It was a dangerous ride!

Sorry, guys and gals. It has been awhile that I have posted stuff. Earlier I have mentioned that our lives nowadays were like roller-coaster rides with ups and downs but I never would have thought that I was in for a more dangerous ride. I was not feeling well last week. I thought it was the usual stuff but Dennis was not convinced. I truly made him mad by not seeing a doctor. Finally I went to see a doctor and the doctor said she was glad that I did. She told me that I could have died like her last patient with similar symptoms who went to see the doctor too late. The last patient was just 22 years old. I got my full dose of injection and medicine. I feel better now. I should have listened to Dennis much much earlier. My bad. Sorry love :oP.

Anyways, because last week I was feeling so down, I did not do much except losing my mind over the pain. However I managed to cook up the following two dishes.


Here is a Cantonese version of vegetarian dishes. My grandma used to cook this for the first day of the Chinese New Year. Everyone in the family switched to vegetarians just for that day. There is a very good description of this dish on 5xMom's Penang Faces. Thanks to Fish Fish's introduction.




Since it was a bad week, my butterflies were black and white too. I made these butterfly jellies with coconut milk, black grass jelly and Milo powder.

Ups and Downs

We are having our ups and downs nowadays just like a roller-coaster ride. We have encountered stumbling blocks here and there with our restaurant. However we believe that these issues can be resolved if the other parties are willing to do that. Nevertheless, we learnt a lot within one week. If we open another place in the future, we shall be able to act more wisely.

We have been running around a lot and hence we do not have the time to cook much. Here is a simple pasta dish. We use tomato pesto to make the sauce. We also use the breadcrumbs from the veggie nuggets and green onions to make the deep fried omelet.



This is a deviation from the normal french fries. Instead of potato, we use long green beans fried with bread batter and later tossed with salt and chayenne powder.



Here is a stir-fried curry noodle dish with roasted sweet red pepper.



We deep-fry some Gardenburger veggie patties and then serve the patties in a coriander-cumin sweet tomato sauce.


Originally, I planned to cook more desserts but in the end, I found out that the recipes that I have need some tweaking. Maybe I can have them up on the next posting. Hopefully.

Update on the Business

Alrighty, here's a quick update on where we are with the business. Things have finally started to pick up and it will only get more hectic. Since the beginning of this week Phan and I have been running around trying to get things done. Here are the highlights of what we're dealing with at this moment:

Financing

The bank underwriter officially approved our loan and we signed the letter of commitment on Monday. Closing the loan will require that we do several things to meet the requirements, for instance purchasing certain types of insurance, getting certain permits, and meeting the minimial initial investment from our own equity first.

Property

We're still in the lease negotiation phase. The landlord should have a final lease contract for us to sign by the mid of this month.

We've been meeting with the architect to go over the changes that we'll need to make on the initial drawings he provided us.

Equipment

We have the quotes on most of our equipment and have pre-ordered them. They will start shipping when we're ready.

Permits

Our architect will submit the drawings to the city to get the building permit. We'll also have to visit the Health Department and get their permits. Additionally, we'll need to sign up for the business licenses.

Insurance

Have to get a hold of a few insurance agents to get quotes for general liability, property, and worker's comp insurance.

Marketing

Working on the restaurant's web site. I wrote up a promotions plan, and now I need to schedule it, placing in date ranges and deadlines for each milestone. This needs to be done by this week, then implementation of the plan will start.

I'll also need to come up with the interior design scheme very soon.

Operations

Phan is working on recording the recipes. She's also developing and documenting the processes and procedures for every area of the operations. This is what we will use when we train our employees.

A Walk around Pearl District

We headed to the Pearl District today, an area in Portland known for its expensive restaurants, beautiful condos, and art galleries that are on every corner. Another thing that's spread throughout the area are furniture stores, lots of them. From imported antiques from Asia to modern styles, there are a total of 54 furniture stores in the Pearl distirct. We went there to get some inspiration on the theme and color scheme of our restaurant's interior decor.

Walking down the street, you'll see lots of buildings like these, which are condominiums where many of downtown Portland's urbanites make their home.







There's always something to do here, and the area's clean and absolutely charming.


Below are photos of two of the 8 furniture stores that we visited today. So did we get any ideas? After absorbing what we've seen today, Dennis is still brainstorming for some ideas.







We also stopped by an Italian dessert dinery and had some of the best tasting pistachio gelatos we've ever had. We also ordered a rasberry souffle, which was beautifully decorated, but the taste was just so-so.





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We now get back to our regularly scheduled program, back at home. Here are some more of the noodle dishes we made the other day. This week we will have more desserts pics, hopefully. :oP Here is a fried rice noodle dish with bean soya sauce. It is common in Malaysia. This dish is ideal for vegan since there is no meat, egg or diary.



Another more popular or rather the fried rice noodle dish that I miss a lot is this one with the slippery egg gravy. Cantonese called it Wat Tan Hor.



This is more of a curry stew noodle. We are trying out various soup texture and see how each one of them tastes like. This one is not bad. The noodle used in this dish is Udon. No egg or diary is added to this dish. However the Gardenburger sausage link is not vegan.



Back to another normal veggie soup. We are actually trying out the homemade chili and the eringi mushroom. The eringi mushroom has a superb flavor and texture but it is about $1 for one piece haha. The homemade chili is HOT!!!