A Little "Friend"

Last Thursday, I needed the car to run some errands during the day, and therefore, I had to wake up early in the morning to drive B to work.  Just when he got into the basement to go to the garage, he gasped, "I think I just saw a mouse!"  What?!  Not again?  To confirm, he peeked behind the laundry machine, and lo and behold, there was a mouse.  It then scurried away and hid under the machine.

Since my last mouse incident, I've been occasionally checking the floors for mouse poop (it's something I will have to do until the farm field across my place gets congested with houses).  I swear I haven't seen any for a while, and for sure none in the last few weeks.  So I'm pretty confident this new 'friend' just came in.

So after I picked B up from work, we went to buy some more traps.  B believed that since he is a 'rat' (chinese zodiac), he could also think like a mouse.  So I bestowed the mousetrapping responsibilities to him.  He thought he would trap something, while I thought the mouse might just leave, since I caught nothing the last time.  Well, guess what?  Before he went to work the next morning, he found this:

Poor little one, what mouse could withstand that big wad of peanut butter? 

Of course, B didn't pick it up and throw it out immediately.  He had to leave it there so that I can have a good look at it.  I, of course, stayed away from the basement all day until B got home from work.  Mind you, I'm not really scared of pet mice, since I had one before, but I can't say I'm fond of dead wild ones.  So before we left for Calgary for the long weekend, I went to the basement with B so that he could pick up the dead mouse to show me.  The poor girl (I inspected her) had already stiffened up after laying there dead for more than half the day.  I'm glad we caught her so quickly, and I also hope she didn't have any babies during her short stay here.   

New Kitchen Toy

This past weekend I got myself a new kitchen toy: a food processor.  I never believed in these things.  The main reason was cost: why am I paying so much for a machine to chop my food, when I could just use a knife?  Also, there were other inexpensive solutions too:

Before, I tried to make chopping easier by buying (as in getting B to get me) a Slap Chop.  It was ok, but to clean tiny pieces of minced garlic/ginger was a little tedious.  You also have to be very careful that you don't cut yourself when scrapping the tiny bits off the zig-zag blade.  Washing a knife was much easier.  Also, your to-be-chopped food is limited to softer items (I had a hard time chopping potatoes). It does its job, but it had its limit.  This past year, it stayed in its little box most of its days.

To shred cheese, I have a cheese grater.  It seemed like a great idea at the time when we bought it at Superstore: buying cheese blocks to shred was much cheaper than buying a bag of shredded cheese.  However, after our first grating, washing that damn thing was pretty tedious.  We have avoided a lot of shredded cheese recipes.  The grater also sits inside our drawer for most of its days now.

I was reading some food and recipe blogs this weekend, and this one blogger said that her cooking life was made easier because her food processor did most of the laborious work, which included chopping, dicing, mincing, shredding, mixing, and etc.  Just by this, I was somewhat brainwashed and went to look for one.  There are a lot of food processors out there, but I wanted one that did more than just chop and grind.  And ta da: I found my little onyx black "KitchenAid 7-cup Food Processor with ExactSlice System".

I had two Bay gift certificates: one with $50, and one with a remaining of $6.  When I got to the Bay, it was not on sale.  Oh boo.  However, the nearest Home Outfitters is only a few blocks away, and oh yeah, it was $50 off (33% off).  After ringing in my gift certificates, I only had to pay another $48.  Nice job!

So how does it fare?  Not bad.  So far, we only sliced some mushrooms and shredded cheese for our homemade pizza.  And yes, the cheese shredding was great and the cleaning was not bad at all.  I'll be using it again tonight to make another project (a surprise I'll post later).  We'll see how well it shreds other items!  More food processing to come!

Edmonton Floods

Lately, there has been A LOT of rain and thunderstorms. A lot of basement floods had resulted from all the flood.  However, mine was not.  I guess my building's sump pumps were working well!  I live approximately one block away from a park, which consisted one of the few stormwater ponds in the community (I call them mosquito baby heavens).  The water in the pond had risen so much that the bridge, pathways, and vegetation were all underwater.  I took some photos, but too bad, some of the water had receded.  However, they still show the effects of the water in the park.

The stormwater pond.  Looks normal, eh?  Look closely (see below).

The last time I sat here, my feet were dry!

Some of the water had receded, but sections of the the pathway was still cover by water.  Look at the vegetation on the left, it's all brown and mucky from being underwater.

Thunderstorms and heavy rain are still happening.  Edmonton just had one last night and today.  However, I don't mind it too much.  It keeps the house cool.  I'm surprised my little Roshi is not afraid of the loud booms.  He just looks blankly or sleeps right through them.  My brave little guy.

Shanghai 456

Another person I know who also enjoy eating at holes in the wall is A, a coworker of mine.  She was the one who first took me to Shanghai 456 for lunch.  This place is a little cafeteria that is located inside an airport hangar.  The place was pretty good, and so I took B to it and let him have a try.

Shanghai 456 - Building 18, 49 Airport Road in Edmonton

When you eat Shanghainese food, you have to order Xiao Long Bao (小龍包).  However, typical places that claim they make these well make them not so well.  They are usually very dry. Shanghai 456 makes them the way they should be made: a doughy pocket enclosing the meat AND the juice. Yum.  

小龍包 - there were six or seven, but I forgot to take the photo before eating them

Can you see the juice inside?

Another good dish that they had was the dumplings.  They also had juice inside.  Since I didn't want to order the same thing I had for my first lunch here, we ordered some noodles and this beef flank and tendon dish.  They were pretty good as well.  B was pretty happy and would like to go again.  However, we'll let the grease settle for a bit before coming back.

Won Jung Gak

One thing I love to do is search out local "hole in the wall" restaurants. They typically have the homemade tasty and usually, delicious food. This past weekend, I was a little tired of our neighborhood cuisine, and decided to look for another hole in the wall in Edmonton: Won Jung Gak.

I came upon this place by looking for restaurants in Edmonton and also searching "Edmonton hole in the wall", and funny, restaurant listings do come up! There were quite a number of good reviews for this place and a good warning about its MSG usage!

Anyways, this place truly defines "hole in the wall". It is hidden among blocks of semi run-down concrete blocked, light industrial buildings on the south end of the city. B was like, "Are you sure there will be a restaurant here?" because all we saw were closed car and machine shops. However, the little building came into view, and it could not be missed since it's the only building in the area with Korean and Chinese characters on it!

Won Jung Gak, a little Korean restaurant at 9655 62 Avenue 

Too bad we were not too hungry that day. So we just ordered something 'light'. I read good things about their noodles topped with black bean sauce, and their spicy soup noodles. What was great was that they had a "double bowl" serving both. It's a typical Asian noodle soup bowl, but with a divider in the middle. The brain of this restaurant is genius!

This bowl is genius!

The noodles were GLORIOUS. I just love chewy (彈牙) noodles. The black bean sauce topping was interestingly good. It's nothing like the Lee Kum Kee jar of black bean sauce in my fridge. I can't quite describe it.  It's not very salty, but just flavorful in its own way.  And damn, the spicy soup was spicy. For certain, I was chomping down mouthful of MSG. Usually when I intake MSG, I have this stingy feeling in my mouth, but here, it could also be mistaken by that spicy soup. B also ordered a noodle soup, but in a beef broth. It was pretty good, but bland compared to my dish. However, that's because my dish was on the flavorful (MSG filled) side!

Would I come back again? Oh yeah, and on an empty stomach to taste other Korean dishes - bulgogi, my favorite.