Viet-nom nom's

I've been lagging the past couple weeks with this blogging thing, so MAH BAD! Things have been pretty crazy what with the NBA draft, Twitter (follow me: @melkwon), and my hectic drinking schedule dominating my life. But now that the draft is over and that I've embarrassed myself via Twitter a sufficient amount of times, I think its time to get back on the grind and do what I do best...

So it was my homegirl, Mimi's birthday last week and so we hit up a Vietnamese restaurant in Berkeley called Anh Hong. I'll admit, the only Vietnamese food that I've really had and violate on a regular basis is pho, so imagine how shocked I was to find out that Vietnamese people made other dishes.

So Anh Hong is known for their "Bo 7 Mon", which means "Seven Courses of Beef." SEVEN COURSES OF BEEF...aslkhdfoikjsf'powjefohdefa'dljb!!!!!!!!!

Sorry.

Anyways, where was I? Yeah, basically they brought out various beef dishes and there are very specific ways to eat every dish because there are so many different components like veggies, wrappers, and sauces that are a part of this meal. Needless to say, I needed a lot of instruction from the Vietnamese folk at the table.


So these are the rice paper wrappers that you wrap everything in. You dip them in water and they get all jelloid, then you wrap shit up in there like a burrito. I unleashed the inner Mexican beast in me when it came time to rolling these bad boys up. I had everyone cheering me on and asking me to roll their beef thangs for them, which got out of hand.


These are some of the veggies you roll in...bean sprouts, pickled carrots, daikon, cucumber, mint, lettuce, cilantro. You know, the Vietnamese basics.



This was one of my favorites, the Beef Carpaccio, which are slices of rare beef covered in intercourse sauce.


This is some species of salad that I can't identify for the life of me because I'm vegetably inept. But I can tell you that they are garnished with shrimp chips ;)



These are some beef thangs which I believe are the Beef Lemongrass rolls and Grilled Beef Lot Leaf. DECADENTLY DELICIOUS with a DASH of DONG POWER. A little alliteration for that asssss....



Top rank, point blank, I'm vital...SKILLS!!! Yeah, I wrap.


This is the Vietnamese Crepe, my second favorite. It was filled with shrimp, pork, creamy mung beans, and bean sprouts. You know I fucks with the frieds more than anything else...no worries though, I wrapped it up.


SURF AND TURF, baby! A little shrimp and beef action for ya, a pretty classic combo that made my nether regions jump for joy. I should really ask them if they need someone to re-write their menu for them because I am a straight up wordsmith when it comes to Vietnamese cuisine.



My girl, Jizzo was jocking the shit out of this dish. According to the menu, they are the "Charbroiled Shrimpballs on Sugar Cane." I shit you not, it says that. That just saved me a whole lot of work...apparently, they have their own menu wordsmith.

So BRAVO ANH HONG! I give this place 69 stars for being so goddamn delicious and bringing such unadulterated joy to a young boys heart. Big up's to Vietnam too for all the beefy contributions they make to this scary world, where veganism and vegetarianism are on the rise.

Late-Night Berkeley: Donuts, Boba, and Crackheads

So the other night, my cousin and I were out in Berkeley to get some late night BOBA action in. For one and a half Asian twenty-something year olds, guzzling boba at the local Quickly on a Friday night is the equivalent of doing body shots of Patron at a club for most other people. So we ended up at Sweethearts on Durant and got two boba milk teas for $3! For those of you who cannot add, that is a steal.

So right around the corner from Sweethearts is probably one of the best donut shops around, King Pin Donuts! Around 11 or 12, they have donuts fresh out the fryer cooling on racks by the window and it smells like the Pillsbury Doughboy's hotass fart. You cannot help but walk in, order nine dozen donuts, annihilate them, and do celebratory windmills til you break every bone in your body. Although this time I did not order nine dozen donuts, but I did order one cinnamon twist and did the windmill thing til the homeless people outside demanded I be removed.



I only had my Blackberry on hand and no real camera so please excuse the wackness of these photos. But this is the boba and the elusive cinnamon twist. It was crunchy on the outside (in a fresh, good way) and warm and fluffy on the inside. I could not believe the gloriousness that was in my mouth...


Believe it or not, this is NOT a badger tail. It is actually the world's largest and probably oldest dreadlock. After further investigation, I also found out that the woman donning this thing was in fact Whoopi Goldbergs crack baby.

