Late Post: Big Boy's Filipino Food Truck: review

Seattle Seahwaks Super Bowl XLVIII Champions! + 12th man at the Parade!

The past week was filled with family, friends, food, and of course Football!

For those of you not familiar with American Football or the Super Bowl, it is probably the most watched event on American television for the year and is definitely the biggest event in sports. My hometown team, The Seattle Seahawks, made it to the finals anddd.....

Congratulations to the 2013-2014 Seattle Seahawks for winning it's first ever Football Championship!

We are the World Champions and all of Seattle is beyond proud!

My outfit for parade.

I have a few pictures below of one of the biggest celebrations ever! Enjoy!

Now I don't ever usually wear eyeshadow, let alone super bright and bold ones, but I had to go out and buy some blue and green to show my Seahawk pride! And I think it turned out pretty well for a newby like myself!

  

Products used:  E.L.F. eyelid primer, Wet n Wild Color Icon eyeliner in 653E Cool Green, Wet n Wild Color Icon eyeshadow palette in 391A Arts in the Streets, Essence eye pencil in 09 Cool Down, and an Elf brightening eyeshadow palette, and Maybelline Great Lash colored mascara in I See Blue

And of course, I had to color my hair too! I attemped chalking (and let me tell you, it was the hardest thing to do, and left my hair incredibly tangled..ughh! but totally worth it!) I used Rembrandt soft pastel chalk and water. 

 

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And of course pictures of the parade and crowd itself below! I swear, I have never been surrounded by so many people at one time. It was beyond crazy especially since it was freezing outside! Totally worth it though, and definitely something I am glad to be a part of!

I stood in Pioneer Square near Main street and it was beyond crowded. It was hard to see over people and get good shots/videos, but I was able to grab a few good ones. I'm just lowkey upset I couldn't get a good one with Marshawn Lynch aka Beast Mode! Below are a couple of the pictures I was able to take from both the offense and defense.

Tight End

Offensive Line

Wide Receivers

Running Backs

Quarterback! (Russell Wilson!!)

Defensive Line

Linebackers

And of course, the Legion of Boom #LOB !!!

I had so much fun at this championship parade. Despite the cold and being surrounded by thousands of people, I met a random yet really cool group of guys that shared their food with me, hehe. Even though no body had reception or internet access, it made people become more aware of the moment, instead of constantly updating their Twitter and Instgram accounts. I am so proud of the Seattle Seahawks, I am proud of our city coming together like this, and I could not have wanted more for our football season. This really was an experience of a lifetime!

 

Chinese New Years 2014

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, but this past week has been filled with so many events! Chinese New Year was on January 31st, and of course my family and I had a nice celebration and along with that, it was Super Bowl weekend with the Seattle Seahawks taking it all for the city!

For today's post, I just wanted to share pictures of my family's Chinese New Year with you guys and in another post I will be featuring all things Seattle and Seahawks!

One of my favorite decoration set ups in my living room!

My mom fried up a lot of homemade shrimp crackers...so good!

We had a lot of people over so we needed two whole chickens for my mom's Hainanese Chicken and Chicken Rice (so bomb btw)

 And then the circle of food (there wasn't enough room to fit everything so things are intermingled) at the "adult" table. We had vegetable wraps, Mu Shu pork wraps, pea vines, pork belly and taro, steeped mushrooms, bbq stea, and roasted pork..etc just so much food!

Overall, it was a wonderful day and a loud and festive night! I had family from California and even Australia over to come celebrate with us. Everything was decorated in red and of course, red envelopes of lucky money >.< hehe.

I hope you guys all had a wonderful weekend and if you do (or don't) celebrate Chinese/Lunar New Year.. Gong Hei Fat Choi!! (gong xi fa cai in madarin)

Coastal Kitchen feat. The Amalfi Coast: Restaurant Review

Last Sunday, a few of my old co-workers and I headed over to Capitol Hill in Seattle to try out Coastal Kitchen for 'Blunch'!

 

I have never been here before and have always driven by it or hear people talk about it, so when we got together, we thought, why not? The cool thing about this place is that each month or so (not sure how often, it is probably on their website) they feature and tour a new area showcasing the flavors and some dishes of that region and when we went, they were featuring the Amalfi Coast which is located in Southern Italy.

They don't feature a whole ton of dishes from the region, the whole menu only has 3 dishes for each side with foods from that region and the rest of the menu is a regular blunch/lunch menu.

