43rd and SE Belmont, PDX

The beauty and the danger of fried rice is that you can use whatever leftovers you have in the kitchen. I say danger because my mom once got food poisoning from eating fried rice when we were in Asia. Lesson learned - only order steamed rice when you are overseas.

This recipe took care of two problems for me. I wanted to try this kimchi fried rice that everyone was talking about and I wanted to use leftover turkey from my Whole Foods Holiday Meal leftovers. I had half a turkey left and just little old me. I also didn't want to suffer the typical leftover turkey fair of repeatedly eating the same meal over and over until it's gone. I wanted something different! (As an aside, my family's traditional leftover turkey meal is turkey tettrazini, which I crockpotted earlier this year.)

In my frig were the two jars of kimchi that I had made about three weeks ago. Here was my chance to actually use the stuff. The result is a very different Korean fried rice with the chili paste as the major flavoring in contrast to the soy sauce Chinese fried rice or the fish sauce Thai fried rice. Because it uses chili paste, it has more bite to it. And because kimchi is cabbage, you take care of the crunchy vegetable component.


Leftover Turkey (or whatever else you got) Kimchi Fried Rice

Note that I add a spread of ingredients so you can go low if you like less of an ingredient or high if you like more.

1 T vegetable oil
3-4 green onions, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/2 - 1 cup kimchi, you may need to chop it down to smaller pieces
2-3 cups cooked rice
1 T chili paste
1 T sesame oil
1/2 - 1 cup cooked turkey, chopped
1 egg

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil til hot. Add onions and green onions and cook until the onion is transluscent. Add kimchi and rice. Toss everything together to mix well. Add in chili paste and sesame. Mix thoroughly. Add turkey and toss to mix everything together.  Let mixture cook a bit so that the bottom layer gets a bit crunchy, about 5 minutes. Toss again. Make a small whole amongst the rice and break in an egg. Cover the pan with a lid and let the steam cook the egg until the white is set, but the yolk is not completely cooked, about 3 minutes. Uncover and serve immediately.

Cleaning up my archives, I found this old post (2008) and decided to repost because I had forgotten about it and need to remake them myself. I love looking at other food blogs and discovering new things. I stumbled across hoddeoks at My Korean Kitchen. Hoddeoks are Korean street food, pancakes with a brown sugar/cinnamon filling. They looked interesting and easy, so I figured I'd give them a try. Tips for next time: more filling, try chocolate shavings.


Ingredients for 6 pancakes


* All purpose white flour - 1¼ cups
* Salt - 1/4 tsp
* Milk - 90 ml (6 tbsp)


Fermented yeast water (mix these well in bowl 1)


* Warm water (40℃) - 45 ml (3 tbsp)
* White sugar - 1/4 tsp
* Dry yeast- 1/4 tsp


Stuffing (mix these well in bowl 2)


* Cinnamon powder - 1/4 tsp
* Crushed walnuts- 2 tbsp (you can use peanuts instead, but I prefer walnuts)
* Dark brown sugar - 90 ml (6 tbsp)


Leave the mix of fermented yeast water in a warm place (30-40 ℃) for 10 minutes. Add the flour, salt, and milk. Mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place for two hours.





Oil your hands and then split the dough into six equal parts. Take one and flatten it into a pancake in your hand. Put a spoonful of filling in the center and then seal the dough around it.





Heat a skillet with a little oil. Place a pancake in and flatten with a spatula.





Brown both sides and serve. Here is a cut one to show you the inside. The brown sugar should be melted in the center. Yum.

Update: February 2016
I've just received an email about a class action lawsuit against It's Just Lunch.


Original 2011 post:

Dating as a woman in my late 40's in Sacramento sucks. And it's not just me. I have a posse of single girlfriends my age that look great, have good jobs, are smart and outgoing, and none of us can get a date with a decent guy in our age range.

I've been divorced now for ten years. I've tried it all - online dating, speed dating, Meetups, etc. In 2005, before the economy tanked, I tried It's Just Lunch (IJL). You may have seen their ads, especially in airline magazines. It's a dating service where they set you up on dates (basically blind dates) for just an hour - over lunch or over drinks.

