My initial assessment is that anyone could probably get similar results if they worked out an hour with the same intensity. However, something like P90X works because it hands you a schedule and regimen to follow, and it definitely helps that you can do all these at home without any fancy equipment, and without having to drive the 10~ minutes to the gym and back. I don’t think this will replace old-fashioned cardio, but at very least, if anyone is moving this much over a span of 3 months starting from zero to no physical activity, this will guarantee, at minimum, muscle tone. We’ll see how I feel about this in the next few weeks, and I’ll be able to make a better assessment then.

The following is the weekly routine for the first phase:

Day 1: Chest & Back, and Abs. I went from virtually zero physical exercise to an hour of pull-ups, push-ups, and core/ab-work. I’ll spare you the details, but there was bile involved. And for about 3 days I could hardly lift my arms. I’m pretty sure P90x wasn’t designed for those with my level of sedentariness.

Day 2: Plyometrics. I feel these are kind of silly compared to what we used to do in KFClub for warm-up, but I guess that’s not the point. I think the difference is that with these drills, you are doing them simply for the sake of the jumps, and for me, there is a lack of “intent” or development of skill to motivate me. At the end of the hour, I was definitely feeling the burn, but I wasn’t spent afterwards. Perhaps I’m only going through the motions and need to increase the intensity. That is not to say I was not sore. I was definitely limping the day after. But maybe that’s due to the heels that I, stupidly, decided to wear that day.

Day 3: Arms and Shoulders, Abs. I’m using resistance bands which are too complicated to use and less effective, but weights cost too much money; it’s a trade-off. My upper body still hurts from the first day, so I can’t tell if I’m in more or less pain. Shortly after Day 3, DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness) was in full effect, so all the discomfort quickly built up and hit me like a lead brick.

Day 4: Yoga. This was kind of a relief. I had some yoga background from my month at Yoga@Cindy’s, so I knew what to expect and how to utilize the hour-and-half well. It’s a good tension and pain, and the muscle soreness relented after the exercise.

Day 5: Legs and Back. This burned but not too badly. I’m a bit out of shape, but I’m used to similar drills in Wushu and welcomed the burn.

Day 6: Kenpo. This is my biggest gripe about P90X. You should never, never learn martial arts by video. You can develop bad habits or worse, injure yourself. I don’t know the slightest thing about kenpo but even I could tell the people in the video here have pretty bad form. I understand that this kenpo section is just to provide some variety and a good cardio workout, but I couldn’t keep my heart rate up. Someone with some martial arts background should be fine here, but Wushu isn’t exactly the jab-hook-punch kind of martial art so I spent more time trying to figure out the correct move more than getting a good workout. Eventually, I substituted some moves here with Wushu combos that are comparable in core- and cardio-work. I will probably continue to do this for the next few weeks.

Day 7 is a rest/stretch day, and then I’ll have to repeat this regimen for another 2 weeks before changing it up in Week 4 according to the program.

It’s good motivation that Reid and I are doing this together because I don’t think I could do this for more than the suggested 3 months. I’m not the gym rat type of person, and though this daily video is short and quick, it is way too repetitive for me.  I personally prefer to dedicate time/effort to learning a sport or developing a physical skill where the exercise just becomes the means to the end. Wushu can’t be it anymore, so I need to find a new sport.

In the meantime, P90x is a good start. I want to take a 4-day hike on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru at ~10,000 ft. elevation, and I need to get into better shape (and “round” is not a shape, Jon Li) if I want to do that next year.

Additionally, it’s a good time to start preparing myself for backpacking/camping in the upcoming summer months. (Guess whose idea that is, given my last three near-death experiences with overnight backpacking.) I ought to find some friends with hobbies that don’t require an hour of pull-ups and cheesy encouragement. The sport of Internet surfing and competitive eating are like attractive substitutes.

I jest. I enjoy looking like a fool dangling from the pull-up bar when Reid can do, like, 10 of them. Gotta get swollllll.

Here I am finding out that spam is half-fat, half-sodium.

Here is the Baker’s Edge brownie pan doing double-duty as a spam musubi assembly.

Nom nom!

Back in college, HK and I used to bash on the male population that bought flowers and stuffed animals for their significant others on Valentine’s Day. One year we even [facetiously] suggested that she decapitate the stuffed bear that an admirer had gifted her since she was known to be rather selective (that’s a nice way of putting it) and often scoffed at any cliché signs of affection directed at her. I know, I know - we’re horrible and don’t deserve anyone’s adoration, but Valentine’s usually leaves a bad taste mainly because of things like this:

Lover's Lane at Safeway

Yech!

