This weekend was the San Bernardino Train Days at the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, CA. The SB County Museum is a very nice museum in and of itself. On a normal day it is what you would expect from a county museum. It has typical museum stuff. On the upper floors they have one of the largest bird egg exhibits you have ever seen (and probably will ever want to see). In between levels there are rock exhibits. The lower floor is dedicated to San Bernardino County History. Then finally, the basement has a big stuffed mammal exhibits (think Road Kill-R-Us).
That of course is on a normal day, and today was not a normal day. Today was train day!! On train day the whole museum gets overtaken by trains. There were tiny Z gauge trains that were smaller than a finger, there were trains you can ride, and then there are even actual trains! For AJ (who is 3) this was a very exhilarating way to pass two hours (the event goes all day long but we had other things to do that day). This is definitely an event for the train lover in your life (which right now happens to be just me and AJ, Denise did not go).
When it comes to food I can often be a bit impulsive (that’s an understatement). I love variety and have a hard time eating the same thing twice. Unfortunately, we have a lot of leftovers that never get eaten in our refrigerator, but on the plus side dinner time is rarely ever a dull moment at our house! To add to that, one of the many blessings I count is that I live in a place and time in which I can get almost any ingredient I want. Which is good because this particular recipe required a lot of ingredients.
I loved all the vegetables in this dish.
As in the title I call this recipe Californian Singapore noodles. I did this for two reasons first off, the the original recipe I found was a bit too spicy for my family’s taste, and second, because I know I have now clue about how this dish was supposed to be made. I just kind of put it together, did my best, and surprisingly it came out pretty well.
First off you will need the following ingredients:
Main Dish:
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
8 dried or fresh shiitake mushrooms
6-7 ounces of Mai Fun, also known as rice sticks or vermicelli (one bag)
2 stalks celery, sliced thin
1 medium onion, sliced thin
1 cup bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
8 green onions, with ends trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 pound pork cut into thin slices
4 tablespoons hoisin sauce (Chinese barbecue sauce)
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
Steps:
1) Prep your food by cutting up all your vegetables.
2) If using dried shiitake mushrooms soak them in hot water (should be uncomfortable to the touch) until soft, then cut the stems then slice thin.
3) Put the mai fun into a bowl of lukewarm water (should be warmer than room temperature, but comfortable to the touch) for 8-10 minutes until the noodles get stringy, make sure the water covers the noodles. Drain noodles and set aside.
4) Marinate the pork in hoisin sauce and cook until browned. Then set aside.
5) Heat up 2 tablespoons of oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the curry powder, the ginger, and the minced garlic, and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth, soy sauce, and sugar. Stir to combine and then cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.
6) Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large wok over high heat. Add in the remaining garlic and ginger, and stir-fry until the garlic starts to become golden. Add the celery, onion, pepper, sprouts, green onions, and mushrooms. Stir-fry for 3 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften. Set the vegetables aside in a bowl.
7) Heat the last 2 tablespoons of oil in the wok over high heat. Add in the shrimp and stir-fry until they start to turn pink on both sides. Add the barbecued pork and toss to combine.
8 ) Add in the noodles and the vegetables. Pour on the sauce and also add the oyster sauce. Mix the ingredients thoroughly to coat all the noodles and incorporate all the vegetables.
9) Serve hot.
The recipe serves about four and turned out great. One thing that really stood out to me was the taste of ginger in the recipe. Perhaps it was because I used fresh ginger, but it really stood out in this dish and gave it a kind of sweet mellow flavor. In general I loved the mixture of flavors in this dish. I want to thank Rasa Malasia for posting their recipe. I hope they don’t mind that I changed it a bit. As I mentioned before my family doesn’t handle hot spicy foods too well, plus the original recipe had too much noodles, when I made this dish I found myself having to take away noodles.
AJ was very excited about the noodles.
All in all it was a great dish, I have never been to Singapore. I have never even met someone from Singapore, but with dishes like this I am very eager to go there one day and discover more about Singapore.
We like to consider ourselves adventurous people with no plane tickets. We don’t get to travel much of the world, but we will go to semi-great lengths to find something new. One of the ways we like to find new things is by using a site called Groupon.
