My dear readers, I am once again remiss in reaching out to you.  From the moment I returned from California, I have been engrossed in a kitchen remodel.

I wearily arrived home Friday morning (redeye flight) to immediately begin removing the entire contents of my kitchen into boxes so the contractor (arriving three hours after me) could begin ripping everything out.

The next several days were a chaotic blur of contractors, office work, feeding my brother (who so kindly took several days out of his life to sit in my house and care for my dogs while the contractor worked), late night visits to home depot, lunchtime stops at the plumbing supply, and trying to function within the surrounding chaos.

Each night, I ate a different take-out, Chinese food, Pizza, Chinese leftovers, eggplant parmesan hero, leftover hero, etc.

My contractor finished installing the cabinets on Thursday.  He measured and created the template for my countertops and left. So, Friday evening, I came home from work and began to put the dishes back into the cabinets.

Slowly and steadily, I worked through the night, stopping to pass out around midnight.  My brother and I woke up Saturday morning and the incredibly daunting task of cleaning my house.  Because I had kitchen stuff in every room of the house, we had an overwhelming amount of work ahead of us. 

There is a biblical poem that Jewish people read (sing really) on Passover called Chad Gadya.  It is the story of a father returning home from the market with a new goat.  They reach a wall along their journey home and the goat refused to climb over it.  So the father goes to great lengths to convince the goat to climb over the wall.  Please allow me to share a translated passage (converted into a children’s story) with you…

With a saucer of milk,
The Cat began to chase the rat,
Rat began to knaw the rope,
Rope began to hang the butcher,
Butcher began to kill the ox,
Ox began to drink the water
Water began to put out the fire,
Fire began to burn the stick
Stick began to beat the dog,
Dog began to bite the goat,
The goat jumped over the wall,
And I finally got home that night!

My cleaning project felt quite similar.  You see… in order to put the hardware back in the linen closet, we had to remove the contents of the linen closet and re-organize it.  The jars were in  bags with the Tupperware in the spare bedroom. So, to put the hardware back in an organized fashion, we had to find the jars (and their corresponding lids).  Then we could not put the bakeware away until we cleaned to pots and pans out of the trunk in the living room.  We had to sort the pots and pans first… 

Taking an hour-long break for lunch (in the local pizza place), we worked until 2:00 AM, slept for a few hours, woke up and started all over again.  I am pleased to report to you, dear readers, that my project is almost done.  I have only to sort out the kitchen drawers before my work is completed.

The contractor returns to install the countertops, sink and faucet this coming Saturday.  At least I can work this week without the pressures of housecleaning weighing on me.

In the meantime, I would like to look back to San Francisco. .  In my last post, you found me wandering around downtown San Francisco in the middle of the night, searching for food.

Well, the following day we began scouting out locations for an event.  We cabbed it from one part of town to another… searching, evaluating, moving on.  We finally stopped for lunch in my favorite dim sum spot, Canton Dim Sum. 

Dim Sum is one of my favorite foods in this world.  We sat the the large round table in the back fo the crowded restaurant and waited as Chinese women rolled different carts toward us, each with different delicacies.

We started with Shirmp Spring rolls...





Roast pork buns...



Chinese style fried calamari...




Barbacue Pork Spare Ribs...



Har Karow...




One of my all-time favorite types of Dim Sum... It is BBQ roast pork (slightly sweet) encased in sticky rice and wrapped in lotus leaves  — then steamed.











Shu Mai...






Thiw is a coconut panna cotta-type dessert that is really delicious! It is made with rice, coconut and sugar...

We were four people in total, and our bill came to less than $60 dollars!