An Indonesian in Mississippi. Not as catchy as "An Englishman in New York"
Partied out
Penelope turned 1 year old last week, so we had a tiny celebration in traditional Pamudji family style–we cooked a special meal. It’s always about the food! I cooked a Chinese/Indonesian noodle dish as is the custom, and Denise baked some carrot cake cupcakes. » Continue Reading…
Babalu
Babalu Tacos & Tapas is a trendy new restaurant on Duling Avenue in the Fondren district of Jackson that serves (surprise!) tacos and tapas, among other things. Denise tells me there used to be a tapas place in Jackson, but it must not have done very well because it’s long gone. Having wanted to try tapas for a long time but not having the chance to, Babalu is a sort of answer to that wish. “Sort of” because if I had to categorize it (and I’m just as hopeless at categorizing food as I am music) I’d call it Mexican/Spanish-Southern/American fusion. It has a distinct Mexican base with its tacos, empanadas, enchiladas, etc., as well as Spanish with tapas; but the end product is very much informed by American sensibilities in general and Southern sensibilities in particular. So it’s not authentic tapas but, as is increasingly apparent to me, food doesn’t have to be 100% faithful to original regional/national recipes to be good.
As for the “trendy” bit, Denise and I are decidedly un-trendy. We don’t wear the latest fashion, drive a late model car, or even bother to go to the movies or watch popular TV shows to stay current. So as it seems everybody in town has eaten at Babalu twice already, we just got around to our first visit last week. Now we’re sorry we didn’t go sooner because in this case “trendy” has a healthy helping of substance to go with its style. » Continue Reading…
Haircut
Hoping it wouldn’t dull her Samson-esque physical strength, we took Sofia to get her first haircut. Christe’, our family hair specialist and likely the greatest in all of the Jackson Metro area, did the honors.
It's snow. Serious!
We got snow! Not nearly as much as last year’s big (for Jackson anyway) snow, but Sofia loved what little of it we got.
First snow
Penelope, on the other hand, was not convinced of the virtues of this cold, white stuff.
The three amigos
County Line Road plus a short strip of Old Canton just north of County Line has become a hotbed for Latin American cuisine. The joints we know of in that area are La Morena, Omonia, and La Guadalupe. We had been to La Morena and Omonia, which left La Guadalupe as the only restaurant we needed to visit. We finally got around to it yesterday, and once we did we wish we had done so sooner.
Spice Avenue
Another “best”? Getting a bit bold about declaring best restaurants in town, are we? Sometimes it’s just so obvious you have to go ahead and acknowledge it. Spice Avenue is the best Indian restaurant in the Jackson metro area.
Denise and I went to Spice Avenue for the 1st time for our anniversary this year. My parents were in town, so they offered to babysit the girls while we went on a cellphone browsing date (how romantic!) and ate at Spice Avenue afterward.
Independent
Penelope can kinda sorta hold her own bottle while feeding. She can’t hold a bottle with a full portion for very long, and she’s still clumsy, but she’s getting that hand-eye coordination down. Honestly Denise mostly holds the bottle and sometimes lets Penelope try. Next step: change your own diaper.
Key card
Actual dates: October 21-24, 2008
We left Surabaya and headed to Yogyakarta to visit Borobudur Temple, Kraton Yogyakarta (palace), and the Malioboro street market. While we were there we stayed at the Grand Mercure Yogyakarta, which since then has apparently been rebranded as the Phoenix Hotel. I like Grand Mercure better myself–sounds more, well, grand, which really is an apt adjective for this fine hotel.
Happy family
Actual date: October 19, 2008
Rewind is back! More specifically Indonesia Trip 2008 is back!
Happy Labor Day 2010, everybody. Denise has been nudging me to resume posting about our trip in 2008, so here I am doing some of that while enjoying Labor Day. I’ve decided to start putting the “Actual date” info in red so as to minimize confusion for future posts about the trip. Hopefully when you see the line of red text you’ll immediately know it’s a Rewind post, especially since I’ve also got some stuff from earlier this year that I’m behind on that will be making its way here soon. Rewind-splosion. No, we didn’t go to Indonesia again. Yes, this stuff is from 2 years ago. But it’s still way cool and I’m not gonna let good blogging material go to waste. Again, when reading this blog just ignore the accepted rules of time and space and go with the flow. Time travel is a common occurrence in the Pamudji-verse.
Party time
Sofia turned 4, and we threw her her first honest-to-goodness birthday party. Actually mostly Denise threw the party, and I was basically along for the ride. We didn’t do anything big–inflatable pools, beach balls, sprinklers, party favors, cake and sherbert, lemonade, and a few of Sofia’s friends from church and the neighborhood. Even so, Sofia was a bit overwhelmed and kept mostly to herself while the party was still raucous. Oh, she had fun. It’s just that she mostly had fun by herself. We’ll have to work on that.