Photos Catchup: Google Life, Restaurant Food

[tuftears]

Some more random snapshots from my phone!



Every now and then, food tricks show up in front of the campus where I work. This time one of them was offering beef and onions pierogies. They're pretty tasty!



The area has some feral cats. I noticed this one cat roaming the grass while on my way to the cafeteria.



After watching Zootopia with dracosphynx (it's a pretty good movie), we adjourned to Sino, a nearby restaurant, for lunch. I'm pretty sure I've had their Firecracker Chicken before; it's a spicy version of kung pao chicken. Not bad.



I've been hearing about xiao long baos for a while and have been curious how good they really are. Sino offered them, so I figured this was a good opportunity.

Verdict? Not bad. They're basically dumplings with hot soup inside; if you don't want to burn your mouth, bite a hole in one at the top so the heat can dissipate, then eat the whole thing in one bite.



Last night a power outage brought darkness to my home. Looking outside, I noticed flashing lights... Seems like there was a fire a couple houses over.

Unfortunately, the outage required PG&E to replace equipment, so it took about 12 hours all told before power was restored. It was not an especially awesome night; I can only take comfort in that I was able to determine the emergency flashlights/nightlights I have around the house generally need to be replaced, but one lasted long enough for me to set up an actual emergency LED lantern, which preserved my sanity.



The power was back on in the morning, thanksfully, and I glumly tossed out a fair chunk of refrigerated food, including (sadly) some delicious homemade chili. If you're not aware, if you have a power outage longer than 4 hours, you should carefully check with a thermometer whether the temperature has gone over 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the fridge part, or 0 degrees in the freezer part. Likely any meat or eggs-containing item, or mayo, should be tossed if they have reached the danger zone.

To cheer myself up, I splurged on a rare breakfast out of the house. This is pretty similar to my usual omelette on the weekends-- it's a spinach/bacon/cheddar omelette, and I usually make myself a kale/ham/cheddar omelette. Difference are the crispy hash browns, which is always a PITA to make for myself, and the sourdough toast with a bit of butter, versus my multigrain English muffins with preserves.

Pretty tasty! For health reasons, I will probably keep on making my own breakfast, but it's okay to splurge now and then.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Yeah, I've had some long power outages here before (usually hurricane-related), and it's no fun having to throw stuff out.

That's cool about the food trucks, though. There used to be a once-a-month event at a local shopping mall called "Food Truck Crazy," where several food trucks would line up in the parking lot on a Sunday (toward the end of the day, when the mall was closing anyway), and Gwendel and I would go out and sample different things. It was a bit pricey, and it was a bit hit-or-miss, but more often than not we ended up with something really interesting we just couldn't find anywhere else.

Alas, that just stopped without explanation, and we haven't found anything like that in the area since. :/ Having food trucks drop by at my workplace would be awesome.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's something the food coordinators do here to mix things up for us, keep things fresh. They rotate around, so it's not always the same food truck, and they seem to come around every few days.

I've heard of food truck gatherings; it can be fun, but also pretty crowded if they're making a major event out of it. The one time I went to one that was bacon-themed, the lines were too long to be able to try much.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if you've had a few longer power outages! It was a learning experience for me.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

For power outages around here, I use the same clip-on LED-fobs that I've started stocking for Feral. The coin cells powering them are lithium, so their shelf life is probably only about 3 years, but they're inexpensive and give me enough light to not trip over anything and to see what's on the desk in front of me. Anything above "reading light" or "make a sandwich light" is overkill for me (your mileage may vary).

There are candles in the house, but the last time those were used was decades ago.

My main annoyance during power outages is dealing with all of the computers in the house. Everything has a UPS, so if the outage is only five or ten minutes, we're fine... but at the ten minute mark, I'm running around trying to safely shut everything down (because I don't have "powerchute" set up on these machines and wouldn't trust it even if it _was_ set up due to the specifics of the UPSs around here).

Most outages here are about 5-15 minutes, but every once in a while there's one that lasts for hours or longer. The last really big one that I recall was in the late 1990s when an ice storm took out a major power corridor in the province (and in the next one over; it was a big storm). I seem to remember that there was one more recently than that, but I'm forgetting the details if so.

[rowyn]

The pierogies looks delicious. I want some now.

I suspect I would burn myself and/or spill hot soup everywhere with the xiao long baos, but that's still neat. :D

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

It's a valid concern, I'm pretty sure that's why the review I read said that one should do as such to avoid this fate. :) When you have one of those big Chinese soup spoons, you have plenty of room for the dumpling and the soup.