Lil Jon Wins Award For Chardonnay Wine | Hip Hop News HipHopDX.com

I'm drunk and I'm on my google reader and I don't know if I seeing shit but I'm pretty sure this says that Lil Jon made a prize winning chardonnay. Feel like im in the fuckin twilight zone or some shit.

Lil Jon Wins Award For Chardonnay Wine | Hip Hop News HipHopDX.com

Shared via AddThis

Hot Dates in North Beach + Baseball Metaphors

Me being the sexy, young thang that I am, I go on plenty of dates and have become somewhat of a dating expert. Never you mind that my dates don't involve actual men...


Raspberry & Chocolate Macaroons from La Boulange on Columbus. I unknowingly made out with each of them for about a half hour before I took my first bite. I kept it at first base cause I didn't wanna seem easy since it was our first date and all.





Focaccia bread of the pizza and plain variety from the Liguria Bakery. We go way back so we already knew each other pretty well, so its safe to say that I scored a home run with these bad boys.

Ladies, I hope you took notes.

Burma Superstar: That Is What You Are

I first heard about Burma Superstar from a presentation done in my Food and Wine class on Burmese cuisine. It was described as a cross between Thai, Chinese, and Indian food, which intrigued me because all 3 of those cuisines are amongst my top 69 favorite cuisines. I've never had Burmese cuisine before and never gave it much thought, but that presentation had me hurtin for a BURMESE squirtin!

So the first time I tried to go here, I went to the location on Clement Street in San Francisco and there was a 45 minute long wait! Mind you, this was around 9ish on a Tuesday night. So we ended up going somewhere different cause we already had that hungry, rabid look in our eyes and couldn't wait that long or else someone would have died in the name of garlic noodles. But from that moment on, I KNEW that I had to eat at Burma Superstar because people don't wait 45 minutes for mediocrity...except for the morons that wait in line at Pink's.

So the other night I finally ended up going to their location in Oakland in Temescal aka the Williamsburg/Silverlake/Track Bikes McGeeversville part of town. Naturally, when gentrification exiles the crackheads and the angel dust clears, the hipsters appear and the good food follows.



The exterior. You can't see it but there are 5 foot grease stains on the windows where I was pressing my body against the glass. They threatened to call the police but my friends somehow convinced them I wasn't a meth addict and they let me in. I just get really excited when I try new restaurants.

So the real reason we ended up at Burma Superstar was because we desperately wanted sangrias and when you look up "sangrias" in Oakland on Yelp, Burma Superstar pops up. And rightfully so because their sangrias were ON POINT!



They have both red and white wine sangrias but we opted for the red after our waitress suggested them. I think the sangria was supposed to have lychee in it but didn't quite taste it but perhaps the white sangrias were the ones with lychee in it. Whatever, we were just happy to have SANGRIAS! My homegirl, Oaklandass Mimi had quite the night with just half a watered down sangria...bless her Vietnamese heart. I on the other hand could have used several more pitchers of sangria...



We started off with the Tea Leaf Salad which is their signature dish and I'll be honest, I wanted to try it because of the hype but faked being excited because it is after all a salad. Salads remind me of dieting and dieting reminds of entertaining thoughts of suicide. Also, I was half expecting it to have a Thai Milk Tea dressing so imagine my disappointment when I didn't see my veggies floating in a bed of orange liquid. Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised when I tried this because it was goddamn DELICIOUS! It consists of fermented tea leaves, tomatoes, lettuce, dried shrimp, fried garlic, sesame seeds, peanuts, and split yellow peas. It was a crunchy, refreshing dish that got me excited in all sorts of ways ;)


Next came the GARLIC NOODLES with DUCK! Now if anyone knows me, they know that I LOVE duck, especially after a long night of partying. After the club, I can typically be found being laughed at and photographed, face down in a plate of duck soup at Osha. Anyhow, the Garlic Noodles were THE BUSINESS...pretty simple: flour noodles, fried garlic, scallions, and duck! QUACK BITCH!


This is the Spicy and Crispy Chicken, which is deep fried chicken breast in a sweet, spicy sauce with chili and garlic. I think my friends described its glory pretty accurately when they proclaimed, "Damn, those chicken nugget things are HELLA good!"



