Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Freehold Lunch and Spa

On Sunday I spent the afternoon with my friend Jamie. Her birthday was on Friday so to celebrate we went to a day spa for massages. I didn't think about it at the time, but a massage after a day of paintballing ended up working out perfectly. We went to a place called Avanti in Freehold. I'm not sure if I was allowed to, but I took a picture of the quiet relaxation room inside. The couches were super comfortable.



Afterwards we grabbed a late lunch. Neither of us is really familiar with the Freehold area, so we decided to try a Japanese hibachi and sushi buffet place that we passed on the way to the day spa. It's a place called Tokyo. We stuck with the sushi buffet. It was pretty good. They had a lot of selection as far as sushi, and they had some other non-sushi stuff as well. Sorry no pictures of the food (-__-) ...

While we were eating the restaurant suddenly went dark and a strobe light flipped on in the center of the room. Jamie got really freaked out because she thought I had told the restaurant it was her birthday - unfortunately I didn't have so much forethought. Jamie managed to escape this time...


We got a picture together before we left, relaxed and full - definitely a good combination.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Top Gun Paintballing

Work on the laundry room is finally complete - thanks to the help of Phil's dad. Pictures of that should be coming soon.

With further renovations on the house on a slight pause for the time being we had some time this weekend to go out. Saturday we headed out to a paintballing place called Top Gun with some of Phil's coworkers. A group of us met at our friend Mohamed's to head out together. Mohamed's friend Mike came along too. Not only did he bring his own paintballing gear, but he's also a hunter. He shared lots of stories about his hunting adventures...Doesn't he look kind of intimidating in his camouflage? I'm just glad he was on our team!


We ended up waiting around for over an hour for the rest of the people to show up. Everyone was getting a little antsy. Mohamed looks like he's ready to suit up.


Once everyone arrived we headed to the main building to get our gear. Which had a lovely "We don't call 91" sign in the front just in case you were worried about getting injured. Very comforting, isn't it?

Here's the whole group suited up and ready for action!


Since there were so few of us we were considered "walk-ons" and played with several other small groups. It was a lot of crouching and crawling around in the woods. I'm not even sure which team won which games...But we all had fun. Here we are with Joanna and Anand after a long day of kicking butt.


They day wasn't completely without injury. I ended up with 4 giant bruises - 1 on each arm and 2 on my right hip area. One of the bigger ones was the one on my arm, which I got during our last game. I guess that's what I get for trying to sneak up on the enemy. I look so sad.



The bruise on my arm was really swollen at first. Joanna said it was at least the size of a quarter, so we did a little comparison. It's pretty close.


After getting cleaned up a bit we headed back to Mohamed's for dinner. Here he is with his wife Maroa. Don't they make such a cute couple? ^__^


Phil and Mohamed are hanging out around the grill while Mohamed cooks up some hot dogs and hamburgers.


Check out the spread! They pulled out all the fixings.


Here's Phil chowing down on his second hot dog...or was it his third?...

Mike's wife came by with their son Gabrielle to join us for dinner. Isn't he so cute in his overalls?

At one point no one was playing with him so he pretended to be upset, but we caught him smiling secretly. So young and he already knows how to play to the crowd.


I forgot to bring my camera (I know, first outing in so long and I forget my camera...), so these pics are all courtesy of Joanna - thanks Joanna! ^__^

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Cell Phone Buddy

So, not much to post as of late. Phil and his dad have been working on our laundry room. I was going to post some pictures, but it's not completely done so I thought I'd wait to get the full before/after effect.

In the meantime here's a filler post of Phil's new cell phone buddy. His Aunt Ruby brought it back from Hong Kong. Isn't it cute? Although I'm not sure how I feel about the giant kidney bean mouth...


Phil's using it for his cell phone, but the box said you could also use it for pens, iPods and Wii remotes. It kind of looks a little sad with its face all covered up like that...


That's all for now, but hopefully there will be something more exciting going on this weekend.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Uncle Ringo's BBQ

My posts are a little behind I know...
On Sunday we headed to East Brunswick to Phil's Uncle Ringo's house for a Labor Day BBQ. Here's Uncle Ringo BBQing up a storm with some peppers and asparagus. So colorful!


There was tons of food including ribs and chicken. I was so full from the weekend of eating I didn't get a chance to try any, but according to Phil it was very good.



There was a second grill filled with individual wrapped ears of corn, and a rogue hot dog bun being toasted on top. I think the green things on the side are a kind of cucumber. I don't remember seeing anyone eat them though...

After chatting and eating, or watching people eat in my case, the cousins decided to play some volleyball. Here's Lucia with her game face - she meant business!
After our failed attempts at keeping the volleyball in play for more than 2 turns we took a break to eat some fruit. Check out the giant melon slice! Looking at the size of this slice I think the entire melon could probably swallow Phil's head whole. I'm not sure what kind of melon it is but it looks like it's in the cantaloupe family...just twice as big.

It started to get chilly outside so we packed up the food and headed indoors. All the parents started to show off their different exercise moves. Phil's Aunt Ruby was teaching his mom various stretches and yoga poses.



This pose looks familiar, I think I've seen it on the Wii Fit!


Then Uncle Ringo joined in. I hope they're not too full from the BBQ!

Don't try this one at home guys.

After the grown ups tired themselves out from their post-BBQ workout it was time for dessert. We had Häagen-Dazs vanilla and almond ice cream bars and homemade strawberry pound cake from Phil's Aunt Chan.


Hopefully there will be less eating this coming weekend. I'm not sure if our stomachs could take it...Ok, who am I kidding, Phil's stomach could probably take it... ^__^

Monday, September 7, 2009

Kevin's B-day Celebration

One of Phil's cousins, Kevin, has a birthday coming up so we all headed out to the Golden Star restaurant on Division Street for dinner to celebrate.