Groupon is a site in which a new business trying to get business will deeply discount their prices. In the case of Dhat Island they were offering a pre-paid coupon of $20 dollars for only $9 dollars. That plus the fact that a new Disney movie (Tangled) was coming out across the street was more than enough planning than we needed to do to ensure that we would have a happy anniversary (8 yrs go by fast).
According to the staff at Dhat Island they started out as a catering place and are now trying their hand at being a restaurant. The location is easy to find off the 10 freeway, but it shows that they are still getting used to being a restaurant. Luckily for them though they are a Caribbean themed restaurant and so if the place seems a little laid back it is all in tune to the theming.
Now you would think by the amount of times I have been on those boats at Disneyland I would be an expert on all things Caribbean, but alas I am not. Had you asked me what Caribbean food was supposed to look like I might of just of muttered something about Blue Bayou and mint juleps (which by the way are not Haitian). When I asked what the best thing on the menu was the server said that it was the chicken, but the thing was I wasn’t really craving chicken at that moment (it just so happened that Denise had cooked chicken the entire week before). What I really wanted was pasta and surprisingly they actually had pasta! Not only that, but when I asked the server about this he said they had pasta all the time in Haiti, who knew?!!
The pasta was definitely different but it was good. It was in a creamy white sauce and had little peas (at least I think they were peas). I am not usually a fan of peas, but it was good, kind akin to macaroni salad, but with white cheese and a little bit of chicken (guess there was no getting away from chicken that week). Denise had a eggplant creole dish, which she said she liked. I tried a bite and it was good, but it looked and tasted just like gumbo to me (than again I never claimed my taste buds to be that refined).
All in all it was a good, fun place to go. The staff is very nice and the the prices are decent. I do hope they get more popular, if only so they get a better parking lot.
I want to say thank you to my Uncle Bob who’s blog post reminded me that I needed to write about this place myself. If you are interested in reading his review of the place you can go HERE. Hope you try it out. I think you just might like it.
In 2006 the stock market was doing good, but I knew it was going to take a hit soon (I am not sure I knew how bad it was going to be, but I felt it was coming). I bought my home in 2004 for $140K and in 2006 it was valued at $260, but the thing was I knew my home wasn’t worth that much. I had this uneasy sense that I knew I needed to get a handle on my financial picture. Problem was I didn’t know what my financial state of affairs was but doing I knew I had to find out. So doing what a Business Administration major does best, I decided to make a balance sheet.
The bottom line wasn’t good, we were $174,524.41 in debt. The funny thing is before I calculated that all out I thought we were doing good. I really thought our loan debt wasn’t that bad. We had credit cards but they were all paid off. We only had (and still only have) three debts: Denise’s student loans, my loans, and the house loan. Still looking at the bottom line I knew that things had to change.
Looking at the debt I am not sure what I got for my money. At one time it seemed like I was doing well, but these days I kind of feel like I was sold a dream and all I have left for it is a two pieces of fancy looking paper and a money pit set on a mountain. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that we didn’t learn a lot in college and it is nice to know that we have a fixed monthly living expenses (we were smart enough to go after a 30 yr. fixed). The thing is however I wonder if in the end it was really worth it. I find it ironic that the majority of the richest people in the world never finished college and the happiest people I know don’t own any land. Not to mention having so much debt really reduces your flexibility. We live in turbulent times and I worry that I am not as stable as I would like to be. Like most people I worry about my family and I want to make sure they are on a solid financial footing.
With the desire of having a more solid financial footing we worked on a ever evolving series of budgets. It took time but we now have a spreadsheet that allows us to track all of our expenses down to the last penney. If your interested in checking it out you can go HERE. Most people we know would be horrified to share all their expenses like we do, but Denise and I have no such pretenses. As you can see we are not poor and we are not rich. With an annual income at about $55,000 we are just slightly higher than the average US wage earner. The net worth is negative, but you have to realize I base this off the scenario of having to liquidate everything immediately. We first and foremost feel that we are very blessed and so aside from shelter and food, tithing and offerings are our first priority. In the spirit of weathering out that “rainy” day we also try to save at least 10-15% of our income a year for retirement purposes with an additional money allocated to long term savings. The goal with our budget is to anticipate any expense that may come our way. This is almost impossible, but we have found that if we pad some of the expense items and spread it out over the year we have been able to smooth out high and lows over the year.
