lemon souffle pancakes a la moi

day 31: you better wipe that drool from your chin! i know your mouth is full of digestion juices right now.

lemon souffle pancakes with lemon curd and blueberry sauce.

i'm so happy i made these for breakfast.

earth killer

day 30: i know it's horrible for the earth but i pretty much use a new plastic bottle of water every day at work or at the gym. you know what would make me more awesome? not using a plastic bottle daily.

Rhea's Deli

korean steak sandwich

okay you all need to head to Rhea's Deli on Valencia and 20th like right now. you'll thank me later. don't ever tell me i never did anything for you.

you know how there's the whole korean taco kick going on? off of the top of my head in SF alone there is Kung Fu Tacos, Seoul on Wheels and Takorea. i'm sure you can find more korean tacos around town too. well every time i eat a korean taco i think to myself "this is great, but i wish i had some rice instead of this corn tortilla." uhhh well that tells me i'd rather be eating at a traditional korean bbq spot rather than having it all mexican fusioned. i thought a korean sandwich might have me feeling the same way but when i bit into the sandwich my mind went insane for a little bit! the sweet of the korean beef mixed with the spicy of the aioli and jalapenos, the salty of the sharp cheddar and the fantastic Acme bread was amazing! i would take korean beef in a Rhea's sandwich over korean beef with rice any day! SO good! get your hands on one quick! in fact, get your hands on two and save one for me. we'll go kick it at Dolores Park and eat these amazing sandwiches in silence. conversation can wait for after sandwich consumption.

you think i'm kidding.

but i'm not.

get me a sandwich!

it can be your "thank you" to me for introducing you to yum.

strawberry bread

when i'm at Costco i always feel an overwhelming need to buy things in bulk that i don't need. fifty granola bars? yeah, i guess i could eat that many of the same thing. two giganator bottles of head n shoulders? well i've never tried head n shoulders before, but sure... i may as well buy a couple (i warn you now, do not buy head n shoulders shampoo/conditioner in one. my hair felt unwashed and gross for the two days i actually used it). oh that huge bottle of sundried tomatoes will probably last me a whole year, so i guess i should probably pick that up too! well i did the same thing with frozen strawberries. i bought the biggest bag of frozen strawberries known to man and had them in my freezer for a month before i decided to make this:

that is strawberry bread. it doesn't look very appealing, right? and it looks kinda dry, right? but trust me, it's not. it's moist and tasty. i can't say it tastes a whole lot like strawberries, but i like it either way. Martha Stewart may seem quite icy but she knows what she's doing in the kitchen. so far all recipes i've tried from her website have been good. and that's exactly where i got this easy recipe for strawberry bread.

how could they let me out of the house looking like that?

we all have bad pictures, right? usually the most embarrassing pictures are the ones in your teens because that's when you were trying your damnedest to look "cool" or whatever you want to call it. or maybe i'm wrong. maybe the most embarrassing are somewhere between 9-11. you know what i'm talking about. the awkward stage. let's take a trip back to the 80's. 


hello world, meet the former me!

day 29 pic.

good god are we serious right now?? i was rummaging through old things and found a very VERY old passport of mine. how in the world did my parents let me out of the house looking like this? this picture makes me laugh hystarically. and please, let’s name all things wrong with this pic!!

1. first, let’s just  touch on the most obvious thing. my face looks like a balloon that’s ready to pop! i purposely took this pic with a slight angle upwards in hopes that it could potentially serve the same purpose as someone lifting their chin a bit when taking a photo.  you know what i mean? stretching the chin a bit? turns out it doesn’t work that way! haha j/k!

2. i know i never went to a hair stylist to get my hurr did. actually, i remember my mom cutting my hair for years. she only stopped when i lost all trust in her hair cutting abilities. but that's a story for another day. so that slant with an incline from right to left that you see is her doing. i don’t know if she thought it didn’t matter, or if she was trying to cover up the fact that my left eye is slightly bigger than my right eye, but those bangs look ridic.

