06.22.10
Posted in family stuff, food and restaurants at 10:20 pm by Administrator
Since we celebrated Father’s Day at la Petit Greek, I might as well put in a plug for them. From the name of the restaurant, obviously we had Greek food. We started off with appetizers such as hummus, baba ghanoush, tarama (whipped caviar), and tzatziki (yogurt cucumber dip).
Well, we had already started dipping into it, obviously. And since the restaurant was a bit dark inside I didn’t realize that my picture was blurry. . .
But, that didn’t stop me from taking more pictures of the other appetizers. This is their keftedes (beef meatballs).
Their dolmades (stuffed grape leaves).
Brian, Andrew, and I had the lamb kabob, which was one of their specials for the day, something about it being organic lamb from Colorado or something.
This dish came with a great salad and lemon potatoes. Aaron had a similar dish, but chicken instead of lamb. We also tried their sanganaki, which is a flaming cheese dish. Here’s our host lighting it up.
Here’s a look at what the dish looked like.
Other dishes around the table was another special of the day–a calamari salad.
This is their santorini (lamb stew).
I think this was their salmon palaki.
My dad had their pastitso (Greek version of lasagna).
Now, I’m sure I also had a picture of their basic gyro dish, but for some reason I must have not uploaded it. . . hmmm. But it was pretty basic, so I’ll forgo it for now.. Hope that’s a good sampling of the lunch menu at La Petit Greek in Larchmont for anyone interested in checking them out. They also had friendly service, so two thumbs up! 
Hope everyone else had a nice Father’s Day, too!
Marlakins
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06.16.10
Posted in food and restaurants, hobbies at 7:45 pm by Administrator
Current events have been too depressing for me lately. To keep my sanity I like to delve into crafts and food, heheh. And fortunately, this past Sunday was craft day for me and my girlfriend. In between our craft days we still keep in touch with each other and update each other on our progress. Last week I started on a pattern of potted herbs and finished one Christmas ornament of a cat looking through a window.
Then since the boys are on quarter break we decided to eat out at Real Food Daily, our local organic vegetarian restaurant. I had the Stir it Up with soba noodles and tofu.
Brian and the boys had the Burrito Supreme dish.
So when Sunday came along, I hooked up with my friend again for “girlfriend craft day” and started off in the usual way–lunch with the family for dim sum, again. This time we hit Harbor Village in Monterey Park. Here’s how our table looked at one point.
My mom wanted to try their tripe dish.
Here’s what my dish looked like at one point with the sticky rice opened up.
After dim sum we headed out for tea (even though I had already had several refills of tea, but they wanted to go and chat some more!), then back to my parents to work on our crafts. I was able to sew up a few of my ornaments and finished up my herb pattern. Here it is framed and hung up on my wall.
This is actually a small picture about 5″x7″. Since it’s so small I decided to just pick up a desk frame that I liked and remove the stand on the back. I placed a tie on the back and hung it on the wall. I saved the stand from the back in case I later decide to use this frame again for a desk.
I’m currently working on one of the Christmas decoration patterns that my friend and I recently purchased. And I think soon, I’ll start on another larger cross-stitch pattern by Donna Dewberry. I’m also currently reading a book called Nixon and Mao. So far it’s interesting, and may blog about that later on.
Marlakins
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05.18.10
Posted in Book Reviews, food and restaurants, hobbies at 9:40 am by Administrator
My longtime girlfriend and I have decided to make a one day a month craft day. We like to meet up at my parents’ house since their house is midway between our houses, and it also gives us a nice excuse to visit with my parents. So we meet up around 11:30AM, go out for a bite to eat, then head back to the house for a day of crafting. For May our craft day was last Sunday and we all went our for dim sum for lunch. I’ll take this moment to put in a plug for Restaurant 88 in San Gabriel. Tasty food at a very reasonable price. Here’s a shot of one of the food carts.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with what dim sum is, it’s basically a Chinese roving buffet. Women roll carts around full of various foods and stop at each table who wants any. If you like what’s in their cart, they’ll just place however many orders on your table that you request and stamp your ticket. At the end, they tally up all the stamps and that’s how they figure out your bill. The nice thing about dim sum is that the orders are small, so you can try lots of different dishes. Here’s an example of what our table looked like at one point. Keep in mind that as you polish off your container, they take it away and more comes, so it’s ever changing.
