new year, new niece!

Lilliana Elise Go was born 1.05.09 at 9:21pm to my beautiful sister in texas. she is 7lbs 6oz. isn't she a stunner?

at some point i'll get around to uploading my holiday pictures! i promise!

holidays in seattle

i feel like 2010 completely ambushed me! i had intended to write a christmas post before the whole new year thing, but alas, it just did not happen as i had hoped. and now it's almost february! at the moment i am waiting for the dishwasher repair person, so i figured i had better bang this thing out!

anthony's mom and brother came out for a few days over christmas. it was our first holiday season away from home, so it was particularly nice to have family visiting. we decided to test a new tradition and got chinese for dinner on christmas eve. we headed over to the eastside to szechuan chef in bellevue. it was busy! apparently it's a common tradition up here! we tried some new things, and overall the food was delicious.

i've learned the ballard locks are always open, so we took a stroll through the gardens and watched for boats on chirstmas day.

we also went the the crab pot again and got to visit the woodland park zoo. it was my first trip to the zoo, and i was pretty impressed with some of their exhibits. the wolves and bears were particularly awesome. unfortunately, my camera is not able to capture that level of awesomeness, so you'll just have to imagine or visit for yourself.



we spent nye 2010 at the seattle aquarium. i've been to the aquarium a number of times now, and it's always a good time. this party was o.k., but it was good to get out of the house and celebrate.





with the new year i decided to make some "soft" resolutions. the past few years i haven't made any at all, because i never remember what they were to begin with. this year i decided to "record myself" more often. i want to keep track of my life and remember the little things. so, i've decided to video record myself and blog once a month. i think once a month is reasonable, don't you? unrelated, i have also decided to try to read a book once a month (considering that i used to read 5 in a month, i feel i've got some wiggle room here) and go to a yoga class at least 3 times a month. with my recent vacation and other weekend plans, i don't think i'll make the yoga goal this month, but i've got 11 more chances to get on track. so, there they are. i've got them in writing. we'll check in on those in a few months. :)

the weather is finally starting to get to me. i thought i would manage to survive my first seattle winter unscathed, but the first couple of weeks of january were brutal! almost a week of rain (real pouring rain) and strong wind gusts that made use of an umbrella impossible. i've busted 3 umbrellas now. the amusing thing is that this has been one of the mildest winters they've had in seattle- ever. with record-breaking high temps, the weather patterns match those of late march/early april. that's depressing. however, the rain fall has been much higher than average, so at least i know it's not supposed to be quite this wet!

i now am interning with the voluntary committee of lawyers doing drug policy research, in addition to the league of women voters of washington. i'm still volunteering with the seattle municipal court and the planned parenthood action league. and, i finally got a job doing research with reconnecting youth through the university of washington. oh, and i submitted my application to the uw msw program. i'll let you know in a few months how that turns out.

stay tuned for my febraury round-up of life in seattle.

"celebrated chefs" of seattle

i hear there are amazing food tours of the city. (these are just a few: savor seattle, walking tours, seattle bites) i plan to try at least one, and perhaps many, depending on how long we stay in this fair city. i'm the foodie of my friends, so i'm not sure that we'll have any visitors requesting a food tour during their stay. that means anthony and i just may be on our own. oh darn! except, not really, because where there is good food there are happy people. and perhaps among those happy people we will find new friends, foodie friends.

case in point: when we went to cafe nordo we met a seattle native that had lived in many places beyond washington state, including japan. we told him we were looking for excellent asian food, and much to our delight he fervently spouted off a list of his recommendations. he also had recommendations for sandwich shops. and i'm sure he could give us a recommendation for just about anything food related. he has become our good food beacon.

anyways, back to food tours. several months ago, while my sister was visitng, we got brunch in west seattle. towards (what's the difference between toward and towards?) the end of the meal the server came over with a cookbook and an offer. offer: give them our credit card #, keep the cookbook (free), every time we dine at a restaurant in the book and use the card, 5% of our bill goes to charity. seriously? yep, no catch. seriously. so, we opted in, and then quickly forgot about it. until we dined at ray's cafe. we noticed the donation on our account register and decided we had better take a list at the list again. the program is called "celebrated chefs," and if you're visiting seattle, it's worth checking out. if you're visiting us, definitely let us know if there are any you want to try!

the restaurants are all over the city, the eastside and elsewhere, including whidbey island. these are the restaurants on the list that we've hit so far:

seastar in south lake union: see my "review" here.

ray's cafe in ballard: we went here expecting amazing seafood and were sorely disappointed. to be clear, ray's cafe is the cheaper version of ray's boathouse. ray's boathouse is supposedly obscenely expensive, but i'd say the cafe is way overpriced for the (lack of ) quality of food they serve. i'm still hoping to try ray's boathouse one of these days!