Anyway, that was until last year, when she received a bouquet of roses and sheepishly admitted how thrilled she was. And then this weekend, Reid pulled out all the stops for our first Valentine’s and one-year anniversary. Now I’m the sheepish ball of sap.

First, we celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday night with my parents and some extended family. Yay, good food and red envelopes!

Second, Reid surprised me with all the sappy stuff that I pretend to hate and then made a delicious brunch crab and avocado omelets with hollandaise sauce, mimosas, and bacon! We went to Tartine Bakery in the late afternoon, got a fresh loaf of bread right out of the oven (7×7’s 2010 list of things-to-eat item!), slathered it in creamy, sweet brillat-savrin cheese from Bi-Rite Market, and munched on it at Dolores Park. Granted, my suspicions were correct in that we would spend the day trying to get the Foursquare Valentine’s Day badge, and Tartine was one of the Foursquare stops, it was hands-down the best bread and cheese I have ever tasted, and it was a beautiful day in the Mission to enjoy it. We did have some time to kill before our dinner reservation, so we went to Absinthe to try the Galapagos cocktail (another item off the 7×7 list). I can’t say it wow’d me, but we’ll have to come back for the house-made hot dog that’s also on the 7×7 list.

And last, Reid took me to dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which I have been excited about since he told me he made the reservation. The restaurant is hailed as the birthplace of California cuisine, was listed as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, and was awarded a Michelin star for several years. I was particuarly impressed with the UN-pretentiousness of the restaurant and the friendliness of the wait/kitchen staff who invited us to explore their open kitchen at the end of the meal. I’m not a self-proclaimed foodie, nor can I speak with knowledge to quality of ingredients or cooking technique, but I can just say that the meal was absolutely delicious. It was definitely one of the best dining experiences I’ve had, but the caveat I must state with that proclaimation is that fine dining is only as good as the company dining with you. That said, I looked forward to making pasta with canned sauce, frozen meatballs, and leftover bread and cheese with Reid the following evening as much as I looked forward to our nice dinner out at Chez Panisse.

Okay, enough of the sap. Back to self-deprecating humor now.

Over the weekend, I met up with some girlfriends that work at Google (just another step towards Google HQ infiltration) for some tea at Palo Alto’s Tea Time. First, I had gotten a Google calendar invite (that Android pushes directly to my mobile Gmail). I was able to respond to it, and it syncs with my Google calendars.

I do a speech-to-text search for Tea Time since I can’t very well type while driving, and GPS navigation and text-to-voice directions help me get there since the Google God knows I have no sense of direction. Point in case: I parked in an underground garage, and when I emerged, I had no idea in which direction to walk. Out comes the phone! And I pinpoint my exact location and walk towards the little red dot marked Tea Time. BTW, this phone renders my $140 Garmin nuvi useless.

I meet the girls, and we’re all a-Twitter about this super cute place with super tiny I-need-5-of-these-to-be-full-cuz-I’m-about-as-dainty-as-a-pig English crumpets and sandwiches, so we all take out our Android phones and communally tweet about it via Twidroid. And then Foursquare check-in because… I don’t know. Because we CAN.

The Yelp application helps me decide which sandwich is most highly recommended.

And then some pictures are in order, using our 5 megapixel phone cameras (that also captures video).

Looks like I won't be needing my point-and-shoot anymore. On a different note: look at the tea cozies! I've never seen one before!

Then we chat/gossip about the upcoming Valentine’s Day, and we (or just me) joke that we can keep tabs on our significant others’ current locations via Latitude.

As I leave, I notice that I’ve missed a phone call from Mom and she’s left me a 2-minute message as she is prone to do, but have no fear, because Google Voice has transcribed the message so I can just read it quickly. Unfortunately, Mom speaks in Chinese, and Voice doesn’t do Chinese-transcription-to-English translation yet. Bummer.

Bummer #2: I can’t take screenshots of my phone to supplement my blog post here. But that’s okay because you can already read about them at much more reputable tech blogs.

Bummer #3: Still waiting on a widget/app for Google Buzz that was just released yesterday (which, I might add, still hasn’t shown up on in my Gmail yet…)

Yes, I realize these are all things you can do to some degree with various other smartphones, and in another year, this phone will probably be as obsolete as the G1 that came out almost exactly one year prior to the Nexus One. But let me bask in my new phone’s glory, OK? This is a huge step for me since I have been waiting to upgrade for a long time, but wanted to wait for an worthy phone. Ahh, all praise to the Google!!!

