the world is your acorn

The night before the wedding The Little Red Haired Girl and I decided we wanted to have a rehearsal dinner, we wanted it to be a Chinese banquet, and we wanted invite everyone. Never people to disappoint ourselves, we did what we wanted. Back in June, The Little Red Haired Girl, Lady Ebony, and I went on a tour of Chinese banquet facilities in the Boston area, trying one menu item at each restaurant. Even though we thought something in Chinatown would be fun, the obvious choice ended up being Royal East in Cambridge, right between Central and Kendall. The manager, Otto, was really nice, and the soft shell crab app that we tried was amazing.

So, after some deliberation about the menu, here’s what we ended up with:

1. Cold Platter

2. Seafood with yellow chive soup

3. Double lobsters (in the picture there’s also a tofu dish that was for non-seafood eating folks)

4. Crispy double squabs (note the look on our faces)

5. Steamed whole fish

6. Hong Kong steak

7. Sauteed pea tendrils w/ crabmeat sauce
8. Longevity noodles
Plus fresh fruit for dessert.

Somehow no one (that I know of) managed to get pictures of the last 3. Too full and lazy by then, I guess. All the food was fantastic, and exactly what I had imagined and been telling The Little Red Haired Girl about for years. Otto and his crew at Royal East also did a great job. We didn’t have to ask for much, they handled vegetarians and fish allergies easily, and service was efficient and professional. We were so impressed and grateful, if we lived there we’d be regulars at that restaurant. So freaking good.

I’m married now.

Good news: I finally installed Office 2008, and while I haven’t yet had a chance to see if anything is cool about it, it’s fun to have a new thing.

Bad news: The paste unformatted macro that i had for Word 2004 doesn’t work now.

Good news: Hard working people out there have written AppleScript to fix my problem. Hooray!

The Little Red Haired Girl and I have been reading a lot of poetry this last month or so, trying to find appropriate readings for the wedding ceremony that we both really liked. I thought it might be nice to have some Chinese poetry, so I took a couple of books out of the library. We didn’t find anything we really liked, but we did find some that we laughed hard over, imagining including them in the ceremony:

Impromptu on a Hangover
P’i Jih-Hsiu
I block out the midday brightness with a screen depicting dark woods,
burn a stick of heavy incense, nursing my hangover.
What’s this? As evening comes, I’m ready for a drink again!
Beyond the wall I hear the cry of someone selling clams.

Words of the Newly Wed Wife
Wan Chien
The third day I went into the kitchen,
washed my hands and made the soup.
Not yet sure of my mother-in-law’s tastes,
I sent some first for my sister-in-law to try.

The other day I tried something new: a calamari steak. I’ve cooked calamari before, but not just a steak. In my head I knew I wanted to do a grilled calamari salad of some sort, but when I got home I discovered that, in fact, I was way too lazy to light the grill. I then discovered Sam the Cooking Guy’s Calamari Steak with Garlic & Capers recipe. It’s super easy, and just involves searing for a couple of quick minutes, then adding butter, garlic, capers, lemon, and some fresh herbs. I also seared some squash and eggplant slices with some garlic to make a pseudo-grilled veggie salad and put it all on some lettuce. It turned out to be a delicious lunch that I’d do again. Maybe next time I’ll get a picture before we eat it all.