Tamarind of London

Playing: Fluorescent Adolescent-Arctic Monkeys
Reading: Marie Claire Runway Second Edition

For my brother's birthday, which happened to be the same day the world was supposed to end, we went to Tamarind of London. My brother, Ted, and I keep a list of restaurants that we want to try and we use every possible cause to celebrate as a reason to try a new place. Tamarind of London was hailed by Orange Coast as being not as good as its predecessor in London, but still offering the best Indian food in Orange County. To start us off, we ordered the Garlic Naan and the Date Naan. The Date Naan was by far the best thing we ordered there. That naan was stuffed with a date and coconut spread that was almost desert like.

The dishes are all served family style in small pots and you help yourself. We ordered the Mushrooms and Spinach, Smoked Eggplant, Lamb Curry, Butter Chicken, and the Prawn Kebabs. Even though the Lamb Curry was too spicy, it did have a great flavor once I got over how tough and dry the lamb was. Unfortunately, both the Butter Chicken and Smoked Eggplant had bitter aftertastes that I wasn't too fond of. The Prawn Kebabs were pretty standard and considering the price, I really think we deserved more than five prawns. If you ever go to Tamarind of London, order the Mushrooms and Spinach. I don't typically eat vegetables, but this was definitely worth a try.

My brother and I each ordered a Mango Lassi, which was incredibly small for $6 and around the size of a kids meal cup at McDonald's. After the Date Naan, this was the next best thing I ordered. The creaminess of the yogurt really served to balance the heat from the Lamb Curry. They also serve a Passion Fruit Lassi, which my brother and I wanted to try, but they ran out of it that day. What a bummer...

Since all of the portions were a lot smaller than we expected them to be, we ended up ordering some Cheese Naan, which was actually pretty good. Was it the best naan ever? No, but it was good. It was stuffed with a mild, creamy cheese that oozed out of the naan, when you bit into it and it was nice to have a blander dish to offset all the strong flavors of the main dishes.

The most interesting dish, which wasn't really a dish, that we got was the complimentary after dinner mints. They were mint leaves freshly dipped in white chocolate. It was definitely very odd and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. The only recommendation I have for the chefs is less white chocolate please, since the white chocolate was overpoweringly sweet. Overall, Tamarind of London was good, but not amazing. If you want the best Indian food in California, I still suggest heading into Los Angeles. The biggest problem I had with Tamarind of London was the itsy bitsy portions. Considering each main dish averaged around $20, I was expecting a lot more meat or at least to be left mind blown at how good the dish was. The most reasonable dishes there were the naan bread, which came with around four slices each and averaged $4. Also, the service was lacking, considering we had to ask them twice for utensils and had to remind them that we ordered the lassis. So the verdict is, skip Tamarind of London and head on over to either the Ritz or Charlie Palmer, if you're in the mood for high dining.

Christmas Day

Playing: Let Your Heart Hold Fast-Fort Atlantic
Reading: An American in Paris, Again by Eric Wilson

Merry late Christmas! This Christmas day post is a tad late, I suppose, but I still wanted to share it with all of you. Since my grandparents come over every year for Christmas and they always go to bed at a ridiculously early time, my family has Christmas lunch instead of Christmas dinner. Every year my dad and I make prime rib with au jus, mashed potatoes with gravy, and some kind of a vegetable along with some biscuits. We've been discussing stereotypical French Christmas meals in French class and that got me thinking, what is a stereotypical American Christmas meal? I don't think there really is one...

This year there wasn't really anything I was dying to get my hands on other than a few CDs, so I mostly got cash, which I'm saving for some future splurge.  The Patrick Wolf CD is my favorite from him after "Lupercalia," while the Something Corporate CDs are to replace the ones my brother's idiotic friends borrowed and never gave back. Sophie gave my everything that I like-cute stationary, sparkly nail polish, sweets, and a yetti button. The Burberry scarf is actually my mum's gift to my dad, but I plan on borrowing it, since I've been wanting one for myself for quite a few years.

My dad and mum didn't communicate with each other, when they were getting gifts for me, so I ended up with two purses. In the end, I won. Actually, I'm probably going to return both of the purses, so I didn't win. The Alexander Wang tote is too heavy for me, while the Marc by Marc Jacobs purse is too safe for my liking. Since I already have a plain black purse, I don't see why I need another one and I'd rather save my "purse money" for something I'm dying to own. I want to keep the Alexander Wang purse for school, but some jerk is going to stick gum on it or something, so I know it's not safe to bring it to school and I don't want to keep it if some idiot is going to ruin it.

The day after Christmas, my family went to Bruxie, since my dad has never been and I tried the Green Eggs and Ham there, which was very good. The pesto oozed out of the sides and I liked how gooey the cheese was. The only improvement I can suggest is cooking the egg less so that the yolk oozes out too. Surprisingly, the mayonnaise added a nice creaminess to it even though I normally dislike large amounts of it.