I didn't get anything from the regular lunch menu but I did choose 2 items from the blunch side.

First thing I tried was the Sfogiatelle and not gonna lie, it was a little disappointing. The description made it sound really good and as if the ricotta inside would be nice and creamy. The flaky outside was a bit chewy and took some work before you could swallow it. The inside was more moist than the outside makes it seem, but it wasn't exactly the creamy type of cheese (like a danish perhaps) I was expecting. I did enjoy the flavor of it though--the lemon flavor was refreshing and it wasn't overly sweet. I had expected these to be a bit more fresh, but in honesty I feel like it was a bit stale. Not that good for a first impression...however, my main course made up for it!

I choose an item from the blunch side again and this time it was the Risotto Hash con Polpo. The risotto had pancetta, octopous, and argula while topped with two eggs over easy served with grilled foccacia bread.

The presentation on this was excellent and immediately made me giddy with excitement to dig in! It was almost too good to eat..almost. haha. It came with its own little wok and the colors of the fresh herbs and other ingredients were so inviting.

I love octopus but hate when it is overcooked and I was very pleased by the way the octopus was prepared in this dish. It wasn't too chewy, but rather nice and tender. I loved breaking the egg yolks up and mixing everything in together with the rice. The pancetta bits added a nice salty layer of flavor to the dish as well. The grilled foccacia was nice and crispy too and was perfect for dishing up the risotto on top of it.

My only gripe about the dish was that it was a bit greasy. You could see a lot of oil at the bottom of the pan--but it did help in making the rice sticking to the pan crunch up--it was just the leftover oil that was a bit much.

Overall, I was satisfied with my dish and am definitely wanting to come again, either for a happy hour or dinner, or even when they change touring location. The place is always busy and you should make RSVPs for dinner time (I don't think you can reserve space in the morning/lunch time). We had about a 30 minute wait, but since it wasn't raining and the fact that there were many little stores to check out, it wasn't too bad. The price was very reasonable and the portions are quite generous as well. 

Have you ever tried a dish like this? What's your favorite Italian food??

More Food: Marination Station + Vostok Dumpling House in Capitol Hill

The other week, I did a post on this Soviet inspired dumpling house in Capitol Hill, Seattle called Vostok Dumpling House and decided to go back and try more food along with grabbing some goodies from Marination Staton (right next door) to bring to-go for home.

A look inside Marination Station.

Marination Station is a fusion food place mixing Hawaiian, Korean, Mexican, etc. all together.

Now a look at what I ordered!

From Marination Station, I ordered the Kimchi Fried Rice w/ Beef (comes with a Fried Egg $7)

I love when the egg yolk is like that above, so perfect when it oozes over the rice.

This is probably my most favorite item to order at Marination Station. Being that this was the second time I ordered from here ever, I just had a craving for this fried rice. The beef was a little tough, but it really didn't bother me and I overall enjoyed it and had some the next day for lunch and it was still good!

I also had ordered 1 of each of their tacos. The best of the pork and beef ones. The chicken and tofu ones were mediocre...and I probably won't order those again.

Teriyaki chicken soft taco.

Next are the items from Vostok!

I ordered the chicken dumplings with the Garilc and herb sauce (above) and also their pork dumplings with their KGB (a super spicy sauce) pictured below.

I loved both of them and couldn't have been happier! The pork with the KGB was a real kicker, in terms of heat and I would totally recommend this to any spicy food lovers. I can't say much else about the dumplings besides that they were delicious and satisfying. My parents also tried it and liked it as well. It's a nice change to the Chinese style dumplings we usually eat.

Pork w/ KGB sauce

Chicken w/ Garlic & Herb Sauce

Last but not least, I had to also order the borscht (red beet soup) from Vostok. I had always been curious about borscht but have never tried it. I saw it on their menu and ordered it with the sour cream.

I have to say, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST SOUPS I HAVE EVER HAD! I don't know where borscht has been my entire life?! To b honest, I'm not a fan or cooked red beets (I prefer them juiced) and I usually eat golden beats. This just changed my mind about red beets in general. This was a vegan recipe I believe, but still had bold flavors from the other veggies used. My mom was also obsessed with this so the next day, she went out and bought all the ingredients and we made a big pot of this stuff! It's pretty easy, but it wasn't as good as Vostok's, but still, tasty.

Okay, that's it with my food post! I hope you enjoyed this post and the pictures >.<

Do you like fusion foods? What are your favorite food fusions?!