In order to pay off our debt we have adopted a snowball method. We pay almost minimum payments on all of our debts except for one. Our main focus since 2006 has been Denise’s student loan and excitingly this looks like this is going to be the year we are going to pay it off! After we pay off this debt we will use all the money we had allocated to Denise’s loan to my loan, then to the 2nd, and finally the first. Unfortunately, my prediction is 2026 (seems so far away!) to pay off everything, but I figure having some date is better than no date. Plus, with a little bit of luck we might even be able to put some more money to pay down some of those loans. If you ever feel like donating to any of this your more than welcome to do so! [paypal-donation]
The main thing is we have a plan. It may not be the best plan, and it is certainly not the only plan, but at least it is a plan. What I love the most about our plan is that it gives us hope and a sense of continuity. Things may happen and they do, but slowly but surely we are mitigating those risks. For us this is a war and like Winston Churchill said, “he who fails to plan is planning to fail.”
I may not be ready to travel the world yet, but that does not stop me from at least tasting the world. We were watching this show with Samantha Brown called Passport to Europe in which she was in Madrid, Spain. It was 10 PM there and she put her spoon in her hot chocolate and a fascinating thing happened, it didn’t sink! Unfortunately, I don’t have the money to go to Spain but this was enough for me to stop the video right there and go out the grocery store and find everything I needed to make Spanish Hot Chocolate.
If I can't travel the world, I am going to make it come to me.
Sometimes you think things are going complicated, but then you find out the thing you thought was complicated is actually very simple. This is the case with Spanish Chocolate. To make Spanish Chocolate you will need the following items:
A 10-12 ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate.
2 1/4 cup of whole milk
1 teaspoon of corn starch (dissolved in a small amount of cold water)
Churros (optional)
That’s it, just three ingredients really. In a sauce pan melt the chocolate and milk together on a medium heat. When it starts to boil remove it from the heat (keep the flame going) and add the corn starch. Get it to a boil and remove it from the heat three times while slowly stirring. After the third boil serve in two mugs with a churro. How simple is that?!
Eating this hot chocolate is like eating a melted candy bar. You want to eat this cup as soon as you can because the colder it gets the thicker it gets, if you are too slow I think you might end up with a cup shaped candy bar. The problem is it is very hot. Don’t even try to drink it, trying to do so is putting your tongue at risk. This is where the churro comes in.
I didn't have any fresh churros, but these frozen Super Churros worked great.
Dip your churro in the chocolate and you will find that the chocolate perfectly melts into the churro and then you can safely eat your chocolate. If you don’t have a churro try using a spoon. Either way your in for a nice treat. Now all you got to do is imagine yourself in a small little Tapas Cafe in Spain.
Notice the Chocolate doesn't drip.
The recipe makes for two cups, enjoy it carefully. Warning:If you decide to eat more than one cup of this stuff I take no responsibility for the inevitable sugar induced coma that will surely follow!
I like Cardenas and I like the idea of them having a store in San Bernardino, but it has been a year now and I think it is time for a new sign.
Anyhow, if you have never been to Cardenas you should go. It is very different than your typical American grocery store. Catering to a Latin clientele it is laid out differently in that you will find a whole section dedicated to tortillas. It has always kind of been interesting to see a tortilla making machine in action. At Cardenas you can watch it go all the way from a corn kernel to tortilla, without even having to watch a dumb video (maseca!!), although no free samples.
At Cardenas you will see your typical sections such as fruits, vegetable, and meat; but the content will not look the same. I never knew you could eat s cactus until I walked into a Mexican grocery store. Also I never had to dodge a pinata before I entered a Mexican grocery store.
Well, if you ever see a Cardenas grocery store in your area I encourage you to go inside. If you do please get me a pumpkin empanada, they are really good.
In the package is regular mochi, you can also see a strawberry mochi ice cream ball.
New Year’s Day around the world is pretty important, but in Japan it is their most important holiday. There are many traditions behind New Year’s Day in Japan, so many so that I will not even attempt to cover them all.
I can cover one of the traditions, that of Mochi. Mochi is translated from Japanese to mean “Rice Cake.” And that is basically all it is. As part of our New Year’s celebrations we went to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles. The big selling item there was Mochi.
