Ugh

Well, Winnie is still sick, so she gets a free pass on her blog updates until she recovers, but I am going to try and sneak in another entry on time before I get too tired.

First, some non-food related issues I would like to get out of my system before the food appreciation begins. It's just that lately it seems that life does not like me very much. Hence the stomach problems and the entry being titled "ugh". Earlier this week, on Monday, between job recruiters calling and the usual stress at work, I was distracted enough that I managed to misplace my Motorola Droid. It was a very bad time to lose my cell phone. I had just spent the past few days actively applying for jobs and sending out resumes. I was fortunate to have a Cisco employee find it and turn it in to the lost and found the next day, but I was not a happy person for about 16 hours.

Despite all of that I did still successfully schedule an interview with a recruiter for earlier today, which went fine, but about 15 minutes before my interview I discovered that there was a gigantic hole in my skirt. I was able to finagle my skirt into still looking decent by changing the hole into a slit on the side of one leg...however, the length of that slit was really not appropriate for an interview. Maybe for a club or evening dance, but definitely not an interview. Oh well. I recognize these are small gripes, but the timing was just so bad for both of my problems that it led to decent amounts of stress and frustration on my part. And this is why it is important to take time to relax and eat delicious things.

Immediately after the interview, I met Matt at a restaurant, Honba Sushi, and ate this Tonkatsu (pork cutlet). It wasn't bad, pretty light actually, and I felt much better afterward.

This was a delicious and messy gyro with tzatziki from a nearby nicely inexpensive Greek place that my coworker Bing recommended. We ate outside as the weather was nice.


Bing and I have kind of become lunch partners now as we try to go to lots of new places as an excuse to take a long lunch and escape Cisco for a while. Next week we're going to try and go to have southern Shanghai style Chinese food.

My coworkers and I also find excuses to take a break from work while at the office as well. Earlier this week we had cheesecake to celebrate one coworker's birthday, and today we had more traditional cake to celebrate the birthday of another coworker, Olga. I've been told she kind of looks like me, but I don't know.

I'm sure Cisco appreciates me putting photos of some of their office space and lockers on my blog. The cake was from a local Chinese bakery and absolutely delicious. Fantastic batter and lightly whipped icing. Good strawberries too.

Okay, I'm pretty tired now and the cat wants her food, so I think that's a pretty good update of what's been going on with me lately. New York City photos should be next week. Good night.

Traveling

Okay, it's time for another irregularly scheduled update.

Recently, my stomach has been very very bad, I guess from stress at work, so I haven't been eating out as much, and when I do, it tends to be very mild and simple things such as sandwiches. I love sandwiches, but unless they are a particularly unusual sandwich or I am trying to highlight an certain attribute (like for any I may have posted before) I usually devour them before even thinking about taking out the camera. So probably not much in the way of new eating out/cooking pictures until I fix my stomach issues which is fine, as I have hundreds of much more interesting food photos to talk about.

Today's theme is traveling. When people go traveling, regardless of their budget, there is often an special emphasis on the food that is eaten during that time. One of the main categories in any travel guide highlights local places to eat and famous cuisine for the chosen area of travel. A traveler might eat out beyond their normal means at a very fancy restaurant just for fun, try to eat at the small places the locals eat at, or even eat at home with the locals themselves. All are excellent ways to discover new culinary experiences.

Logic would dictate that I should write about my most recent travels as an example for my blog, but as the New York City photos still need some sorting, it is with some excitement that I bring you my next featured meals...from the beautiful state of Maine! When my dad, brother and I went up to Richmond, Maine to visit my cousins Alex, Maryliyn and Alex Jr. From the summer of 2008.

I thought I had lost all of these photos because I could not for the life of me figure out where I had saved them, but one day my brother miraculously discovered that I had saved them on his mini-SD card that he usually uses for his GPS unit. After that was lost, and found again, he finally e-mailed them to me. The reason I wanted these so badly?

This:
What Maine is famous for. Succulent lobster, caught the day before, cooked the same day by my cousin Alex who is an excellent chef, and eaten with the traditional tools and bib. Delicious.

Lots of lobster. Yum.

Another restaurant I would like to feature also had excellent seafood, like these shrimp,

but was also unique in that you could dock your boat near the restaurant instead of parking your car. Which is what we did using my cousin's boat, the Palm Beach.

The blue building in the background to the left is the restaurant. The boat in the foreground with the people standing next to it is the Palm Beach. This was actually from the town of Bath and we were headed back on the Kennebec River because it was starting to rain hard (but not storm).

Here are some scenic photos of the Atlantic Ocean from a beach in Maine.


Beautiful, right? But extremely cold water, even this late in summer (end of July).

I could go on and on about how excellent the food is in Maine and what a great time I had there and how it was one of my best summer vacations ever but I think will save some parts for another entry when I go back, as I most certainly will someday. Have a good night.

So much eating out...

I'm not even going to try to come up with an excuse for what happened to my blog this past month...it would take too long. But a friend and I are both going to try and post at least one entry in our blogs every week to see if that doesn't help us both update more regularly.

My next reflecting series is also going to have to wait until I find the correct SD card and I'd rather summarize the past few weeks using recent pictures of food anyway.
So this entry is instead brought to you by the letter S.

Sonoma Chicken Coop


On Saturday, May 22nd, my Uncle Bill and Aunt A'delle from Sacramento, CA came down to San Jose to celebrate my birthday (actual date May 31st, but I already had plans for that day). They picked the primarily California based chain Sonoma Chicken Coop. It wasn't bad - I'd heard it was expensive, but for this area, I really thought their prices were pretty good. This was one of their specials for dinner that day - the Thai Peanut Chicken Wrap. I was really full from earlier that day from eating at...Applebee's I believe, so I wanted something lighter and this was perfect. Tender chicken, lots of vegetables, jasmine rice, and a nice peanut sauce made for a solid if less traditional American chicken restaurant entry. I think the rest of my party had Italian style dishes.

Steak

This steak represents the 2nd most expensive meal I have ever had and paid for by myself. This meal also included mashed potatos, wine, and Italian seltzer (don't ask), but as it was eaten at a Morton's the Steakhouse I believe it is fair to concentrate exclusively on the steak. This was their small (yes, small) rib-eye, cooked medium rare and it was a very very good steak. I actually can't say outright that it was the best steak I have ever had because of this grocery store called Dorothy Lane Market and their steak...but it is now very very high up there on my list. I went with a bunch of Matt's friends during Memorial Day weekend, along with one Japanese guest that was there for that weekend's FanimeCon. My Japanese is getting so bad though...
Worth going once for the atmosphere, service, company, and food, but I think it will be a while before I go to this expensive of a restaurant again. Or at least until I find a better job or something.

Sushi

Since people seem to like photos of sushi, here is another one. One of my-coworkers, Bing, and I eat out together practically every day now as an excuse to escape the horribly depressing Cisco environment. This is where we went for on Monday, June 7 - a pretty good sushi place called Sen Dai Sushi. A small place, but apparently always busy, we shared these two delicious and reasonably priced sushi rolls there and also ran into some current and former co-workers there, two of whom are still at Cisco, but no longer with our department. It was a good lunch.

Okay, I think that was a pretty good update entry for now. I might try and find some people pictures to accompany these food pictures, but it is getting late and I still have "work" tomorrow. Good night!