Here we have the Garlic Chili Shrimp. WADDUP? I HIT. WHAT ELSE? PLUS DOME. SAY WORD?...AND WE GOT IT ON TONIIIIGHT! (Some dishes remind me of Cam'ron songs.)




Okay, listen up...you MUST order the Coconut Rice or else you will have done everything wrong. EVERYTHING tastes better with a side of Coconut Rice because the coconut flavor compliments all the dishes so brilliantly and MAN, god, Jesus, Moses, Noah, I LOVE IT!!!!! Its just so rich, creamy, and flavorful and its like having a month long Luau in my mouth.




We topped the meal off with some Fried Coconut Fritters with coconut ice cream and strawberries. Sexcellent. Beautifuck. Oh my lord...

In conclusion, Burma Superstar is one of my new favorite restaurants and I desperately want to try everything else on the menu. Every dish we had was extraordinarily delicious, unique, and damn near tantric.

Somehow at the end of the night, this poor, hermaphrodite doggy ended up in a headlock. Take note of the fear in its eyes...I've never seen anything like it before. I blame Burma.

I just had an epiphany...

It's not until I read this article on "The Worst Packaged Lunch" on menshealth.com, did I realize that I just stopped eating Lunchables last year...at the age of 21. A grownass woman seriously eating Lunchables for a meal. Well, I'm glad I matured out of that stage cause apparently they have 680 calories in them. I also ate Flamin' Hots and Vitamin Water for breakfast so yeah, I don't think I've been capable of feeding myself properly without parental supervision until recently.

Eat This, Not That - The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution From Men's Health

Shared via AddThis

Baking That Will Get You Laid: Jello Poke Cake

After looking at other food blogs, I noticed that my blog did not feature any recipes, whereas most other food blogs do. I also noticed the pictures they feature aren't of food that's half eaten, their cameras are in focus, and they don't write like they're writing blurbs for erotica novels. So I thought that maybe I should put up a recipe once in a while so that I appear domesticated and ladylike. Here it goes...

So, a wise man once told me and my friend, Jessica, "You eat like white trash." And I did not disagree. Thus, here is a recipe for a cake that my cousin put me on to called Jello Poke Cake. Its an extremely easy recipe, also surprisingly delicious considering the ingredients and is ideal for toddlers, starving college students, and ambitious stoners.

JELLO POKE CAKE
1 Box of Yellow Cake Mix
1 (3 oz.) Box of Raspberry Jello *
1 (3 oz.) Box of Green Jello *
1 (8 oz.) Tub of Cool Whip
2 9" Round Baking Pans

*You can use whatever flavor Jello you want, it really doesn't matter.


You should be able to find all of these ingredients at your favorite 711.

So first you should probably make the yellow cake mix...there's instructions on the back of the box. Follow those. Here's picture's for those of you who cannot read.


Put the mix, eggs, oil, and water in a bowl and getcha swirl on.


It should come out looking like honey mustard. If you come up with something different, you should probably just give up and buy a Hostess cake.


So you pour the mix into two round cake pans and bake it at 350 degrees. It should come out lookin' golden brown, round, and sexy!


According to the directions, at this point you should be getting horny or "hornee" in Spanish. So you should probably let the cakes cool on some cooling racks.

If you can fight off the hornyness, start preparing the Jello. It's a steamy process that involves mixing boiling water and cold water into the Jello mix. I know, complex stuff but if I can do it, you can too. Just kidding, you probably can't.




Now for the fun part...get a fork and poke the living shit out of them cakes!! That deserves the biggest, "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!!!!!" (Seriously, make sure you poke it enough cause I didn't and the cake didn't absorb the Jello very well.)


LIKE SO.

Now you can pour the Jello mix over the cakes. You're not going to use all of it but go nuts if you like. I used a turkey baster!



Now stick these bad boys in the refrigerator for 3 hours at the very least. Of course, we only chilled them for an hour but that's cause it was getting late and we were hungry and I could only watch so many episodes of "True Life" on an empty stomach.


NOW ITS TIME TO FROST!! Take your tub of Cool Whip and a spatula and try your best not to rub it all over your body. Just on the cake will be fine. But whatever you do with the rest of the Cool Whip is your business.




AND THAT'S IT! I suppose you can decorate it but whats the point if its going directly in your mouth after you frost it.






I must shout out my cousin, Amanda for making this cake with me. If she didn't supervise me while making this, I would have set the house on fire and put myself in a body cast.