Goodbye, Sunny. My precious car that would have turned 10 with me this year. After the initial shock and then confusion and then panic and then many hours with many useless people on the phone, I was most sad about my car. My sad, dead and murdered car that I drove all the way out from North Carolina to California with a pitstop in Wisconsin with as much stuff as I could fit in him. Alone, staying at sketchy motels and with random (but nice) Airbnb hosts along the way. He made it through thunderstorms and snow and up and down hills and mountains that his engine could just barely handle. All just to be shot down in an instant thanks to a dumbass kid in his dumbass Audi.
The night started off so well too with crab arancini and parmesan fungi fries at Key Klub and some v creative cocktails at Pacific Cocktail Haven.
SIGHHHHH.
So that's how that weekend started to wrap up the month of January. The rest of that weekend was me moping and drowning in fear and anxiety - not at all helped by some sketchy activity going on upstairs regarding deranged home invaders and broken windows, and then to round out the weekend, I got a minor bout of food poisoning in the middle of the night.
Pretty sure it was from the bahn mi (full of delicious tendon bits and pate) sadly. But a few days later I ate the bahn bot loc. First time having these little zongzi things based in tapioca instead of sticky rice and I enjoyed them and I didn't get sick from these guys!
Athena said the tapioca jelly texture reminds her too much of fat... perhaps that's why I like them so...
I had to trek all the way down to Union City to clean Sunny out and hand him over to insurance. As if we didn't all know he was murdered - it was still a sad moment to confirm it and then see him in broad daylight. All dusty and... broken. Bumper resting in the dirt like his jaw is dropped in disbelief like What did you do to me? Thank gracious for Erin who could shuttle me down and then make a little day of it. We picked up some baked goods at La Farine and then got chicken wings and garlic noodles at Monkey King.
I ate this leftover tomato walnut focaccia with a fried egg on top and leftover extra spicy hot sauce from another meal in bed.
Queen of scraps over here, finding a way to stretch bits and pieces and also not waste the excess of corn tortillas at work. I made pseudo enchiladas with a can of refried beans in my stash and leftover cheesy jalepeno artichoke dip and drowned it with a simple tomato sauce made with adobo chipotles.
That just meant I had a lot of leftover leftover corn tortillas and half a can of refried beans for lots of tostadas with pickled onions.
A lot of simple meals were eaten in bed that week because it was all I could muster. I finally made a Ranch 99 run and replenished my fridge with produce for the rest of February.
Pomelo with tajin is soooo good. And also rough on an empty tummy so be warned.
My motivation to cook mostly came back when I saw dungeoness crab on sale while I was dropping off a return package (didn't need that CRV cabin filter after all...) from Amazon.
I looked up a recipe for Singaporean chili crab, found a few that called for a sweet and hot chili sauce, had no such thing and wasn't going to go shopping, so winged it.
The sauce is an aromatic tomato-y and adjusted with my homemade chili oil. Meanwhile, I hacked up the cooked crab with the back of a knife before throwing it back into the stew-y sauce to infuse it with crabbiness and vice versa. Finished with egg and peas because I cannot resist.
Sides of garlic handmade noodles and stir fried greens.
And pepper shrimp from my newest impulse buy: Motherland.
Also spent a soothing morning at home making sweet sticky rice stuffed lotus root (with gogi, logan, and jujubes) to have dessert for a complete and rounded meal.
A brief intermission of surf for turf in the form of roasted duck (and wonton noodle soup) from Yung Kee - a good comfort pairing on a gloomy day when you just want a dependable soup and fat and salt.
By the way, I saw a thing about dry frying mushrooms before adding the oil. This is the way.
R&G Lounge date for salt n pepper crab that's tripped and fallen and can't get up.
Viridian date for tamarind crab that's vomiting up it's dinner of noodles.
Not the most graceful of items to eat at a fancy bar with mood lighting.
Also we love this pork belly on crisp rice friend.
Crab weekend ended back where it began with another platter of my riff on chili crab. This time we're piled with crispy fried lotus chips (and kinda burnt shallots oops - don't take your eyes off the deep fryer, friends).
Sweet baby Blue begging in the background.
The outcome of all this crabby goodness is a lot of crab stock in my freezer. For, say, if you want to make a sweet crabby sauce for green beans or crabby red curry broth for noodles.
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