Taking is tea is pretty fun. You sip and giggle and kick back. This weekend our tea drinking trio went to Crown and Crumpet in Ghiradelli square. With modernized cottage decor, the one room tea shop has the ambiance of an Amy Butler ad complete with flatscreen faux fire. We had the Tea for Three with a pot of tea each. My Sakrambo description read,

"Peppery cherries work in harmony with rosemary undertones in this Japanese blend. Playing lightly on your tongue; a sweet symphony you don’t want to pass up."

We agreed the sandwiches here were better than elsewhere but didn't care for the little pink cupcakes at the end. The Queen Elizabeth chocolate rounds on sale were utterly charming.

Afterwards, we went to Kara's Cupcakes. I took a half dozen to go for father's day but ate the fleur de sel when I got home. During transport - 2 small blocks of walking and a relatively calm Cal train ride home - the cupcake had collapsed and the filling was indistinguishable from the cake. There wasn't a strong flavor of caramel or the sweet vs salty hit I was expecting, and while the cake was perfectly light and moist, the frosting was almost felt too heavy and dense in comparison.

The next day the family ate the rest of the cupcakes and the favorite seemed to be the coffee and especially the chocolate with Ghiradelli chocolate topping. Each cupcake seems to have its own cake texture and frosting characteristics, so the denser curd filled lemon cupcake held up better than the fleur de sel, but I want to try the buttermilk vanilla before passing judgment.

An exhaustive list of online retailers for by-the-yard fabric cuts. Search by store name or by type of merchandise, i.e. Javanese prints or Equestrian. Catches vendors that Google doesn't, especially for unusual searches.

Wiki has removed his entry so there isn't much info out there in English except perhaps a small ode on Soompi but Yoo Young Jin is a man of many talents. Musician, performer, composer (producer in our modern American lexicon), and lyricist extraordinaire, this lanky haired professional has served up countless Korean hits for SM Entertainment and Avex Trax. He rocketed mega groups such as H.O.T., Shinhwa and S.E.S. to number 1 and proteged some of the best Korean vocalists - Fany, Boa and DBSK/TVXQ. Over time, his production has only gotten more sophisticated, penning songs for Super Junior and Shinee, and writing material for Kangta, not to mention his own solo albums.

Pedigree aside, Yoo Young Jin, has a specific knack for creating the most bombastic of boyband club blockbusters like The SHINee World - Shinee. He often lays massively thick basslines beneath dark monotone verses, contrasts that with soaring romance, then playfully intersperses ethereal bridges and explosions in between (Don't Don - Super Junior). Unusually dynamic song structures (O-DBSK) appear as mini switchups, double bridges, and epic compositional changes that are de rigeur today in America's more progressive producers.

At his best, Young Jin adeptly transmogrifies his sources into narrative epics. Take a closer listen to more than 1o years worth of chart toppers and You Young Jin's Tracks jump out as a relatively distinguished pop with sophisticated stuff going on in a veritable sea of copyright infringement. Yes, a lot of those sounds were foraged from the American back catalog of House of Pain, rave massives, nu electro and Timberland/lake canoodling, and some of it is leaden cheese. Indelibly though, the fingerprint of Yoo Young Jin marks Korea's pop landscape. Hate it or love it, he has shaped our taste for the cream of Korea's pop culture. No one could have lived through any kind of asian scene in the 90's without fingerdancing to seminal H.O.T. I mean... who can forget the bouncy insouciance that was Candy? Meanwhile, he's rhyming "sorry sorry" with "shawty shawty" over dirty synth and hypnotic bubbles. Like, What?!

"Damen Show", in the lingo of Japanese cooking show Dotch, is where a piece of food is sliced down the middle to show the tender, juicy, crispy, textures of whatever has just been created by top notch chefs from the most expensive or exclusive ingredients in Japan. "Cross Section Show" it means, but the lusciousness of each culinary vivisection is essential to winning a game where contestants compete for a bite to eat. A little bit Iron Chef, with less haute innovation tips to glean, and a little bit marketing ploy, but more interesting than watching a regular commercial, Dotch is a cross section of Asian pop tastes and historical dishes.

During my stay in Hong Kong I visited Jimmy's Kitchen, a restaurant with a decor reminiscent of mobsters and Frank Sinatra. The most memorable however, was the madras chicken - a broiled thigh with powdery curry paste or rub, rather than a familiar sauced dish. I can't recreate it yet, but I'm trying.

Mos Def is back - that crawling drawl, the afro funk vocal doodles, a political torch blazing brightly - all that - totally integrated into a loose experimental Preservation driven, Madlib spirited sound. Production is funk refined and old school wonky without out ever getting too vintage. Tracks by Mr Flash from dance label Ed Banger and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes are current without trying overly hard to be too new crunk cool or electro bombastic like Method Man and Redman's recent Blackout II. Instead, The Ecstatic is a closely vibing but not copycatting cousin to Badu's New Amerykah.

Hear Mos Def afresh on Casa Bey, the least verbally lazy since Black on Both Sides. His flow and singing throughout the album take on a jazz tinged arrangement that becomes more than the sum of the original parts. Lyrically sharp, the "freestyle" style compliments the musicality of the track and shifts percussively, tonally, a feature not usually found in straighter "rap" albums. While familiar stylistic tics dot the album, elements, like the verse to verse pause, are redefined through the revised structural context. It's no accident that Mos Def performs at a couple Jazz festivals towards the end of this year.

Both Slick Rick and Talib make distingushed and appropriate appearances, a flag for the notable sweet spot that The Ecstatic hits. But while it acknowledges the past, the album never gets mired in Hip Hop history. Rather, it delivers us the Mos Def we know and love, but different, better. Black on Both Sides was a perfect piece of work, perfectly coffee toned and caramelized, its sensibility tuned to a certain bboy register. The Ecstatic, pitched more ambitiously but just as listenable, reaches broadly and colors more vividly outside the lines. I am a very very glad fan.

Korean Potato Noodles and stir fry vegetable recipe from Cooking Korean food with Maangchi.

The recipe was fairly easy to follow, although I may stir fry the vegetables differently next time so as to use less oil. Instead of white mushrooms I used all fresh shitake. I also topped it with a Japanese Style egg omelet cut in strips, but this is in no way "authentic".

The total result was not bad but rather bland. The SO insists that's the way it's supposed to be since Japchae is part of a multi-course bbq with kimchi, but I will still probably add a bit more seasoning next time.

In any case, his Korean mom wants to teach me how to make her Japchae so I'm excited to see how she does it.