The fam and I had a terrific day yesterday PLUS we aquired some wonderful bargins for Casa Allen. It all started on Friday night with the craigslist find of the century ....
A table and chairs for the princely sum of only $34!! Thank you to the folks moving to Idaho, AWESOME find. We have always had the highly affordable - highly unattractive plastic chairs and table and I've always wanted a wooden indoor set for ourdoors so we have been keeping our eyes peeled on the listings for one...and now, voila!
After Gary had picked these up we went to the Seattle Vintage Flea Market and picked up a bunch of delightful things. One of my new prized possessions is Tony, the 10 point stag which came home with us and was prompted showered and spruced up with my new favorite color spray paint PISTACHIO. Dont you think he is the prettiest $8 (including paint) ever?
and he is looks almost like he is smiling looking out toward Clark Park.
Course because we were downtown, we decided on Dim Sum for lunch. As you know friends, I could eat my body weight in steamed shrimp dumplings and hum bow every day of the week, and one of our favorite places to go is House of Hong. Ok, I admit, the place is no palace and the waitresses walk off laughing like drunk faeries when you ask as question that you will never get answered because they dont understand english...but that's all part of the wonderous ullure of this place. Dim Sum, for the uninitiated, is a variety of foods (including several kinds of steamed or fried dumplings) are served successively in small portions from, (and this is the best part) wheeled carts that tiny Chinese ladies trot around the restaurant with. It's actually a good exercise in assertiveness because each little plate had a nominal value (usually $3-$5) but if you can't say no..you might end up with a squilliion dollars worth of steamed goods in front of you.
We usually always look for the same things because we love the flavors: - steamed hum bow with bbq pork (also my sister favorite - Shona, when you come home to visit, we'll take you here and tell them to bring the buns till you pass out)
and steamed shrimp dumplings
course there are other things that are must haves - the shrimp toast (tiny pieces of shrimp meat mixed with something delicious, spread on a piece of baguette, battered and deep fried), soy sauce chow mein, pork pastries, Steamed Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce and garlic, honey walnut shrimp.....its all so so good! My only complaint about House of Hong is they are the only place in town that charges for a refil on your soda. Other than that its always consistently terrific and we wish we were closer to you House of Hong, then again - we would be built like Houses if that were the case!
More treasures to bring home from the market included tres cool "moulds" which looked wicked awesome in the firelight and were only $10 each!
We love to have a fire in the evening and treat the kids to smores (for any kiwis reading this a smore is a honey flavored cracker sort of like a digestive biscuit, put on the bbq with a couple of squares of chocolate on top and marshmallow and then another cracker on the top - heat until gooey and voila!) - tonight Gary invented quite possibly one of the planets most delicious smores to watch the fire and the satellites by...ROLO SMORES. Oh yesssss
You dont have smores in New Zealand!? No wonder you moved here :)
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