tri.gallery

Hello! Welcome to my little playroom. Here I try to balance all the things I am passionately striving to improve. If you enjoy following this, please let me know any way you feel comfortable. It'll motivate me to keep this running :-) !function(){var analytics=window.analytics=window.analytics||[];if(!analytics.initialize)if(analytics.invoked)window.console&&console.error&&console.error("Segment snippet included twice.");else{analytics.invoked=!0;analytics.methods=["trackSubmit","trackClick","trackLink","trackForm","pageview","identify","group","track","ready","alias","page","once","off","on"];analytics.factory=function(t){return function(){var e=Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);e.unshift(t);analytics.push(e);return analytics}};for(var t=0;t

402 posts

[trigallery-blog]

#155

Challenge everything. Leaving no stone unturned equates maximum preparation. 

[trigallery-blog]

#154

on the court: get up. again. and again. don't stop getting up for anybody. 

off the court: get ready.  

[trigallery-blog]

cooking: Bacon Brussel Sprout Skewers via Paleo Happy Hour

So did you know that I love bacon?

Bacon bacon bacon. I just can't get enough of it.

But one thing you might not know is that there's a certain vegetable that goes better with bacon than probably any other. Yup - I was surprised too:

It's brussel sprouts.

The healthy green sprouts somehow just takes on all the salty flavor of the bacon and creates this amazing tasty sensation.

It's a clear case of opposites attracting. Here's how I made the above, thanks to my favorite cookbook at the moment:

The Ingredients:

Serving "6"

1 pound bacon, thickly sliced

2 pound brussels sprouts

1 teaspoon ghee

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Small wooden skewer

The process:

1. So you can cook the bacon in 1 of 2 ways. The first way is to use a frying pan on medium heat, cooking the bacon until it is partially cooked but still soft and pliable. The second way is to ditch the pan and place your bacon on this fun little baby and microwave for 3 minutes:

2. Don't worry, I don't receive any compensation for promoting any products on my blog. That's not the point of this cooking initiative of mine. I just happened to find this tray super useful in getting me to continue cooking :)

Basically - I can drain out all the bacon grease without minimal effort! Here's how they turned out:

3. Note how these are still quite soft and pliable as previously instructed. If you overcook the bacon, it would be too difficult to weave onto the skewer later. Next up: Cutting the brussels in half lengthwise:

4. Once those are done, it's time to add the brussel sprouts, ghee, garlic powder, and sea salt to the frying pan.

5. You'll have to saute on medium-high heat until the sprouts are tender and browned to a point like this:

6. Once both the brussel sprouts and bacon are cooked, it's time for the fun but difficult part :) Threading bacon and brussel sprouts to form a nice presentation. It's hard to weave the bacon around the sprout and back through the skewer to make it look like what you see in the pictures given the bacon isn't always the most moldable to work with. The best tip of advice I can give you is to rotate the stick and let gravity work in your favor. You'll understand if you ever give it a try:

7. I bought pretty long skewers so I managed to weave 2 bacon strips and about 6-8 brussel sprouts on each stick. Once that's complete, all that's left to do is bake the skewers in a baking pan for 5-10 minutes or until it's fully cooked:

8. And voila! Bacon brussel sprout skewers!

Recipe review:

Overall, this was one of the easiest dishes I've cooked. With very few ingredients and very minimal steps, this is definitely one I can foresee repeating just because it doesn't take long but is a good meal any time of day. Taste-wise, these is so goddamn good. Honestly I can probably wake up to these every morning...

And since there's nobody stopping me, maybe I will :)

To health!

[trigallery-blog]

exploring: State Bird's Progress with friends!

I've been good with eating paleo all week - but sometimes, you have to play with the exception :) especially when you get to somehow get reservations to one of the selective restaurants in the city: Progress, State Bird's sister restaurant :)

With many thanks to my little sister Tammee for securing these spots from her co-worker, we got to enjoy a family-style 6-course meal over the span of about 3 hours. As you can see from the photos - the lighting wasn't too dark and the space was huge so it was nice to be able to see each other in the face while chatting.

My sister and I went with two of our old travel buddies - Vuong and John-Viet! Back in the day, we traveled to 14 different European countries, Vietnam, and Australia together - so you can bet we had a blast reminiscing about the good ol' adventures days. 

