We are going to China!

We are almost done booking our trip. We’ll be going to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong this spring. The airplane tickets are already bought, and the hotels are reserved. Now we only have to get train and plane tickets for travel within China. In Beijing, we’ll be staying at the awesome looking Hotel Kapok.

BUG

…an incredible device that opens incredible possibilities — an open reconfigurable hardware platform with an SDK kit! It’s a beginning of something really big and fresh in the world of consumer electronics. Pre-ordering starts on Monday, with first units getting shipped on March 17th. The first modules include a gps, an lcd screen, a webcam and a motion sensor…with more to come.

more details here
engadget video

Herring Urge

Today I got an incredible urge to eat pickled herring.

Devendra Banhart @ Amoeba

Davendra Banhard is performing at Amoeba this Saturday. Depending on the amount of laziness I experience this Saturday, we may or may not venture out to see this show. We sacrificed his last show in San Francisco to see Stereo Total instead.

Going Vegetarian

In an effort to lose 10 pounds I am switching to a mostly vegetarian diet. I already haven’t had any meat in the last two weeks. Anyway, in my opinion, the best way of going vegetarian is with Indian vegetarian cooking. You consume fewer calories by not eating meat—but the food doesn’t make you feel like you’re part of some horrible experiment.

I am planning to document the whole process…making it part of my new year’s resolution…

Below is probably my favorite way of cooking green beans, because the end result is that you almost don’t know that you are eating green beans. The hardest/most tedious part is trimming and cutting the beans.

Ingredients:
4 tbsp of ghee or a mixture of oil and butter
2 tsp of black mustard seeds
1 tsp of cumin seeds
1/2 tsp of crushed dried chilies
1 pound of green beans cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1/2 cup of water
1 tsp of ground coriander
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of sugar

1. Heat the oil and fry the seeds and chilies until the mustard seeds start popping and turn gray.
2. Add the beans and stir-fry 2-3 mins.
3. Add water, cover and cook for about 10 mins.
4. Uncover, add the remaining ingredients, then raise the heat to evaporate any remaining water.

Btw…the recipe comes from here