single vender looking at their food. omg took forever to leave. BUT, it is always fun to try samples of food, the air is smelling like all different types of vendor food; grilled corn, BBQ ribs, rotisserie chicken, gyros, kabobs, etc etc.

below- strawberries!

cherry tomatoes

navel oranges

delicious raspberries

more starberries
Who needs mcdonald's yogurt parfaits when you can make them yourself? The answer is always Trader Joes ahhaha. Honey flavored greek yogurt + honey granola + starberries, blackberries, and rasberries. DELISH!

It's so nice to have a farmer's market every week where you can get really delicious and fresh food for a good price. People there are also friendly and helpful. It's also a nice way to get to know where exactly your food comes from. I encourage everyone to go to your local farmers market! You'll never know what you'll find! :)

Long Distance Sushi

Due to Yelp, I found this random sushi place in Newark called TGI Sushi. My brother doesn't eat sushi much so I decided to take him there. I thought it was going to be like 10-12 minutes from my house. WRONG! It ended up being like over over 25 minutes and GPS made me take a weird freeway I've never taken before. Lets just say I was scared and didn't know where I was going. But then we arrived, and the sushi was pretty good. The unagi roll my brother ordered was massive and creamy. My bento box was...average. But it was fun spending time with my brother over sushi :)

Hang out with your sibilings before they grow too old for you to boss around! hehehhe

My YiMama makes Legit Dumplings

My aunt, whom I call Yi Mama in Cantonese, makes freaken awesome dumplings! So this is my little tangent story on how I discovered it. One weekend, Josh tells me there is a "Dumpling Festival" in downtown Pasadena, sounds fun lets go. So me and my cousin, my aunt, and Josh go and it takes like 40 minutes since theres traffic, and TO our surprise we see only like 2 taco trucks, one is seriously a taco truck...(at a "dumpling festival?")and the other is the dumpling station. Basically it was a taco truck look alike that sells different types of interesting dumplings. Theres like over 50 people waiting in line for the dumpling station. Greaaattt. But they had a creative menu. Nutella and Banana Wontons? Wasabi Fries? Curry Dumplings? Since we were on a time crunch we just left empty handed. BUT, that didn't stop my aunt from getting some dumplings! The next morning I woke up, and saw plates and plates of uncooked potstickers, bowls of different fillings, my gong gong (grandpa) and po po (grandma) hard at work folding the dumplings in place. My aunt was seriously inspired because she made like 5 different types. When you have an aunt like mine, who NEEDS dumpling station, or a dumpling festival? Below is the normal type of potsticker with pork and bok choy inside.

Then she took it to the next level and made dumplings with apple, ground pork, and shrimp inside. These were Josh's favorite :)

She also made some really awesome chicken and curry dumplings, perfectly crispy and crunchy!

Me and Wendy's experiment: chocolate dumplings hahah.

YiMama hard at work

My grandparents, taking this dumpling making business very seriously.

haha jk!

As my grandma would say, "Fai Dee Sek Mai Koi le!"

1/2 + 1/2 = 1 yummy lychee green tea

Me and Josh visited this tiny but always busy boba place called Half and Half. It's a really really small shop sandwiched between a Wells Fargo and a Shabu Shabu place. We both ordered Iced Milk with Boba because yelp told me to. It was......interesting...in a good way. Don't expect it to be super sweet because it's actually really light. The milk part basically tasted like milk and ice made into an icee. But the boba was really sweet and chewy so it was a nice balance. But when I went again with my cousins, I ordered the Lychee Green Iced Tea with lychee jellies, and it was SO good and refreshing! OMG I can just imagine drinking this in like 100C degree weather and feeling extremely happy. The good thing about Half and Half is that the regular sized drinks are like large sizes at most other boba places. Thats always niceee. I also tried the Peach Black Iced Tea and it was pretty good too.

We also ordered two brick toasts. Below was the corn flavored one. When we got it I was thinking in my head how I could make the same thing......hahaha. (Which I later did with josh but it just didnt taste the same) It was nice and buttery but I wouldn't spend 5 bucks on it again.

The second one was the "sweet cream" flavored. OMG it was soo good. Even though the toast was the size of a regular piece of bread instead of thicker, they put a magical recipe of butter and condensed milk and honey and some other magical ingredients to make it taste super delicious. I probably would spend 5 bucks to eat that one piece of bread again.
So since summer is here, and the weather is getting warmer, go visit Half and Half and get yourself a nice refreshing drink. Its full of chinese fobs though, but maybe you will make some new fob friends!

Chicken and Waffles

So I finally went to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena. I didn't really know what to expect. I went with my cousins as a spontaneous dinner suggestion. They said you are suppose to eat the chicken with the waffles. I'm thinking thats really weird. But anyways, we were all super hungry and couldn't wait for the food to arrive. When it did, (didn't take long) all the plates came all at once and we were bombarded with FOOD. Chicken everywhere! Waffles all over the place! My brother doesn't waste any time and just begins eating the waffle off the plate. Like really? hahah. So I took a drumstick and a quarter of a waffle. I cut up the chicken, and ate it with a chunk of waffle smeared with syrup....and..... I really liked it! It actually tastes good together! I continued to do that for the rest of the meal. We were so hungry that we finished all our food in 15 minutes. Yes we timed it. Hahaha.

my cousins waiting for the food. My cousins Conrad and Joanna proudly wears their tye die shirts. (we all made them for fun). Lookin good Conrad.

Chicken in gravy- not as good as the fried chicken but not bad either.
the waffles with scoops of butter
Southern fried chicken!

I would have to say that the Southern fried chicken was the best thing I had there. It was just really really crispy and delicious. Totally different from KFC. The chicken just tasted really really good. Overall it was a very nice experience at Roscoe's. I also heard that the Pasadena location was not as good as the other locations in LA. Really though? Cuz I thought this place was already pretty good. I'll have to try the other ones in LA to see what they mean. Does anyone wanna go with me? :D

My cousins, my brother, and me rocking the tie dye hahahhaah