Phil and I made a stop back to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory to pick up a surprise ice cream cake for the occasion. The cake was layered with 3 flavors - red bean, green tea and lychee. (As if we hadn't had enough ice cream and desserts already on our mini food tour). The writing on the cake says "Cougars for Kevin!"...don't ask...


For dinner we had some veggie dishes. This one was celery and lotus seed, and I think it might have had some abalone in there as well...

Jumbo shrimp deep fried with walnuts and brocolli.


Taiwanese sausage with onions and mushroom.


Deep fried crab and lobster. Phil and I thought that the crab was soft shell crab, but we quickly learned that it was not. I guess they just deep fried the regular crab for flavor. Although it did make it a little more difficult to eat.

Once we finished eating the waiters brought out the cake and Lucia lit the birthday candles so we could all sing Happy Birthday.

I think the best part though was the giant butcher knife they provided for cutting the cake. I know he's the birthday boy and all, but Kevin looks a little too menacing with that knife...


And we can't forget group picture time! From the back: me, Winnie, Aunt Ruby, Phil's mom, Phil's dad, Phil, Aunt Chan, Alex, Lucia, Kevin, Ray and Peter.

Mini Food Tour (Ice Cream Overload)

Two of Phil's cousins from out of town came to visit, so we spent the day in the city to hang out. Our first stop was to a Shanghai restaurant near the Elizabeth Center in Chinatown. It's a little hole in the wall restaurant with not much seating room, but their food was decent. They even had soup dumplings, which were pretty good. Lucia looks like she's enjoying them.

We also ordered some drunken chicken, and vegetarian duck (basically tofu skin stuffed with mushrooms).

And a plate of rice noodles with veggies.


With our bellies semi-full we debated what to do next and finally decided on getting some ice cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. This ice cream place has all kinds of "asian-inspired" flavors from the traditional green tea and red bean to almond cookie and lychee. This place has been around for a while, but this was my first time...at least as far as I remember, which isn't necessarily saying much...

Everybody was craving ice cream. Ray looks like he's in ice cream heaven.

Phil and I got the Lychee and Almond Cookie flavors to try. Both were delicious, but I think I liked the Almond Cookie better. We'll definitely be coming back here again!


Then we continued on our way uptown in search of more food. On our way we passed an interesting new looking building with a giant rainbow colored "hell yes" sign. Apparently it's a new museum - though I'm not sure what kind of museum. Maybe Phil and I will come back to check it out sometime.


The next stop on our mini-food tour was a french fry place called Pommes Frites. They sell Belgian fries with different sauces. They're open 24 hours and are apparently very popular with the late night bar hoppers.


Everyone was a little exhausted from all the eating and walking, even the thought of more food was tiring...

Ok, maybe not that tiring...



We ordered a large order of fries to share between us. It might not look like a lot, but that paper cone certainly holds a lot of fries.


We ordered a sampling of 3 different sauces - roasted garlic mayo, peanut satay and pomegranate teriyaki mayo.


We also met up with Phil's sister at Pommes Frites. She had just finished her GRE exam and was super excited about her score. And what better way to celebrate than with food!

Next on our tour was a place called Momo Fuku Milk Bar. Momo Fuku has different restaurants, like a noodle bar and ssam bar. The Milk Bar is a soft-serve ice cream and pastry place that uses cereal milk as their main ingredient. What exactly is cereal milk? It's milk that has had cereal soaked in it for an extended period of time until the milk takes on the flavor of that cereal.
In addition to their soft-serve ice cream they had other desserts, like cookies and cakes. The cookies looked really tasty. They have a "Compost cookie", which is made of potato chips, pretzels, coffee grounds, oats, graham cracker crumbs, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips. They also have a "Blueberry Cream cookie", which basically tasts like a blueberry muffin.

Phil was set on ordering some cookies, but was outraged that they would charge over $1 for cookies...that is until he spotted "yesterday's cookies"! Day old cookies for half the price.


So he ordered 3 - the compost cookie, the blueberry cream cookie and the cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie. My favorite was a tie between the compost and blueberry cream.

Lucia ordered the cereal milk soft-serve, and a slice of chocolate chip cake. The soft-serve definitely tasted like left over cereal milk, which was a little strange. Phil was convinced that someone must have eaten the cereal from the milk and got grossed out. The cake though was very good. It had layers of passion fruit curd in between. Normally I wouldn't think of mixing anything chocolate with passion fruit, but it tasted rather good.

After we filled our bellies even more with food Phil and Lucia decided to be silly in front of the milk sign at Momo Fuku. How does Lucia freeze in mid-air like that?

Then we took the long walk back to Lucia's apartment. On the way we passed a taiko group performing on the sidewalk. It made me think of the Icho Daiko taiko group back in Cleveland. They even had a skit of an old lady with a fake hunchback pretending to wash rice in the river.


We also passed a temple closer to Chinatown that was offering food and paper money in the street. I don't think there were any holidays on the lunar calendar for this weekend, so they might have just been performing a regular offering. Seeing offerings on the street outside a temple is not something new in Chinatown, but what was strange about this one was they were offering a whole goat! Whole pigs, chickens and ducks are something that you see a lot, but never a whole goat. It was huge and almost looked like it could have still been alive!...freaky...


We finally made it back to Lucia's apartment, exhausted from all the eating and walking. Phil and his cousin Alex settled in for a nap before it was time to head out again for dinner. It seems Phil isn't the only one who has post-meal naps. Must run in the family... ^__^


Whew, so much eating and it was only the start of the weekend!