Dec 31

In comparison to 2008, 2009 was awful! The one thing I can think of that 2009 had over 2008 was that I read more than double the books I read in 2008. I’m anticipating the fresh feel of a new year that is 2010. In the meantime, here’s a review of how my year has gone with heavier emphasis on my blessings verses my misfortunes.

Note: All links open in a new window.

January 2009


Celebrating New Year’s with the boyfriend

February 2009


Alan and I at the Killer’s Concert

March 2009


Rodeo, Austin, TX

April 2009


Selina’s Birthday

May


Celebrating Sae’s law school graduation

June 2009


Cindy and me at Grand Lux Cafe in Houston

July


Brandi and me on Fourth of July

August

  • The first two weeks of August, I tried to squeeze in as much time as I can with Alan because he was about to leave for Korea for up to 4.5 months.
  • Starting, August 16, I started counting days Alan was gone.
  • Kim came to visit the weekend of the 22nd and we saw Wicked.
  • I saw 500 Days of Summer three times this month, in theatre, of course. This is the first movie I’ve done that.
  • Jon visited from NYC.
  • I got a part-time, part-time (yes you read that right) job, thanks to Brittany dropping a good word for me.


Alan’s last night out with friends before going to Korea.

September

October

November


Having hot chocolate at Ren Fest.

December


After party in the car.

I’m a blessed girl. Instinctively, I’d tell you my 2009 was pretty awful but when I write it all out like this and focused on the good rather than the bad, I can see now I’m still quite lucky. Farewell, 2009.

Tell me how your year went. Or better yet, if you have a year in review entry, I’d love to read yours.

Nov 27


My FFB (Friend from Boston) BFF has a birthday today! She’s my brain and she lives in my heart. Aw. Happy birthday, Mary Ellen. I love you and can’t wait to see you this Christmas.

Nov 24

Over the weekend, we went to Texas Renaissance Festival in celebration for Jessica’s birthday which was earlier in the month. Here’s a pictorial recap :)

Foods of Texas Renaissance


Fried cod and fish, and turkey leg!


We devoured almost the entire funnel cake before realizing we never snapped a picture!


It was sooo cold and wet and perfect for hot chocolate!


I LOVE fried alligator. LOVE it. If you eat only one thing from Ren Fest, make it the alligator.

It rained the whole time we were there.


The mud on Jess and Brandi’s shoes/jeans. We did pretty good not getting too dirty.


My cowgirl boots were truly functional and my jeans were the cleanest.

The rest!


This guy freaked me out every time we ran into him. That black tongue actually moves!


Apparently, gnome kisses Brandi every year. Jessica was quite jealous.


Poop deck!

Videos


We saw our usual shows, one of which was the Mud Show. The “Spartan” picked a poor Trojan audience member to kiss. Lucky us, it was the dude sitting right in front of us.


I got so excited that the guy actually drenched her, I accidentally stopped recording just when he hit the spot. No worries, I stuck around for the next guy! See next video.

I leave you with a photo collage of the three of us at Ren Fest in 2007

Nov 13

Jessica’s birthday was last weekend but she was out of town. We wanted to go somewhere to celebrate with her on Wednesday but she had a test she had to study. Since we’re all on really tight budgets, she said she had a coupon for a medium sized pizza from Double Dave’s. I had some chicken in the fridge, and Brandi thought that maybe making some kind of chicken pizza would complete the pizza party. I picked the first recipe I found on Allrecipes.com: BBQ Chicken Pizza.

The new ingredient to me this time were molasses and cilantro. I grew up on A LOT of cilantro as it’s a very popular in Vietnamese cuisine and I love Mexican food. But I’ve never officially cooked with it. (I’m really intimidated by Vietnamese cooking, I must start tackling that soon.) Molasses is new to me too. I only used a teaspoon of my new bottle of molasses. I think I’m going to try molasses sugar cookies as my next baking adventure. This was an easy weeknight dinner. Easy cleanup and fast! Recipe follows with my modifications in a bit. I cutback the brown sugar because reviews on Allrecipes.com mentioned it was too sweet.

I would make this again for friends. I, myself usually don’t crave BBQ chicken pizza. It wasn’t too sweet with less brown sugar and I’d keep that modification.

Edit: Alan had a couple of slices last night and he said it was “awesome.”


This is the chicken sauce mixture on my prebaked pizza crust.


I sprinkled onions on one side planning on giving the option of slices with no onion. I screwed up and didn’t mark what side had onions. Doh!


Recipe called for one cup cheese, I used 2 cups!


Baked and done!


Jessica takes pictures of her birthday pizzas.

Recipe serves 8

Ingredients
3 boneless chicken breast halves, cooked and cubed
1 cup hickory flavored barbeque sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon molasses
1/3 cup 1/8 cup brown sugar
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 (12 inch) pre-baked pizza crust
1 cup smoked Gouda cheese pizza cheese mixture, shredded
1 cup thinly sliced red onion white onions

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). In a saucepan over medium high heat, combine chicken, barbeque sauce, honey, molasses, brown sugar and cilantro. Bring to a boil.
Spread chicken mixture evenly over pizza crust, and top with cheese and onions. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

Oct 6

Around this time 2 years ago on this blog, I wrote about the things I appreciate about my roomie. I talked about how how Alan never complains about my cooking, explains sports to me, and how we gawked at pretty girls on facebook. Almost half a year later we started dating and some things have changed. We don’t gawk at pretty girls on facebook as much anymore and he’s not too shy to tell me when I overdid it on the salt in my meatloaf, he does still however teaches me about sports. I’ve impressed a handful of my guy friends now with my sports knowledge. Hee.

