pizza makin’

I severely missed being able to cook freely whilst in hong kong …since I had an 8 sq ft kitchen with no oven… so in the hopes of satisfying my urge to cook, I endeavored to make pizza this past tuesday. these 4 pizzas were made with 2 different crust recipes, three different mozzarellas, 1 very basic sauce, and either prosciutto or pepperoni. there was also a calzone mixed in (which was awesome) but I didn’t manage to get a picture of it.

no pizza stone, but the really hot oven on convection setting seemed to work out really well. next attempts will sport a pizza stone and maybe the grill?

america!

only america has the floor space and the requisite amount of breakfast lovers to necessitate an entire aisle in walmart devoted to waffles.

and yet not a single pizza stone.

not unrelatedly, I’m going to post more on this thing… trying to increase my web presence.

(W)inner mongolia

I will post more. I promise.

Meanwhile, I went to China, and these are some things I learned there:

1) Domestic Chinese airlines are horrendous. If they aren’t crashing unreportedly on a regular basis now, they will be soon.

2) I will never complain about the amount of construction going on in another city ever again.

3) If you’re going to be force-fed alcohol, it might as well be awful-tasting, rice-based, and anise-flavored… and it might as well be fed to you by old, high-ranking Communist men… and it might as well be at lunch… at 11:30.

4) Chifeng (a prefecture-level city in Inner Mongolia) harbors a secret military complex. I was tipped by this subtle 600 Billion RMB government building (pictured below) and by the fighter jets with green flames breaking the sound barrier at the airport upon our arrival (not pictured due to swiftness).

year of the dragon

it’s been a while.

sorry blog. facebook’s just a friend….. I promise.

anyway, this is a photo diary of my adventure to see the chinese new year fireworks on wednesday night. unfortunately, integral parts of the evening such as people, naan, whiskey, and wheels of cheese have been omitted. however, as one would imagine, the fireworks in china were pretty great.

view from the rainy bus trip to wan chai

the crowd gathers in anticipation…

the fireworks begin. a diligent police officer faces the crowd… way to keep those rowdy hk families in check.

fireworks in full swing with the 108-story ICC tower in the background.

happy-face-fireworks! I guess we’re still a few years away from dragons.

the smokey finale.

in and around hong kong II

probably one of, if not the, last posts before I depart on a three week adventure to thailand and laos. these a few more shots I like that were taken wandering around hong kong this week. I do a lot of wandering.

for some reason, I really like this one.

 

everything in hong kong is well-planned… right down to the tree line.

 

in and around hong kong

new shades from mong kok… first offer price: HK$120; I paid HK$35 (US$4.50… still probably too much… for a few reasons)

 

I like the lines in this one. very perpendicular.

 

camouflage.

 

active camouflage (above something called ‘banana baby’)

 

is there a word that means the opposite of camouflage? conspicuous?

 

sunset from the roof…

happy thanksgiving!

I’ve handed in a couple of papers over the last week, and I’ve finally had a chance to relax a little bit and to throw a post together. so here is some random stuff from the past few weeks that may or may not be interesting.

on my return from a class that ended at 9pm on thanksgiving (heathens!), I really wanted some pumpkin pie. so I thought I could make some kind of satisfactory substitute by buying 1) pumpkin puree and 2) frozen puff pastry. note: there’s no oven in the apartment. nevertheless, the roommate and I were able to make both a decent pumpkin filling (added condensed milk, butter, maple syrup) AND a decent oven substitute (wok, rack, wok cover) to create these ‘pumpkin puffs’ below. some were good.:

in other news, today I went out to the antique street and bought a camera I had my eye on. this is the ‘kodak vigilant junior six-20′ (c.a. 1940), or as I like to preemptively call it, the ‘film/money/time waster’…..a result of many failed attempts to get it to work over the next few weeks.

I did manage to find this awesomely retro users manual online, so who knows. it’s a start. maybe cameras get better with age… and rust.

 

 

drew’s visit: part 2

if there were two themes to andrew’s hong kong adventure, they would be 1) delicious weird and/or fatty foods and 2) scenic hiking/inordinate amounts of walking. the results? I probably managed to gain 5 pounds or so despite having burned thousands of calories going up and down mountains and all over the city… which was no easy task. here are a few more photographic highlights:

this is the race track at happy valley… the atmosphere was great, the races were fun, and you can make bets as low as HK$10 (~$1.25), which sounds really cheap, but in my case, I just ended up making a lot of bets (and winning none of them).

this is a church in macau.

here is lunch before our hike up to the peak. fried noodles with mutton, grilled chicken wings (not pictured), and camel pancakes (/tacos!):

hike view (north side of hong kong island):

hike view (south side of hong kong island):

and finally… snake soup (with ‘american chinese food style’ crunchy things):

weird food tally (off the top of my head): mongolian mutton/camel/lamb’s milk pudding, snake soup, cured donkey, chicken feet, suckling pig, 2 gooses, ox tongue (drew only), frog congee (drew only)… plus a lot more delicious but less weird chinese food (with some portuguese/macanese mixed in).

drew’s visit thus far

 

obviously, I’m new to the iphone…

as much as it kills me to post a bunch of iphone photos, I still don’t have a charger for my canon battery, and instagr.am is pretty sick.

and the camera isn’t so bad itself sometimes… this is from the eventful boat trip back from a beach near sai kung.

later that night drew and I tried some cured donkey… we both agreed that this could have used some rye bread.

the next day we went and saw the big buddha…

I know it’s drew’s vacation, but so far, this was the highlight of my trip. these pork buns are from Tom Ho Wan, the world’s cheapest one michelin starred restaurant. here’s a good article on it (here), but in summation, everything was fantastic and these pork buns may have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten, they were HK$14 for 3 (~US$1.80 [not a typo]), and anyone who comes to visit me will definitely be making a stop here (or one of their other two locations so we don’t have to wait over 2 hours to get in).

 

abstract hong kong

here is my feeble attempt at an HK style tribute to christoph niemann:

 

My Life in Hong Kong: Part 1

 

 

In Hong Kong, my room is pretty small…

 

 

So it likes to hang out with even smaller rooms to make it feel less insecure.

 

 

There’s also no clock in my room… But sometimes I can look out the window to figure out the time:

 

 

Hong Kong is a VERY vertical city…

 

 

But apparently, no one who works at google maps has any idea…

 

 

Luckily, Hong Kong has an intricate network of escalators and elevators to help people get around…

 

 

Although the convenience makes a lot of the locals pretty lazy…

 

 

that’s all I got! but I’ll post more if I get inspired: