Korean Dinner 07-29-17

My friend Carol is visiting in Texas so Dick is fending for himself.  Poor guy.  We decided to go out for dinner and try something new.  So we went to a local Korean restaurant Da Rae in Fullerton, just a few blocks away.  I tried Korean food some decades ago and it was okay, but didn't give me a yearning for it.  Maybe it was time to try it again.  We did our own online researches, but when it came to ordering the waitress was very helpful.  We went mostly with her suggestions.  We told her we couldn't handle spicy.

 

The main course comes with a myriad of small bowls with mysterious tidbits.  Most were pickled something.

 

The large plate contains a sort of pancake with green onions and some other ingredients, I liked it a lot.  In the bowl in front of me is tofu with a vinegary marinade.  Directly above that is a bowl with scrambled egg cooked in a flat 'pancake', rolled and sliced, that was good.  

At top are pickles with a little spicy red sauce - they tasted a lot like bread & butter pickle and were crunchy.  Below that, pieces of mung bean cake with a slightly spicy marinade - good, but hard to pick up with chopsticks. 

We each had a bowl of plain steamed rice and a bowl of clear soup with tofu.  In the middle is a bowl of some sort of fish cake sliced - just so-so.  To the right of that is sliced daikon with hot green peppers. And in the bottom corner is kimchee made with fermented cabbage.

We thought this appetizer would be crispy rice, since that was in the name, but instead it is ground rice extruded into these soft cylinders and cooked in a soy sauce flavored broth.  There is also one hard boiled egg floating there.  We could have done with about three each instead of a huge bowl of 20-25.

This is my beef main dish.  The reason it is whitish in the middle is because it was just served and the steam is rising from it.  The iron platter is VERY hot, but rests in a wooden holder.  I had to wait for it all to cool down a bit.   I took more than half of this home and had it for dinner the next night along with the rice.

The bones from Dick's short ribs are piled on one side of his platter.  And all this food is what was left when we couldn't eat any more.  We left everything except my beef and rice. Notice the steel chopsticks on the lower right side; they could be used as knitting needles.  We are more accustomed to bamboo chopsticks at the Japanese restaurants, I think they hold onto the food a little better. 

 

We will take Carol for another experiment in Korean food soon and maybe order less and share more.  

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Friday Feet - KoKo 07-28-17

These are the cutest little feet I know of and they are so soft I like to hold them.  KoKo didn't even wake up to have his picture taken.

 

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Thursday Threads 07-27-17

Here is another quilt from my past.  But one I liked a lot.  I made it for special Fabri-Quilt exhibit at Spring Market 2005.  I was then a member of the now defunct "Kansas Art Quilters" who accepted long-distance members.  It was a great group, but living in CA I never made it to a meeting, although I did meet some of the ladies when I was visiting in Kansas.   

 

Four Dwellings   Del Thomas  24“ Sq.   April 2005

Machine pieced and quilted.  No pattern, just cut and sew.

The people are pieced using large polka dots for the heads.  

I even liked the back!  It was a time when quilters were discovering that backs as well as fronts could be colorful and decorative . 

This photo shows the binding where I inserted a sort of piping made from the frayed edge of a solid yellow fabric. 

Why, oh why didn't I line the label so that it was readable?  Lesson learned.

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Wordless Wednesday - Flowers 07-26-17

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Not much going on 07-25-17

It has cooled off a bit in Southern California, which makes our morning and evening walks (at 7) a bit more comfortable.  Still lots of blooms in different yards.  The ever blooming white landscape roses are a popular planting here.  The bougainvillea is riotous even when it is kept trimmed into a hedge.  I have lots of feverfew blooming, although it is a little patchy due to a sprinkler leak last winter which required digging into the flowerbed.  The plumbago is also patchy because the gardener keeps trimming it back at the wrong time.  I need a new gardener, mine is tired of my yard, I think. 

 

 

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From TCQC a Deborah Lacativa quilt from 2009

Don't know why Blogger is giving me background color, but there it is.  I have copied this post from Feb  23, 2009, when I originally posted it.  For further description - the black oval is appliqued and the hands are appliqued over it.  The strings of beads with the brass bells hanging down from the cuff of the hands are dangling, so they have to be laid out carefully when storing.  One of the shells (top right) was broken when I took it to a program I did, the remains are held on by the beads sewn into each hole of the shell.  I still love this quilt and hang it often in my house.  I also have an affinity for finding a parking spot, so it resonates with me. 

"Parking Magik" Deborah Lacativa 2003 22" square

This original design refers to Deborah's minor skill that always nets her a choice parking spot, no matter how crowded or busy the parking lot. The foundation is a printed cotton bandanna with appliques of original digital images printed on PDF with BJS.[bubble jet set]

Embellished with glass beads...

tiny brass bells...

... and shells.

This quilt is so interesting and different than anything I have seen elsewhere. The use of the bandanna (India? Africa?) works very well and the shells, bells and beading are appropriate for this piece.

I purchased this one after I saw it in "My World in Black and White", an exhibit organized by Ann Copeland and her Fiberarts Connection of SCalifornia. And it isn't the only one I purchased from that very good exhibit! This quilt is very different than the work Deborah is doing now and I am pleased to have one of her early works in the Collection. I know that one of the influences that sent Deborah in a different direction was an Elizabeth Barton workshop. And, as she says, she hasn't looked back.

I also purchased it before I discovered the difficulty I have with storing quilts with lots of embellishments - especially dangling things. Along with a few other delicate pieces it is stored in a large flat acid free box for which I still haven't found a good spot in my house.

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