Once upon a time, not a single day would go by where I’d not browse Den of Angels, the mega-forum for people who like Asian ball-jointed dolls, nor would I pass up a chance to go to a company-hosted party in New York City for owners of dolls made by a certain company for the specific purpose of buying MORE things from this company. This year, neither of these things are happening. My adoration for Asian ball-jointed dolls has cooled considerably, both from these trying economic times and also general changing interests. Would I sell my dolls to make room for a new hobby? Hell, no. I still enjoy my dolls. Maybe not with the same enthusiasm as I had a few years ago, but I still enjoy them.

To that end, my buddy Gen, arteeste name of Engelmech, repainted my Volks Super Dollfie 13 Elena for me, named Victory by me. Ole’ Victory was a wedding present to me from my husband. I am not going to go into a huge explanation of Volks and their dolls and the intricacies of the doll enthusiast world; that can be found elsewhere if you really care. Anyhow, Gen’s repainted her before; I decided it was time for a refresh. Gen’s repainted most of my dolls at this point, and she never disappoints. Ever. She’s ridiculously talented and while she is aware she is talented, she’s not got a big huge bloaty-head about how absurdly talented she is. Anyhow, here’s my doll. Even in spite of my laughably bad photo-taking ability, I think she’s still pretty cute.

Sausage with many ingredients!

A couple months ago or so, I went to my mom’s house where she made something rather fantastic for dinner. She told me that she’d been making such a thing for herself and my father a lot recently. She took sweet and hot Italian sausage and cooked them with garlic, sliced white onions, strips of roasted red pepper, pepperoncini, and some very tiny potatoes from Trader Joe’s. The dish was basically invented so she’d have something to do with these tiny potatoes. When it was all done, she’d cover it with some shredded cheese, and there you had a meal. Read the rest of this entry »

Doug called Christian last night wondering if we wanted to get together for dinner tonight, which we figured sure, what the hey. Doug’s request was for Chinese because he wanted pork fried rice. In thinking about places to go, I read about a Szechuan place in Malden called FuLoon. It got a Best of Boston award from Boston Magazine in 2009 (i.e. last year). In the same way that I found out about Chau Chow City from Boston Magazine, so I have now learned of FuLoon! The menu sounded really interesting, and reading more reviews made it sound like something we all definitely wanted to try, so off to Malden we went in the midst of a horrible rainstorm. We were seated quickly and took off our stinky, wet overcoats. I’d made some notes beforehand of stuff that I wanted to try, specifically garlic chicken wings, JingDu pork pancake, and wok baked beef. I also wanted dumplings because hey, dumplings. Who doesn’t like dumplings? Christian got pepper steak, Doug got tea smoked duck and pork fried rice. The first thing to come out were the dumplings. They may have been Chinese Spaghetti Factory dumplings, they may not have been; I don’t care if they weren’t made fresh right there because they were very good, came with a nice dipping sauce. The next thing to come out was the chicken wings, and holy crap, let me tell you something, those garlic chicken wings were a very wise choice. An enormous platter of fried wings covered in fried minced garlic, sichuan peppercorns, black beans, and dried red peppers. It was suggested to us by the hostess that we put the garlic on our rice. Holy moly. I could eat that on anything. The pork pancake was wonderful and was more or less like the way I’d seen it described: a scallion pancake stuffed with pork dumpling filling. That was served with black vinegar, also fantastic. The wok baked beef was as good as claimed, but I really enjoyed the black pepper steak that Christian got, which was super-tender all nestled on a bed of sauteed onion, all covered in black pepper. I didn’t try the duck, so no comment; it came with four little steamed buns, and I ate one of the buns, which reminded me a little of a communion wafer. The pork fried rice was nice and light and contained no magenta pieces of pork, but instead tender little slivers of pork with egg, bean sprout, and onion. Iron Chef Chen Kenichi would be proud. It was all-around fantastic, and I look forward to going again and trying something else. I believe the hype!