Sweetiekins Life

In January, we took a weekend trip to enjoy some good eats in New York City.  We went to some of our favorite spots: Joe's Shanghai and Lady M.  We also tried some new places like Sushi Seki, Schmackary's, and Tony's Di Napoli. Right after landing, we headed straight to Joe's Shanghai.  They had a relatively new location in Midtown West, which is near Times Square where we were staying. This location was definitely swankier than the one in Chinatown we usually go to.  Apparently, it's "The Center of Exotic Specialties."  I don't know about all of that - I just wanted some xiao long bao (soup dumplings)! We ordered some crab and pork soup dumplings.  They were delicious!  I didn't notice any difference between these and the ones at the Chinatown location.  The real crab bits inside were SO good!  These are still the best xiao long bao on the East Coast, and second best overall after Din Tai Fung. After lunch, we hea...

It was the day after Christmas, and my parents agreed to babysit for us so that we could enjoy dinner.  Instead of going somewhere fancy, we decided to check out one of the highest-rated pizza joints in the area.  With 4.5 stars on Yelp, we figured it would not disappoint. We pulled up to Fire Works, which is located in downtown Leesburg.  The place was packed!  The parking lot was completely full, but we were able to find street parking close by.  I'm not sure if it was due to it being a holiday or if it's always like this. We ended up waiting about 40 minutes before getting a table.  That gave us plenty of time to browse the menu and watch other people's food come out. For our pizzas, we decided to go with the Quattro Carni and the White and Spice.  We were torn on which appetizer to get and followed the waiter's recommendation of the spinach dip. The spinach dip came out really quickly.  I slapped some on the pita-type...

I kept experiencing SD card errors while using my new GoPro Hero5 Black .  I tried the solution on the GoPro website, which said to update the camera 's firmware and reformat the microSD card.  However, I still kept getting the error. I checked GoPro's  microSD Card Considerations and Works with GoPro Verified Compatibility pages.  The SanDisk Extreme 64gb microSDXC card that I had purchased was listed on both pages.  I found it very strange that I was still getting the SD card error even though I had followed the instructions and was using an approved microSD card. The SD card errors are usually caused by the card being used not having a high enough write speed.  When the speed is not high enough, the card is unable to keep up with the high quality video that the GoPro is recording, resulting in the SD card error.  I came across some forum posts online that said SanDisk microSD cards do not have the speeds advertised and therefore cause pro...

We were doing some Christmas shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond and needed to grab dinner afterwards.  We saw this restaurant in the same shopping center and decided to try it out.  I think it's fairly new - there used to be one of those chicken teriyaki fast food places in the same spot last time I looked. My wife ordered the tonkatsu ramen.  It came with Japanese miso salad, which came first.  The salad was ok, the dressing a little on the sweeter side The tonkatsu ramen came pretty quickly after.  It was decent - not horrible, but not that good.  The broth was a bit salty and not like the traditional Japanese ramen that we were expecting.  The half egg that it came with was fully cooked instead of having the runny yolk that is the norm.  Overall the ramen was not very flavorful and lacked umami. I ordered sushi, which came on a platter right as we finished the ramen.  I ordered salmon belly, hamachi (yellowtail), ikura (s...

The Dragon Ball manga ended in 1995.  That's also the year that I visited Taiwan as a kid and went bookstore to bookstore to find and buy the entire series . Just last year in 2015, which is 20 years after the Dragon Ball Z series ended, they came out with Dragon Ball Super . I used to love drawing Dragon Ball pictures.  When I was at my parents' house for Christmas, I looked through my old boxes of drawings.  I found this drawing that I drew in 1998.  The original Dragon Ball Super !

This place was on my ban list for a while due to a bad experience with their tonkatsu.  My wife really likes the restaurant though, so I gave it another shot. We started off the meal with a complimentary pot of mussels.  I didn't remember this from before and was pleasantly surprised. A friend ordered the steamed mandoo (dumplings), so I tried one.  They weren't to my liking.  I prefer to taste more meat than vegetable when I eat dumplings, but this was the exact opposite.  I did not taste any meat over the leek. I had the beef dupbap for my main meal.  The dish is bulgogi meat with some sliced onions and carrots on top of rice.  The meat was sweet and to my liking.  The dish was actually pretty good, and the portions were huge.  I had enough leftovers for dinner the following night. Overall, it was a decent meal.  Good enough to get it taken off of my ban list, which is actually saying a lot.  3/5.