]]> http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2010/02/fangirl-dom/feed/ http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2010/01/100-foods-the-2nd-attack/ http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2010/01/100-foods-the-2nd-attack/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:02:05 +0000 kolinateng http://kolinateng.com/?p=838 The difficult thing about this 100 foods list is filling in the time in between the eating. Luckily, last weekend there was the free admission to the SF MOMA. And this weekend, Reid and I decided to watch Avatar again. This is worth noting because this is the first time I’ve seen a movie more than once in the theater. It’s difficult for me to justify spending $10+ for a movie at the theater unless it’s a movie of epic proportions, like Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Matrix, etc. Avatar, of course, is our generation’s technologically-pivotal Star Wars, and I can justify watching it in the theater again only because there’s no way I would be able to watch this movie in all its 3D (and in IMAX!) glory at home, or maybe ever again.

Anyway, Avatar was just as exciting and epic the second time around. While most critics thought James Cameron delivered on 3D tech magic and the creation of a whole new world and failed to deliver on script and storyline, I really enjoy the story. Sure, it’s the superarch of Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, and FernGully (in space!) , but that’s what makes it classic and timeless. Having read several articles about Cameron’s world of Pandora that he crafted so carefully, I wish he divulged more of that world in Avatar; I did come across one that describes what was cut from the original script, and I think those scenes would have given the movie a lot more background and depth. That aside, there was enough depth and character development that I became really engaged in the movie, even the second time.

With that plug out of the way, onto the food!

22. Vietnamese roasted pork sandwich at Saigon Sandwich: Sometimes the best foods are made in dark little stores, stacked to the ceiling with odds and ends of desserts that haven’t been touched in years, and owned by little old ladies that could pass for your own mother. Such are the women that made our sandwiches today, and the sandwiches were everything Vietnamese sandwiches should be: crunchy but soft French rolls, perfectly seasoned roasted pork, sweet pickled carrots, cilantro, and whatever mayo-like spread that ties it all together. Man, I love Viet sandwiches, and these guys put Lee Sandwiches to shame and will give my local favorite (and the lunch place for many a Cisco or Yahoo employee), Cam Hung, a run for its money.

87. Fresh spring rolls at Out the Door: This place is owned by the same people that run the reputable Slanted Door at the SF Ferry Building (which is also on the list). I’m not surprised that $8.50 will get you only 2 spring rolls here, since it’s kind of a fancy-pants place. They were pretty good, especially the creamy peanut dipping sauce, but $8.50 is pretty steep even for delicious Vietnamese spring rolls. $8.50 should get you about 6 just-as-delicious-if-not-super-delicious spring rolls made by Vietnamese moms. Or maybe 20 if you’re in Vietnam.

63. Meatballs with grapes at Aziza: Reid and I had planned to visit Aziza (thanks to SF’s Dine About Town deal) before we decided to tackle the 100 foods list, and the list conveniently has listed one of Aziza’s appetizers that we had never tried before. Could it be better than even the basteeya and the spreads? Or, heaven forbid, their lamb shank? How could we have ever missed the meatballs if they are THAT good? It turned out that the meatballs were good, but not mind-blowingly so; i.e., Reid has ordered the lamb shank for the past 5 (and now 6) times he’s been to this restaurant–THAT is what I call a good dish! In conclusion, go to Aziza, but order the lamb shank, and if you happen to be there in the right season, order the fig moscato cocktail. Amaaaaazing!

Conclusion for the day: Mom-made food is probably the best when it comes to simple, non-fusion ethnic food (though, ironically, Vietnamese sandwiches are technically a “fusion” food from the French colonization days). Aziza still awesome; get the lamb.

12. Porchetta sandwich at RoliRoti at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers Market: Rotisserie pork loin, rolled with pork belly and spices and herbs, and covered in crackly pork skin on a spit for 4 hours. The bread roll is slathered with the juices from the spit, and the cut of meat is topped with sweet braised onions and tender greens. After a good 20-minute wait in line with growing anticipation, this sandwich completely satiated my appetite and set our expectations unbelievably high for the rest of day - I mean, this is a sandwich of DREAMS. It was a worthy beginning to our foodie endeavor.

91. Albondigas soup at Mijita: Beef and pork meatballs in a tomato based broth with vegetables. Coming off the high from the porchetta sandwich, this soup was sadly disappointing. It was a good soup, but it was no porchetta sandwich; it lacked any sort of Zing. However, the point of this whole exercise is to experience new foods and new restaurants that I wouldn’t have cared to even step into. If I ever want Mexican food while I’m at the Ferry Building, I will try the tacos and Quesadilla Mijita here; they looked amazing on everyone else’s plates. However, after having tried the aforementioned porchetta sandwich, I don’t imagine myself wanting anything else at the Ferry Building.

