Memorial Day Weekend

I had a great Memorial Day long weekend. A bunch of us managed to rent a 5 bedroom beachfront house in Seaside, OR for cheap (ok, it was really really cheap, considering we squeezed 16 people in there… and since the house was so big is really wasn’t much of a squeeze anyway).

Seaside, OR is just 10 miles from the famous Canon Beach, OR and is along the Pacific Ocean (facing west), so we were supposed to get great ocean views and spectacular sunsets. I use “supposed to” as it was rainy all weekend, so going to the beach wasn’t all that fun and sunset was just a splattering of color behind some dense clouds. I think I’m jinxed. Clouds and rain follow me everywhere I go. It had also rained when I was in New York City two weeks ago (I’ll write more about that when I have the time).

Anyway, we made a quick stop at the Pearl District in Portland on the way to the beach house. It turned out to be a very pleasant area with a nice mix of specialty shops, bars and bistros. Kinda like Capitol Hill in Seattle but newer, with less people and no bums. We also made a stop at the famous Powell Books. I never really appreciated a trip to a bookstore until I stepped into that one. They had a huge selection of new and used books with personal recommendations posted on the shelves. I walked out of the store with a long list of books I’d be interested in reading sometime in the future.

Anyhow, I have had a rough past couple of weeks and this trip was a really good break from it all. I turned off email syncing on my phone and tried not take phone calls. That’s my excuse for missing calls this past weekend (sorry JY and Kevin). This was one of those rare vacations where I managed to forget about all that was going on in life and just relax. I need more of these .

Here are some photos…

Canon Beach, OR.

One of the rare photos of me.

Trying to take a “cool” photo but failing miserably.

How to make sweet peanut soup

Step 0:
Have a craving for sweat peanut soup.

Step 1:
Open new pressure cooker that has been sitting unused since Thanksgiving last year.

 

Step 2:
Read the instructions and try to take note of how not to accidentally cook myself while using this thing.

Step 3:
Wash peanuts.

Step 4:
Put peanuts into pressure cooker.

Step 5:
Add some water.

Step 6:
Cook for some time.

Step 7:
Eat salad. (Fine. This isn’t part of making sweet peanut soup. But I was hungry ok?)

Step 8:
Peanuts are cooked!

Step 9:
Add some water and some sugar (if you haven’t realized by now, cooking sweet peanut soup requires great precision in time and quantity of ingredients).

Step 10:
Enjoy sweat peanut soup while thinking of what to eat next.