World Cafe

Downtown San Antonio

2012-01-16T23:17:00.000-08:00

Continuing my adventures in San Antonio...

On Dec 26th we slept in late, went to see Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol at a local Texan theater. I believe it was part of this regional chain - Santikos Theatres - and it was interesting not only in its being decked out in stereotypical Texas western decorations, but also in that it had assigned seating in each theater! I haven't come across that since Japan. I'm not sure how well it would work elsewhere in the US, but this theater was well staffed and had plenty of ushers to direct people to their seats and there were no issues. We picked out good seats on a kiosk ahead of time.

While waiting my mom shoved my brother and I into one of those photo booths and insisted we take photos. Here are some of the results:

Alfie looks thrilled, as always.

After the movie we had a late dinner at the Iron Cactus on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. For a touristy "Mexican Grill" complete with live music it was actually pretty good. I had shrimp tacos and lots and lots of chips and salsa. I think my mom and brother had variations of an enchilada or two.
Yum. They were fairly generous with the shrimp.

Dessert was their version of tres leches as well as some delicious flan.

Finally, we just walked around the Riverwalk since all the X-mas lights were still up, and it was a pretty serene place to walk after dinner, once most of the rest of the tourists had left (or were only in the parts with bars).

I would have liked to stay longer, but Alfie is still underage, my mom doesn't live that close to downtown, and were were all pretty tired. Just as I am getting tired now. The San Antonio holiday trip conclusion will come next entry. Good night all.

Benihana for New Year's

2012-01-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

No long excuses for my lack of posting tonight - I'm too tired. Hopefully I'll be better at keeping this New Year's resolution of doing a better job of maintaining my blog however, and then the explanations and ruminations on why I haven't posted in whatever lengthy period of time will no longer be necessary.

So, let's begin with New Year's. For New Year's Eve, Matt and I went to San Francisco and ate at the Benihana in Japantown. I've been a couple of times before for birthdays, but for New Year's Eve they had some different specials. I had filet mignon which was served with soup, salad, shrimp, vegetables and fried rice. Matt had a main dish of shrimp and steak with everything else I additionally listed plus ice cream. The chef was pretty entertaining, but since I've seen the show before (and it's always pretty much the same) I was more interested in the food, and the filet mignon did not disappoint. None of the teppanyaki places I know of around here are cheap, but Benihana was founded first (in NYC apparently) and has always been an enjoyable polished experience for special occasions, particularly birthdays, but it's seemingly pretty popular for New Year's as well.

Here is the chef cooking for our table. We didn't make any reservations, and just happened to walk in at the perfect moment for a table that needed two more people to be full. The next seats wouldn't have been available for probably another 30-40 minutes.

Here is my fried rice and filet mignon with liberal amounts of onions. No one else wanted the extra onions, so Matt and I wound up with the rest of them.

edit 1/16/12 - Oh yeah, and we took purikura as well, which I am now adding to this post now that I have it scanned

Since we were driving back to San Jose afterward, we didn't have anything to drink. I realize it was only Matt driving, but since he wasn't going to drink, I decided to wait as well. Once back at the apartment, we had *ahem* "California sparkling wine" (aka champagne that can't be referred to as champagne) and liqueur cherries from Trader Joe's. Delicious. After researching movies that took place on New Year's Eve, we settled on this :

Each of the Four Rooms mentioned was a separate story taking place in the same hotel and sometimes sharing characters, but told by a completely different director. Both Matt and I felt the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino stories were stronger than the other two, but that may have just been because I was immediately able to tell which two were theirs. While they were both still young directors when this movie was made and each piece is pretty short, their now famous trademarks are almost all there. And they were both satisfyingly ridiculous.

Finally we watched the New Year's ball drop at Time's Square on TV, then eventually after that we went to bed. And today? Not much either. I slept in late and read stuff. Pretty quiet, which was fine with me after the craziness that was Christmas. Maybe tomorrow I'll blog about that.

Austin

2011-05-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

So...at the rate I've been posting I guess this is going to be a biannual blog. Oh well. Let's get to it.

To deal with the many ups and downs, highs and lows, lefts and rights, etc in life, one of those old cliched adages still holds true; I have been doing my best to turn bad situations into good ones.