49. Ginger snaps at Miette: I had high expectations for these ginger snaps. Afterall, what’s not to love about perfectly designed tags, signs, and typography? Plus, Miette’s macarons are absolutely delicious - so maybe I had just missed the memo on their ginger snaps? I never cared much for ginger snaps, and upon the first bite, I wasn’t too impressed. However, you can taste real ginger in this cookie, and it is subtlely aromatic. The texture is interesting as well - it is neither very chewy nor brittle, but somewhere in between. After my 3rd cookie though, the flavor and texture both really grew on me. I probably would not buy another canister (because the price is a bit steep; $7 for 12 cookies), but they were good to try.

28. Gibraltar at Blue Bottle Cafe: This is apparently the name of a country, a brand of guitar, a candy, and so on. Supposedly this drink is named after the glass that it is served in. But basically, at Blue Bottle, this is a super small cross between a latte and a macchiato/cappuccino. The menu board does not explicitly note that you can order this, but indeed you can. I don’t have enough experience with espressos, lattes, or macchiatos (Starbucks doesn’t really count) to judge this drink, but I still think it was really good. You can taste good coffee when you taste good coffee, and this is good coffee.

40. Cheeseburger at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher: A cheeseburger is a cheeseburger, so when THE LIST says you need to try this cheeseburger, you should expect that this cheeseburger will blow all cheeseburgers out of the water. Sadly, it didn’t do quite that. It was a good cheeseburger - something like what you’d get at In-N-Out, but for 3 times the price - but on an egg bun. The egg bun WAS quite good though. But not 3x-the-price good.

35. Salted-caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery: Okay, I am an excellent judge of icecream, if not by the sheer amount consumed, then by… I don’t know, the love of icecream. No icecream is a hard sell for me, since the only bad icecream I’ve had was the 1-year-old freezer-burned icecream from my freezer. But this salted-caramel scoop of icecream was so creamy and so delicious, it tasted like I was eating caramel, but in an icecream form - which is exactly what I was looking for. I’d get this again and again and again and again…

21. Pizza margherita at Pizzeria Delfina: I’ve had this before, yet I looked forward to it as if I never experienced it before and was promised, as Reid put so cleverly in his Yelp review, “heaven on dough”.

In conclusion, our day of food was bookended by the two best foods of the day. I would return to order the porchella sandwich, the gibraltar, the salted caramel icecream, and the pizza margherita. 4 out of 7 ain’t bad, though I would expect to love every single item on this end-all-be-all list. Oh well!

Misc. notes:

• Too full to visit Hog Island Oyster Company (99#), Out the Door (87#), Slanted Door (#7), and La Mar (#47) which are all also at the Ferry Building.
• In the Mission, Tartine Bakery’s Morning Bun (#8) was sold out by 6PM. Also, we did not make it in time for their fresh loaves (#25), which come out at 5PM.
• The SF MOMA was promoting free admission this weekend for their 75th Anniversary exhibit. We visited the MOMA since AVATAR in IMAX was sold out at the SF Metreon (STILL, after 5 weeks!!!). I left feeling more cultured, but also biwildered; I don’t understand modern art, must less those of the vaseline scupture variety.

Look, I even made a Google map to help plan the strategy of my attack. Iwill need to strategize so that every trip to SFis optimized for money, time, and stomach space. It is not complete yet, but you can see that under each restaurant/location is the food I am to consume at each location; additionally, I am trying to identify each location by dessert/snack (coffee symbol), dine-in restaurant (fork and knife), casual counter food (burger and drink), and cocktail (martini glass not pictured).

Reid, who has already blogged about our endeavor, and I will begin at the Ferry Building this weekend with the cheap(er) foods, but in the meantime, I will satiate my appetite with au bon pain at the airport before I board my plan back to the Bay Area. Smell ya later, D.C.!

I have also neglected to clearly define my new year’s resolutions. Due to the excitement preceding the (now annual?) Tahoe cabin trip, and the subsequent business trips beginning on the first day back to work, I haven’t had the willpower to make those resolutions. I can perhaps resort to the usual “1) Lose weight, 2) Save money” but losing weight is hard to do with a generous per diem in D.C.

I continue to digress. Back to my first point: Happy 2010!

I brought in the new year in Tahoe once again, in a posh cabin with 21 friends over a span of 5 nights.

Many of us are avid snowboarders and carry season passes, so we went riding at Sierra-at-Tahoe for as many as 4 days. There was a bit of a blizzard on the first day, but the powder was perfect for smooth riding. I feel like I finally have a decent grasp on carving moguls, but it takes so much focus that I am entirely spent after one run. The Lower Main run is quite possibly my favorite run at Sierra: steep, smooth, and good powder when groomed; Beaver is very fun for tree runs on the side, except for one particular jump I hesitated on and totally faceplanted. At least my new riding helmet helps keep my brains in!