Since Bruxie portions are rather small, my brother and I shared the Seasonal Creme Brulee, which was very good. The burnt sugar really made it taste like a real creme brulee and the custard was extraordinarily creamy. My brother and I both agree that we ordered more wisely on this trip to Bruxie than last time. Another nice thing about Bruxie is their seasonal menu, where you can get Egg Nog shakes around Christmas and Turkey Dinner waffles around Thanksgiving. It's a very cute place to try, if you're ever in the area. Hope your holidays went well! Let me know what you did and how you celebrated!

A Very Merry You-Survived-the-Mayan-Apocalypse Christmas

Playing: Christmas Lights-Coldplay
Reading: Holiday Traditions: At Home with Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes by Jane Aldridge

Sophie and I hosted a Christmas/Sophie's Birthday/Surviving the Mayan Apocalypse Party just last night and being the best hostesses on the planet that we are, we spent about three hours decorating for the party. Admittedly, a good half hour or so was spent getting ourselves tangled up in Christmas lights and another hour spent laughing over stupid inside jokes, but still, we put a lot of hard work into this party.

She baked a brownie birthday cake and had me help her ice the cake. It was my first time icing a cake and I had no idea what design she wanted, so I just did the white icing and helped smooth out the cat's fur a tad, while she did the whole laser cat design. I have to admit that I think we did a pretty good job with it and everyone else seemed to like it quite a bit.

John Paul, Sophie's dad, and I did all the cooking for the party. Even though this is going to sound pretty egotistical, I think John Paul and I deserve our own Food Network show. It'll be like Down Home with the Neelys only with us yelling at each other and telling each other to get lost. Oh and a whole lot less deep frying...I made some penne arrabiata plus some vegetable dip, John Paul made a citrus marinade chicken along with some sort of a beignet, and Sophie's dad made mac and cheese for all of us.

Sophie did the most amazing thing ever and surprised me with Aadil! Oh, how I've missed Aadil and his wisdom! We totally claimed him for our game of ghetto Scrabble and put him on our awesome team, +3@/\/\ K|(K@$$ (TEAM KICKASS). Unfortunately, we didn't really kick ass, but it was fun being able to not use proper spelling. By the end of the game, we went from ghetto Scrabble to redneck Scrabble and I'm really not sure how that happened. Since Aadil doesn't want me to post any photos of his incredible dancing, I will have to end here by just letting you know that we ended the party with tons of dancing that vacillated between being really ghetto, borderline mosh pitting, and being reminiscent of 80s new wave moves. Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and get to spend time with everyone you love!

Fashion+The Killers

Playing: Be My Escape-Relient K
Reading: Style.com/print SS 2013

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates and posts; like I said before, nothing of real interest is going on in my life. My friend, PJ, started a fashion club at my school, so I joined. We pretty much just sit around and discuss runway shows, models, and clothes, but we also do some artsy stuff like drawing and painting. It's pretty fun and the teacher's room that the club is held in has all these old fashion magazines, so we get to rip out our favorite pictures. I loved the W spread with Lindsey Wixson and the haute couture spread with Karlie Kloss, so I had to rip out those photos.

Jessy was also at the meeting and I hadn't seen her in while, so it was nice to catch up with her too. She brought a little gift for me from the Marc by Marc Jacobs store. The ring is just my style-simple and slightly edgy-and the pen is also really cute. I brought in a Marc Jacobs bag to carry my yarn in to school one day and the next day I was carrying this bag around plus some Marc Jacobs ads, so the boys in English class asked me who Marc was. When I told them he was a designer, they exclaimed, "OH, that explains why he has bags and the ads revolve around clothes!" Oh mon dieu, boys!

You guys have all met my puffer fish, Jacques, already. Well, I like to spoil him and play with him, so lately I've been holding my new iPhone up to the tank, so that Jacques can watch music videos. He'll actually watch some of them, but so far I think he likes "Mr. Brightside" the best. It's the only music video, where he'll watch the whole thing.

By the way, the music video for "Miss Atomic Bomb" came out today and it's almost like a sequel to "Mr. Brightside." All of the cast from "Mr. Brightside" is present and the video just makes me so happy. The cartoon part was a bit cheesy, but I still liked the video and thought the concept was interesting. The best part is Miss Atomic Bomb and Mr. Brightside are reunited and it makes me go aww and get all mushy and love sick every time I hit the replay button on YouTube. Sorry for the complete and utter lack of technical terms in this post and the overuse of stereotypical teenage girl phrases, but seriously, the music video makes me get all love sick.

Who's your favorite music video couple or music video romance? I really love Mr. Brightside and Miss Atomic Bomb in case you couldn't tell.

A Very Sophie Christmas

Playing: FALL-Cider Sky
Reading: The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (Not that one...)

