1. I ate nothing but chinese food growing up. In fact, of my 18 years at home with my family, probably less than 10% were eaten with a fork and knife - most were eaten with chopsticks and accompanied with a bowl of rice.  Very rarely do I actually FEEL like eating chinese food (except in Toronto where the food is awesome), much less cooking it. I'm pretty chinese fooded out even so many years later.
2. There isn't a lot of challenge to chinese food cooking to me - I'm very familiar with the ingredients - whereas things like parsnips, fennel, pumpkins, celery root - these are all things I've never cooked with before and I'm totally fascinated with how to prepare them, what goes well with them, etc.
3. High standards coupled with laziness - truthfully the dishes I would want to eat/make are WAY too labour intensive for it to be worth my time (sharksfin soup for example) that I'd rather just go out to order it (though I'm a snob and think Seattle chinese food blows) - or better yet, go home to Toronto to eat it or have my mom make it :)
4. I hate chinese vegetables. Not that it should stop me from cooking chinese food, but I think bok choy, choy sum and pretty much every other chinese green is totally nasty.

So there you have it, can cook chinese food but probably won't.

Bon Appetit's November issue is full of thanksgiving goodness - I want to roast a turkey every day! Anyway, since I'm unsure of who is going to be doing the cooking at T's fam's place for thanksgiving, I didn't want to lose out on trying out some of the recipes.

I love fennel, though I usually use it raw in salads and I've never actually 'cooked' it before, so I tried this - Roasted fennel with olives and garlic - and seriously, its awesome... if you're looking for a good (and easy to make) side for thanksgiving, this is totally worth it. Finding fennel sometimes can be a pain the ass, since the only place I've consistently found fennel is at Whole foods and its so much more expensive there than if you can find it at Safeway and Trader Joes (though they only sporadically carry it so its good to have WF as your backup).

I really wanted to try the Brussels Sprout Hash with Carmelized Shallots but I couldn't stomach the idea of the entire apartment smelling like stinky gym shoes all evening while they cooked (plus, not everyone likes brussel sprouts) or the Butternut Squash Gratin with Goat Cheese and Hazelnuts too but T isn't as crazy about butternut squash as I am. The fennel went over well with all so I'm happy. I'll have to try those other ones another time.

1. Mixtura (Peruvian, have been there before but definitely want to go back)

2. The Oceanaire Seafood room (because Brian from top chef is there!)

3. Andaluca (because I always drive by it but have never been)

4. Market street (because maybe Ballard isn't actually that far away and I should stop avoiding it)

5. 35th Street Bistro (because they listed Paella on their menu)