In 2005 IJL had an office near Arden Fair Mall. I went in for an appointment and signed up for a year for $1200. I was so fed up with the online dating scene and I figured that "you get what you pay for". If a person is willing to pay that much money, they must have a decent job and be serious about finding a long term relationship, right? I was tired of the online players out there just looking for hookups and casual flings.

I'm driving a beautiful country road on a gorgeous fall day. It's the Lincoln Newcastle Highway curving through lovely farmland as it makes a slight climb in elevation between Lincoln and Newcastle. I think I've only driven this road once before in my 20+ years in the area. I'm looking for Twin Peaks Orchards and as I round a curve it suddenly pops up in front of me quicker than I would have thought.

I am here to take a tour of the family owned orchards with Camelia Enriquez Miller. I had met Camelia and her mother at the Folsom Whole Foods press dinner where their dried stone fruit was part of the cheese platter and a peach jam was featured on the Diestel turkey. The dried fruit, in particular, was addicting. I had asked if I might come and visit and spent a couple of hours on their beautiful property.

not mine, but similar

When I was 12 or 13 I went on an extended summer trip of the Eastern United States with a group of other 'gifted' children. This was a big deal considering that at the time I still lived in Saudi Arabia. This meant a two-month vacation traveling with our teacher and being away from my family.

Ah, puberty. It was during this trip that we girls started shaving. There probably wasn't too much to shave at that point, but it was a right of passage that began on that trip.

Upon returning home I now had a shaver amongst my bathroom toiletries. One day my father discovered it - how I'm not sure since I had a separate bathroom where my father never ventured. Anyway, my father came to lecture me about not thinking that I had any reason to be shaving. After all, I had most of my mother's Filipina traits in that I really had hardly any body hair. He didn't forbid me or stop me, but I still remember the talk.

 The thing is, he was right in some regards. I hardly have any hair on my arms and legs. But as we all know in our American culture, women still shave under their arms and sometimes in the nether regions. My point is, though, that this lack of body hair includes around my eyes. My eyebrows are light and my eyelashes are practically nonexistent.

It's hard to imagine anyone not loving Hawaii. You've got a set of beautiful tropical islands that are part of the United States so that you get all the amenities of home while feeling like you are almost in a different country entirely. My first trip to Hawaii was to Maui with my parents in the 70s. Since then I've been back a few times, but I never had such a wonderful time as my last visit in August. I guess it was the freedom of being by myself so that I had the ability to explore, learn, and know Hawaii in a much more intimate way than ever before.


When I was told that there was going to be a Taste of Hawaii Tour with Chef Alan Wong coming to San Francisco, I had to sign up for one of the events. Alan Wong is one of the most prominent chefs in Hawaii. He was here to introduce his new cookbook, the first in over a decade, called "The Blue Tomato". Along with him was Arnold Hiura, a journalist who is now also known as a Hawaiian food historian. He also has a book out, "Kau Kau: Cuisine and Culture in the Hawaiian Islands", which I bought as well. They were in the Bay Area for a week, their only mainland stop. There was a full week of events, including the Chef's birthday bash. Eileen and I went on Sunday for a talk/dinner event at the Japanese  Cultural & Community Center of Northern California.

I know that many people have been waiting and waiting to know what's next with Sacramento's food truck ordinances.

The last time I updated everyone was probably the end of July. At that time we had had a few roundtable discussions with the City, the restaurant owners, the California Restaurant Association, and, of course, the food trucks.

The food trucks gave a wishlist of some of the things they would like. The list included such things as being allowed to park for the meter limit (if it's a 2 hour meter, they should be able to park there for 2 hours) and being allowed on private property with owner's permission.

Where we left it in July was in the City's hands. They had collected information from everyone and said they were going to start working on some proposed ordinances, it would take a few months, and hopefully they would have something in the fall.

Whatever is proposed has to go to committee first - the Law and Legislation Committee. At first we heard it would be October. Then it got pushed to today, November 1st. I was all set to go today and then found out it was cancelled.

I contacted the City to see if they had a status. Here is what I can tell you.