Wow, 3+ months already?!

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog for months now. I was rather busy for the past few months though so I actually have a real excuse. Hehe. Now that I'm in US, I should be able to post more entries in this blog. So far I've been eating a lot of home cooking. Good stuff! I really miss having veggies and salads, something that I definitely don't get enough in Bali.

Mmmm 90 years old booze

A fun and food-related article from the BBS. Farmer at a remote village in Macedonia dug up bottles of what thought to be vintage cognac from World War I.

This is certain more interesting than the cases of 1930s Bordeaux that we had during the wines class at Cornell.

Fire Update

I mentioned a while back about a fire that burned down one of the biggest markets in Denpasar. Our favorite Chinese-Indonesian restaurant was located in that complex, and we thought we'll never taste the goodness of Ma Fong Sen (aka Honey's Restaurant). Then, we found out from one of Mami's relatives that the restaurant survived the fire and in fact it's still open! We ordered take out last night, and the food was as delicious as before. All the dishes are still there and they tasted just the same as pre-fire. Yay, so happy!

Not more fires!

We have guests visiting us right now and we wanted to take them to Mafongsun aka Honey's, which is our favorite Indonesian-Chinese food place. This place was more like a large food stall rather than a real restaurant. The formerly green colored walls were covered with soot and grease. The place looked like a dive but the food was great and no one we've known ever gotten sick from the food here. Our friend from Hong Kong who is quite picky when it comes to Chinese food highly approved of this place when we took him and his wife to the place. We decided to take our friends are Cantonese to this place. Unfortunately, that morning of our planned trip, the market which housed this restaurant burned down. Just our luck! It took about twelve hours for the firemen to put out the fire. I wonder what's going to happen to the people who ran the restaurant as well as all the occupants of the market. This market was huge and I feel sorry for all the people who had their shops there.

I don't think the authority knows the cause of the fire. Maybe it's an accident or maybe it's arson. Wid said that there were disputes about the land which the market was located. Something about wanting to turn the place into the parking lot. I guess we'll know when people decide what to do with the land.

It's really ironic considering the last time we planned to take some people to a new place, the exact same thing happened. I hope we're not cursed or anything.

Whale Fossil in Vineyard

I suppose you can file this under "when science and food collide." BBC reported that whale fossils were found in a vineyard that produced "the famed Brunello de Montalcino wine" in Tuscany. It's cool that the owner of the vineyard is happy with the discovery, and that the scientist are careful not to disturb the terraces when they do their exacavation.

I love the quote from the owner, Cristina Mariani, and the blur at the end of the article:

"It reminds us "that this rich soil is composed of nutrients and minerals deposited millions of years ago," she says. "It's that special earth that gives complexity to our wines."

So, if you are lucky enough to ever taste a Brunello, just savour it for that extra moment, and remember that beneath the old vines that produced it - there was an even bigger old whale.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Noooooo

Wid and I found out a few days ago from our friends that the manager/cook of Ippin Nyukon is leaving by May. We then asked the waitress what's going on when we went there for dinner that night. Apparently, the cook is going to either Jakarta or Bangkok to look for a new place to start another restaurant. Don't know if the new place is going to be called Ippin Nyukon. The person replacing the cook is also from Japan so hopefully he knows what he's doing. I just hope the food won't change too much when the new guy takes over.

I had the usual bowl of special ramen, but Wid decided to try something else. We shared a salmon and tomato salad which was surprisingly light yet favorful. Wid really liked the skinned tomato; he thought it was very fresh. The salmon (raw, sashimi quality), tomatoes, and friend wonton skins rested on a bed of chopped lettuce and covered with a tangy sauce and Japanese mayo. For entree, Wid got the eggplant in meat sauce. The taste reminded him of a lighter version of their mapo tofu.

Since it's close to the Lantern Festival (元宵節), I ordered the gluttinous rice balls in tea for dessert. This time I got the sesame version instead of the usual peanut, and I think I like the sesame version more. We also got a raw tuna salad for Wid's parents.

