cook + book: asian cuisine, sketching, bookmaking, and slow sewing

My week started with a lovely Sunday longsilog of longaniza, rice with spicy vinegar, and a fried egg (and the key to a perfectly fried egg with firm whites and runny yolk is to put a lid over the frying pan while cooking).

 

Nothing like a Filipino breakfast to start a week of yummy Asian meals.

It was a busy and hectic week where I had no time for clay club after school neither Tuesday nor Thursday because of teaching and hosting slow sewcial night. And art school. Okay I'm just a beginning art major enrolled in one class at community college, but still. I saw the instruction to not sketch in our Bristol or mixed media pad, and instead sketch on less expensive paper. Rather than buy a sketch book at Michaels or Hobby Lobby, I decided to make my own chap books to bind later with needle and thread into volumes. One type of homemade book will be my notebook and sketches for my 2-Design class, and the other my pottery journal.

What I learned at Arrowmont in a book binding workshop 3 years ago is coming back to me.

I also organized my linens of the top of a hall closet after Patrick destroyed its bottom that housed his tools. I've a collection of linen and cotton napkins, which I ironed as I was fuming over the destruction wreaked by my husband. We argued and then apologized to each other and have resolved to buy a cabinet from IKEA to replace the ghetto-looking cabinet.

I love that these napkins feature botanical drawings, but one is missing. Aaargh.  

 

At least this set is complete.

And so I want to make 3 more vegetable-themed linen lunch napkins to coordinate with them. 

Then I had to attend to tasks like gassing up my car and grocery shopping. 

 

And one fabulous Japanese dinner before social sewing of wasabi poke, miso-dressed salad and kimchi--all thanks to Costco.

I was late to the club house because of my poke dinner, but I did manage to do a little stitching on this lockdown embroidery sampler.

And the finale to my work week was a night out with Cecilia and Chia to Seapot. I'd never eaten before at a hotpot restaurant. First we went to the condiments bar where I loaded up on dipping sauces of chili oil, Sichuan peppercorns, chopped garlic and and a dish of soy and peanut pastes with scallions and cilantro. Where Cecilia and Chia chose miso broth, I chose the spicy house soup with red chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and other spices. 

 

My soup was a bit too spicy that I was coughing. I was almost gonna ask for sugar to temper the heat. Luckily there was sweet Chinese sausage plus all the green vegetables to tame the fieriness.

The conveyor belts slid by with other proteins, mostly seafood besides the small platters of lamb we all chose. Cecilia grabbed prawns (delicious!) and miniature-lobster (spiny?) tails (not my favorite because the shell was very difficult to peel for meat that was not worth the reward). The octopus was also not my favorite, and I wished I had gone for fish and calamari instead. Lotus root was also not a favorite, but I had 3 plates of some green leafy vegetable (not gai lan because the stem was more tender) including baby bok choi. I loved also the fish balls and the dumplings.

  

Besides lamb, the other protein choices included chicken breast, pork belly, kurobuto pork, beef toro, rib eye, and Angus prime.

I left my first thinly sliced lamb too long in the boiling broth and almost couldn't find it. Still delicious even when overdone. You can see in the pic above how much it shrank.

  

But omigosh I wanted to and did try almost everything on that conveyor belt though I did pass on the spam, tofu and desserts of fruit and cake slices. I could not believe all the different kinds of mushrooms--shitake, enoki, woodear, maitake, oyster and couple of other fungi I didn't recognize. And shellfish galore like razor clams, mussels, manila clams, scallops, and sea snails. The restaurant adds 10% to your bill if you leave behind a lot of unfinished plates and to prevent food waste. I wanted to finish my spinach noodles I really did, but my broth was pretty much gone and too salty to finish cooking them. And my soup pot couldn’t be refilled because our 90 minutes were up (we were there for an hour and forty minutes) and there were diners waiting for an available table. So fun. I would totally do hot pot again.