Mochi by itself tastes horrible. Well, not horrible, just horribly bland (think plain rice cracker with no crunchy). It has the consistency and look of a mini white hockey puck. I didn’t understand why they were selling like hotcakes and why they thought they were suitable for offerings in their temple. The only thing I could think of at first were that at least they are shelf stable. I don’t think those things could ever go bad, but then again why would anyone ever want to live their life eating such bland food. Then I discovered two exciting recipes.
In the package is regular mochi, you can also see a strawberry mochi ice cream ball.
The first one is Mochi ice cream. It was actually invented in Little Tokyo in a shop called Mikawaya. This shop is known as a “Wagashi” (sweets) shop. In this store they took the mochi and put ice cream into it (Japanese normally put sweet bean curd in the mochi). These little balls of ice cream are soo good!
They are just the right size and at a dollar a piece it isn’t really expensive. If you have the time and the opportunity you should try it.
It's amazing how the little hard rice ball turns into a soft delicious pizza.
The other recipe that I just discovered was Mochi Pizza. Like I said before mochi by itself is like eating a mini white hockey puck. So making Mochi Pizza is almost like a chemistry experiment (except you can eat it when your done). It starts out hard, but with a little bit of oil and water you get this nice fluffy, crunchy on the outside, yet chewy on the inside pizza crust. If your interested in making it you can check out my video (thanks goes to Runny999, who is from Japan, who posted his video on how to make it):
Mochi is an interesting thing for me. I was ready to just sign it off as some weird Japanese tradition, but once I tried it I really liked it. I guess that is how life goes, you just can’t automatically sign off on something.
Here are some pictures from Little Toyko’s New Years Celebration (click to expand them):
Denise and I are people with many goals. Some of them get done, some of them wait, but for this year Denise can say she got at least one done. Denise has always wanted to go and see the Rose Bowl Parade (officially known as the Tournament of Roses Parade) in person and this year she did it:
So, you have seen the video and you want to go too. Well, that’s great! Let me tell you how to do it. First thing you have to know is that there are three ways you can see the Rose Bowl Parade: the expensive way, the medium way, and the cheap way. Each way has their pros and cons. I will try in the best way I can to describe each one.
Reserved seats are nice, but expensive.
First way to do it is the expensive way. The expensive way is by far the easiest way to do it, but by virtue of it’s name it’s going to cost you. To view the Rose Bowl Parade the expensive way you need to buy a ticket. Not just any ticket, it needs to be from a company called Sharp Seating. Sharp Seating is the official seating company of the Tournament of Roses Parade (the official name of the Rose Bowl Parade). Sharp seating has reserved seating along the entire parade route. Their seating is divided up into 4 areas. The price ranges with the more expensive tickets (about $95 dollars each) being in area 1 (because it is closest to the Rose Bowl Game, to the lowest priced tickets (about $35 dollars each) being in area 4 (because it is at the end of the parade). Your ticket will include a parking space that will be about 2-3 blocks from your grandstand viewing area. The negative is the price, but the positive is you can get there at almost 8:00 am and your spot is reserved for you. No waiting whatsoever.
The Sierra Madre Villa station is the last stop on the Metro Gold Line.
The second option is the medium way. This is the way we chose. To do this you need to learn a little about public transportation. Specifically you need to learn about the Metro Gold Line. First thing you need to do if you choose this route is decide where you are going to park. In our case we chose to park at Sierra Madre (the end of the Gold Line). We went to Sierra Madre because it was closest to us and had 1000 free parking spots (we figured we had a good chance at getting one). The next step is to buy your pass. You can buy a one way ticket ($1.50 per person), but your better off buying an all day pass ($6 per person). There are four stops that are within blocks of the Rose Bowl Parade. They are Del Mar (beginning of the route), Memorial Park (closest to the Rose Bowl), Lake, and Allen. In our case we got off at Memorial Park which put us 2 blocks from the parade route. Then we slowly walked up Colorado Blvd. until we found a spot we liked. To do this method effectively you need to be on the Metro Gold Line by at least 6:30 am, you can get there later, but that is going to put you farther behind in the viewing. Although, no matter how early you get there you will not be at the blue line (the best viewing spot which is on the street). The pros is you get a relatively good spot for a relatively easy price (the cost being the walking, metro tickets, plus maybe parking if you go to the wrong station to park), not to mention you don’t have to stay up all night to get your seats.
The definite crowd favorite was the Delfines (a Mexican marching band).
