Nikon D90 camera bags are now available for pre-order here, in brown, black, or leopard print.

The smell of freshly fried french fries from McDonalds are intoxicating. I don’t know what it is about their fries, maybe its the extra salt…the crispness..whatever…they are good. I don’t like burger king, and I’ll eat Wendy’s fries by default because I do love their Spicy Chicken Sandwich (#6), but McDonald’s fries are definitely my favorite.

I also enjoy their McFlurries and Chipotle Chicken snack wraps. Someone on twitter the other day unabashedly asked “WHY?” when I said I wanted a snack wrap, as if I’m not supposed to like them or eat them. I don’t get what the big deal is, they are fast, cheap, and easy to eat…and dare I say it? They are kind of tasty. Or maybe I wouldn’t really know because I eat them when I’m 1. starving and 2. have no time to use a knife and fork …and you know, when you’re hungry everything tastes good.

I had a small used truffle left over, and I’ve had this for over 2 weeks now so I knew I had to finish it off before the scent totally went away…so I decided to dust the rest onto some fries. Just two of my favorite things together. Forget fancy BS hors d’oeuvres for your next dinner party, just buy a bunch of fries and sprinkle truffles on them.

It occurred to me recently that I spent a good deal of time thinking about how to make an iPad bag, yet the iPad is a lot less important than my Camera. I’ve been wanting to make a camera bag for a while now, I take my camera out as much as I can….

A photo below of a common problem. Having to carry two bags, a camera bag and my personal bag. This makes it annoying to walk around and shoot, since the whole point of shooting is to capture a moment with speed and ease. If you’re too busy to fussing around with your “things” you might miss a shot. If its not the camera bag, I’m usually holding a camera around my neck. The more you carry around whilst shooting the harder it is to shoot. I also can’t stand stuffing my camera into a big purse with a bunch of other personal items. I can’t explain how annoying it is to have a purse hanging around my body while I’m squatting or moving around, sometimes it dangles in between my legs and I’m always sliding it towards my back.

Instead of making a sketch, I made a rough 3-d draft, or a prototype. The design or pattern was built completely around the structure of my camera.

2nd prototype; this one is a lot more polished but it still wasn’t exactly what I wanted in terms of leather. This leather I used was great because of its durability and thickness, the material holds the stiff rectangular shape of this bag very well. Mainly I wanted to test the strap length, and the metal frames to see how well they would work.

What I wanted to achieve with this camera bag was not only the consolidation of my personal items and my camera, but keeping the camera visibility as hidden as possible, maybe I don’t want people to know that I’m some jerk with a chunky DSLR? . The bag is designed specifically so that the user can shoot whilst the camera is inside the bag, and it is also designed especially for the Nikon D90, each camera has a different design, different shape, and different measurements. I have another camera which has a bigger body but the D90 is easy to use, light, and its the one I like to take with me when I go out.

Each compartment opens.


This little ditch was cut out for a reason, it’s where my finger sits when it hits the shutter button, the reason for the ditch is comfort so my finger isn’t reaching in to press this very important button.

Personal items are kept to a minimum for this bag, but I’ve still considered them for the design. I made two pockets for credit cards, cash, a key, and another pocket to fit my blackberry. That is really all I need, and I don’t want to carry another personal bag along with my camera, this way I only carry one bag. If this was the perfect scenario I would have integrated a little pouch to hold my lipstick but I forgot about that one.

The leopard print for this bag is obviously a huge part of the design, but I’m so excited I found several hides of this leopard print. I’ve been searching about 6 years for this material (since college), every time I came across some BS leopard print fabric it was either faux hide or extremely cheap looking this was exactly what I was looking for.

The flip side of the bag (shown below) is the same design except it doesn’t have any cut outs for the camera, so this camera bag can also be disguised as a purse.

Here is a photo below of the lens, I designed this bag so that you can shoot whilst the camera is inside the bag. In terms of lenses, as I said, the LIGHTER THE BETTER, and I plan to bring only ONE lens when I am walking around. Don’t have time to switch my lens while I am trying to shoot.

****D90 bags are available in my shop. Thanks for reading.

I’m on my second cup by now……




Black truffles shaved on toasted english muffins with butter and honey. This is probably the easiest post I’ll ever do in terms of food.

Has anyone read the review about Inception via NYTIMES? I hate to admit it but the review made some strong points about the movie, most of which were very critical. Oh well I still liked it!

A quick post on a different way to do breakfast…..can’t start it without eggs.

This may seem weird but I salt cured this piece of Toro Tuna (fatty tuna) for a breakfast meal (replacing smoked lox)…Salt curing meats like prosciutto, pastrami, etc is quite common but you can also cure and smoke fish (smoked salmon for example). Cured tuna isn’t as common but some chefs like to do it. I think cured Toro tastes 100x times better than smoked salmon. It doesn’t even taste like tuna anymore it starts to taste like some smoked ham or prosciutto, but more moist and fatty. It practically melts in your mouth. Also it only takes 24 hours to cure before hand. I used 2 cups salt, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 tablespoon of lime zest, and crushed peppercorns. At the end I also splashed a little less than 2 tablespoons of dry gin on the salt before wrapping everything up. I know too much tuna talk…this is my last post on it I swear!