My parents ditched me last weekend to go to to a Christmas party, so I had no where to go and Sophie, being the amazing friend that she is, took me out for a day of fun and creativity. She took me to this yoga studio to make Christmas ornaments, which I kind of slaughtered, but no worries, I'm going to try again! I've always wanted to do a themed Christmas tree, so if I were doing one, my theme for this year would be stars and the sky.

Afterwards, we walked around this little ditch area in my town and explored, while dancing to the Cure and the Police. We like to dance a lot and this is one of my favorite photos of Sophie; she looks so happy and like she actually enjoys spending time with me. After we explored for awhile, we decided to catch a showing of Looper, which was so intense, at the dollar theatre. The only complaint I have with Looper is that the makeup artists changed Joseph Gordon Levitt's face too much. Did I tell you about how I went to go see Lincoln for APUSH extra credit and my teacher, Mr. Harrington, sat right next to me? He chucked popcorn at me and now in all his classes, he does Audrey fangirling over Joseph Gordon Levitt impersonations that are painfully accurate. (I LOVE HIS CLASS THOUGH.) After watching Looper, Sophie took me to dinner because she's a nice person like that and then let me bum around her place until my parents came back home. Thanks, Sopher Gopher, I owe you one.

Later on (not with Sophie), I went to Target to buy some Christmas lights and I'm super excited to say that the Target and Neiman Marcus collaboration hasn't sold out, since it's too expensive for Target shoppers and too cheap for Neiman Marcus' audience. I grabbed a Marc Jacobs scarf, which is so perfect and it's conservative enough that I think men can wear it too. During the post-Christmas sales, I'm going back for the Tom Browne blazer! The Christmas cards were just so cute and for Christmas this year, I'm giving heart felt cards. My group of friends is doing a secret Santa and I just wanted to show you how cute the items I bought for Jackie are. (Just don't show her! She doesn't know yet!) The cupcake bath bomb is so cute and realistic looking, while the hand scrub and lip gloss just smell insanely good.

I actually got some requests, which I'm shocked about, to do a separate blog of extra photos from my life such as cute things, my food, and just more photos of well, me. WELL, today's your lucky day, I created a tumblr for all of you (but mostly me) that stores all my extra fun photos that didn't make it on my main blog. So if you like photos of Vivian and me dancing sporadically in Disneyland, attracting a crowd of bystanders, then The World is just for you. Really, knowing you guys want to see more of me makes me feel so loved.

PS I apologize for being a cruddy blogger. Not much of interest has been going on in my life.

What I've Been Eating

Playing: Sugar, We're Goin Down-Fall Out Boy
Reading: Civil Disobedience (Part 1 of 3) by Henry David Thoreau

For Thanksgiving break, my brother came home, so as usual we went off to try a bunch of new places to eat. Bruxie is known for their waffle sandwiches and we've been meaning to try it, so I ordered what was recommended the most on Yelp. The Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Waffle is a chicken fillet deep fried and topped with cider slaw and spicy honey stuffed into a crispy waffle. Out of the sandwiches we ordered, this was one of the better ones, since it had more stuffing than the others.

My brother and I shared the Lemon Cream and Berries, which was only ok. The lemon cream had next to no flavor and all the berries were quite sour. Overall for my verdict on Bruxie, the food is only alright, but the concept is cute. It's not nearly enough food, since the waffles aren't stuffed with that much food.

Flavio's happens to be one of my favorite restaurants for pasta. The food is good, the service is friendly, and the price is inexpensive. The Pasta Rustica is one of my favorites there. It's bow tie pasta served with sauteed garlic and artichokes, sun dried tomatoes, and chicken in a light cream sauce. The best part about this dish is that it's actually pretty light for a cream based sauce.

My brother and I also went to the Old Towne Grinder and Ice Cream Parlor, since they have the largest selection of sodas anywhere. We actually didn't try the Nuclear Orange Bomb, but I wanted a photo of it because, let's get real, why wouldn't I take a photo of a soda with Kim Jong Il? It's just "WTF" enough to make me smile. The blueberry soda was amazing by the way, while the Cherries and  Mint was quite unusual. I highly recommend visiting this place for their amazing soda selection. Where else can you get gourmet Ginger Ale and then get Sweet Corn?

Harry's Grill is one of those places that I go to for old time's sake. After my family went to the beach, we would come here for inexpensive American food served in huge portions. Their fried chicken is pretty good actually and has a sweet unexpected after taste. This actually comes with a large bowl of soup, so you can get away with sharing this with someone too. What I've been eating is pretty safe and not too fancy lately, so hope this post didn't bore you too much.

PS Blogger  is no longer letting my upload photos directly, since I've used up my 1 GB of memory. I deleted something around 100 photos to clear up some memory and it's still saying that I have no memory. Do any of you know what's wrong? For now, I'll just use Photobucket to upload my photos.