My latest example, and blog post subject, is my trip to Austin over April 19-21, 2011. This was the result of a Cisco furlough. I really did not want to be furloughed. I really could not afford to be furloughed. I really could not afford to go anywhere on furlough. But if I'm going to have forced time off, the last way I wanted to spend it was at home being miserable about being furloughed. My mom was already headed down to Austin during that week to check out the culture and decide if she'd ever want to live and work there, so I decided to join her.

For those of you who know me well, you are already aware that the relationship I have with my mom can be...interesting...at times. What mother/daughter relationship isn't though, really. When it comes to vacationing we have usually been ok, however, I think this may have been her first out of state trip with just me. It went just fine, but I didn't eat any meat during the trip because I gave it up for lent. Yes, I went to Texas and had no red meat whatsoever. Just fish/seafood. I know I am strange. So it goes.

Oh, and did I mention I bought a new camera right before this trip too? I'm not sure if it will make a difference for the photos in this blog, but we'll see. And no, I couldn't really afford the camera either, but my last was over five and a half years old and it was barely holding any charge anymore (from disposable batteries) so it was time. Onward to the photos:

Art exhibit at the airport

Fancy hotel room at the Omni Austin in downtown Austin. This hotel had a roof top pool and hot tub!

Enchiladas Verdes con Camarones at Takoba - My first meal in Austin. It was pretty good and different TexMex style. My mom picked it out after reading the local papers - I guess it was award winning, but really kind a lone well-kept place in an otherwise rundown neighborhood, just outside of downtown.

State Capital Building. Just as the stereotype goes, everything in Texas IS bigger. I think Texas's state capital building is even bigger than California's.

Breakfast in bed! Thank you Omni Hotel room service.

Back to the state capital to tour inside and then walk around more downtown

Ancho’s Blue Crab Melt at one of the hotel restaurants. It looked nice but it wasn't very good. Neither was the service. Our waitress disappeared for most of lunch and my mom and I would up tipping the busboy instead as he wound up doing all of her work and was very nice.

My mom in front of the Texas History Museum

After a disappointing lunch, I asked one of the locals operating a clothing boutique on her favorite place for dinner. She named The South Congress Cafe which was a modern, kind of eclectic place. It was absolutely excellent - great food, great service. The host actually bothered to host and came to just chat with us multiple times and the waitress was very knowledgeable and attentive.

Barramundi Almondine - a type of fish from the south Pacific that I'd never even heard of before this dinner. It was delicious. I had some really good wine to go with it, and my mom had a dish that also featured barramundi as well as two margaritas that she swears were the coldest she had ever had in her life.

Dessert was dried cherry and pecan bread pudding with bourbon sauce and Amy's Vanilla Ice Cream. Heavenly.

Then we went to go see the bats on the South Congress St Bridge - apparently one of Austin's major tourist attractions. I didn't get any good photos of the bats, but we did see them!

Here is my not a good photo of the bats. They were small and fast.

Here is a photo of the bridge and downtown Austin at night.

Overall it was a good trip and my mom enjoyed the time as well. Next time I think I would like to travel outside of downtown more and also try eating some of their meat. The city was nice, but it is still clearly a work in progress, and not nearly as elaborate as other cities I have visited.

I would have really liked to go to Chicago again to see people there, or to go even farther away, but Cisco kept going back and forth on whether or not I was actually even going to get furloughed, and which week it was even going to fall on, that this was an incredibly last minute trip. I think this was the probably best option for me on limited resources, and honestly I'm just glad to have been able to travel somewhere at all. The next trip I take will be to go back home for my brother's graduation, and hopefully the vacation after that will be somewhere overseas.

Have a good night everyone.

Zachary's Event - Blupdate

2010-12-06T22:21:00.001-08:00

My poor blog. Abandoned to cyberspace for months. Again. But enough people have bothered me, a couple even going so far as to text me weekly (Winnie) and invite me to blog update events on Facebook (Zachary). My normal update day is supposed to be Thursday, but I have conceded to update today...at least for now. I hate Mondays. Especially ones that are particularly stressful and when I am starting to get sick.

To try to combat getting sick, I have been consuming lots of vitamins, both through artificial means, vitamin drinks and bars and such, and natural means, lots of fruits and juice. None of which are very exciting to blog about, particularly those energy bars. Yuck. I only like to blog about delicious foods. Though the fruit and juice has been ok.

I wouldn't even know where to begin with my backlog of food photos and fun events, so I will just focus on what I ate this weekend, as well as today, besides the aforementioned vitamins.