Well it’s that time of year again and my dude is now at that quarter century mark as of today :) I want to wish him a very happy birthday and a wonderful 25th year. I gotta go wrap a small prezzie and head over to his new apartment now. Happy Birthday, Bubba!

Aug 21
Halycon
icon1 Linda | icon2 Austin, birthday, savory | icon4 08 21st, 2009| icon3No Comments »

The first time I stepped into Halycon, located on 4th St, downtown, was summer of 2005 with Kym of Je Mange. I think we only had coffee that day and read and journaled, like we did many days that summer. Through the following years, I go occasionally to eat the table top smores. Actually, I remember the last time I went, Chris had accidentally blown a fireball into my face while we were making smores. Anyway, when I went Tuesday night to catch the tail end of Katambra’s birthday celebration downtown, I decided to opt out of my usual table top smores and ordered their banana walnut crepes. Jon and I split it and devoured it. Look at how glorious it is? This makes me excited to experiment further next time I make crepes on my own.

I swiped Halycon’s picture of their smores off their website.

Related Sweet Crepes Blog Entries:

July 12, 2009 – Banana Nutella Crepes
May 12, 2009 – Crepe Cafe in San Fran
May 13, 2009 – Honey Honey Sweet Cafe & Crepery

Aug 5



Last weekend, for one last night of birthday festivities, some old coworkers and Neville treated me to Kenichi, a sushi restaurant that’s been holding its own in the Warehouse District of Austin for quite some time now.

We had reservations at nine but did not get seated til 9:45. A lot of people were complaining. A few points off for that. It’s a pretty bumping place, people dressed to the nines, grabbing drinks and sushi before a night of partying, I’m sure. So our dinner party was the ONLY mixed ethnic party, which we found kind of funny as we were in an Asian restaurant. Lily and I were the only two Asians.

When we were finally seated, it took a long time for us to even get our drink orders in and then much too long to receive them. Service was pretty bad. We hardly got any attention. They forgot the energy drink Neville ordered with his vodka, and also gave Lily’s order to Neville and then charged us twice for it. Luckily, we were in good spirits and were chair dancing to the music. The music was R&B and hip hop from the nineties. Perfect for our age bracket of 25-30.

We had Spicy Edamame to start and oh my goodness that was delicious. Edamame was sauteed with Sriracha, chili oil, and Japanese spices. I don’t think I can have regular old edamame again. I ordered my usual Escolar and Unagi, and tried their Hawaiian roll. Hawaiian roll: blackened Yellowtail with pineapple, asparagus and fresno pepper, rolled in edamame paper. I’ve never had sushi with pineapple nor have I tried edamamae paper. It was pretty good. I also tried Neville’s Japanese Bagel and it’s the first sushi roll I had with strawberries! The Japanese Bagel had cream cheese in it and I can’t remember what else but the strawberries and cheese did give it a very contemporary and unique taste to it that actually works, not like the white chocolate sushi I had at Imperia.

Overall, the sushi was good if you’re in the mood for something not traditional and more experimental and trendy. I am interested in coming back for maybe happy hour. It was an alright experience, Kenichi. I was just happy to be spending some time with some of my favorite people.

Jul 30

I didn’t get my birthday wish but I did have a nice dinner with some friends at a new place I’ve been meaning to try. The only person who had Torchy’s Tacos was Jen and she’s never had it at the Trailer Park & Eatery. Happily, it was a new experience for everyone involved.


Si Nae and Stephen brought their two new puppies.


So at the Trailer Park & Eatery there’s Torchy’s Tacos and another trailer I didn’t try out yet called Treat, a dessert eatery. This is Brandi in front of the Torchy’s window.


I ordered the popular deep fried avocado taco and the green chile pork taco. Delicious. I especially liked the green chile pork taco.

My brother ordered the “Dirty Sanchez” which instigated a few immature chuckles.


What’s in the Dirty Sanchez? Scrambled eggs with guacamole, fried poblano chili, escabeche carrots, and shredded cheese served on a flour tortilla with poblano ranch sauce.

Everyone enjoyed the tacos. Pretty damn good and I’d so come back.

Some more photos:







Brandi, the cake decorator made me that cake. Reminds me of a little girl’s birthday cake. Plus, it was chocolate. Chocolate is medicine for the soul.

I’m glad my 25th year is over. 26 is starting off shaky too but through it all I have good people and good food. That’s not too shabby.

Jul 28

I’m 26 today.

So these came over the weekend.

Then today I got two more deliveries.

I’m so lucky to have the people I have in my life.

Jul 27

Last night Brandi, Jessica, and Jesse took me to Melting Pot, I blew out a birthday candle and made my first wish. I wished pretty hard. I usually have a very broad wish when I blow out candles but this time, I specifically wished for something. My actual birthday is Tuesday (Brandi just likes to spoil me) and I’ll wish for it once more.

Brandi declared today, “Linda Hot Dog Day.” She’s crazy. I like to only really have one big celebration with loved ones and then maybe one more if I have someone special but she’s adamant about extending festivities. So she made us hot dogs and made us wear party hats.


Jessica: “You can see me two times, bitches!”


Maybe I should have wished for bigger boobs…


This shot took us several times to get kind of right.

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