To improve my ice-cream making skill I searched for recipe for green tea (matcha) ice-cream and black sesame (goma) ice-cream. Surprisingly they aren’t too hard to make, basically use the same ice-cream base and then add in the flavors. The Ho Yummy blog has a recipe for the black sesame ice-cream, and it pointed me to the Fujiya Japanese food store for getting the black sesame paste. Went there tonight, got the paste and also a bag of black sesame seeds. Also got a can of really pricey Japanese green tea powder. Nice store, got tons and tons of Japanese imported products and some freshly made bento boxes and other good stuff. I got an unagi rice bowl for dinner.

Tonight I tried to make the black sesami ice-cream. For the base it’s always the same: 2 cups whipping cream, 1 cup half & half, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, and beat them all up. To prep for the sesame part I pan “roasted” 1 table spoon of the seeds (they actually pop when they got too hot!), then put them into my food chopper to chop them into pieces. I could have used a bit less seeds actually, maybe half a table spoon next time. As for the black sesame paste I used 3 table spoon instead of 6 as the recipe says because of 2 reasons: the bottle of paste is so pricey and tiny I didn’t want to use it up! and then I tried out the taste, it’s already super strong after 3 table spoon so I thought that should be plenty. Blended everything up and poured it into the mold as usual. I think 1 cup of sugar is too much, it’s a little too sweet to my taste. 3/4 cup of it should be perfect.

Chinese New Year tomorrow, I wish myself a happy and prosperous new year!

Made chocolate icecream today - 2 cups whipping cream, 1 cup half and half, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate, 5 table spoon of cocoa powder, 2 eggs. This is just experimental, basically same base but adding the chocolate powder and semi sweet chocolate chunks. I find the end product a bit too sweet and chocolaty, I guess next time I can use 1/2 cup of sugar instead of 3/4 cup, 3 table spoon of cocoa powder instead of 5, and then I can try putting in dark chocolate instead of the semi sweet ones. Also will try putting in some liquor. Aside from making icecream I also got green tea as apparently it’s good for health and it melts fat as well, and it’s tasty! Got some made in Japan ones, super tasty and refreshing.

I’ve been listening to audio book called the “11th element” which is a series of tutorials teaching you how to become more successful by utilizing this weird but interesting concept of “inner CEO”. So far it’s very interesting although I’m still trying to understand how it really works and all that. I’m hoping that it’ll help me to achieve my goal but I’m still a little skeptical about it. We’ll see.

So yesterday I decided to visit Value Village (store that sells used stuff) after knowing Andrew’s got quite a few cool items there (mostly gaming stuff). I went in there few years ago but I recall they had nothing but clothes. They actually have tons of other good stuff now like collectibles, kitchen ware, gaming stuff, electronics…. I saw this “Icecream Maker” buried in the back of one of the shelves, took it down and looked at the instructions and stuff. $4.99? No way….and it looked brand new. I quickly bought it and took it home, tried making ice-cream the same night and it worked! Yummy vanilla icecream with just a few simple ingredients like eggs, heavy cream, half & half, and sugar. Chill the metal bowl for several hours and then just pour the mixture into it and start turning the crank once in a while. Not exactly sure how it works (like why can’t I just put the mixture into the freezer, wouldn’t it turn out the same?) but it did work. I’m going to try making rich chocolate ice-cream next. So yum.

It was Wendy and I’s 9th year anniversary. We went to T&T supermarket and got a 6 pound lobster! It was so huge, I had to chop off both of its claws in order to fit it in my wok. I steamed it for ~20 minutes and it was done. It was really delicious, but the meat was less tender than I thought, I’ll try steaming it for a shorter period of time next time. Oh we went to Granville Island to pick up some fresh organic veggies, and made a veggie soup - I’ve put so much stuff into it….carrots, zucchini, red onion, mushroom, and tomatoes.

This week I’ve been working busily on my papercraft as usual, finalizing it now I think it’ll only take about 2 more days before it’s done. Today I was painting the white, exposed parts at the paper creases and joints, to make it look better.

Went with Wendy to The Cannery seafood restaurant by the Vancouver Habour waterfront. The place was quite hard to find, and it had securty gates where I had to speak into a mic to let some guy know that I was heading to the restaurant. It’s beautifully located right next to the water, at a slightly elevated cliff, so beautiful when we got there at the blue hour. I brought my new Panasonic GH1 camera for a test drive, took a few pics inside and out and then the battery died on me! Huge =( … Didn’t get any pictures of the food but it was awesome. I had a swordfish and Wendy a halibut. We both had non-alcoholic pina colada. She got a balloon too as the server recognized her. I was surprised to see a dining menu that was prepared by Wendy with our names on it that says “the cannery wishes wendy & herman a happy anniversary” =D . We had a complimentary dessert too, I think it was called strawberry crumble and it was very tasty despite the strawberry paste was a bit sour.

I spent most of my time making my Howl’s moving castle model. I’m having a pretty good progress, finished all the 7 chimneys during the last 3 days of hard work, also finished making a couple of the castle’s exterior addons, and its ears (I didn’t know it’s got ears until I made them). Now I’m going to have to install the chimneys, and after that, it’ll be the many houses and also the gears and stuff. Can’t wait to finish it ASAP.

Okay, so for some crazy reason the Gravlax salmon is being sold at Ikea again..! It was totally surprising to see loads of them being sold at Ikea, cause I went there just to get some light bulbs and didn’t expect to see the fish at all. This is after like a year of waiting for the fish to come in stock again… I instantly bought 5 packs of them and finished a whole pack the first day (as seen in the pic). So tasty…~~~

Another big happy is that the Kalimba that I bought from Amazon.com arrived. I had to go to Point Roberts to pick it up, but it was well worth the effort (even though I later realized that they sent me the Huge Tracey Treble Kalimba instead of the Alto Kalimba that I ordered) I played with it for a couple hours after getting home, and a bit more the same evening - it really hurted my thumbs…lol However the sound was really nice and almost haunting. It’s hard to tell how nice or not nice a sound is but all I know is that it’s the kind of sound that I really like. Tried to play some simple song, while trying to remember which tine correspond to which musical note - it wasn’t easy at all. I have to wait for my nails to grow back in order to play it properly - you’re supposed to play it with a bit of the thumb flesh and mostly the nails. Holding the instrument on hand gives me a very magical feeling, knowing that it was made in Africa and that the African actually plays on it during rituals and stuff like that. I know I will be playing on it a lot the next couple weeks.