The best part? Just being with like-minded people again who are down to explore and go on spontaneous adventures. We already have camping trips booked up: 1- a weekend trip up somewhere up north the third week of March and 2- a possible venture out to Burning Man this year :3 just the thought of going gets me excited!!

Overall good food, good people, good vibes, great night :)

[trigallery-blog]

cooking: Bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers

Looks good right? That's because they are :) Got the recipe from that same awesome book:

The Ingredients

15 large jalapeño peppers

2 ripe avocados

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice

8 strips bacon

The process

1. First, I washed the jalapeño peppers, cut them in half, and removed their seeds:

2. Next, I cut all the avocados and scooped out their insides:

3. Next I had to make lime juice so I cut some limes in half and squeezed them:

4. Next, in my handy dandy nutri-bullet blender, I mixed in the lime juice I just made and garlic powder to a nice, creamy blend:

5. Time to throw the avocado into the jalapeño themselves:

6. Next, I cut my uncured bacon strips in half and proceeded to wrap them around the jalapeños:

7. Once they were all wrapped, I placed them on a rack and baked them at 425F for about 25 minutes:

And voila Jalapeño bacon wrappers! 

To get the bacon strips extra crispy, you might want to leave it on broil for an addition 2-5 minutes. 

Did these taste delicious? Oh you bet...

Perfect for your in between-meal munchies, breakfast, lunch, and hell yes, even dinner...

Also, it's nice that the recipe is so simple! It just takes a little while to scoop out the jalapeños but aside from that setup was pretty straightforward. 

ONE WORD OF ADVICE THOUGH: wear gloves when seeding out those jalapeño peppers. My sister even warned me in advance, and I still got all kinds of pepper skin burn on the hands and face... 

It was pretty damn worth it though :)

To health!

[trigallery-blog]

#153

Like a phoenix, do not be afraid to fly and renew yourself everyday.

Like a tree, do not forget your roots that bring you to where you are today.

Like a blend of both, burn and grow wildly.

[trigallery-blog]

exploring: Crissy Fields

When you work all week prepping for the launch of your blog, you also can't forget to rest with friends!

A few of us decided to have a picnic out in Crissy Fields :)

It helps that the weather out this weekend was so nice. Super sunny and barely enough wind. I can't believe it feels like this in San Francisco despite us still being in January. 

Spent a couple hours out soaking the warmth, eating vegetarian/paleo dishes, throwing frisbees/footballs, and interacting with dogs. No wonder people think we're hipster...

But i's always nice to catch up with a few of the ol' bruins!

[trigallery-blog]

cooking: Aunt Esther’s Famous Ribs

If you don’t know by now, I’m a huge fan of ribs. I love ribs. And for parties, I make them for my friends all the time. 

But what happens when you go paleo? How do you make tasty ribs without all that sugar? Glad I can lean on this book to help :)

The Ingredients 

For the ribs:

1/3 cup pickling spice

1 teaspoon parsley flakes

1 teaspoon onion flakes

1 teaspoon sage, dried

2 bay leaves, crumbled

2 racks of baby back pork ribs

Avocado oil

A cheescloth and cotton string

For the barbecue sauce: 

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 6-ounce can tomato paste

2 cups beef broth

4 dates, pitted and diced

2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke

1 teaspoon sea salt

Blender (used my trusty dusty nutribullet)

The process

1. First a made a spice bouquet by placing pickling spice, parsley flakes, onion flakes, sage, and bay leaves in the center of a piece of cheesecloth and mixed the ingredients. 

2. Then a tied the cheescloth with a piece of cloth string and set it aside while preparing a large pot of boiling water. 

3. While the water was warming up to a boil, I cut the ribs apart, trimming excess fat however I could. 

4. Once the boiling water was ready, I added the ribs and spice bouquet to the boiling water, waited for the meat to boil again before reducing the heat and allowing it to simmer for about half an hour

5. While that baby’s cooking, it’s time to go the sauce. First I heated the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Then I saute’d the onion and garlic for 2 minutes. Subsequently I mixed in the tomato paste, beef broth, dates, mustard, apple cider vinegar, chili powder, cumin, liquid smoke, and sea salt in to simmer for 5 minutes. I you can imagine, this process had to happen so quickly it was hard to squeeze in a picture here. Advice: have all your ingredients and amounts ready to go!

