My Hero

Ron Jeremy of the Culinary World

I've never been to Canada. But one reason I want to, other than to see my brother-in-law, is to dine at Au Pied de Cochon. There's a lot of hype surrounding the restaurant, but peel away all the PR, and you'll see.. This is good, simple cuisine with fresh ingredients. Maybe the media overplayed the rough looks and manner of APDC's chef, Martin Picard. Maybe they overplayed the "extreme" ingredients in the food.. but I have to say, this is my kind of cuisine. Food dictated by ingredients. He's not getting any spot shrimp by chopper.. He's getting fresh oysters, sea urchin and clam from Canada's rich coastline.. I've always taught my students.. Real cuisine is dictated by natural ingredients. The skill of a cook should not be measured by the distance his or her ingredients have travelled to be in the kitchen. Nor should it be measured by the price of his equipment. Maybe I'm more of a cook than a chef, after all.. I'll go deeper into thatsome other time. But for now, I still hope to visit beautiful Canada with Dave and Le Marc.
 

Related rant.. All of you who jumped on the molecular bandwagon, do the world a favor and stay right there where you are. Yeah, I was there too. It was a short, short phase for me, mostly curiosity driven. It helped me understand a little more about composition and manipulation, but in the end I went back to real gimmick-free food.

Music

as recommended by /mu/

Choices choices...

I'm almost certain i want tudor style raised panel cabinet doors.. But when the contractor sent me this, and suddenly, out of nowhere.. Options. Still leaning like big pun towards tudor, but also considering: Shaker- more modern, straighter lines, and designed by a breakaway religious group Plain raised panel- more modest and not as much personality as the tudor Nantucket beadboard- nice texture, and nantucket reminds me of turn of the century whaling and dirty limericks Laminated chipboard- super shiny, super cheap French-wow, glass. Tudor (cathedral) - channels my cooking inspirations, Child, Pepin, Bocuse, etc. - reminds me of our old house - goes with our exhaust hood - very Terence Conran - nice in white - will go with my tilework So, yeah.

The House Project: May 2011 Update

Here's how the house renovations are going so far:

• All bathrooms except for the nursery have been retiled
• New wide Chan C Bros cantilever sink console for the masters Bathroom
• Laundry area/ dirty kitchen are done
• Yaya's room repainted and fitted with cabinet
• TV mounts are in
• Library/Drum room wall treatment
• Pocket door for powder room
• Etc etc etc

The road is long.. and many a wallet hole.. We may be able to move in soon.

f

The Pink Floyd wall in the Drum room/ library. Mom also gave us a daybed for my buddies to laze on

The two huge drop light shades from Hive. In an effort to be green, we installed LED's inside. Result: batcave level illumination. Going back to CFL's.

The Taupe-y Landing. You can almost see the emergency light. Interesting fact: The word "Taupe" is taken from the old name of the European Mole, which is a strange shade of gray.

The Nursery. Blue gray and white. One of those desks is a mahogany antique with carabao horn inlay.

The old look of all the bathrooms. Very "beach resort dance number".

Bathroom of the Library. Check out the mini-wall tiles

Master's Bedroom. With a clear view of the subdivision's gate and everyone entering. Just wave when you come visit!

We didn't touch anything here... yet.

View of the living room from the 2nd landing. you can see the TV mount from here. You could probably watch TV from here too.

The house's exterior. We just did some touch up work on the paint for some spots, and rusty runoff from the railing, but that's the original color. The bench is antique from Great-Grandma's house.

The Powder room.. That's a pocket door. I wanted to put a urinal here but i realized if a girl were to be sitting on the toilet, her face would be right where the urinal is. Sorry, bad idea.

Utility Sink/Laundry/Dirty Kitchen. This is built from components of the original kitchen, which we tore down. Natural Granite countertop, laminated chipboard doors and concrete base.

Here a kitchen will rise...

Like everything else, it took us a while to decide on the button/frame for the doorbell, and the right chime to use. 

Balance

We are at the stage of house renovation that makes me a bit anxious. The wife has the rest of the house planned in a utopian Elle Decor-friendly style. Of course I contributed my ideas too, like the main door doorknob, and uh.. my drum room, and much more...

It's kitchen time. Mrs. me expressed her desire to let me make the style decisions for our kitchen, me being her chef. That's like the "Do these pants make my ass look big" question..

It goes without saying that i still have to keep it neat, yet I want this kitchen to have character. Hopefully the contractor we pick can be into it enough as not to just Sketchup some generic kitchen counters and cabinets..

Look at those sexy tiles!! Are they beveled???

To me this is not a mess..

How can i find balance?

Cook's Kitchen vs. Neat Freak Kitchen
Open Plan vs. Storage for Everything
Julia Child vs. BoConcept
James Beard vs. Ikea
fight vs. no fight

The balance lies somewhere.. closer to the right I think..

JH

Multiply for sale?

I found out someone has various social networking *things* that share the name of my old multiply account. How much should I sell her the rights?

here's mine:

www.myhungryeye.multiply.com

Hers:

http://www.myhungryeye.com/
http://twitter.com/myhungryeye
http://blog.myhungryeye.com/

I think I came first, somewhere around 2007

hmmmm...

JH

Bricks, Walnut, Incandescent Light and Sputniks

Needs moar meatloaf

I found my copy at BookSale.. The original owner's notes and receipts were still inside

I like when I can't tell if a building is a house, a school or a factory

It must be something from my childhood, my fascination with non-mod/ non-hippie/ non-disco atmospheres from the 40's, 50's . I love brick and wood structures, super warm incandescent light (fortunately today made eco-friendly by way of LED), sputniky sculptures, natural stain walnut and molded plywood. I love our Burnham view apartment in Baguio, that old apartment building on 4th street near Mount Carmel in New Manila, and even the new Ateneo Campus in Rockwell. I love copper in the kitchen and rotation-dialing telephones. In short, I love Frank Lloyd Wright, Terence Conran and Charles and Ray Eames. Thats why I baked this moussaka.

Joey