3. as a child of the 80′s it was really cool to wear your hair to one side. some people wore a high side ponytail, some wore it low. either way, it was cool, i promise!  i precisely remember messing with my hair in a mirror right before taking this picture. tie it up. take it down. repeat. i was trying to get it right and was really frustrated my hair wouldn’t stay. at the veeeerrrrrrrry last minute it was perfect! and look what it turned out to be. “perfect” turned out to be a hot mess! my hair was too short for all of it to stay all the way on that side of my head, i guess! i like to think my locks were soooo silky smooth that it slipped out of my hair tie to free itself from constraint in order to keep it's lusciousness. yeah, let’s just say it was the latter. =)

4. whoa there buck-o!! i know every kid goes through the awkward teeth sizes stage but in combination with all of the aforementioned, it just adds fuel to the flame. it looks like i've got a checker board in my mouth. 

let's not even get into the giganator shirt i've got on. that too, is a post for another day. that'll be my "fat kid" post. 

well i hope you had as much fun picking at my old passport photo as i have! do you have old embarrassing pictures? i urge you to show me so i feel better about myself. haha! 

mommy and me

day 28: you know how kids have blankets or “binkies” that they don’t let go of? some of them keep them into their adulthood as a security or just for memory sake. well this is my version. i remember we got this stuffed animal at Costco. it never had a name or anything but it was special to me. i slept with it, played with it, and there’s even evidence that i got marshmallow on it’s ear!!! i definitely remember that. i'm pretty certain that while my mom was making rice krispie treats my kid-fat-ass was eating the melted marshmallow and somehow spread it on mama bunny's ear. it always reminded me of my mom and i so i couldn’t let it go. to date, it’s the only stuffed animal i keep around.

pasta carbonara

two winters ago my cousin, Eva, and i spent a couple of weeks roaming Italy and Paris.  everywhere we went she was in search of the best carbonara. see one time in her life she had a carbonara so good that she vowed she would spend the rest of her life seeking that taste again. okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but she ordered carbonara probably three times while in Italy to no avail. the carbonara we had was good but wasn't like she remembered it. two years later the memories of Italy roamed through my head and i felt the need to find that familiar taste.

bacon? silky rich eggs? pecorino cheese? what's not to like about carbonara? i pretty much followed this recipe sans the parsley, cause who wants to pay for something that just adds color to a dish. oh, and i used thick cut bacon instead of pancetta cause it's easier to get your hands on.

i can't say that it would rock Eva's world as i never tasted that mythical carbonara she once had, but this one was pretty damn good for home cooked!

day 27

day 27: i was walking down the street, looked down and saw the ladder and it's reflection. thought i could potentially capture what i saw with a photo but the quality of depth on an iphone camera couldn't do this more justice. 

blue corn

day 26: my friend Marjie knows i love popcorn. so for my birthday she got me an old school stove popcorn maker and a popcorn kit that included these blue kernels. i can’t wait to see if they are tinted when they pop. if you know the answer, don’t tell me. in the moment i want to either be surprised or disappointed.

day 23, 24 and 25

day 23: we always want to be closer to nature, yet we are also the ones who keep ourselves out. 

day 24: walking on my favorite trail, you are almost always guaranteed to see deer. deer without heads is a different story. haha!

day 25: i cycled the Marin Century last August. that's 100 miles in six hours. now i know that time isn't considered fast by any means but still, cycling 100 miles in a day is a feat by my standards. my butt was sore and i vowed not to ride my bike for at least a month after that. that month turned into 4 months and today was the first day i got back on my bike. it was beautiful outside today and i couldn't think of a better way to spend my day. so i took my bike out and rode a glorious 28 miles. i hadn't realized how much i missed cycling. but this day reminded me how exhilarating it feels every time i ride. 

let's catch up

as of january 1st i started Project 365. you simply take one picture a day for 365 days. what i like about this project is that at the end of the year you have something to refer to to reflect on your whole year. every picture is a piece of my day, whether it's something i just thought looked interesting or something that i do often that i want to document. i haven't uploaded days 23 and 24 but let's catch you up on 2011 so far.

i don't have the picture for day 1 either. i'm an xray tech and every day i use "L" (left) and "R" (right) markers to indicate whether i'm x-raying the person's left or right side for documentation purposes. it's preeeetty important for my job, so my first day was a picture of my markers. don't worry you're not missing anything. i can assure it you it was a crappy picture.

day 2: spikes. a plant that sits outside of my house. 

day 3: driving through the Mission district of SF, this caught my eye.

day 4: Katy Perry's song Firework has the lyrics "you're original. cannot be replaced." originally i heard it as "your original cannot be replaced." i liked the way i initially heard it where "original" is a noun rather than an adjective. i think each person absolutely has their own version of original. in my version "your original" is what you value that makes you you. and we all know that what you value about yourself cannot be replaced. you determine what makes you special, not anybody else.

day 5: driving around SF you try to look up into the sky but often time your view is interrupted by wires and cables!! i'm not complaining. it's just an observation.

day 6: i see this sign nearly every day when i take my lunch breaks during work. and everyday this tempts me!

