We’ll be moving into a townhouse condo in Fremont in September. It’s under construction at the moment. We’ll be living on a new street named Paso Cedro Common. My freshman dorm was Cedro. This is something like fate, I guess.

This is the first house Kolina and I have purchased and it certainly won’t be the last. It’s definitely true that the Bay Area has ridiculous housing prices. Homes we went to around the area were gone the next week with numerous offers and counter-offers raising the price by 100K in some cases. Hundreds of people would flow through homes at the price range we wanted and inventory itself was pretty sparse. Open houses were more like parties, with some real estate agents bringing cookies, dim sum, and soda/wine for guests.

I’m glad we found the home we did. For me, it’s a great combination of location (Mission Schools), price, and location. It’s a bit far from work but we can luckily take the shuttle to work. It’s near power lines but the disclosure says there’s no scientific evidence that proximity to power lines is associated with health defects :)

In the meantime, it’s time to become an expert in home furnishing pricing and features. I’m glad Kolina and I agree on making our home look like something out of Restoration Hardware / Pottery Barn.

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We bought a home!

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Pug meet up!

spreads
chickpea, yogurt-dill, piquillo-almond, flatbread

rum, pumpkin, orange

cachaca, tarragon, cardamom

trout, avocado, red onion

short rib
date, carrot jam, nettle soubric

lamb shank
barley, cherry, saffron

pound cake, lemon ice cream, mint cream, blood orange, caramel

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Love aziza

View of Lake Tahoe from Heavenly. March 9, 2012. Conditions were pretty good despite it being very warm.

View from our cabin:

I was able to ski for two runs after switching my snowboard with Tom.

Pug meetup!!!!! The first Saturday of each month at Butcher Park in San Jose will now be a mainstay for us. So many pugs! So much fun!!

Stanford v. Cal basketball. Stanford won! But Cal made the NCAA tournament :(

Holden’s happy to see me after I came back from Tahoe!!

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Some recent photos from my phone

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First ride of the year

- Horrible Bosses: A mindless comedy that had a few good laughs.

- Real Steel: Totally what I expected and that was fine with me.

- Moneyball: Slow to start, but a really good movie once it got going. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, I think you’ll like it.

- Captain America: Not bad given my expectation were very low.

- In Time: I remember seeing the trailer for this a year ago and thinking it would be pretty cool. The concept could have been developed a lot more, but maybe it’s because I kept wanting to see Justin Timberlake start singing and dancing.

- Drive: This movie got stellar reviews but watching it on a plane just doesn’t work. All of the art and style of the movie is lost on a small little screen on a long-flight. So, I didn’t enjoy it. The dialogue and plot development was too slow for me. I was tempted to turn this one off, but without anything else to do, I sat through it.

- Ides of March: I really enjoyed this one. Compared to Drive, Ryan Gosling actually said something.

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Movies

Via

Via

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Yeah, I have a pug

The main focus of the meal, at least for me, was on breaking out a great bottle of wine. In this case, it was a Cakebread Chardonnay Reserve and that meant a more limited number of options to pair it with. I ended up picking making some Bay Roasted Scallops, along with some asparagus on the side.

The recipe itself wasn’t difficult, but there are four steps and everyone includes “season with salt and pepper”. I might have been too liberal with both because in the end I did think the dish was a bit too salty. Good thing I had some excellent wine to wash it all down :)

We were supposed to follow up the meal by making some Momofuku Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies. The recipe calls for room temperature butter, followed by 1 hour of the cookies in the fridge before baking. We didn’t have enough time so it was punted to Wednesday.

So, today, with Kolina getting to go on an all-expenses paid snow trip to Tahoe, I had the pleasure of trying out the recipe. I read the comments and saw a lot of complaints about cookies falling apart and there being too much butter. Despite the warnings, I trudged ahead, cut butter by 50% and definitely experienced the crumbliness of these cookies. I’m not sure how they stick together and they sure looked ugly when I took them out, but they taste delicious! If anything, it’s going to be a great topping on ice cream.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Valentine’s Day Cooking

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Holden

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Truth