Saturday, February 6, 2010

Perfecting Fish & Chips


Chuc Mung Nam Moi Saigon!

The flowers are totally complete around Nguyen Hue in time for the Lunar New Year. The entire Vietnam is preparing for their holiday. Gift baskets, Cherry Blossom Trees, Money envelopes and a lot more for this special festival. While inside my apartment I am busy cleaning and preparing my house because I have a visitor coming tomorrow from Manila. We are off to Cambodia on Monday to celebrate Valentines. I hope it will be fun and romantic? Lol!

It's been three years since I started cooking Fish and Chips when I was still in Manila. Tonight is the night where in I was able to prove that I already mastered and perfected the right way to do my Dory Fish and the batter. Lemon or lime plus salt & pepper! Whoah but where's the chips? I didn't take a photo of it because I didn't cook it properly. Maybe because my chips are so old and over staying already in the fridge. Next time!

Tomorrow I will try to get some pictures of Nguyen Hue and how Vietnamese celebrate the Lunar New Year or popularly known as the Chinese New Year. But here, they simply call it TET...

hugs,
joanie xxxx

Bocuse d’Or USA

February 7

I’m going to sleep soon, but first, in case you really need to know who won the Bocuse d'Or USA competition and don’t follow me on Twitter but can’t wait until it’s up on the Nation's Restaurant News web site later this morning, I’ll go ahead and tell you it's James Kent from Eleven Madison Park.

I saved the good pictures for NRN.com, because I know where my bread is buttered, but this is an outtake, of (from the right), Eleven Madison Park executive chef Daniel Humm, Bocuse d’Or USA champion and today’s king of the world James Kent, EMP general manager Will Guidara (or as people in the chain restaurant biz say, “Frank's boy”) and Tom Allan, who like James Kent is one of EMP’s sous chefs, but James played captain in this competition, so he's the winner. Tom will accompany him to Lyon in January of next year to represent the stars and stripes there.

Tonight, everyone in this picture is probably getting drunk.

All day and all the night...

Yesterday I went with my dearest Laia and Esther to our favourite Kaiten suhi... well, maybe is not the better one in Barcelona, but we love to go there and enjoy our meal! After that, we took some pictures of us in the Saint Ana Church, an small and lovely place in the heart of Barcelona.

 
Coat - Ben Sherman
Dress and boots - H&M

We took a little coffee and chatted about our things, and later, we finally went into Riera Baixa, just for have a walk into the vintage shops... I bought a lovely white dress, it's been in the Lullaby shop for months since I saw it the first time... so I guess that it was waiting for me, and now... it's mine!

  
  
  
Candies on a shop and my dress! It's lovely, and it looks like I'm going to play a tennis match!
At the end of the day, we discovered a burguer that looks so 50's style, and we decided that we would come back in a few weeks, but... 

Today, I went there for my dinner! I was with Micky and my friend Godino, just wanted to see "The Road"; but of course we had to eat before it... and I told them about this place, so... 


 
Here we are, Godino and me!
 
My dinner: chiken burguer and a vanilla milkshake!

It's so delicious!!
And I want to show you my outfit, just because my friend Rose made that dress for me... isn't it lovely?

 
Dress - Handmade
Tights, bandana and boots- H&M
Bag - Vintage

By the way, the film was awesome, but really really hard... anyway you should all see it!
What did you do on your saturday night?

Winter Wonderland....

We woke up to 6-8 inches of snow this morning and downed power lines on our house! Thankfully, somehow the lines were still connected to our box so we still had power. Once the power company got there and let us out of our driveway, we drove to a local park for a hike to enjoy the snow.

SDC11981 by you.

SDC11998 by you.

SDC12004 by you.

SDC12012 by you.
Denali was the only dog that would cooperate for the family picture, haha.


SDC12014 by you.
And lastly, one of my favorite pictures from the hike!

For those of you on facebook, I have the rest of the pictures on there. You can also go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/godsflower