Days of The Dragon

Parker An and I had a very fun and full weekend.

Unfortunately, I had to spend $400 Saturday morning on a plumbing problem, but we didn’t let that put a damper on our weekend!

Saturday, we went to the Cleveland Pride festival with my friends Beth and Rob, and their two kids. It was hot and sunny, but since it’s on the lake there was thankfully a breeze much of the time. We stayed for about 3 hours – long enough to see what we wanted to see and not so long that we were dead tired – though Parker did nap on the way home. Here’s a few pics from that:

Beth & Rob’s kids (Ilya and Gavin) and Parker – nobody was very into the camera, as you can see
 

Parker was fascinated by this dog that was catching Frisbees

You can’t visit a pride festival and not have your kid’s picture taken with a couple of drag queens, right?!

The festival grounds are right next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and they had these giant guitars – Parker was not really up for the picture, but I got one
 

On Father’s Day, we went to my parents’ house and with them and my sister and her boyfriend to the Cleveland Zoo. It was another nice, sunny day. Parker really enjoyed the zoo – we got to see a lot of neat animals and we road the train.
 

After that we stopped by the Asian grocery store by my parents for some fruit and ingredients for later in the week. Then we had a cookout with grandma and grandpa…and then headed home. A full weekend, but lots of fun. Parker is at a great age for the zoo – he’s really interested in seeing the animals and asking lots of questions.

Parker and I are both tired and could have used a day off to recover from our weekend! That’s it, back to work and school today.

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It’s been a few months since I put up some video – I let Parker pick out his favorite pieces of video and put them together.

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There is a new (well, sort of new) burger joint in Akron, over in Highland Square, called Metro Burger. Parker and I stopped there for the first time on the way home from shopping this past weekend. It was really good, so I wanted to mention it on the blog.

Everything is made right when you order it, so it’s very fresh and the taste is great. It’s one of those places where you order by filling out your own order sheet, which lists all the options for your burger. The offer many types of burgers (beef, vegetarian, turkey, and chicken), and the usual array of toppings and condiments.

They offer sweet potato fries as well as regular French fries – freshly cut on the premises.

All of the food we got was very high quality and not overpriced. In addition, all the plastic (cups, utensils, etc) are made from corn and biodegrade within a few months – very cool!

So, if you’re in or near Akron, check it out sometime!

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A few weeks ago POM Wonderful contacted me and asked if I’d like to try some of their pomegranate juice…for free, no strings attached, they didn’t even ask me to review it on my blog. So, as a thank you and since I mostly liked it, I’m posting a little review of their pure pomegranate juice.

If you’ve never had it before, you should definitely try it! It’s not for everyone – it has a very distinctive taste and can be pretty tart, kind of like cranberry juice – but, it’s quite good. And, like most pure fruit products, it’s certainly good for you: 100% pure juice, no added colors, flavors, sugar or preservatives. It’s even Kosher – important, because we Jews do tend to have a greater than average interest in pomegranate. If you’re going to give your kids juice, you might as well make it a healthy, pure juice like POM Wonderful’s pomegranate juice or juice blends (and, to me the blends are better because they take the tart edge off the drink). If you’re worried about calories for yourself or your kids, I’d recommend doing the good old dilution trick – I almost never give Parker An pure juice, we’re mainly a water, coconut water, and soy milk house; when he does get juice, it’s always watered down.

Did I mention that the packaging is cute – these are containers you’ll want to save to make crafts with – if not, don’t forget to recycle.

When I lived in Florida I remember we had a pomegranate bush in our yard – I remember getting a few small pomegranates off it, but it wasn’t old enough to give full sized fruits. I don’t buy actual pomegranates too often, but I’ll be buying the POM pomegranate/blueberry/cherry blend from time to time.

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Ok, no yucky duck embryo pictures in this post

Today, Parker An went fishing for the first time in his life…he had lots of fun. He liked holding the worms and petting the fish a lot. Don’t have pictures because they’re in grandpa’s camera. After that we went to my cousin’s daughter’s 5th birthday party…and then after that we went to the playgroup at the Vietnamese church.

Couple pics from the playground at the park where the party was (taken by my friend, Beth).

Parker picking and eating a strawberry from our yard.

Sometimes don’t you just feel like putting socks on your hands, stripping down to your underwear and riding a bike?

This is my child after having fallen asleep tonight…at first I thought he was trying to play a game with me or something…but, then I heard the little snores…

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With nicer weather here I’m paying less attention to the web. I meant to post Memorial Day weekend about our trip to Columbus, but never got around to it…so, now I’ll have a longer catch-up post.

Memorial Day weekend we went down to Columbus to the yearly Asian Festival. It’s great – there is food, entertainment, and shopping from around Asia – countries from Korea to Japan to Viet Nam to India and the Philippines, and everything in between. We had a great time – Parker’s grandparents came along, as did my sister and her boyfriend. While there, I also got to see one of my best friend’s mom, who I hadn’t seen in a while.

Here’s a picture of Vietnamese performer playing the Vietnamese type of zither or đàn thập lục – very beautiful!

Parker was having a blast peeking out from behind trees…

Later in the week we made our usual trip to the Vietnamese grocery store…where we found these cucumbers which are very good – they’re about 4-6 inches long and many of them curl around. They have almost no seeds inside and are a tad sweeter than your usual cucumber.

Graphic picture below…in case you’re squeamish!

They also had partly incubated duck eggs – a delicacy to some in Viet Nam where it is known as hột vịt lộn – I tried one there and it was ok. Essentially, you just drop the egg into boiling water for a few minutes, as if you were making a half-boiled hardboiled egg.

So, I bought a few and decided to try making them at home. Unfortunately, the ones they had were a little further along than the one I had in Viet Nam, so I didn’t like it as much – the embryo was too developed. So, being the zoology geek I am, I decided to open up the others uncooked and show Parker An what a duck embryo looks like.

We also picked up some rambutan or quả chôm chôm – they were nice and sweet! They are pretty much just “hairy” lychees.

Then, later in the week, Parker decided to unwrap and stack all the toilet tissue in the house!

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