G'nosh Art Studio

A couple of months ago, a few friends and I attended a painting class at G'nosh, a painting studio.

Here's the wall of completed art pieces.  G'nosh offers 1-2 classes a day and you can register for the classes online.  Depending on what kind of artwork you are into (or what you would like hanging on a wall in your house), you can select the class.  A couple that was at the class at the same time as off did something pretty neat. Instead of painting the identical pieces, the girl painting the left half of the image on her canvas and the guy painted the right half of the image on his canvas. 

This is the instructor's finished painting.  We were supposed to strive for something similar to his painting.

Here's the first step of my progress.

The techniques we used for our painting was a "sponge" technique using acrylic paint and "parachutes" of newspaper as our brush.  We then lightly pressed the paint on to the canvas and blended the paints together.  It was kind of neat because we were only given primary colors (red, blue, yellow) paint, but through the dabbing of paint, we blended the colors to make green and orange splotches to that were supposed to resemble water and the sunset.

My finished art piece.

I've concluded that I'm not very girly or artistic. Throughout the class I keep thinking, "how can I finish this piece as fast as possible?"  I also kept thinking, "hmmm... there's a reason why I am studied science...it was probably due to my lack of artistic skills."  My girlfriends who I painted with loved  the experience. They even bought coupons to paint at another studio....I think I'll stick with baking as my hobby. 

G'nosh Richardson
1310 W. Campbell Rd.
Richardson, TX 75080

Mike's Haircut

I've been quite slow with the posts. I meant to post this early in February, but got caught up with work and life.  Last month for fun, I attempted to cut Mike's hair...on my own.   I never had the desire to cut anyone's hair, but Mike thought it would be fun.  Plus if things went really bad, we could always drive some where to get his hair professionally cut or we could just buzz all of it off. 

This is a picture of his hair prior to the cut.  The hair cut (or shall I say that the*attempt* of the hair cut) was comical.  1) I've never used clippers in my life; and 2)  Mike had to walk me through the process because I've never seen a guy get his hair cut before. 

So apparently, the first thing you are supposed to do is put a guard on the clippers and shave up the sides of the head until you feel like stopping.  Mike warned me that a "bowl" haircut would be bad.  Then once you've done that, you have to spray the hair with water and use a comb and the clippers without the guard to bevel/gradient cut the cut hair and the side hair.  My interpretation...I imagined I was trimming a hedge and getting rid of extra hair that was in my way. 

Mike proceeded to tell me that I had to decide on the length of hair I wanted to cut from the top and then treat his hair in "columns" and "rows."  I had to grab a section of hair between my fingers and cut it about 1/2" from the top and make sure that all the hair in the "columns" were the same length.  Then to check my work on the columns, I had to grab hair in rows to make sure the hair in the columns were correctly cut. Isn't that confusing? I actually understood this concept because when I go for a haircut, the hair stylist does something similar. 

Ta-da.  The finished haircut with a slight rat bite.  Throughout the haircut I kept telling Mike to just go to the neighborhood salon to get his haircut.  The $15-20 we saved was not worth the stress of the haircut and plus Mike would have to walk around with that haircut for weeks. 
But Mike's a trooper...or he's adamant on me becoming his personal barber.  I cut his hair again this past weekend and he says that it's an even better haircut then the first time.  Now he's banking on the chance that my learning curve will peak on the third attempt.  Hopefully I will be traveling when he needs another haircut and he'll just go get it professionally done. 

Mochi Pounding

Random story about me...growing up, I always wanted to marry into a "mochi-pounding" family. Isn't that odd?  This was not a criterion on my "must-have" list for a potential spouse; it was more of an optional added bonus.  During the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, there would always be a news segment on TV about families gathering together to pound mochi.  It would be an all-day event in which families, friend, neighbors, and calabash aunties and uncles would all come together to pound mochi for the new year.  My immediate family is small, so I always thought it would be nice to be have large family gatherings filled with fun and laughter.