Usually they have so many dishes that it’s almost impossible to try everything. They also have desserts, but after my AA days, I don’t indulge in those anymore. For that matter, since my AA days, I had even avoided dim sum all together for “years”, and only recently started venturing out again. Here’s another closeup of more dishes.
I especially liked this one, which is veggies wrapped in nappa cabbage.
Now don’t ask me what these dishes are called. While I have eaten them many times in the past, I have no idea what each dish is called. And as a matter of fact, sometimes there is a bit of a language barrier, since these dim sum places are pretty much operated by Chinese, who speak Chinese and tend to have heavy accents. And even so, there are mistakes in translation. Here’s an example of what I mean.
You might ask for a lobster, and they’ll give you a crab, ha ha ha!
So moving right along. After we stuffed ourselves we headed back to the house for our day of crafting. We’ve been working on cross stitch patterns. Here’s an old pattern I made years ago and finally decided to try making it into a small pillow.
Here’s the finished, well, “almost finished” pillow along with the other little cross stitch patterns I’ve worked up. I’m kinda out of practice sewing and kinda winged it to put this pillow together. It’s a bit crooked, heheh, but I’m just going to use it as part of my Christmas decor at home, so no big deal. Plus I think I’m gonna put some cording around it to help dress it up a tad more.
Okay, so I still have a few more pics that I’ll post later because I’m almost finished with another shrug. . . and I still have the museum pictures to share from last Friday. We went to the Wende Museum in Culver City, but there is one pic I want to take to add to the post yet, so will hold off until I get that shot. I’m also still reading a couple books that have some info that I think would be interesting to share. The book, The Ayatolla Begs to Differ is turning out to be rather interesting. I’m certainly learning a lot more that I didn’t know, and I also appreciate the different perspective. I know that many cultures think differently, and understanding the culture does help to understand their behavior and decisions. This book helps in that in a funny way because the author has a nice sense of humor.
So until next time, hope all is well!
Marlakins
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05.10.10
Posted in family stuff, food and restaurants at 11:32 am by Administrator
Hope everyone had a Happy Mother’s Day yesterday. We had a nice one, and as usual it was a simple family gathering. We met at Grandville in Burbank. I had my usual natural Chipotle chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries, so won’t show another picture of that, since I’m sure I’ve already posted one on here in a previous post. But here’s mom. I had to take this pic because she looked so happy AND my sister got “crafty” and “made” her own bow piece by piece. . . She’s not one to do crafty things, so this was very unusual. . . has the temp in hell gone down a notch?
Well, shucks, it’s a bit hard to see the ribbon my sister made, but rest assured it was quite complicated from the looks of it. It was certainly a successful attempt at her handy work. Kudos, Doll!
My sweet girlfriend even joined in with the gift giving and gave both my mom and dad gift certs to the Red Lobster.
Then there was the food. . . El brother-in-law with his soup and sandwich. . .
My Auntie’s Land and Sea dish. . . Hmmm strange configuration. . .
My Uncle’s salmon dish. . .
There were a couple orders of the Taco Trio at the table. . .
My boys had the five cheese and artisan artichoke pizzas, which I think I’ve already posted pics of those in a previous post, so will skip it here. I don’t know what Mom and Dad ate as they were already digging in as was I, so didn’t bother taking more pics, heheh.
Overall, it was a nice day. I know Mother’s Day tends to be commercialized, but hey, I enjoy any chance to celebrate with family. Now I can’t wait until Father’s Day! Heheheh.
Marlakins
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04.25.10
Posted in family stuff, food and restaurants at 1:36 pm by Administrator
Yesterday we celebrated my dad’s 79th birthday at the Lobster in Santa Monica.
As usual, I love getting together with my family, and it was especially nice seeing that my dad was really enjoying himself.
I didn’t get pictures of everything, but first there were the appetizers. Uh yeah, I call those jumbo.
Here’s my dad getting ready for his lobster meal. . . He just got through his soup and salad starter and is now anticipating a nice juicy lobster, heheheh.
And there it is! 2.5 lbs of lobster. . . ummmm
I had their Grilled Australian Barramundi with squash and sauteed spinach. Oh wow! Now I will vouch for this dish! It was absolutely delicious!
There were roasted pumpkin seeds as well on top. Absolutely yummy. I highly recommend this dish.
Then there were the desserts. My aunt and uncle as well as my oldest sister had these.