6. After that, I moved the sauce mixture to a blender (finally get to use the nutribullet!) and blended on high until smooth.

7. Once simmering the ribs in the pot was complete, it’s now time to brush the ribs with barbeque sauce! I placed these babies in a baking sheet, marinated them in the fridge for another hour and a half, and then proceeded to put them in an oven at 350F. 

And voila! These babies are ready to be chomped on!

Now what’s the point of making 2 slabs of ribs without enjoying them with friends? Took them out to Crissy Fields for them to enjoy :)

Alli, my gluten-free friend, approves of the recipe 

And so do I :) whoo!

Review of the recipe: I was actually pretty surprised at how tasty these ribs were.  And I’ve had my fair share of ribs rubs and sauces now too. Of course it’s difficult to compete with their heavily sugared originals, but for having absolutely no sugar in the recipe, this recipe turned out pretty darn good. The dates definitely helped making it sweeter than otherwise. 

For next time: 1. use a more heavy-duty blender to make the sauce more smooth. 2. have all the ingredients ready upfront before making the sauce.  3. brace yourself for the cleanup afterwards. dear god that was messy and exhausting ;P

To health!

[trigallery-blog]

cooking: Curried Cauliflower with Masala Dip!

Yum! I was in the mood to make a vegan dish today. So I decided to get inspiration from this cool little cookbook:

Yes it's a paleo book... did I tell you that I'm going to go paleo for the next month or so? Yup.

The Ingredients:

For the curried cauliflower:

1 head cauliflower

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon curry power

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Avocado oil in an mister

For the masala dip:

1 tablespoon ghee

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1 8-ounce can tomato sauce

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon garam masala (I substituted with tandoori masala)

1/4 teaspoon ginger

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

The process:

1. First preheating the oven to 425 degrees, I proceeded to wash and remove the stem of the cauliflower and separate the head into bite sized florets

2. Next, in a large pan surrounded by aluminum foil, I sprayed some avocado oil and spread the cauliflower florets evenly on the sheet, tossing them with olive oil, curry powder, and cayenne pepper to mix

3. Easy as that! Then I threw it in the oven to heat for 10-15 minutes until it was browned and tender

4. Also had to take it out halfway to flip the cauliflower and make sure everything was evenly cooked

5. Meanwhile, I also had to make the masala dip by melting the ghee in a small saucepan over medium-high heat

6. Next, cutting up the jalapeno pepper and garlic, adding it into the pan, and saute-ing it for 3 minutes.

7. After that, I poured in the tomato sauce, stirring in the cumin, paprika, tandoori masala, and ginger as well. Reduced the heat to low and simmered the mixture until it was ready!

Success! After about 30 minute of prep time and 25 min of cook time, all is done :)

Special kudos to my little sister who gave me tips and took pictures throughout the process. She gets to taste run it

She likes it!

Review of recipe: Alone, the roasted cauliflower wasn't super memorable but the masala dip was authentic and bomb. Tammee is going to keep using this recipe for her indian dishes at home :)

Overall prep was really easy and it turned out a lot better than I imagined aka I'm so glad it turned out alright given my noob cooking skills... The recipe apparently serves 4-6 people but together my sister and I finished the whole thing for dinner with lots of leftover masala dip to spare. Good stuff!

[trigallery-blog]

#152

Mind. Body. Community. Always seek to balance improving each leg of the ever-growing tripod. 

[trigallery-blog]

re: Why did you decide to start tri.gallery?

Have a question for me? Ask away!

Before I begin, let's be clear about one thing here: this is not some whimsical, spur-of-the-night decision to start up another blog. This took a few weeks of deliberate thinking, planning, and designing to get this up and running. 

Before that I mulled a few months about wanting to build something like this. Then, life, work, 3 seasons of New Girl and 1 season of House of Cards (Netflix... I definitely will not renew you) got in the way of me finishing this up - but no more. I'm writing this note this morning and publishing it even if it sucks as a literary piece. End of story. 