Saturday we slept in late and around noon went to meet some friends at a salad and soup buffet chain that's common around here called Sweet Tomatoes. I made a ridiculously big salad that had everything in it that people don't normally put together in a salad. I also did not use any salad dressing because I'm still barely a fan of salad, let alone salad dressing.

Blogger is not allowing me to upload my salad photo at this time. However, it is just that. A photo of a salad with lots of pasta and crackers added to it.

For dinner I was feeling tired and trying not to think about the JLPT test on Sunday, so Matt asked a friend for Chinese takeout recommendation and we wound up going to Koong's Chinese Restaurant in Milpitas.

Delicious. Mongolian beef, shrimp with vegetables in brown sauce, and crab rangoon. Good Chinese take-out and reasonably priced. Next time I will order one of their dinner sets with soup.

Sunday I just had energy bars and drinks to try and survive the awful Japan Language Proficiency Test (n2) and then had Saturday's Chinese leftovers.

And we're back to today.

For lunch I ate with my coworkers in the cafeteria- while I was still unemployed, Cisco finally finished building the cafeteria in my building. It isn't bad, for what it is. Various dishes a la carte and others as a buffet at a set weight price. Definitely an improvement over Kaufman (my college cafeteria, for those unfamiliar with its delicacies). I had customized soft tacos for what feels like the 20th time as well as an orzo based dish which I didn't really care for. No photos yet...maybe if I'm sneaky I can get a few with my phone next time.

Dinner I was feeling silly (cold? work burnout?) so I had Matt buy Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets from Target, for two reasons. First was to try them - they were recently rated among the best chicken nuggets in Consumer Reports both for taste and nutrition. Second was because I was planning on playing Epic Mickey tonight! And I did! Such a weird game for modern Disney. Kind of dark, kind of trippy. Aside from their iconic shape, the chicken nuggets weren't nearly as unusual.

Still pretty good though. I think I still prefer Trader Joe's, but these are definitely healthier. And they go better with tonkatsu sauce.

Also, one of the few times I will use an image that is not mine, here is a photo of the Epic Mickey cover from Wikipedia (copyright Disney Interactive Studios) :

I'm enjoying it so far mostly because of the Disney history and imaginative designs, but as all the reviews I have read have said so far, the camera angles in this game are atrocious and deadly.

All right. Bedtime for me, and my first day working all day from home tomorrow. Good night.

Yum, pizza.

2010-07-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

New York City pizza. Pretty self explanatory. It is delicious. I may do some explaining tomorrow anyway, along with some more photos. But not tonight. I've had a rough past week and today was no exception. I'm going to go dream about this nice slice of cheese pizza now:

Yum. Good night.

X-cellent food in NYC! (aka "x" is an annoying letter in the English language)

2010-07-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

I think I will have to again scribe a fairly concise blog entry tonight. My nerves are all strained from Cisco and just having to wait on incidents that could decide a decent part of my immediate future is causing me to yo-yo from wound up high anxiety to extreme exhaustion. Today my supervisor and three other people in my area (though those three are on a different budget than I am) learned that they were being let go at the end of the month. However, nothing whatsoever has been said to any of my four coworkers or me. We are silently going crazy and would really like to just hear anything tomorrow, be it good or bad, just simply to know what's going on. Once we learn we are naturally going to eat out to celebrate either the miraculous last minute save of our jobs (for another 3 months or so) or our triumphant escape from Cisco to move on to better and brighter opportunities.

Until that happens, it is time for more NYC meals.

Moving right along to my dinner on April 22nd, I was finally able to meet with my cousin Ann who lives in Manhattan and works at the New York Public Library as a legal assistant. I'll dig up a photo of her later as the best ones were all taken on her camera and are hidden somewhere in my e-mail. My next culinary experience was to be a Japanese restaurant by the name of Katsu-hama, a restaurant that specializes in one of my favorite dishes; they served all sorts of Katsu, or Japanese cutlets.

Ah...tabetai (I want to eat it). While this restaurant was probably not run by Japanese owners, this was still easily some of the best tonkatsu (pork cutlet) I have ever had either in the US or in Japan and it wasn't that expensive either. The restaurant was small, but neatly arranged, and I felt that how they arranged the meal was also a nice, Japanesque touch. They brought out beautiful plates like this one, but also served our sake in a small box filled with water and flower petals, and had us crush fresh sesame seeds for our sauce. While katsu is fried and my stomach had been feeling queasy all throughout my time in NYC, this was a fantastic meal where both my taste buds and stomach went home happy.