   Lucky for me, not only did I marry a nice sweet guy, I also married into a huge (at least I think it's large) extended family.  It still overwhelms me at the amount of relatives at Mike's family gatherings. Just to give you an idea, I have four cousins all of which are more than 10 years older or younger than me, so we never really hung out and could relate to each other.  Mike has eight cousins all around his age.  Okay, so back to the point of this post, no I did not end up marrying into a "mochi-pounding" family, but Mike's mom's friend hosts a mochi pounding event every year and this was the second year that Mike and I joined in the festivities. 

Mochi rice is soaked overnight and then drained. 

Here's the steamer used to steam the mochi rice. 

Mochi Equipment. 

I'm going to call this piece of equipment a "mochi extruder."  The hot sticky mass of glutinous rice is placed in this container and extrudes out and is cut into uniform pieces. 
The mochi assemblers all line up on both sides of a table and piece of the warm mochi are passed down the table.  People flatten the piece of mochi in their palms and then quickly insert a ball of filling into the mochi.  The mochi is then sealed over the filling. 

Look at that. They have the system down. This is a pan of prescooped azuki bean filling. 

The mochi is then cooled and then someone marks the mochi with colored dots to represent the different fillings. Red-azuki bean filling; Blue-Sweet Potato; Purple(?)-azuki bean and strawberry; Yellow-yellow sweet potato and coconut (I think). 

Hawaii Restaurants~En Fuego

Our winter trip back to Hawaii was only a week and a half long, yet we managed to eat out so many times!  Mike and I actually made a schedule (which we conveniently managed to leave back in Texas) so that we could hang out with our family and friends.
One night during our trip home we checked out En Fuego in Kapolei.  One of my friends lives on the far west side of the island, so Mike and I decided to meet up with her and her husband in Kapolei. 

Mike ordered a combination bento with garlic chicken and teri beef.  The garlic chicken was very flavorful and according to my friend, a lot of people on yelp.com recommended the garlic chicken. 

Hawaiian plate with kalua pig, laulau, mac salad, haupia, and lomi salmon. 

Mahimahi and garlic chicken combination plate.

I ordered the ahi tuna salad.  I was trying to order a healthy meal, but was disappointed with my dish. Mike and I both thought that there was a funky sour taste to my ahi tofu patty.  Next time I go back, I'll stick with the garlic chicken. 

The staff at En Fuego was extremely nice and accommodating. I think Mike and I would eat at En Fuego again. The food was reasonably priced and tasty.  But with our limited trips back home to Hawaii, we probably would not add En Fuego to our short list of restaurants we would return too. 

En Fuego Grill

590 Farrington Highway
Building C-1, Suite # 534
Kapolei, HI 96707
(808) 674-8805

Hawaii Restaurants~Hiroshi Euroasian Tapas

One of my good friends just got married earlier this year and I was unable to fly back to Hawaii for his wedding. We decided to meet up for dinner at Hiroshi's one night while I was back on vacation. the last time I ate at Hiroshi's was back in 2005.  I remember really enjoying the meal and was impressed with Hiroshi's version of "peas and carrots" which was really a mixture of perfectly cut cubes of carrots and edamame. 

We were served these rice cakes with a wasabi dip, while we were waiting for our entrees.  They reminded me of lightly fried puff rice.  The pictures are a little dark because I did not want to disturb other dinners with the flash from my point and shoot camera.


 

My friend ordered the crispy skin moi served with Mrs.Cheng's tofu, fennel, edamame, corn, tomatoes, and hijiki in a broth. 

I ordered the panko-crusted swordfish served with roasted shitake mushrooms, zuchinni, and thai basil in a roasted garlic soy butter sauce.  I'm not sure if my taste buds have been altered since I work on some low sodium projects, but I felt that both our dishes were a bit on the salty side.  The flavors were great, but I kept reaching for my glass of water. 

We ended our meal by sharing the bananas foster dessert.  It was served with two chocolate lollipops and a vanilla dip. Yum!

Hiroshi's
500 Ala Moana Bld.
Honolulu, HI
(808)533-4476