Ironically, to get the best seats for viewing the Rose Bowl Parade you don’t have to pay anything at all. You do have to spend a lot of time, and I mean a lot of time! Starting at 12 pm the day before the parade, the city of Pasadena will allow you to camp out on the curb of the parade route. At least one of your party must stay there the entire time. If do not do this the city will take your stuff, throw it away, and someone else will immediately take your place. You are not allowed to bring a tent and if the city sees you with alcohol you will be arrested on site. At 12 am on the day of the parade you will be allowed to move your chairs to the blue line. This is the best place to view the parade, even better than the expensive grandstand tickets because no one is allowed to be in front of the blue line. The cons of course is you just spent 24 hrs for 2 hr show, but you did get the best seat in the house!
Building the Pac Man float must of took forever, it was very elaborate.
Well, those are the three best ways to see the parade. There are other options out there, but they are mainly all variations of the three methods I have described and I am not even sure if the other methods are even legal. Some random things that might also help you on your way is to know that the official guide, which many will sell you (buy it from the Scouts), costs $10 and if you want to view the floats up close you can do that for another $10 at Victory Park (if you do this make sure you download the free float podcast). Also, the parade is always on January 1st, unless the 1st is on a Sunday, then it will be on the 2nd. Bring a jacket because it gets cold, but rain has only happened once in the parade’s known history (2006). With that said the parade was awesome. Denise had a great time, I am glad I was able to go with her on this adventure. Hope you can make this adventure a reality too someday.
I don’t have a daughter but if I did I don’t think I would name her Inez (Agnes in English). The Santa Inez mission is named after Saint Agnes. One of the earliest saints she is known as one of the first Christian martyrs. According to the story she was a daughter of a an early christian family who were also Romans. Being very beautiful, a prominent Roman young man asked to marry her. She refused, he asked why, she said she was a Christian (and he wasn’t), and so soon she was dead.
Rather a sad story, but wanting to appeal to more women the missionaries used her name when building the 19th mission in 1804. The name worked because the Santa Inez mission originally flourished, until about 1820 when Mexico took over. Then the soldiers didn’t get paid and were told to get their debt out of the Native Americans. The Native Americans didn’t like this too much and in 1824 there was a major revolt. The mission wasn’t the same after that revolt and like many missions went into disrepair. In 1926 with major financial support of William Randolph Hearst the Capuchin Franciscans took over the mission and began major restoration work on the mission.
Thanks to those efforts the “Mission of the Passes” (it is right in the middle of a old mountain pass) is an open and thriving mission. There is a little museum you can visit M-F 9am-5pm on most days except for major holidays.
Split Pea Soups Andersons is a very nice looking restaurant.
I need to preface this post by saying I have no affiliation with Split Pea Soup Andersen’s and was not compensated by them in anyway (although if they are reading this and want to pass me some free soup I wouldn’t say no)…
All you have to do is follow the signs to Andersons.
So you have been driving on highway 101 for what seems like forever. If you have been you undoubtedly have seen the signs. Placed at every mile within a 10 mile radius it is kind of hard to miss Split Pea Andersen’s. It is good thing all those signs are out there because you wouldn’t want to miss this place.
Inside the restaurant is a big gift shop.
You may think that just because Split Pea Andersen’s is a tourist trap (and have no doubt it is), it will be expensive. This is where you would be wrong. It is not cheap but for all you can eat soup and salad for $9 dollars you will wonder why you haven’t stopped here sooner.
Janet enjoying her prime rib dinner.
In our case we were looking for a decently priced prime rib meal for Christmas and thought the Danish ambiance might be nice.
AJ wasn't too sure about the soup at first. I think he thought it looked too much like baby food, but once he tried it he liked it.
Some people may say that they just simply don’t like pea soup. Most of the time I would agree with those people (I am not a big vegetarian myself), but this soup is a bit different. According to their little history sheet they give out they say there is no secret to the soup, but I am not really sure about that.First of all it is not grainy like most pea soups I know. The second thing is it is very creamy, almost like a chowder.
This proves anyone can have a museum.
After you finish your meal you may find that you are stuffed, but that is no problem you can have fun going through the Buellton Historical Museum (yes, the pea soup restaurant has a museum).
Anyhow, I hope you go, I think you just may be glad you did.
