Since I was little, I like to cook and recently I notice that I enjoy it even more now. Since Friday I am “in the zone”. That night I made beef tape soup(BG style), Sat and Sun I worked all day, Mon I made pasta with pork meat souse, Tue I made BG style pizza with lots of stuff on it (corn, mushrooms, peas, peppers, meat, egg, feta cheese, muenster cheese, and a ton of herbs), last night we made pork chops in hunters sauce ( bg style sauce ) from Ivan Zvezdev’s book.

That’s why I got a good chef’s knife. Global G-2 which wasn’t that expensive after using my gift certificate from amazon. It will come today or tomorrow.

One week ago was turkey day and everything was closed. Silvia & Emo invited us to have dinner at their place and we decided to go. The weather was nasty, but that didn’t stop us. We even made baklava the night before to bring over there. Ofcourse we ate turkey, but stuffed with rise and livers - BG style. It was very good. The night was pleasant and we left around 11:10- 11:20. We came back home at around 1:40. There are a few pics but I have not downloaded it from the camera.

All done! My whole website is now valid XHTML 1.1 - the main page, diary and gallery. Today I fininished the last element.
If someone asks me, why did I change everything to xhtml 1.1, ‘I don’t know’ will be the answer Just like that to have something to do

Today Dary gave me a present - sushi eating set. It has a tray, bamboo thingy, plate for the food, cup for the sause, chopsticks, chopstics holder all this times two. I decided to dedicate the top of a drawer for my asian things and I shot it:

Yixing clay tea set, yin yang incense box, general box with a compas-turtle, sushi set.
Thanks very much my sweet Dary!

So, today my blog officially becomes valid XHTML 1.1. The biggest problem I had was the MoTranslator, that enables people to write comments in Cyrillic without having installed the appropriate keyboard layout. MoTranslator neads an custom attribute in the textarea tag, but XHTML 1.1 does not like custom attributes. So going trough the specifications of xhtml 1.1 I noticed the xml:lang attribute. There you go! I just changed a few things in the code and now everything is fine. The only thing left is my gallery and my entire site will be valid xhtml 1.1

Recently I got a book called Powerful Sleep. It is very interesting and I recommend it to anybody. It starts with some theory on sleep, and goes on to explaining how the internal clock works, how body temperature is related to the pattersn of feeling sleepy, also talks about the importanc of sunlight and water. In few words, to increase the quality of your sleep and decrease the amount you sleep you should: Get up the moment you wake up and get some sunlight in your eyes. Don’t drink cofee, take a short ( not more than 40 minutes ) nap once a day in the time you feel most tired, and don’t eaty heavy food at night. Also, avoid doing things in bed other then sleeping and sex. Try to sleep in as dark as possible and get as much sunlight as possible during the day.
Highly recommended.

On Wednesday I tried to cock General Tso Chicken. It didn’t turn out like I expected, but in the end Dary and Angel said they like it this way better. I think the lemon I put in was not needed and the egg was not enough. Next time I’ll try to make it the way it is supposed to be. To do this I ordered a wok. The best thing is that the cheapest woks are one of the best. I found one one ebay for 7.99. Unfortunately I had to buy one with flat bottom because of the stove I have. But they were too pretty cheap. I expect it next week and I’ll try to stirfry some chinese meals
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Because I like cooking, when I was in Bulgaria I got a set of knives from an offer. After a few hours looking on the net today, I found that the ones I got have nothing to do with good knives. I even saw them on ebay for 7.99 The complete set… I even noticed a flaw in the shape of the chef’s knife -> it is shallower in the chopping area and does not reach the board, so I cannot chop properly with it… I know I said I’m not going to buy any more stuff, but a good knife and a wok are lifetime items and they are about food… Dary wanted to buy me a knife for Christmas, but I’ve heard that it is not good to buy a knife as a gift, because it can “cut” the friendship between the two ppl. In general I don’t believe in such things, but I’ll my myself the knife and she can buy me something else It is better for me this way.
For now I like two knives best:
Calphalon Katana Chef’s Knife -> American brand with Japanese steel and a great look.

Global G-2 -> Japanese brand with German ( I think ) light steel - an interesting design and very good reviews on the net.

I think I’ll get the second one.

Today was Election Day and we had no classes, so since Dary had to visit some museums in Manhattan, we went to MET and Museum of Art and Design. The first one I’ve seen already, but the second one was the worst museum I’ve been to. We came back around 5:30pm and we took a nap for about 40 mins. Later I started preparing the chicken we bought last night ( we went shopping last night ). From the three double chicken breasts I made eight chicken fillets and 3 cups of bitesize chicken. Two of which I deep fried with some egg ( preparing them for General Tso chicken for tomorrow ) and the other one I just marinated and put in the fridge. I also prepared the sause for the General Tso chicken and I prepared 4 of the fillets with lemon and whine sause for diner. Now I plan to go to bed.

In the past few days I’ve been reading “Power Sleep - Secrets of the inner sleep clock”. The idea of the book is to teach the reader how to control his sleep, to gain maximum recovery from it and to be fresh during the day. There are some very interesting advises like: drink 3-4 pounds of water every day; the first thing in the morning after waking up should be to get up from the bed and find a good source of light ( the sun ); if possible jog for 20-30 minutes after you wake up ( after breakfast tho ); take a nap for 40-45 mins during the day… I promise to write a full review when I’m done with the book.
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I woke up @ 7:59 AM this morning!!!
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I’m falling behind with my chinese, but I’m changing my schedule right now so I’ll make it up.
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Tuesday is election day and there are no classes, so Darina and I decided to go to Manhattan for a trip.

Yesterday, we came home after school at around 7 and we decided that the night will be spent watching movies. I fixed some chicken with Bulgarian cheese and mozzarella, with rise and chipotle sauce on the side and around 8:30 we were going to watch Click. It turned out that the DVD is not working so we started watching Survivor BG from Neterra. We went to bed around 2 and today we were up by 12:30. At round 2, Vassil came and we went to do some laundry. It’s 16:24 and I have to shave and go to work…