Part 2 of the blog post you already forgot about

So this is part 2 of the excavation of Serena's bathroom, and probably a much less interesting part so for that I apologize.

In this part, we fix her scary shower by adding both a shower head and light.

Here is the shower before we began, with and without the flash, to show what it looks like and what it would be like if you were actually using it:

Celebration of a very American holiday

SO David & I celebrated Thanksgiving by spending a week in Tennessee with his friends and family.  People tell me that this is a Serious thing to do and indicates that we are in a Very Serious Relationship because I'm having Thanksgiving with his Family...but *shrugs* it was fun! :)

First, we flew into Nashville and stayed with David's brother Brian for a night.  I got in first though, so I took a nap in the airport and then I woke up at 12:30am to David shaking me and saying "Hi I'm buzzed."

The next day, Brian took us around Nashville, and then I tagged along with David alllllll week.

"You're still following me around? WTF little stalker Asian girl?!  No one's supposed to know about you, go back to New York!!"

Our celebration of lesser-known holidays!

This will be a very brief post about how we celebrated TWO not so famously famous holidays in America at least.

Here is a not-so-subtle hint to help you guess the first one:

As for the second one, you'll just have to read on because it's a surprise!

Cupcakes and Immunity-boosting Strawberry Hot dogs

So for today, I'll be writing about two timeless and classic desserts which everyone can remember fondly from their youth: Red Velvet Cupcakes and, of course, Strawberry Hot Dogs with Immune Defense.

AAAAASSSIAAN FLAAAAVORS

Can I just say that it irks me to no end when people on Top Chef say that they're going to use "Asian flavors" in their food all the damn time? It makes me slightly nervous that some cannibal is lurking behind the couch ready to pounce and boil me in a giant vat with the Thais, Japanese, Indians, Koreans, Malaysians, and Vietnamese, so that all our pan-ethnic juices (which is just ordinary soy sauce, because that is of course the ultimate essence of Asianness) combine harmoniously to make Asian Flavored Stew.

So yeah.

But ANYWAYS, David & I have a LOT of catching up to do with regards to blogging about cooking projects, and David is insisting that I go first.  So, I'm going to Asian flavor it up hardcore with THREE MEAL ADVENTURES!!

Hallow-day, Part 2

So it took me a while to finally get around to writing this, and also this title in inaccurate, as this blog post is about Halloween night and Serena's is the one about Hallow-day. However, I wanted to make an obscure reference to an old Homestar Runner cartoon that I just thought of. So I did.

And, yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition. You deserved it.

Anyway, once we got back from the farm museum, we began preparing ourselves for Halloween night. The week before, after much debate (I was pretty much stuck on Santa Claus or a bear since I already have costumes for those) and many hours scouring eBay, we had settled on being a circus bear and a circus bear trainer as our costumes. I had a bear suit already (don't ask) and so just purchased a tutu to complete the costume, while Serena ordered a figure skating outfit on eBay, purchased a whip, and did her own makeup.

HALLOWEEN festivities part 1: FARM MUSEUM!!

SO I bet you thought we moved past our blogging phase, or stopped having AWESOME ADVENTURES due to our 1 month lapse.  But this is not the case!  We have been sooo busy having awesome adventures and we're just so naturally inclined to laziness that we have not been documenting it all until now!  So expect to see a glut of catch up posts from us :D

We had both wholesome and unwholesome fun on Halloween.  First, we went to the Queens County Farm Museum!!  I think the last time I went was in Kindergarten for our class trip to teach us what farms and farm animals are supposedly like.  Because it is so relevant to NYC kids.  They had a pretty cute Halloween setup going on though, with a lot of kids dressed up in ridiculous costumes.

But LOOK it's DUCKS!

Craigslist silliness related to excavating the bathroom

So I already know from past experience that if you post ANYTHING under the "Free" section in Craigslist all the nutso crazyfolk will come popping out of the woodwork. Several months ago, I was cleaning out the attic and I dumped everything in a giant plastic bin, posted it on Craigslist, and then left the bin of stuff outside my door with a giant "PLEASE DONT TAKE MY BIN :(" sign. And YOU KNOW WHAT?? 30 minutes later, MY BIN WAS GONE! >:O But THEN, the person called and was like "Oops I didn't see your "PLEASE DONT TAKE MY BIN :(" sign and brought it back. Yay! But THEN, it disappeared AGAIN and NEVER reappeared. So sad :(

So this time around, when giving away my crazy bathroom stuff, I dumped everything in a giant CARDBOARD box. And my inbox got flooded with silly emails (33, to be exact). Here are some highlights.

Excavating Serena's Bathroom, Part 1

So about a week and a half ago, Serena decided she wanted to excavate the storage wall thing in her bathroom. Normally, this wouldnt be that big of a project, but that storage wall contained items dating back to possibly the 70's.

After the excavation, we offered the box of items for free in Serena's driveway to readers of Craigslist who cleared it out and took the box with them in less than 2 days. The fact that anyone wanted most of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous as you'll see below (Also, just see Serena's post for more of the ridiculousness of said Craigslist people).

Counting Crows Concert

David & I caught a 9/3 Counting Crows concert in Central Park. Opening for them was Michael Franti and Spearhead, and Augustana. It was David's millionth Counting Crows concert since they're just about his favorite band ever, but it was my very first. And I've learned that it's probably a good idea to wear heels to concerts. But over all, it was a great time.