poppy in capitol hill: poppy is an example of the latest seattle restaurant to be over-hyped. i was psyched to try this restaurant and found a great opportunity while my parents were visiting from denver (my dad loves going to new and different restaurants too). the concept is 10 small plates on one larger plate- all per person. they do have some smaller options with only 6 or 7 small plates. the presentation was fantastic. such a clever concept, and i cannot imagine how much work goes into each and every plate. the taste was a mixed bag. a couple of the dishes were absolutely incredible, but many of them were over-worked (concepts taken too far). please note: i am not expert, have no professional food experience, nor am i food critic. as such, take my "reviews" with a grain of salt.

tidbit bistro in capitol hill: another mixed-bag with this one. our meal began with a bang, but devolved with each course. this is a restaurant will won't hit again.

ponti seafood grill in fremont/queen anne: this restaurant was incredible! we went here with our friends nick and manda while they were visiting. it was pretty expensive, but all of us thoroughly enjoyed our meals. although it's a seafood restaurant, i ordered a steak. it was the best steak i can remember having ever eaten. note: do not order the spanish coffee. waaaay too much bacardi 151.

nell's in greenlake: nell's is another place we visited with my parents. small, quiet and typical seattle fare. fresh vegetables paired with twists on classic recipes. good food, but a touch stuffy. perhaps a good one to try again in the summer.

thanksgiving in seattle

my first thanksgiving in seattle was a quiet success. my parents came out for a few days and declined our cozy guestroom for the beautiful pan pacific hotel. this hotel is pretty darn fancy and in a great little complex in the south/west lake area. it's located in a very convenient location and is attached to a whole foods and starbucks. what could beat that? one of the hotel restaurants is seastar, where we lunched one day. this place is probably the most formal restaurant i've been to in seattle. recently, i've taken to constant dressing down (i know, a pity) to fit in with the casual seattle style (not to mention my shopping budget of $0). so, of course i showed up to lunch in jeans and a waffle shirt. i told my parents (dad donning tie and sport coat and mom wearing lipstick) that they were too dressed up for seattle, and my dad pointed out that everyone in the restaurant was dressed up (bow ties and all). attire aside, the food was excellent. i highly recommend the coconut pie for dessert. so good that it made my mom unable to eat for 2 days. no sarcasm here. we literally gorged ourselves on that pie (i focused on the filling of course!). thankfully she was able to eat again just in time for the thanksgiving feast!

i decided to go pretty traditional this year, as it was my first "solo" attempt at cooking the entire meal. it is important to note than anthony was a tremendous help, thus the "solo." my proudest achievement was baking my very first pie from scratch! too bad i don't like pie! the rest of the menu included carrot soup, blue cheese and walnut biscuits, deviled eggs, herb-roasted turkey, thyme and parmesan mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce with orange zest, and gravy to top it all off. the pie was a twist on a classic: pumpkin swirled with dark chocolate. here are some pics of the pie process:

we're now trying to figure out how to spend our first new year's eve in the northwest. but first, stay tuned for christmas in seattle!

it's been too long...

i think about this blog almost every day, but just haven't put the time into it that i should be. so here i am, trying to play catch up.

halloween: this year we did halloween in style at the seattle symphony. we went to benaroya hall for the first time to watch the symphony play along to alfred hitchcock's psycho. isn't the auditorium beautiful? the movie was played on a big screen while the musicians played throughout the show. it was pretty incredible and hard to believe that they were playing live.

the next evening we went to "trolloween" in our very own neighborhood. apparently the fremont troll's (a huge stone troll that lives under the aurora bridge) birthday is on halloween, and this year he turned 20! we somehow ended up in a parade through the neighborhood and saw some interesting sights. this creature had huge bat-like wings and was on stilts. this was particularly impressive as there were hundreds of people marching along in the parade up and down the hills of seattle.

birthday: the weekend after halloween was anthony's birthday, and his mom came out to join us for the festivities. we had the amazing opportunity to attend the show at cafe nordo. chef nordo travels the country with his actor/servers, celebrating the life and death of the chicken. don't call it dinner theater; apparently nordo cringes at the thought. you MUST read this article about "the modern american chicken." here, in seattle, the theo chocolate warehouse (theo is a blog post all in its own right!) was turned into a little cafe/farm/psychedelic stage. each course was based on a life stage of a chicken, and each was fantastic. the actors were each assigned a table and were very interactive. i was chosen to be the chicken carver of our table and ended up dropping the chicken in the center of the table. wonderful. dessert was a rather morbid interpretation of bloody gizzards, but was delicious none-the-less. at the end of the evening they brought out baby chicks that were just too cute to resist! i later learned that they were destined to become soup. i'm leaning towards vegetarianism with each passing day.

it's still autumn here, but i'm starting to get the idea that the winter will indeed be cloudy and rainy. we get a sunny day at least once a week still and many days have at least an hour or two of sun. i try to get out during those times. it's been nicer that i expected, but it's only november. i hear that by february i'll be clamoring to get out of here. stay tuned for my winter distractions.