It was a bit scary heading to the restaurant because the electricity was all out so the traffic lights weren't working. A few shops had lights on but that's because they had their own generators. We noticed that even with the outage, Bali Nikmat was packed. Luckily, the outage didn't affect the Kuta area (where IN is).

food articles

I guess another reason why Americans are getting fatter and fatter.

From BBC: "Watchdog blasts 'X-treme eating'"

Another interesting article I read was that South Pacific has the highest percentage of obese people (around 90%).

Finally, another article that showed the Neolithic people in Europe might not have been able to drink milk due to the deficiency in a gene that produces lactase.

Woman Chef Wins Top Michelin rank

Woman Chef Wins Top Michelin rank

Found the article on the BBC website. Anne-Sophie Pic is the first woman in more than 50 years to get three stars. She's the the fourth woman to receive this distinction since they started the ranking system in 1926, and she's the only woman with this ranking right now. Kind of sad that the industry is still dominated by white men.

It's pretty cool that both her grandfather and her father won the three star ranking in the past and that now she carried on the tradition by winning three stars on her own.

Lanai Reopening

I want to give an update about the previously mentioned restaurant that was burned down in a fire. After months of struggles (first some sort of legal hassles concerning land rental) and then delays with the construction, Lanai is officially reopened! Our friends and I will return to Lanai this Saturday, if it doesn't suffer another accident. (knock on wood) I hope the food and menu will still be as excellent as before. I really miss the lightly seared, sesame-coated tuna with wasabi mayo and green beans. I'll post a mini review later.

Food in News

I'm reading a news article in the BBC that says that overweight people now outnumbers hungry people in the world. This is a rather disturbing news, and it's interesting that obesity is becoming a global problem. I remember this one prof I worked for totally dissed/made fun of Americans having so many morbidly obese people when in UK where the prof is from has quite the growing obesity problem also. At least here most people are still fairly normal in weight but that's because many (most?) people can't afford to be picky about what they can and cannot eat. Still, it seems to be that there are more and more fat kids here compared to fat adults. At least other eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, aren't present in large numbers yet, though I do notice that someone I know is way too skinny to be normal. I am skinny by nature so I know that's normal skinny. Even then I still have muscles (and curves!), especially on the legs.

It's interesting to note that in US many of the people in poverty are overweight while here the ones here are skinny, but I suspect the reason is that fast food is the cheapest food in US while fast food here is still considered luxury food/treat. I'm guessing the cheapest (processed) food here is instant ramen noodles.

I haven't made anything interesting in the past few days, but I'm supposed to bake some Japanese cheese cake today. If it turns out well, I'll post some pics later.

Oh Noes

File this in the department of WTF.

Last night I messaged my friends to see if they wanted to go to Lanai Cafe for breakfast. The previous weekend for dinner my friends took us to the restaurant which situated on Beach 66 in Semiyak. Our friends were friends of Renee the owner, and we got extra attention from her. When the waitress messed up our order and for some unknown reason 4 out of 6 of us didn't get our main course, she helped fixed the problem and gave us a pitcher of her sangria. The food was really awesome even though the menu was totally random. Fish was extra fresh, sangria was strong yet tasty, and the desserts were to die for. Renee was so friendly and quite the saleswoman--she made everything sound so much more delicious and tempting. We saw the breakfast menu and it looked mighty tempting (plenty of food for a very good price, under 30,000 Rp). We also thought that since the owner is American (originally from South Carolina), she would know what's the proper American breakfast.

We all decided to meet up for breakfast tomorrow at Lanai, but this morning I got a message from my friend--Lanai burned down last night!!!! Total shocker to everyone. Apparently, at one in the morning there was short circuit or some sort of electrical problem at Zansibar, a bar next door, which triggered the fire. The fire had no effect on Zansibar, but it completely burned down Lanai. The only thing that survived was the kitchen. We feel terrible for Renee and the people who work there. It makes me even more sad when I remembered that Renee and her friend wanted to save enough money to start a new business, and now they have to rebuild the restaurant. I hope they recover quickly.