Chinese hand-pulled noodles

We made a vegetarian version of da pan ji (chicken-potato dish) with homemade noodles! The noodle recipe is from an Asian noodle cookbook from the library, This is a book about noodles by Brendan Pang.

Noodles

  • 300 g flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 155 mL (1/2 cup + 7 tsp) water
  1. Combine flour and salt. Add water in and knead 10-15 min with a stand mixer + dough hook (Knead longer, maybe ~20 min, by hand.)
  2. Lightly coat the counter with oil. Press the dough into a rectangle about 1/2 in thick. Cut into 10 equal strips.
  3. Hold each strip at both ends. Stretch and slap against the counter until ~8 in long.
  4. Boil 2-3 min.

New plants

With the hotter summer weather, a lot of my pea plants died 🙁 The two that survived aren’t doing so well and are likely to die in the next week – we’re having a bit of a heat wave here.

We ate a pea! We had an additional 20 peas, but I saved them as seed to plant next year.

I’ve been looking for veggies that like hot weather. Some old sweet potatoes sprouted a bunch, so we planted those. And my mom sent some seeds to try out! We’ve got basil, shiso, and melon (from sibling C’s garden). I’m excited to see how they do!

The sweet potatoes are growing vigorously! Dead peas against the window.

HiroNori Craft Ramen

Went to HiroNori Craft Ramen in Santa Clara. It had 4.5 stars on Yelp so I was obligated to go.

Yelp reservation only. Worked out pretty well, and it was a better experience than waiting in line for 2 hours at Ramen Nagi. Although I do like waiting in lines…

The menu.

Tonkotsu ramen. It was pretty good! Would recommend. For first timers they give you the “garlic black oil” (you can see it in the picture below), a $1 value, for free. The garlic oil was quite good and I’ll probably order it next time, so I guess their advertising scheme worked.

Chicken karaage. Also quite good! It came with some sauce that was also very good. The aforementioned black garlic oil is in the upper left.

Overall I’d say it was solidly solid. I think I like the ramen and the customization options at Ramen Nagi a bit better, but HiroNori compares quite favorably (with no waiting in line). And the chicken karaage was really good, which Ramen Nagi doesn’t offer. I’ll be back.

Electric Scooters in SF

We came across these electric scooter things all around San Francisco.

I tried renting the scooter, but it didn’t work 🙁

They sure put a lot of these things around. Even though the scooter I found didn’t work, I’m sure there’s a working one somewhere out there.

SF Laundromat: Laundré

An upscale laundromat in the heart of the Mission district.

Wow so fancy.

Millennials can enjoy their avocado toast while they wait for their laundry to finish.

For only $10 a load, you too can enjoy an exquisite laundry experience.

The LA Metro Experience

Looks pretty nice!

Wow, this is amazing!

I wonder when the Bay Area will ever invent card-dispensing technology.

It'll probably be the phone booth.
I’ll be patiently waiting for the day when one of these machines can give me a Clipper card.

How to refill your Clipper Card

The Bay Area has this great public transit card called Clipper. It’s really easy to use! In this post I’ll show you just how easy it is to refill.

First, find a machine that looks like this. Just move the screen protector off to the side.

Push some buttons and put your credit card in. When you see this screen, you’ll know you did it right.

Wait for a couple of trains to go by, and eventually the dialup modem in the machine will connect.

“To take one step forward, you must first take one step back.”

And we’re done! Super easy!