My other sister had the strawberry parfait.
El brother-in-law had the Tequila lime sorbet.
I refrained from indulging in the desserts, wah. . . As did Brian and my boys. And lastly, here are a couple more pics of us–mom, dad, me and my sisters.
The pics of my boys are on my sister’s camera, so I don’t have those yet. But here’s one with Brian and me.
After lunch we walked along the pier. There was actually a lot to see, so I ended up taking more pictures there. But I’ll have to share those on another post as there are too many pics already on this one.
Okay! Now to find more mischief. . .
Marlakins
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03.11.10
Posted in food and restaurants at 10:41 pm by Administrator
Last week my baby boy turned 16. He and his brothers wanted pizza, so we headed off to Grandville in Burbank. Here’s the birthday boy with his dad.
The boys all had pizza and I had a chipotle chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries and chamomile tea.
Ordinarily I could only finish half the sandwich and fries in one sitting and would pack the rest to eat later. However, after a month of “training” in the Philippines, this is what my plate looked like in one sitting. . .
I guess that explains the extra weight I’ve gained. . . But if that wasn’t enough, Aaron’s auntie invited him for a birthday lunch, too, and naturally I had to tag along. . . We ate at Yuzu, a Japanese Restaurant in Torrance. They advertise authentic Japanese food. I ordered a smoked sardine plate the first time we went there, then the next time I ordered the yellow tail. This is how their smoked fish looks like.
Aaron ordered the spider roll.
It’s hard to see it, but these rolls have soft-shell crab in there. Very yummy. I recommend both restaurants–Grandville and Yuzu.
My friend’s birthday is next week, and my aunt’s birthday is a couple days after hers, so looks like we have more excuses to find yummy food to eat again. Aaron also learned how to make lumpia wrappers from scratch and wants to make them for his grandparents when they get back. Will share some pics of his culinary creations in another post.
Marlakins
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02.28.10
Posted in Church Issues and Bible Interpretations, Playing the Tourist, food and restaurants at 1:43 pm by Administrator
Today I thought I would continue with my travelogue and share some of our pics from Thailand. I thought they had an interesting looking airport. It was rather large and sci-fi looking. Dad said it was a bit freaky looking, which I can see, heheh. Here’s a small sample of the building as we approached.
Imagine this same structure stretching out for a couple miles or more. Not sure why, but it kinda reminded me of a big insect or insect dwelling or something. Maybe I’ve watched too many Alien movies. . .
The hotel we stayed it was called the Baiyoke Sky, and is the tallest building in Bangkok. Here’s what the building looked like as we approached it.
Our room was on the 40th floor. Aaron and I shared one room even though there were three beds in the room. For a fancy hotel with large rooms, I found the interior design surprisingly a bit plain. Here’s what part of the room looked like.
On the opposite side of the beds there was a small lounge, bar and TV.
Hmmm. Not very exciting decor, no? But the room was clean and very spacious including the bathroom, which was probably more than twice the size of my bathroom at home.
After doing a little snooping around the room I found a Bible written in both English and Thai. Very interesting writing. . .
I found the Thai language difficult to repeat, and being that their written language is so different than English, I found it doubly challenging to figure out what things were. For instance we’d pass a lot of building with Thai writing and I’d have absolutely “no” idea what was inside.
Here’s a picture of some Thai currency.
It looks to me to be the picture of their king on their money. The exchange rate at the time we were there was about 31 or 32 bhat to 1 US dollar depending upon where you exchanged money. Speaking of their king, it seemed like they really loved their king and often spoke highly of him. His pictures were in so many places throughout the city.
Here are a couple views of Bangkok from our hotel room window.
Apparently, the shadow to the right is our hotel. Here’s another angle from the same window.
Large city, huh? I didn’t know what to expect from Bangkok, but somehow I didn’t expect it to look like this. It was pretty crowded and had a little similarities in the way to the Philippines. However, I admit that it’s a bit cleaner than the Philippines and their roads seem more orderly even if it’s still a bit crazy. One difference is they drive on the left side of the road like the Brits. The Filipinos drive on the right side like us Americans. They did have little tricycle-like taxis called “tuk-tuks.” The name comes from imitating the sound of their engines. Here’s a pic of one.
Breakfast was served between 7 to 10AM on the 79th or 82nd floor depending upon the day. This was part of one of my breakfasts.