But why do you feel the need to go through creating this, you ask? Well, 1. I design for a living now - I probably should create a portfolio site but 2. and ten times more important to me, I wanted to do this because I wanted to create my own platform, my own medium. 

Let's not beat around the bush here. This is a little critique on what Facebook and Instagram have transformed for me over the years. So engrained into my mind has it become for me to write short, sweet status posts about my job or interesting tidbits of my life to maximize the number of likes/hearts I received from my friends. It's not a intentional from me persay - but it's still unconsciously in the back of my mind as I type my short sentences on the computer or my mobile device. I can't help but think it. 

Why? Because those stupid little likes are so goddamn addicting. You know what I'm talking about. That little tiny rush of dopamine that goes to your head every time you see a red-and-white notification pop-up with a 1, a 2 - or sometimes 10+ if you can hold yourself away for long enough... - cmon, you know what it does, it makes you feel pretty good. And to be honest, well, in the grand scheme of things, that little rush is probably fairly harmless. There are worser things to be a part of, so it's not like I'm going to start a full-on war against using that medium completely. 

My critique instead however, stems from the shift away from longer forms of storytelling. Like, what if I wanted to describe an experience that is longer than 300 words? What if I wanted to describe an entire experience via the photos I took, via the details I can remember, the nooks and crannies that give a story its full picture - I mean technically you can, but your friends will probably find it annoying and not give it much attention.

What currently exists out there for me - it's just not enough. So I'm going to build a platform that makes sense to me. And hopefully, it'll stick. 

Because I do believe that there's a place for longer content like that - stuff that you're still willing to share in a little more detail for the public. Because there's so much more to me than the little posts that I currently run online. I am a human being with a wide assortment of interests and aspirations. I have the capability of doing many things, and hopefully many of them very well. And I want to share them with all the people I care about, and for all the people who care about me. 

That's the other great thing about running my own independent domain - I'm looking forward to not pushing all my content in front of my friends all the time. Meaning, to my friends who don't care for longer form writing and don't want to hear about every single detail about my life - I'm sure there are more people than I think (especially you male friends) - they don't have to see my stuff constantly popping up on their feed, rammed into their faces without their real consent. I can run a bunch more pieces here, and if/when you're interested, you can visit or read them. If you're not, well then, harmless...

And last, I'm doing this because, well, you don't own me. Nobody does. I do what I want, when I want, however I want. Here's to creating your own little island of freedom :)

Cheers, 

Tri

[vennjapan-blog]

Day -1, 11:42p: Alright! I’ve decided to try to keep a log of what will be a long, ridiculous, spiritual and engaging journey for the next 25 days - where I will share my experiences with friends and family as often as I can. Everything is set into place - the whole gopro setup and backup gear, the tumblr, the 3g phone service throughout the trip (except during meditation), and of course a pretty fun planned itinerary to go along with it! And now I just have to finish packing… after I finish recovering… from all those stupid drinks I just had. Well, cheers to this project! zzzz

[vennjapan-blog]

Day 0, 9:23a: My brother from another mother Andrew stays over for the night and drives me to the airport! Still have no idea what to expect for this trip.. just going with the flow!

[vennjapan-blog]

Day 1, 11:22p: Just got in! Ko was nice and patient enough to navigate me through everything. THANK GOD I have friend with me who can read and speak Japanese. We’re on a bus heading to tokyo station where we will begin preparing for our first night of drinking!

[vennjapan-blog]

Day 2, 12:08a: First stop: Kagaya, the bar Ive been wanting to go for 4 years.. words cannot explain how whacky this place is

[vennjapan-blog]

Day 2, 12:18a: Here’s my attempt: meet Mark - Kagaya’s owner and sole bartender in action. For this particular bar, every client interaction is an opportunity for Mark to act, make jokes, dress in outrageous costumes (mind you, he comes in and out of them in less than a minute), dance on you awkwardly, and really does just about anything to engage you and the rest of the audience. Like, for example, here’s a clip of Mark quickly serving us this beer

[vennjapan-blog]

Day 2, 12:35a: When I asked Mark for his menu, he made me sing with him first in order to get it - which of course I was already drunk enough to oblige.