I’m tired and must sleep for the week’s activities in D.C. now, but Reid, the ever faithful blogger, has captured more cabin moments here. However, I do want to reiterate that the word game Bananagrams was more successful than I could have ever imagined! Best game ever, really!

I seem to have inherited my mother’s propensity to let fruits over-ripen in the fridge - they’re just so much sweeter when they’re just about to go bad! I’ve been wondering what to do with those overripe pears sitting in the fridge for the last month or so instead of proactively doing something about them. There’s something weird about pears that I don’t like - I love the taste but the mushy texture of the ripe fruit makes it so messy to eat.

And just in the nick of time, Tartelette and Smitten Kitchen both recently posted about pears! Is fall/winter the season for pears? Or did two of my favorite food bloggers just read my mind about wasting food?

Tartelette’s poached pear and almond fallen souffle cake looked delicious! But seeing how I have yet to tackle poached pears and much less souffle, I thought I should try something more manageable, or at least something that wouldn’t require a trip to the supermarket. Enter Smitten Kitchen’s pear bread. This thing is de-li-cious, from the moist, pear brown sugar center with a hint of cinnamon, to the majestic brown crust.

In the name of saving overripe pears from the garbage, I hereby decree a postponement on my holiday diet! Merry Christmas to myself!

*Petra - St. Augustine’s Pears ]]> http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2009/12/more-than-pears/feed/ http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2009/12/ambitious-but-mostly-successful/ http://kolinateng.com/index.php/2009/12/ambitious-but-mostly-successful/#comments Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:29:57 +0000 kolinateng http://kolinateng.com/?p=795 So I haven’t been cooking lately since it’s no fun cooking for just one person. Also, I recently retired the no-brand mixer that I bought from Walmart in my thrifty college days because the chrome plating on the beaters were flaking off, and I don’t want that stuff ending up in my food. For a couple of weeks, I wrestled with myself, deciding whether I should just get another $10 beater mixer or just splurge on the coveted KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer With Styled Tilting Head And Ergonomically Designed Mixing Bowl Handle. In the end, I picked out the cheapest hand mixer available from the reputable KitchenAid. The Artisan Stand Mixer will just have to wait until I reach Joy the Baker status. Or when I am rich.

Armed with my new mixer on Monday night, I had the brilliant idea of baking/cooking 3 different dessert/snacks at the same time. I would tackle marshmallows, shortbread, and caramel popcorn all at the same time! Never mind that I have neither a candy thermometer, nor do even my regular cookies come out well. I think more sugar ended up on the counter/floor/my hair than in the food itself, and I certainly had bits of liquid marshmallow in my hair. Egads. Well, luckily for the recipients, better that than my hair getting in the marshmallow instead!

Anyway, the following pictures are lacking in quality because 1) my photography skills are lacking, and 2) I don’t have the patience to photograph when both hands are covered in some mix of chocolate, marshmallow, cookie dough (which tasted really good out of the mixing bowl, btw).

Smitten Kitchen’s Toasted Coconut Shortbread turned out pretty well. I’m normally not a fan of coconut, but I think I’m adverse to only the papery texture regularly used in baked goods. I toasted the coconut and then ground it up in a processor pretty well so there wasn’t a texture issue here and were thus delicious! I used regular Safeway butter, but maybe next time I can try something more decadent? :)

Orangette’s Caramel Popcorn with Salted Peanuts turned out delightfully chewy, crunchy, sweet, and salty. Perfect! It was so easy to make, I think this will become a regular snack to make!

Lastly, the Chocolate-dipped Marshmallows turned out way too sweet for my own liking. I was never a huge marshmallow fan (except in s’mores!), but this one seemed like an interesting challenge to tackle. And there it is. At least my sweet-toothed Mom loves them so I gave her most of the batch to share.

Yikes, I wish I could take better pictures! It’s something to work on, I suppose. Wouldn’t it be great if my photography skills developed in a positive linear correlation to my cooking/baking skills? That would be an interesting trend to see :) Fingers crossed.

Anyway, the snow was so great last weekend thaaaaat… we’re doing it again!  Tomorrow, all the college kids are out of finals and it’s going to be a beautiful partly sunny Saturday, so we’ll probably have to deal with the crowds. The more the merrier? Perhaps. Oh well. If all else fails, we still have our 5-day New Year’s Eve cabin trip snow bonanza coming up in 2 weeks!