Along with this.
Yum, I really do miss that kind of breakfast. It really hit the spot for me. They actually had a very large buffet, which included many types of breakfasts including the regular ham and eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, french toast, yada yada, but there was no way I was going to eat like that when I had all this other stuff to try.
Okay, so after breakfast we headed down to meet the tour guide. I’ll post some of those pictures on the next Thai post.
Marlakins
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02.17.10
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, cooking, food and restaurants at 12:40 pm by Administrator
A few years ago I watched a video series called, Jamie’s Kitchen. IIRC, it was a six part series of students going through chef’s school hosted by Jamie Oliver. I found it to be very interesting, and also thought it was very gracious of Jamie to sponsor these kids and help them become professional chefs.
Apparently, Jamie’s love for food and helping others didn’t stop with helping some students become professional chefs. Recently I found a video of him speaking at a TED conference discussing the importance of teaching children about food and how it’s so important that this be done because of the rising obesity rates here in the U.S. Obesity, Jamie points out, is linked to so many health issues that it must be addressed. His contention is that our society has been so removed from basic cooking skills that many of us don’t even know what foods are. . . for example he showed a short clip wherein he showed small children various veggies and they didn’t even know what they were! The idea is if we don’t know what things are, we won’t eat them. Conversely, we need to know what exactly we’re eating in all our processed, packaged foods. Education, he believes, is the key and as a result he has opened free cooking lessons at a facility in Virginia.
For anyone interested, here’s the link to Jamie’s presentation.
We need more people like Jamie. Thanks, Jamie, for your inspiration, dedication, and heart of gold.
Marlakins
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02.16.10
Posted in Playing the Tourist, food and restaurants at 1:04 am by Administrator
After we poked around the grounds and the hot springs we headed down to the lunch buffet. The buffet started at 11:30AM and then around 12 noon we were allowed to check into our cottages. Here’s a peek at what the buffet looked like at Hidden Valley.
The fare consisted of meat, meat.
Meat, meat.
Meat, and more meat.
There was a small portion for salad, and desserts, some rice and some noodles. With such a nice place and tasty dishes, I was a bit surprised that it was “missing” some very basic dishes. For instance, where’s the seafood? There was none. Where’s the fresh fruit? There was none. Where’s the coconut drinks? There was none. . . Uh, and we’re in the Pines? Say it isn’t so! Well it was so. Okay, but with all this food how dare I complain? We even had live music. . .
Uh, yeah, I know this looks a little cheesy, but really she was pretty good and had a very nice voice. The “hearts” were likely in the spirit of the upcoming Valentines Day that is widely celebrated in the Philippines.
And bonafide award winning local Filipino beer. . .
So after we filled up, we checked into our cottages, which turned out to be rather cute. The cottages were in groups of fours. Here’s what they looked like from the outer ring.
See that sky window on the roof of the cottage to the right? That’s a sky window in the bathroom right over the shower. This is what it looked like at the inner ring of four cottages with a small center garden.
Right be me is a table with chairs and a bench for lounging about on the porch. Just to the right of the picture is the entrance to our cottage. This is what it looks like just inside.
This is the opposite view looking toward the door from the bed.
To the right is the front door, to the left is the bathroom with a skylight, and the spiral stairs leads up to the second floor/the attic for a couple additional beds. This is what it was like upstairs.
There’s actually another bed off to the right of the picture which is not shown and also a small writing table and chair at the foot of this bed.
Downstairs the bathroom was quite nice, but hard to get a good angle for a picture. Here’s my attempt at trying to get in as much as possible in one shot.
Heheh. Well, here’s the run down. Obviously the sink is at the bottom of this pic, the mirror reflecting a tiny portion of the shower at the opposite side is just above the sink. Next to the sink is the wall relief to the shower. Just to the right of me and next to the shower is the toilet separated by glass with an etching of something tropical or some bird. The skylight is just above the shower. It was actually a spacious bathroom, but it was just hard to get a good shot. And besides, I think I was not in the mood to take pictures at this time as I was itching to get back to the hot springs.
Here we are (Dad, Auntie Lita, Uncle Al, and I) enjoying a little dip.
Aaron took this shot of me with a nice view of the spring behind me.
