Amidst the fervor of planning my trip to India, we were introduced to a Nepalese treat that until this weekend was a fabled delicacy that I could barely wrap my mind around. As featured in a NY Times article just days ago, momos are dumplings from Nepal and Tibet that are similar to traditional Chinese ones, but blend cumin, coriander, and other spices that embolden them with South Asian flavors. The beloved snacks purportedly drive even devout vegetarians (like the Dalai Lama) to break their habits on special occasions to indulge in their meaty innards. According to my friend, they are best made with water buffalo, although we were satisfied with using pork and chicken as substitutes. Between devouring the momos, Nepalese pulled pork, homemade chai, and our cherry clafoutis (no, not exactly following the theme), we enjoyed some good company and videos of human tetris from the land of the rising sun before braving the rain storm to return home. The remainder of the past few weeks has otherwise been uneventful, with a lackluster Madonna performance at the Superbowl half-time show and a even more dated act by Billy Crystal at the Oscars, demonstrating once again that the Academy is lagging way behind the times. I guess it’s back to Skyrim for the time being!

Back in NYC for the long weekend, we returned to Golden Shopping Mall in Flushing with my parents for yet another eating spree. Armed with chopsticks in hand and Serious Eats loaded on my phone, we started on the first floor with some hearty pork-stuffed fish balls from Old Wang Ji, then descended into the bowels of the building for Lanzhou Handmade Noodles, cumin lamb and gummy “cold skin” noodles from Xian Famous Foods, and a dozen North-South Dumplings which were out of this world. Before heading home, we stopped by the nearby New World Mall to check out the fabled food court there. What we found was far more impressive than anything we had imagined, with nearly 5 times the variety of food stands and a vast central seating area. Already stuffed from our lunch, we vowed to return here the next time we visit. On Sunday, we met up with my old friends in Brooklyn, trying not to suffer a heart attack over fish & chips, fried mac n’ cheese, and a deep-fried Snickers bar at the Chip Shop in Park Slope. After that, we grabbed some mediocre dim sum for breakfast from Grand Harmony before our bus ride back to Boston. Despite stuffing ourselves full, we still managed to catch up with my med school pal at Highland Kitchen for their Monday-night buttermilk-fried chicken special. I’ll definitely miss these foodie adventures together when we move apart this summer.

Welcome to the new and improved Xephalon 2.0! Almost 10 years after its inception, my website has long been overdue for an update. Of course, my decision to upgrade this time was actually not prompted by all that free time on my hand, but by rising hosting costs which had forced me to move the site to another hosting company and domain registrar. Of course, the transfer itself was not without its own set of issues and headaches. In the process, I’ve had to replace the antiquated Cutenews PHP script with the more popular and versatile WordPress content management system with MySql support. I’ve had to spend the past week manually converting the text-based database to the new format, which hopefully will be worth the time. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with the service at Go Daddy, although I was sad to lose IMAP e-mail support. With work and life becoming more busy, I’ve actually juggled with the idea of taking down the website all together. But for now, I’ll try to stick it out for a while longer.