Or rather I should say, they both were so thrilled that they decided I needed to continue on my journey to attempt to completely satisfy them, as well as fulfill another pilgrimage of my family's culinary traditions in NYC, and like Katz's Delicatessen, easily one of my favorite places on the face of the earth as I have experienced it so far. So my cousin and I moved on to this mysterious place in the East Village...

I love bakeries. Real bakeries, not the supermarket or Little Debbie's kind. The traditional family owned kind where all baked goods are made day of (or are sold at a significant discount) and there is no use of sodium benzoate, artificial flavors or colors, or, god forbid, dough conditioners of any kind. I find this kind of bakery to be very rare in the US, because they are difficult to run as a business, minimally appreciated outside of the cities, and then probably hurt even more by the recession as they are considered more of a luxury item than the much cheaper mass market products at the nearby grocery store. However, despite all of that Veniero's Pasticceria & Caffé has managed to survive since 1894. There are many other very good bakeries in NYC (the Chelsea Market from a previous post contains some), but Veniero's, which focuses primarily but not exclusively on Italian style desserts, has become a family favorite. I literally dream about their pies and cookies and I have no pictures except for this one because I ate everything else so fast.

I'll have to find the exact name for it but this berry and apricot tart was out of this world amazing. Paired with some light coffee, it was the perfect dessert to end a good day in NYC. I already want to go back there to eat more...

Wieners!

2010-07-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, today's entry is about hot dogs. But not just any hot dogs, Katz's hot dogs. Delicious.

Katz's Delicatessen is a kosher delicatessen and cafeteria style restaurant located on Houston (pronounced "house - ton") St. It is fairly old and famous and is a setting in a number of movies as well as being one of those places that celebrities like to go to on occasion so that the restaurant can take a photo of them sitting there. Obviously you can order a lot more than hot dogs for your meal - they are also well known for their pastrami sandwiches and salami among many other items. It has just become a family traditional to eat the hot dogs and drink Dr. Brown's soda. Also they are some of the cheapest items on the menu and probably make up one of the best tasting budget meals in this part of the city.

Katz's keeps their costs down by offering cafeteria style service and seating. You order whatever you like at the counter, the worker writes on your ticket what you ordered, you pick up your food, and you go to look for somewhere to sit down. You pay after eating on your way out. As Katz's is very popular, the place is usually crazy and you will almost inevitably wind up sitting with some strangers. I actually like this part a lot. I sat with an older lady from Hawaii who was stuck in NYC after her flight to Europe was canceled because of the ash cloud. We had a good discussion about life, work, men, politics, Chicago, etc and she gave me her fries because she couldn't finish them. From talking to her I also learned that Obama's motorcade had passed by only minutes before I arrived. I had indeed been wondering why the area was swarming with police - at least it was for a good reason.

I consider this one of my favorite places in the world to eat at, especially since I love deli food and hot dogs, so it is highly highly recommended should you ever venture out to NYC. And send me a salami, please.

Variety is the spice of life you know...

2010-07-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Today is the long awaited first official entry on my New York City trip from April of this year and some of the delicious cuisine I ate there. NYC is of course world renowned for its food, from some of the best low key street food and hidden local spots to literally some of the most expensive four starred places to eat on the planet. The amount of restaurants and cafes and bars and is simply ridiculous - you could easily spend over a lifetime in that city without eating at the same place twice. The variety is also incredibly extensive, as seen in this nice map here of the different types of restaurants that dominate each zip code of the five NYC boroughs according to the Village Voice. All of this is fairly overwhelming, and as a result, while I definitely try and eat at a new place each time I go, I also find myself falling back on old reliable places that it has become kind of a traditional for myself and my family to visit every single time. They're always good.

On my first day, Wednesday April 21st , I was pretty jet-lagged from taking a red eye flight from San Jose to LaGuardia, so didn't do much. After checking into my interesting budget hotel the Jane, I took a nap, called one of my cousins who lives in NYC, and eventually decided I was hungry enough to find something in the area to eat. I had unnaturally good luck on this entire trip despite it being planned last minute and during a time of personal crisis, so of course my hotel was only a few minutes away from one of my favorite food related places to visit in NYC - The Chelsea Market. I'd first learned about it a few years ago when one of my cousins took my Dad, brother and I to inspect their artisan bread shop. I could probably spend an entire entry or more on The Chelsea Market alone, and I may in the future, but basically it is an old Nabisco factory converted into high end apartments and such, and on the first floor is an array of vendors selling all types of food; a miniature NYC condensed into one floor with a very industrial feel given its history. It truly makes for a very unique experience, and on top of that you can get a decent meal for a good price. I opted for the simply named "Chelsea Thai" and had their version of crispy chicken with broccoli.