The Festival of Fringe, part 2

So I'm going to be reviewing the other 2 shows we saw at Fringe fest, namely Tales from the Tunnel by Troy Diana and James Valletti; and The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea explorer, a one man show featuring Tim Watts. David already reviewed the more risque shows that we saw...in comparison, these were more G rated for sure.

Fringe Festival, Part 1

So a few weeks about Serena and I saw 4 shows that were all part of the 2009 Fringe Festival.

As for what that is exactly, I'll leave the description to the website:

The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) is the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 companies from all over the world performing for 16 days in more than 20 venues – that's a total of more than 1300 performances!

My post is going to be about 2 of those shows. One is an ad-lib musical called Baby Wants Candy and another is a musical inspired by LOLcats called I Can Has Cheezburger: The MusicLOL!.

Pseudo-Asian Beef, Egg & Tomato meal

Growing up, once in a while my family would eat a sweet/salty dish that consisted of beef, egg & tomatoes. And since we're Chinese, it would just be one of multiple dishes that we'd eat family style with rice. David & I just happened to have most of the ingredients necessary for this dish, so we attempted it, but changed it up a bit.


Our ingredients:
- strips of sirloin beef
- handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced
- 4 eggs
- handful of mushrooms
- about 1/3 sweet onion, chopped
- olive oil
- rice, or pita
- 1/2 red pepper

(for the sauce...no measurements because David just improved it to taste):
- soy sauce
- balsamic vinegar
- mang tomas all purpose sauce
- sugar
- Jack Daniel's original bbq sauce

Fish Tacos and Tomato Spinach Pasta stuff

So this post is going to be about 2 different nights of cooking.

The first was a night filled with catfish, soft taco shells, mango avacoda salsa, and stuff.

The second was a night filled with spinach, pasta, pasta sauce, and whatever else.

COOL TENNESSEE STORES + Northbound

...the last of Tennessee roadtrip blogging!

David took me to some REALLY AWESOME PLACES in Tennessee, which were HARDCORE.

Tennesseesaucepartnumbersecond.

So. This is part 2 of the Tennessee trip.

While we were there we went to my family reunion in Johnson City, TN. It was Friday - Sunday and featured sitting on a screened-in porch, eating, riding in a boat, water skiing, and tubing. I did all of the above and Serena did all but the water skiing part. Afterward on Monday, we went hiking at Burgess Falls outside of Cookeville, TN.

Before you click "Read more...," if you'd like, you can try to use your detective skills to find the missing Aunt in the picture above.

Tennessee is awesomesauce, part 1

So David & I got back from Tennessee last week after an almost-week-long trip. This trip was my first big dose of The South and my very first time meeting David's People (which is only fair, because he's already met just about all of mine). Super exciting!!

Beaches!

A few weeks ago we went to Siren Music Festival at Coney Island. It was David's very first time at Coney Island, so it was extra exciting :P We ate very greasy hot dogs, looked at stalls of stuff, listened to some music, and sat on pavement.

ULTIMATE COOKING POST!!!1111

So due to a complete lack of any good pictures on Serena's computer (which I am currently using) and a large level of laziness, I will now attempt to make 1 blog post about multiple cooking projects that we completed some time ago.

Butternut Squash Pizza!!

So David & I went on an awesome roadtrip around New England earlier this year (we'll be recapping that in a later entry), and had the yummiest unconventional pizza ever at the Corner Grille in Worcester, Massachusetts. We had ordered a "Harvest Moon Pie," which involved a 14" rectangular pie topped with Brown sugar ♦ roasted butternut squash ♦ caramelized onion ♦ sausage ♦ toasted pumpkin seeds ♦ cheese ♦ brown butter drizzle. Yum right? Well here's a picture:

So on Sunday, we decided to make a butternut squash pizza of our own, combining a loose interpretation of this recipe with what we remembered from our Harvest Moon Pie experience, within the very limited constraints of our cooking ability and the contents of David's kitchen + 1 Waldbaums shopping trip.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 butternut squash
• Boboli whole wheat pizza crust
• 2 tablespoons Italian blend shredded cheese
• 2 slices of mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 medium-sized Vidalia onion, chopped
  
• 1 clove garlic, minced
  
• approximately 4 pumpkin seeds
• about 3-5 mushrooms, sliced
  
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• a thick hunk of butter
• a good measure of brown sugar

Independence Day

So yesterday was Independence Day (or the 4th of July if you'd like, and I wouldn't). We went to Jones Beach on Long Island for the FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR and while it wasn't nearly as crowded as I had expected it would be, it was every bit as sandy.

Anyway, along with the sand there were also some fireworks. As you can see below, our pictures really capture the spectacularness of them.

Our first foray into the world of co-blogging!

Hello world!

This is Serena. David is currently fiddling with the HTML on the site to try to make it look less boring and/or unattractive. We've decided to create a joint blog in order to document all the nifty stuff that we do that we don't want to forget about later. Maybe something like a digital scrapbook of our lives.

You can expect posts about the following:
- cooking experiments/recipes
- music/theater/movies
- roadtrips & travel
- restaurants & various other venues

...and more! New and improved!! 30% more free! Hooray!

In case you were wondering who the hell we were, here is a picture of us:

:)