Mew Mew being cute

That's my leg under the blanket that he's leaning on. My cats like to sleep on/next to me.

How to Train your Dragon Movie

I went to see "How to Train your Dragon" with Lain, Derek, Andre, Jen, Alan, CP, and a new friend Tong. I loved the movie. It makes me want to draw dragons! :p.

Derek's and Andre's Pokeballs

Laine took this awesome picture and edit it as well lol
Andre saw a Gashapon machine outside of a restaurant, and he wanted it really badly, so we all pulled out our quarters and he got a spiderman! yay~ (Look how happy he is below). Derek got an Ironman! We were laughing at how they look kind of like Pokeballs from Pokemon. That lead to the picture above that Laine took of Derek and his Ironman pokeball. Hmm... they also look like little South Park characters, right? No matter how old we are, we're little kids at hearts *cough cough* lol

Love Mode Ginger & James

We saw this Gingerale at Nijiya Market. It's called "Love Mode Gingerale" in pretty pink! James wanted to get one for his girlfriend haha.

Baking Mood

Now that I have a kitchen again. I've been in a baking mood. Cooking too. Drawing too. *Rolls around*
I've been making a lot of creme caramel/Flan. I think the recipe from "The Best cookbook" makes the best creme caramel of all that I've tried. Even Sunny who doesn't like Flan much gobbled it down. Other than that, I've been baking from japanese recipe. The thing that I like about it is that Japanese recipe yields really small batches and they're not that sweet. Japanese recipe are also a lot simpler. I almost never have to use my mixer. It just feels better when you're baking with 3 tablespoon of butter versus american recipes with the 2 Sticks! of butter. Then again it yields a lot less amount in the end as well. It's nice because I end up with much less leftovers. Then again when I bake something good, there isn't enough >_<. Well if I like something a lot lot, I guess I could always double or triple the recipe :p.

Today's lunch.. petty simple, but nice and filling.

Japanese cooking

I live right on top of Nijiya market, so there are a lot of japanese ingredients that I can play with. Things like Sansho powder, Mitsuba, Mentaiko, Shiratamako, etc. I've been making a lot of simple Japanese food. Oh, and Panko makes tonkatsu and korokke tastes super yummy, but Panko mixed with parma cheese and parsley makes them divine *drools*

Good Matcha & Bad Matcha

Quality matters!... especially when it comes to Green Tea. When you use a good quality Greentea, your bake goods just turn out so much better. The smell of the tea is stronger. The color is more rich and vibrant. *drools*.

I made a batch of greentea cupcake with an okay quality greentea, and it turned out kind of brownish. I was pretty sad, but then the Strawberry Cream Cheese frosting tasted so good. In the end, I couldn't justify using the bad greentea cupcake for such a wonderful frosting, so I went out to get good Matcha powder and redid the cupcake. I'm so happy that I did so. This might be the best cupcake that I've ever made!

The other day, I also made very light textured sugar cookies that kind of melt in your mouth, and crushed almond greentea sugar cookies which are kind of crunchy. They are shown in the picture along with the cupcake :)

Sweet Sweet Derek

Stopped by Derek's place and we had a chocolate tasting party. Derek got gourmet chocolate from another country that he hasn't opened yet, so he decided to open them, so that we can try them together. They are mostly chocolates from the same company, but the cocoa beans are grown in different regions which actually makes a difference in the taste of the chocolates. I don't like the sour ones so much. There is one in the batch that I really liked.

He also made me waffles recently! They were delish! :d

Banana Bread Cupcakes

The best Banana Bread/cupcakes that I've ever made.

Rudy's visit Part 3: SF tour

Destination#1: Fisherman's grotto- Nick's Lighthouse Crab
Aww the crabs weren't that good today. They were kind of dry and not as juicy as normal. I was really sad. We walked around the Pier a bit after.

Destination#2: Musee Mecanique
This place was really cool! It's right by the crab place. I can't believe that I've never stopped by here before. Well, not everyone will appreciate this place, but I think the collection is quite nice. They are all old/antique coin operated machines. I especially liked the musical ones :).



Quickstop: Boudin's Bakery
They always make cool looking bread here. It makes me think of "Yakitate Japan" :p

Destination#3: Tcho's Chocolate
We drove passed by Tcho's chocolate, and I was like "oooooh! we should go check that out!". I've seen/heard of Tcho's chocolate before. I just didn't know that they have a storefront right there.
They always make cool looking bread here. It makes me think of "Yakitate Japan" :p

Destination#4: Naia's Gelato
Ahh Blood orange, Pear, Mandarin, Horlicks... I ate 1 cone while sitting there and got another one to eat in the car. Totally of 2 cones back to back. That's how good it was.

Destination#5: Fresca Peruvian Restaurant.
I'm glad that dinner was lovely. Rudy loved the food here. The crab at Nick's lighthouse kind of failed us, but Fresca totally made it up, so the day ended happily :D. I didn't take pics of these because I have so many pics of Fresca's food already xD.

Rudy's visit Part 2: Disney museum & Exploratorium

I got a membership to Walt Disney Family Museum. The museum is a walkthrough of Walt Disney's biography. I really like how the videos and animations are integrated with the still displays. There was a section on his childhood with stories of his days as a jelly factory worker, a Red Cross volunteer in France, and early animation days. There were also a lot of his drawings, animation cels, maquette, props, etc. The gift shop has many cool things. I was stuck in a section with tons of Mary Blair's merchandise that were event special items for the Tokyo's Color of Mary Blair show. I was really surprised that they had the event items there. There were card decks, pins, postcards, dolls, pouches, etc. I bought an artbook. It doesn't even have an ISBN number, and I couldn't find it anywhere online. Lucky me! :D I really wanted to go to that show, but it was all the way in Tokyo last year, so I'm glad that I could at least purchase the book.

Oh no~~ Sophie's crepe was closed, but I saw cool "GeGeGe No Kitaro" Sake containers at Nijiya market there.
Rudy wanted to try Dim Sum in SF. I didn't really know of a good place, but since he wanted to check out China town, we got some Dim Sum there. It wasn't as good as the ones in Cupertino :(. It was super cheap though :p. The Dim Sum place had strange gooey sesame cookies, so I grabbed some. Rudy almost died after he tasted it. He said it tasted like Chinese sausages and he HATES chinese sausages XD. I actually like Chinese sausages, but not in a cookie form...

Afterwards, we went to the Exploratorium. I liked this smoke puff machine lol. After playing around inside for a while (since everything in there was interactive), we went to walk around outside which was Palace of the Fine Arts. There was a pond with really tame Swans. They came super close to us. The architecture and scenery was gorgeous.

We had dinner at this super uber amazing and authentic Japanese restaurant called Kappo Gomi. I definitely have to go back there again.

We ended the night with eggpuff and Nutella Crepe from Genki crepe. Yum!