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cooking photos

The Thomas Keller Affair

As we got ready to move out of our house in Santa Clara, I wanted to cook a final meal in our fancy kitchen before we left it behind. I had always been fascinated with the famous French Laundry preparation of Oysters and Pearls and very early on decided that it was going to be the anchor dish of this meal. As I kept looking for other dishes to go with it I was intrigued by enough TFL dishes that I decided to go all the way and make this a Thomas Keller themed dinner and to only cook dishes that either his recipes or are served in one of his many restaurants.… Read the rest

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cars personal photos

15 Year Anniversary of my 2006 Lotus Elise

Today was the 15 year anniversary of my picking up the Elise. I did post some pictures after years one and two but I figure a milestone event like this is worth a few more. Click through on the pictures to see them in more detail on Flickr.

Picked up from Los Gatos Luxury cars on 6-Dec-2005 some 5 months after I placed the build order. I was told that this was the first 2006 Elise delivered in California.
ZoneTag Photo 16:54:43 PST

Did the 1500 mile break-in down Highway 1. I was at the dealer 6 days after pickup with the odometer at 1490 miles.… Read the rest

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cars motorsport personal photos track days videos

Spa-Francorchamps

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A couple of slow laps (3:17s) from Spa – unfortunately I did not get good video on day 1 when the weather was much better. My theoretical best was 3:11 which I am pretty happy with for a FWD GTI hatchback rented from RSR Spa.

Eau Rouge really is as difficult as they say and the track has a bunch of corners that require way more trust in the car and your abilities than I had for my first time there. This was my first international track day and Book-A-Track did a great job. It was a bit weird to only pass on the left but they ran a great event and I liked the open track (non-session) aspect of it.… Read the rest

Categories
cooking photos

Egg Dinner

One of the dinner themes I have been toying with for a while is “Eggs” and I finally got to try it out over the weekend. It ended up being a 13 course meal over 6 hours where everything included eggs, looked like eggs or looked like something that should have eggs in it. It was fairly successful with only a few minor hiccups along the way despite several of the dishes being first time attempts. The spectacular photos were all taken by Nithya using her DIY lightbox setup. The following is a description of the dishes with any tips and tricks I discovered along the way.… Read the rest

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cars photos thoughts

Zenos Factory Tour

During our our trip to the UK as part of the 2016 GGLC UK Lotus Trip, we were able to get a tour of the Zenos factory in Wymondham. If you havent heard of it before, Zenos Cars was founded in 2012 by Ansar Ali and MarkEdwards who had both spent time at Lotus and Caterham. I was lucky enough to attend the US unveiling of the Zenos E10S and was very impressed with what I saw. It struck me as an equivalent of the Lotus 211 and had significantly better fit and finish than the average Caterham I have seen in the US.… Read the rest