DH and I finally made our way to New San Dor…and we have to say that we both were not too terribly impressed–too much hype maybe. The surroundings are nice, spacious and clean…so maybe the American crowd finds New San Dor less daunting than other ethnic Chinese spots, i.e. no pig heads or ducks hanging behind a glass window. We ordered chicken corn soup, shrimp with mayo, seafood fried rice with garlic, szechwan string beans, and beef on a sizzling platter. I was very disappointed to learn that they didn’t offer char-siu, bbq pork, here…and even more disappointed that I didn’t get a peek at their ethnic menu (which apparently only Chinese know to ask for).
The thick chicken corn soup held a nice amount of chicken, but I wish they had some green onions to it. The string beans had plenty of minced pork with it, and while flavorful, it was definitely NOT spicy. The shrimp with mayo surprised us with its huge battered jumbo shrimp slathered with mayo sauce…it scored points with the hubby, and I admit I was satisfied with this preparation. The best plate of the day was the house special seafood fried rice with dried garlic…it made the Filipino girl inside of me squeal with delight as I dug into the mound of rice and smelled the garlicky aroma waft into the air. Alas, this brief high came crashing down when we sampled the dreadful sizzling plate that hubby and I wouldn’t, couldn’t finish…the soggy, slimy pieces of beef were wholly unappetizing, and the sauce didn’t recommend itself either.
Overall, New San Dor needs to work harder on their menu if they’re to woo us back to spend our hard-earned dining dollars with them. Our meal rang up to $60…not the typical amount we spend at First Chinese BBQ or Plano Chinese.
Logging into my dashboard this morning I discovered that Technorati had pinged my site and some unscrupulous scraper had since then picked up and absorbed my recent blog posts. Blog scraping is a serious problem, opening my site and content up to spamming and copyright issues. I obviously don’t want persons or businesses profiting off my personal thoughts and labor. I’ve started nailing down trackbacks and pingbacks in the WordPress database by following the instructions at the following site. It’s useful to note that I don’t have phpMyAdmin; I simply used the mySQL console window to enter the update statements.
Open only to registered users:
UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status="registered_only";
I spent my lunch hour today visiting Cristina’s and Lowe’s. I walked out with an 18-count flat of dianthus (Telstar mix) from Cristina’s. At Lowe’s, I scooped up a 6 pack of white tulips that were going for 50% off and bought 3 3.5″ pots of Chocolate Chip Ajuga. Dad told me I should’ve waited out the local chain home improvement stores for the plants I wanted. 🙁 But of course there weren’t any Salvia greggiis that caught my eye (was hoping for white greggii).
So…for homework, I’m looking to propagate the following plants over the weekend: rosemary, salvia, and gaura. Not sure how the Crimson Brandy gaura that’s thriving in B2 will take to a disturbance, but this plant has intrigued me to the point of experimentation. As for rosemary, I’m inclined to believe that our yard is ready for a hedge of them, if only to alleviate the dog smell wafting from our yard. Dad says that 5 days in water will persuade it to root, and I’m thinking that unruly specimen in B5 is in dire need of a whacking. As for the salvia, the one remaining white salvia in B4 looks to be resurrecting itself in the warm weather. I’ll be inspecting it regularly for cuttings. And I’m going to keep trying to propagate more of the Hot Lips for sharing–I’m amazed that the 3 cuttings I took last year and sank into the ground before winter are still there, if a tad bit to puny. Hopefully I can also harvest some cuttings of the new Salvia chamaedryoides in B3.
Here are some early evening (approx 7pm) shots of S1, B1 and B3 flowers. I suspect the plum colored iris in the photo is either histriodes George or reticulata JS Dijt. Incidentally, that’s the first Muscari botyroides album that I’ve caught sight of blooming in the gardens.
What I originally thought was the first Thalia narcissus bloom in my garden bore further inspection after I took snapshots of it yesterday. This was not the all-white, multi-flowering, orchid-like daffodil that I was expecting! Both blooms that I had seen so far boasted a white perianth and a yellow (!) cup. It caused me grave concern as I was about to shoot off an email inquiry to Brent and Becky’s about it…until I racked my brain trying to remember if I had EVER purchased and planted daffodils before.
Then it hit me…Breck’s. I scoured my old archive email for an answer–thank goodness, I still kept those around. And there it was, dated 4/14/06, an order from Breck’s for 2 packages of Accent Instant Bloom Daffodils along with some Inzell, Frosty Beauty, and a color assortment of tulips. The tulips which I had lost in the beds some time ago had occasionally surprised me with a red or yellow bloom here and there (I wrote off the Frosties a long time ago), but I had never caught sight of the Accent daffodils until now.
It made perfect sense now why the yellow cups faded to pink, as the Accent supposedly had salmon/pink cups as they aged. I’m not sure how many of these Accents have survived over the last two years, but it’s a testament to their hardiness that they persisted this long. Mystery solved.
