Day: September 1, 2006

TGIF!

Interesting article. Apparently food safety regulators are concerned about how Asian people in America store Asian food:

Two Asian delicacies are the subject of a simmering debate pitting merchants who like to store them at room temperature for hours against food safety regulators who worry the practice could allow bacteria to build up.

One is a rice cake filled with fatty pork and beans, wrapped in banana leaves and served during the Lunar New Year. Another is a baked pastry consisting of lotus paste and a duck egg yolk. [….]

The “lotus paste and a duck egg yolk” things sounds an awful lot like mooncake, if you asked me (I could be very completely wrong about that, being the not-entirely-knowledgeable ABC that I am). But, I’m in the mind that if a billion plus Asian people eat some of this stuff and haven’t been that harmed, how bad can the stuff be? (particularly mooncakes, which admittedly don’t get refrigerated when you buy them off the shelves, but they’re so preserved, what’s the point? Anyhoo, they taste better cold if you asked me). Uh, never mind…

The Entertainment Weekly double issue/Fall tv preview! This is going to take awhile to read and analyze.

A story on the concept of brunch.

Man o’ Spamalot

P got tickets yesterday for Monty Python’s Spamalot. I haven’t been to the theater for a long while, and I love musicals, so it was an especial treat. Also, it’s generally based, but something completely different from the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was a bit more like Monty Python Forbidden Broadway, as the subtext was to parody other Broadway shows, such as the Producers, Phantom, and anything with disco. They also had a Broadway version of the Excalibur Las Vegas. There is also audience participation for someone in the lucky seat, which this time was A101, and a sing-a-long of “Look on the Bright Side of Life”, so there’s no time to be bored. Lots of fun — recommended. And yes, I bought an official pair of coconut shell halves, perfect for all sorts of horse play!

Before, we had dinner across the street at Ollies. They have credible renditions of Cantonese won ton mein soup noodles with BBQ made in house. Other than having a bit more MSG than I would like, the noodles were appropriately al dente and the wontons were fullsized and had both pork and shrimp. The siao long bao was also not bad. The food came out really fast, and we were done in 45 minutes. We didn’t even break $20 between the two of us, which is a real deal in Times Square.