Lime zest and peppercorns

Wrap everything up, make sure half the salt mixture rests on top and on the bottom of the tuna and don’t forget that small splash of gin. The gin should moisten the salt a bit. Secure the package and place it in the fridge.

After 24 hours……

Once it comes out of the fridge and you  wash off the salt, the tuna gets a little drier (from all the salt pulling the moisture out of the meat) and what you get is an intensified toro flavor with the buttery saltiness… I like to eat it right after I wash it and dry it with a paper towel but you can prolong this curing process by soaking the tuna in water, and then hanging it up to dry (like salami) for 1-2 weeks. Then the meat shrinks even more…but I prefer this stage when its salty but still soft.

I placed this piece in the fridge for 30 minutes before I cut it, same concept as putting a ball of mozzarella in the freezer so that when you go to grate it the cheese doesn’t collapse or fall apart completely. I highly suggest you try this (with TORO).

Eggs and potatoes (au gratin). Potatoes were prepared by slicing thin sheets shaped into a rectangle, I used a simple au gratin recipe, heavy cream, butter and some onions.  I didn’t use cheese for this gratin because the flavor is too strong and there are so many other “strong” flavors going on in the dish. I  used quail eggs because they are smaller and work better with this dish. This is not figure friendly, obviously.

Layer avocados in between…

On top of the eggs, avocado and potato, add the salt cured tuna.

If you can, add some sliced fresh truffles (I got this summer black truffle from Dean and Deluca for 40$, go to the cheese section towards the back and ask for it, they don’t display it)

Past and upcoming posts may be pretty light and quick (I don’t have much time to myself right now and I’m waiting on some custom zippers and snaps to arrive before I start sewing again). Thanks for reading anyway!

New in the shop.

Comments are close for this post only, don’t worry I’m not closing comments for good!

This bar is very unassuming, no transparent glass windows to peek inside a slick back lit bar interior..the signage on the restaurant says “gold flower restaurant”. I went while waiting for a movie (inception) because the normal show times were sold out, the cocktails were delicious.

Front window of the bar is completely blocked out with rows and rows of jars.

While the outside may look like a take-out joint this is what you’re greeted with on the inside.

It’s so dark inside, and these were some of the light sources permeating the space, each lamp is filled with a leaf with what seems to be water.

The bar is called “APOTHEKE”, jars have a medicinal design and feel.

As soon as I saw this Cilantro cocktail I had to get it. Cilantro = my favorite!

Waiting for the oil to get hot…

Spicy Tuna mixture, I think I’ve shared this recipe before but I take ground toro (you can use lean tuna), kewpie mayo, sriracha sauce and diced scallions. I mixed these ingredients and shaped them into balls, then I dipped them into some panko breadcrumbs.

I thought maybe instead of spicy tuna rolls, fried spicy tuna would be delicious, but fried for a very short period of time so the interior is almost rare.

Garnish = strips of SHISO leaf.

The sauce that it is sitting on is derived from a Bonito soup base..bonito comes from dried fish shavings…

This *looks* like a piece of wood right? It’s not, its the flesh of a dried fish.


Bonito Shaver

This is the end result, you get these dried fish shavings which create delicious broths, using dried fish or dried seafood for soup bases is very common in asia.

Bonito broth, soy sauce, and mirin (japanese cooking wine) were mixed together for the liquid component. Steep the bonito shavings in hot water to get the flavor.

The tuna is medium rare, but its hard to see because I used a very fatty toro which is pink in its raw state, not red..

Next up? Spicy tuna patties for mini BURGERS now sitting on a mound of japanese breadcrumbs. The patty is the same exact mixture I used for the dish above.

Patties have been panfried, here is how I like to stack it. Shiso leaf, avocado, pickled ginger, pickled radish, cucumber, salmon eggs, and scallion.

Instead of fries, I sliced some lotus root (japanese vegetable) and decided to fry these instead..they are really delicious! High in fiber.

Again, trying to not fry these too much so that you don’t overcook the inside, its good to freeze them for 10 minutes ahead of time so that when you fry it the least amount of heat penetrates the meat.

It doesn’t really have to stop there. You can also make a falafel version of these spicy tuna rolls….Take the same patties and turn them into little balls.

I made some fresh yogurt sauce for these ‘falafels’ with the ingredients below.

Easy easy easy, you can get these mini pitas from whole foods or anywhere…but I added shiso leaf (you can substitute lettuce), red onion, and the yogurt sauce  to stuff these.

The end! Three different ways to do spicy tuna rolls differently, Japanese style, American style, and Greek style.