After we played in the springs for a little bit, guess what? It was time for “merienda.” Ah, yes, that’s what I love about the Philippines. . . snacks. I’d say that merienda is like the middle meal between breakfast and lunch or between lunch and dinner that hobbits eat. What did they call it? Elevensies? Or onsies? LOL
This is the place, Marinel, where Dad kept saying, “Ah. . . I found the place Mark would like!” Eh? What do you think?
Marlakins
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02.08.10
Posted in Playing the Tourist, food and restaurants at 7:26 am by Administrator
We finally got back from Bangkok with another set of adventures under our belts. Andrew, you know how Grandpa jokes. . . He’s now exclaiming to Aaron with a chuckle, “Tell Andrew that you’re now one Floating Market (where we got to ride on one of those long boats that James Bond rode in on one of his movies, heheheh), one elephant ride, and one duckling hubading ahead of him.” Ha ha! You know how grandpa loves to tease! I told Grandpa that once Andrew finishes college, he’ll be able to quickly catch up!
Anyway, it’s now Monday evening (we’re practically a full day ahead of you guys in Los Angeles). We arrived back from Bangkok at 6PM, got back to the condo around 7PM, finished dinner around 8:30PM, then I threw in a load of laundry. It’s now almost 9PM Monday as I sit here to try to update and let everyone know that we arrived safely back in Manila from Bangkok. There’s so much to write about! But before I go there, I want to finish up my Palawan Ho! story. . .
After we got our massages, we rested up a bit before heading down to dinner. A quick little story about our massages. . . At breakfast time the next day we were chatting and discussing how nice the massages were. Mom said with a twinkle in her eye how they complimented her on being “puti.” Auntie Lit’s said with a twinkle in her eye how they told her that she didn’t look like she was 72, but rather that she looked more like in her 50’s. Then I laughed and said with a twinkle in my eye how I got a compliment, too!, and they told me that I didn’t look 45, either, but rather like I was 28! LOLOLOL We all laughed and agreed that maybe we got all those compliments (bola bola) because they wanted a nice tip! But even so, we all still loved the compliments and left our massages giggling like little girls. After that it became a running joke whenever someone gave out a compliment how much tip they wanted. Tee hee!
Our last dinner there was a BBQ by the beach. Oh my gosh! Meat, meat, and more meat! I’m sure you all know what BBQ pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, and fish look like, so I’ll forgo those individual dish shots. Instead I’ll just put one dish pic up of the sea veggie that they served. I’ve had this before in the Pines, and we had it again with the BBQ. I add this pic because I haven’t had this kind of sea veggie anywhere else, but here in the Pines. It’s kinda poppy like fish roe.
Here’s a pic of us during our dinner with a group of the staff that came out to serve us.
After we had dinner that night we went up to our rooms and found the staff had left us little notes and flowers on our beds!
The little gestures like that really made us feel pampered.
Here are a few miscellaneous photos. . . Mom and Dad dancing. . .
Aaron’s turn playing pool. I was really horrible! Ha!
Aaron trying to demonstrate how tiny the napkins were.
Now keep in mind this is the size of the napkins we got during our meals. . . But even this picture didn’t quite give it justice. We got a chuckle out of this because anyone who has been to the Pines from the U.S. might appreciate the luxury of “paper” while in the Pines. We figured at least it was big enough to wipe our mouths. But really, maybe this picture will give better perspective to the size of our dining napkins!
If you ask me, I’d say that table napkin was just about the size of one toilet paper square, ha ha ha! That’ll teach you to be a neat eater! And a tip for anyone thinking of traveling to the Philippines. . . always have tissue paper handy because many public bathrooms are not well furnished with toilet paper.
On the day we left Palawan, we managed to squeeze in a little shopping time. I liked to find the native handicrafts. Here’s one of the stores Aaron and I walked to near the airport (remember the airport in Palawan is kinda tiny, so it’s not a long distance to walk to the small stalls). The owner of the store was working on one of his carvings.
And these were his adorable little kids with their dog!
Aaron doing a little shopping in their store. . .
Not long after that we headed back to Manila. We arrived Thursday evening. We one full day on Friday to rest, do laundry, and then pack up again for a weekend at Hidden Valley in Laguna. I’ll post next about our trip to Hidden Valley.
More of the Philippines next post. We still have a few more days here, so I’ll see how far I can get while here. From what I’ve read, there’s a lot more to see in Palawan and other islands of the Pines. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit more places one of these days.
Marlakins
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