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Boy is snow annoying.
Jan. 25th, 2009 05:49 pm
So, it's snowing. Again. What a complete and total pain. Not to mention cold. When I was younger, I loved snow. Well, the idea of snow. I lived in Southern California so I never really experienced it myself. The first time I ever encountered snow was when I was in New York with my dad for some reason, I was probably about 6, and the memory is vague. After that it was when I went skiing for the first time, with my uncle. So to me, snow happens in places you go to, not where you live. The first time it ever snowed where I actually lived was when I was in Virginia/D.C. Boy was that not fun -- I didn't have a car so I took the Metro everywhere (though even if you do have a car there, it's still probably better to take the Metro under usual circumstances). And even though I lived close to a station, a 15-min walk, tromping through snow to and fro wasn't a blast.
Anyway, on Thursday afternoon I went back to Circuit City, hoping to find that they had lowered their prices further and to see if the open box D90 I was looking at last time was still there. They had lowered prices on more things -- TVs and video games now included -- but get this: the D90 was MORE than the last time I saw it!! It was now priced at exactly the same as a new, untouched D90! I talked to one of the sales reps and he was very cool, he explained that the liquidation was now entirely responsible for prices, and CC didn't have a say in it at all even though they were trying to get the liquidation company to lower the prices on the open box items, as it was completely ridiculous to charge people the same amount for an open box item as for a new, untouched item. Seriously... liquidation company, you fail. I really have to laugh that during a going-out-of-business liquidation the one item I was interested in went UP in price.
Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. I'm having lunch with my cousin at a Chinese restaurant neither of us has been to. It's got mixed reviews, and being that it's Seattle, this is iffy indeed. But oh well. Occasionally my mom, who is of a superstitious nature, has me do random things for the new year. There was the year she called me up and said that she wanted me to do something: wear jade for a year, as it would fend off the bad forces and bring me good luck or whatever. So I sighed and agreed; that's when she was like, "Oh, and it has to be in the shape of a cow." !!! This year, I have been tasked to buy a chunk of meat, and lightly whack at it with a knife 33 times (the age I'll be this year on the lunar calendar). Compared to wearing a piece of jade in the shape of a cow for a whole year, this is actually fairly easy. No, I don't know why. Jade asked, but I explained that the less I know, the better. The superstitious reasoning always gets me irritated, and this way my mom and I are both happy.
I have been fairly productive on the cooking front this weekend. Yesterday I sliced up 10 onions to make about 2 cups of caramelized onions spread, as per this article/recipe at the LA Times. I've made white fish stock today for a cream of scallop soup (which I will be making after posting this). I got the fish head/frames for the stock from Whole Foods, which reserved it for me when I called them in the morning the other day. They charged me $0.99/lb, which is not a lot, but if it was stuff they were going to throw away anyway, kind of short sighted of them. If they'd given it to me free, it would have been a gesture of good will -- I'd been there just the day before, I would have felt good about them, and it probably would have forced me to buy something else when I picked it up. But since they charged me for it, I gave them their $1.31 and left. And on Friday Jade and I both made salmon steaks with pinot noir sauce, and I also made an apple tart cake, which I am enjoying a lot. I've made apple cake before, and I've made apple tart before, but this was the first time I ever made a tart cake ... there's really no other way to describe it because the texture cannot really be pinned to one or the other.
The one thing I meant to make this weekend but didn't was January's Daring Bakers challenge. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to participate this month.
Anyway, on Thursday afternoon I went back to Circuit City, hoping to find that they had lowered their prices further and to see if the open box D90 I was looking at last time was still there. They had lowered prices on more things -- TVs and video games now included -- but get this: the D90 was MORE than the last time I saw it!! It was now priced at exactly the same as a new, untouched D90! I talked to one of the sales reps and he was very cool, he explained that the liquidation was now entirely responsible for prices, and CC didn't have a say in it at all even though they were trying to get the liquidation company to lower the prices on the open box items, as it was completely ridiculous to charge people the same amount for an open box item as for a new, untouched item. Seriously... liquidation company, you fail. I really have to laugh that during a going-out-of-business liquidation the one item I was interested in went UP in price.
Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. I'm having lunch with my cousin at a Chinese restaurant neither of us has been to. It's got mixed reviews, and being that it's Seattle, this is iffy indeed. But oh well. Occasionally my mom, who is of a superstitious nature, has me do random things for the new year. There was the year she called me up and said that she wanted me to do something: wear jade for a year, as it would fend off the bad forces and bring me good luck or whatever. So I sighed and agreed; that's when she was like, "Oh, and it has to be in the shape of a cow." !!! This year, I have been tasked to buy a chunk of meat, and lightly whack at it with a knife 33 times (the age I'll be this year on the lunar calendar). Compared to wearing a piece of jade in the shape of a cow for a whole year, this is actually fairly easy. No, I don't know why. Jade asked, but I explained that the less I know, the better. The superstitious reasoning always gets me irritated, and this way my mom and I are both happy.
I have been fairly productive on the cooking front this weekend. Yesterday I sliced up 10 onions to make about 2 cups of caramelized onions spread, as per this article/recipe at the LA Times. I've made white fish stock today for a cream of scallop soup (which I will be making after posting this). I got the fish head/frames for the stock from Whole Foods, which reserved it for me when I called them in the morning the other day. They charged me $0.99/lb, which is not a lot, but if it was stuff they were going to throw away anyway, kind of short sighted of them. If they'd given it to me free, it would have been a gesture of good will -- I'd been there just the day before, I would have felt good about them, and it probably would have forced me to buy something else when I picked it up. But since they charged me for it, I gave them their $1.31 and left. And on Friday Jade and I both made salmon steaks with pinot noir sauce, and I also made an apple tart cake, which I am enjoying a lot. I've made apple cake before, and I've made apple tart before, but this was the first time I ever made a tart cake ... there's really no other way to describe it because the texture cannot really be pinned to one or the other.
The one thing I meant to make this weekend but didn't was January's Daring Bakers challenge. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to participate this month.
