Taste of the Island Caribbean Take-Out
I’m blessed to be able to split work time between the office and home–3 days a week in the office and 2 days at home. Still, going to the office can be a drag, and on office days a good lunch can just make the whole day. Today I walked a block away to Taste of the Island Caribbean Take-Out for my lunch. This is actually the 2nd day in a row that I’ve been there. Yesterday was my 1st time ever.
Taste of the Island is a Caribbean cuisine restaurant on the corner of Capitol and President in downtown Jackson. You can see from the outside that they took over what used to be a diner-style restaurant that closed a while back. I had seen the temporary banner they put up a while back while renovating the place and had been excitedly waiting for them to open. » Continue Reading…
Primos
After a hard morning of sitting around in an air-conditioned building watching people ride horses, and a few sweltering hot minutes outside watching more people ride more horses, Primos Café was calling our name.
Primos is a sandwich and blue plate special type of joint, with Southern-ish cuisine. For example, I got the Biloxi Press (shrimp po-boy) and Denise got the Catfish Po-boy, both with potato salad on the side. Solid, mostly simple food, and well executed. When I ask for a po-boy, don’t gussy it up too much, ya know? Primos does it right. For non-Southerners, a po-boy is a “sub” type of sandwich. » Continue Reading…
Horse with no name
On the way home from work yesterday I saw a sign on High Street for the National Appaloosa Horse Show going on right now. So this morning we went to the Coliseum to watch some horses. In particular what we were there for was a competition called “cutting”. In case you’ve never been to one (like me before this morning), “cutting” is a competition where you start with a herd of cows, separate one from the rest, and maneuver your horse to stay between it and the herd. [Or as Denise explained it to Sofia: the horse chooses a cow to be his friend and play together, although some cows take a lot of convincing.] Rider and horse both have to have quick response times and the horse has to be really agile. I didn’t do the best job of capturing it in photos, but these horses can really crouch down and dig in to change directions on a dime to stay between the chosen cow and the herd. » Continue Reading…
Rockin' out
Carry-on baggage
Actual date(s): October 13, 2008 – October 15, 2008
No, the title of this post isn’t a banned substance reference. This is the first in the promised series of Indonesia Trip 2008 posts, for which you can click the tag “Indonesia Trip 2008″ at the bottom of this post or the bottom of the page to access all posts in this category once I’ve built up more than one post.
Side note: we actually went to Singapore for a few days too, but “Indonesia-Singapore Trip 2008″ gives too much emphasis to the very short stay in Singapore (plus it’s a bit long), and calling it “Southeast Asia Trip 2008″ makes it sound like it was much farther-reaching than it was. Maybe “Indonesia-Singapore Trip 2008″ would work.
You’re reading the dates correctly. We really did leave on October 13th and arrive on October 15th. Our flight out of Jackson was October 13 at 6:30 a.m. local time, and our arrival in Surabaya was on October 15th at 10:00 a.m. local time. They’re 12 hours ahead, so that’s 39.5 hours of travel for those keeping score. A lot of it was layover time at airports, and we even managed a few hours sleep in an in-airport hotel in Singapore, but that’s how long it took total to get to Indonesia. Then it was another 1.5 hours or so to get to mom and dad’s house. What’s taking scientists so long to perfect the Star Trek-style teleporters anyhow?! » Continue Reading…
Olympus Pen E-P1 with 17mm f/2.8 lens (34mm effective) attached and optional optical viewfinder on top
“It’s not a compact. It’s not an SLR. It’s a Pen.” That’s the slogan Olympus are using for the official announcement of the Olympus Pen E-P1 camera. It’s not a compact because you can change lenses on it. It’s not an SLR because SLRs use a mirror to reflect the image to a viewfinder whereas the E-P1 has no mirror (the Micro Four Thirds standard is designed to get rid of the mirror box, thus reducing the lens-to-sensor distance, which in turn enables smaller cameras and lenses). This is a whole new category of camera, and frankly one that is way overdue–a small camera with a large sensor, that can also take a variety of lenses. Oh, and it records 720p video also. Veruh nass. » Continue Reading…
Sofia in Indonesian dress, new shoes
The first in a long line of future “Sofia clothes” posts. These won’t be all that exciting except for the family, but Sofia is always getting nice dresses and such from family members, and I don’t always remember to document her wearing them. Maybe having a whole post series dedicated to this topic will help me remember.
This dress was given to her by a “2nd cousin” (Denise says so; I can’t figure these things out myself) while we were in Indonesia last year. For clarity’s sake the giver was my mother’s brother’s daughter, which in my mind for Sofia should be at the level of aunt instead of cousin–2nd aunt? The English language’s familial relationship taxonomy is so jacked up. Anyway, this isn’t a real Indonesian dress like some of the upcoming posts in this series, but it is from Indonesia at least so it’ll do. I think it’s actually made by Gymboree.
She’s also wearing new shoes that Denise bought for her yesterday. She’s a size 8 already, which is the largest toddler shoe size. Next up: children’s shoe sizes. Wasn’t she a much shorter, chunkier girl just a few months ago? What happened?
Bop's Favorite--strawberries and chocolate flakes in a frozen custard
What would a birthday dinner be without a proper dessert? Bop’s Frozen Custard did the honors this time. Denise and Sofia shared a Bop’s Favorite, while I got a Katie’s Crunch (Heath bar, butterscotch, and roasted pecans). Yes I ate all of mine alone, although I let Sofia have a taste. Yes, I need to lose weight.
$4.00 for a regular size and $4.50 for a large. Guess which size we picked? For $0.50 more apiece we stretched ours into 2 meals worth of desserts. Not bad. Frozen custard refreezes very nicely and turns into basically the creamiest ice cream you’ve ever had.
You can choose from their selection of concoctions, or you can start with a basic frozen custard and mix-and-match your own creation. We went to the Clinton location, but they have a few locations all over Mississippi. Check out Bops’ Frozen Custard’s website to see what they have to offer and where.
Haru II roll--tuna, salmon, avocado inside, white tuna and masago on top
In what promises to be one of many posts about Haru Japanese Restaurant since it’s our favorite sushi place in town and a standby whenever we want to eat out but can’t get excited about any other place, we had Denise’s birthday dinner at Haru. It’s our favorite because the prices are on par with other sushi shops in Jackson, the fish and other ingredients are just as fresh as others, portions are more generous than most (compare nigiri from Haru to Little Tokyo for instance, and you’ll feel ripped off by Little Tokyo’s skimpy portions), and service is good. Last but not least the food is delicious! » Continue Reading…
