Takoyaki, Palabok and a 50 mm lens

(Wiener Secession, facade)

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The Canon 50mm 1.8 is surely the lightest lens I’ve had. It weighs 130gm only…not bulky when I carry it around in my bag, not too heavy when I mount it with my already heavy camera. It works efficiently at night, gives an excellent background blur for my food shots, gives you great detail for portrait shots and  just add an extension tube to it and you got a reliable macro lens. There’s a handful more good reason why you should own a Canon 50mm 1.8 but the downside is you can’t get everything in a frame easily when you are too near your subject. Take above example…the Wiener Secession is located near the Naschmarkt and there’s very little space in front of it…very few steps from the Friedrichstraße…either one should go to the other side of the street or be in the middle of the road…one that I wasn’t able to do and another that I won’t risk…so here the top part of the photo has been cut off.Partly you see three gorgon heads, they represent architecture, sculpture and painting. The side walls  feature owls, formed by Olbrich himself. Together with the Gorgons they attribute to Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, victory and the crafts.

   

On both sides of the entrance, are each a blue mosaic flower pot.  These pots are carried by four turtles though only one is visible on the photos of my boys. There are also owl figures which I unfortunately don’t have photos of.

Flashback: We visited Tita S again. Kuya O was there already when we arrived. They both have been waiting for us so we can eat Tita S’s palabok and puto (rice cake). Palabok is a pancit (noodle) dish of round rice noodle (often specifically labeled for pancit luglug or palabok) smothered with a thick, golden shrimp sauce or other flavored sauce, and topped with:

I love the meal! Little D ate a lot of the eggs there. We were really full so we decided to walk to burn the calories off even when the sun has almost set. We took the bus to the city center, got down at the Naschmarkt where we bought fresh salmon the last time. I suddenly remembered that that Nippon-ya where I buy Japanese stuff has an ongoing sale. So I asked Tita S and Kuya O to accompany me there. I got me a small, red bowl and a white tea cup, matcha powder and what I’m most excited about – Takoyaki! It’s a good thing that they were deep frozen because we walked about a lot and took us 3 hours more before getting home.

We visited the Manner store just across the Stephansdom (St. Stephan’s church). They sell mostly food that manufactured by Manner and merchandise targeted for tourists…a souvenir shop at most!

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The takoyaki got thawed when we came home. 😀 I heated them up for 10 minutes in the microwave oven and topped them with mayonnaise, tonkatsu sauce, katsuoboshi (dried bonito flakes) and aonori (seaweed powder). You’d know authentic takoyaki at first bite and these surely are the real ones. I was not so careful back when we were in Manila…I bought takoyaki but they have a very different taste…I later on learned that a lot of stalls sell these balls with different filling. Con!

My orders from Bento&Co arrived last week. Those are condiments and accessories for my bento boxes…here are some of the veggie picks I got…designed for my little girl, flowers in different colors.

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Enjoy!

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