day 7: outside of my house. i was trying to capture the fog rolling over the mountain but that didn't show up. the settings on the hipstamatic app on my iphone aren't always the greatest.

day 8: this will be me for the next 357 days. i didn't have a picture for the day and it was getting late so i decided to take a picture of myself taking a project 365 picture. 

day 9: chillin at a laundromat while we wait to get our table for dinner next door.

day 10: that is a picture of someone's abdominal arteries as they are being filled with contrast. this was taken in the operating room at work. some amazing work from our doctors, i'll tell ya!

day 11: coffee

day 12: my membership to 24 hr fitness expired so i had to do at-home workouts. and this is how i do. Ellen or Rachael Ray is almost always on when i do video workouts. kill two birds with one stone.

day 13: my cousin Eva and i went to Seattle for a short vacay. what to do? what to dooo? who am i kidding? we actually just went up for a food trip. the only tour we did was a food tour of Pike's Place Market!  all we did was eat!

day 14: the famous gum wall at Pike's Place Market! SO gross. this picture is really washed out.

day 15: flipping through a book called The Book of Awesome, i came upon this page. who ever knew about the tabs to hold your foil in place? i sure as hell didn't! this is a revelation!!! now i know my foil will stay in it's home.

day 16: the space needle

day 17: after Eva and i ate our way through Seattle, i HAD to go for a 5 mile run along Ocean Beach once i got back home. 

day 18: i didn't have a photo for the day so i used a photo i took in Seattle at Pike's Place Market. take a look at what the man is holding. it's a lightbulb! imagine yourself walking down those stairs. the man sticks out from the wall as a light fixture. it's pretty cool.

day 19: the view as i lay on a bench.

day 20: take a second look! the five prong fork at Benu, a fantastic restaurant from Corey Lee (once executive chef at French Laundry). whoever designed this fork swears that the extra prong makes food taste better. the hell if it was the fork, but the food was pretty amazing.

day 21: i parked and noticed bird poo all over the floor around my car. i looked up to find this. bird booty!! you better believe i was scared to take this pic. i did it as quick as possible.

day 22: you all know those really small compact parking spaces at the Metreon? you know the ones that are lined with huge cement cylinders? yeah, well i tried parking and scraped my car on one of them. note that my car is black but due to the thick layer of dirt, it appears gray. the scrape allows a hint of that original black to show up. anyway, i have the exact same scrape on the other side of my car at the exact same level. now that i have matching scrapes, i call them my racing stripes!

just the beginning

hello all! i'm going to start this little bloggy blog by explaining a little bit about this "always remain awesome" concept and the blog itself. i would write a section on myself but hopefully you'll get a sense of who i am as the days go by.

le "always remain awesome" thing:

let me just say right off the bat that while i do think i'm awesome, i do NOT think i'm more awesome than you are. our awesomes are different. see, to me what awesome means is being a respectable individual with opinions and interests that are your own. you do realize that the keyword in that sentence is "respectable," right? you can be an individual with opinions and interests but if you are a douche or a jerk of any form then you aren't respectable. and if you aren't respectable then you certainly aren't awesome. awesome people to me aren't selfish, aren't conceited, aren't willing to step on others to climb ladders, aren't naysayers and especially don't think they are above others based on appearance, finance or any other superficial way of determining self worth. awesome people are humble, accepting, take the high road, look at the positive aspects of everything life has to offer, and again, are respectable. awesome people may be the life of the party or the person who has won the most races but then again, they might not be too. so long as the life of the party and the guy/girl that won the most races is humble and not  an ass wad, they're probably awesome too! just as awesome as the person who came in second or even 50th. so all of you rad people out there, you know you're already awesome but keep in mind to "always remain awesome!"



le blog:

-many people have a focus to their blog, whether it be health/fitness, food, photography, funny images, cute things or anything else. this blog, however, will pretty much be a combination of random. here you'll probably find posts on amazing food i've eaten or attempted to cook, a post a day from a 365 project, random thoughts that run through my head that i feel inclined to share, opinions or thoughts about anything, memories or stories from my life, etc. hopefully they'll be amusing to someone, and if not then atleast i'll have something to look back at when i'm 80 and wondering what my youthfulish self was like.

-though i was in AP English in highschool, i do not promise any kind of correct grammar. hell, i don't even know how i got through that class. i have been told that i use words in a peculiar way. i like to think that just makes me a tad bit more interesting.

-this blog is going to be written without capitals for the most part due to pure laze.

with all of that said......please, enjoy the show!