daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Mariko said I should cook something for the holiday, so I asked Bay for ideas. He said ribs, and when I mentioned it to my brother, he told me about the method he uses to cook ribs. I tried it with a rack of baby-backs and they turned out great! Along with the ribs, I bought some sausages, Bay made au-gratin potatoes, and Mariko made jalapeño poppers. It was a delicious meal! And I am so happy to finally have a good, reliable cooking method for ribs. 😊
Lately I’ve been going on evening bicycle rides around the neighborhood. They are so relaxing since I take it pretty easy. And I love the granny gears on my bike. It’s like magic powering up those hills. 😊
I spent a little more time removing one last sticker from the frame and now it’s nice and clean-looking. There’s still some gummy residue which is really hard to remove completely, even using Goo-gone and my motorcycle degreaser. But it’s looking good! I just left one Kona sticker on the seat tube, and an International Space Station sticker on the fork. I’d love to find some new Kona stickers for the down tube, but want to keep it simple, such as plain black lettering.
Since we don’t drive much during the COVID-19 lock-down, I use the bicycle to collect the mail from our neighborhood mailbox. The panniers can hold a lot, which was fortunate today since a big yearbook-sized package arrived for Koa. But no problem! I loaded it into the pannier and then went on the rest of my ride.
It’s nice to ride at sunset (I try to be back before dark) since I often get to see the clouds lit up nicely. I also get to see lots of birds, but I don’t have my binoculars. I want to get a handlebar bag or basket so I can have them ready to use without having to get off the bike. I can’t simply reach back to the panniers for the quick grab, which is needed for birding. The problem is, fitting a bag on the butterfly/trekking bars is a little more complicated than on drop bars or a straight bar. Oh well, maybe I can find a bag laying around the house that I can modify to fit the butterfly bars.
In the meantime, I’ll just bring my camera for cloud photos. The clouds don’t fly away nearly as fast as birds do. 😁
Today I went to get my teeth cleaned, which was somewhat worrisome, but ended up being pretty safe. My dentist’s office does a temperature screening, gives hand sanitizer, requires masks in the waiting room, and enforces social distancing as well. It was good to see.
Then, right before I sat down in the dentist chair, I rinsed with a peroxide wash, and for the blood pressure test, they put a plastic sleeve around my wrist. The dentist and hygienists all wore full-body gowns, masks, face shields, glasses, and special gloves. I think it was pretty safe, and I felt comfortable.
It was good to get a taste of normalcy again, even if it was with extra precautions. I feel like this is probably the way we’ll have to operate for a while until a vaccine can be developed. I don’t see COVID-19 going away on its own, sadly.
Today’s photo is of a cute little bottle of Aji-no-moto, or “Aji”. It’s MSG if you are wondering. Yum!
Lately I’ve been enjoying just doodling in my sketchbook using my Pilot Metropolitan and Noodler’s Bulletproof Black Ink. It’s fun to just let the lines go where they want to.
Over the past week, I binge-watched Ainori Love Wagon: Asian Journey Seasons 1 and 2, and African Journey Season 1. I loved them! If you don’t know about these shows, they are Japanese reality television shows, where several single people travel to different countries hoping to find a love partner within their group. It’s a lot of fun, and I since I love travel shows, I find each episode very interesting. The relationships are fun to watch develop, but I think if there was no travel element, it wouldn’t be nearly as good.
In my opinion, the African Journey is the best of the bunch because of the friendly group dynamic. I found the two Asian seasons had a bit too much tension (because of one particular traveler), and while some people love that kind of drama, I’m not a huge fan. I’m looking forward to Africa Season 2, but I’m disappointed because the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have put the series on hold… although they might have finished filming Season 2 before lock-down.
In the meantime, two of my favorite travelers, “Kou” and “Husky”, had an Instagram Live session today which was fun (from what I could understand). It’s neat joining Instagram Live streams since they often interact with the text chat. I remember Crystal Kay responded to a few things I commented on, and in today’s chat, Kou returned my “cheers” by raising her non-alcoholic beer and saying “Texas Chili! Cheers!” lol. 🤣
Anyways, if you like these kinds of shows, and have Netflix US, give it a try.
I hope you had a good day!
The karaage that Mariko makes is always oishii, but tonight we had fresh lettuce leaves too! It was a really nice complement to the savory chicken. It reminded me of eating Korean barbecue with the lettuce leaves. 💗
I hope you had a nice day!
Tonight we had carnitas tacos for dinner, which is one of my favorite foods. In fact, whenever carnitas is on the menu at the restaurant, it immediately jumps to the top spot among the other dishes. 😀
I used this Instant Pot Carnitas recipe today, which is a new one for me. It’s similar to others I’ve used, but it adds a decent amount of lime juice to the meat before cooking which was something that I hadn’t done before. The rest of the family said they didn’t taste the lime, but I think it added a little something extra which was good. Overall, I liked this recipe a lot, and will use it again. It’s not too heavily spiced, so the flavor of the pork comes through nicely. A previous recipe had me add a can of chipotle peppers to the meat, and while it tasted good, it overpowered the meat and is not what I was used to. So I prefer this simpler recipe. And the Instant Pot makes it incredibly easy to make!
We enjoyed the meat with corn tortillas, Serrano peppers, cilantro, onion, lime, and avocado. We also had a jar of homemade salsa from a friend, which complemented the dish perfectly. It was a yummy meal for sure. 🌮💗
I hope you had a great day!