It wasn't bad - a little heavy for me since my stomach hadn't settled yet, but the broccoli was fresh, the Jasmine rice tasted like it was supposed to, and the chicken had a very unique flavor that I still can't quite place. Definitely neither the most authentic nor the best Thai I've ever had but for the price and the atmosphere, not bad at all.

Seems I failed to take any other photos of the Chelsea Market...hm...instead, here is a photo of the view from my room on the 4th floor of the Jane.
I may have been staying in a budget hotel, but I was still in the trendy West Village area, and I could actually see the Statue of Liberty from my windows. I was pretty excited.

Well, that was what I did Thursday at any rate and I think covering all the things I ate in NYC is going to take more than one post if I want any sleep, so further meals will have to wait to allow me to state the obvious: to be continued...

Ugh

2010-06-24T22:31:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

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!

Reflecting Part 1

2010-05-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's very personal blog entry, I decided I wanted to dedicate this next series of entries to my coworkers at Cisco, my godmother in NYC, and others who have kept me sane and well fed over the past couple of months. I may not have time to finish this particular part until later this afternoon as I believe some current and former coworkers and I are going out to lunch again today.

These first parts will catalog my eating excursions (besides Bocce ball) with my coworkers. Fortunately for me, most of my coworkers are as interested in global cuisine as I am, so I have eaten at a good variety of places since arriving at Cisco - some expensive and fancy, some very cheap and casual. Very shortly after I was hired, I was invited to a holiday gift swap with my female coworkers which took place at the nearby Pasta Pomodoro. http://www.pastapomodoro.com/ They are a chain native to California that serves Italian and seafood dishes.

Penne with tomato sauce and cheese and stuff. It was okay. Kind of overpriced for basic pasta - I can probably make it better and for a lot less than the restaurant price.

Some of my coworkers then. Everyone but Eve (far left) is still here...for now. I didn't even know anyone's name for a while...I am so bad with names. Next to Eve is Bing, then Valentina, then Olga, and on the very right side is Lia.

For my gift swap Olga and I wound up having each others names, and I received a very nice wine set (bottle opener and 4 stoppers) while I gave her some Christmas cookie baking sets and a puzzle, which wound up working very well because she was planning on visiting and baking with her young nieces later that day. I still have and use the wine set.

I guess I will feature one restaurant/event/day so this will be in more parts than I originally planned, but I guess this gives each one its own time to shine and me a way to update more regularly and efficiently. Until tomorrow then...

Questioning

2010-05-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while again. I was so ready for a return to writing regularly after that last short mobile post, but then so many things in my life changed. Some people prefer to update quickly as events unfold; a desire made easier with the advent of forums such as Facebook and Twitter, but I prefer to let everything finish and calm down so I have time to reflect and look back on everything as a whole. I haven't felt emotionally comfortable with writing what has happened to me in the past couple of months, particularly when I find it a lot easier to write about success and fun food excursions rather than what right now feels like failure. I decided it was better that I wait until I really felt the need to write, and after going through what to say over and over again in my head, that has finally happened. As such, after making another long excuse for not writing again, I will give a quick update on my life.

On April 5th, after enjoying a wonderful week touring the bay area with my brother, Dad, and Matt, I returned to my job at Cisco Systems only to learn that the majority of my department was being outsourced overseas. I was probably going to lose my job by the end of April, just a few months after I had started. I was devastated, and along with most of my coworkers, began to go through the five stages of grief. I even refused to believe my Japanese co-worker, Sakura, the first day because everything just seemed so sudden and unreal, even though looking back, it is not uncommon at all these days for tech jobs to be outsourced to cheaper labor markets.

Then, on April 15th, Matt and I decided that our relationship was not working particularly well and that we should end it. I know I have been immensely private during this relationship, so while this was not a surprise to me, it may have been or still be to some of my friends. We had not been doing well at all; neither of us had been happy or even feeling much like a couple for quite a while. I had even previously spoken to my dad just a couple days before the 15th to tell him I didn't think this relationship would last much longer. My dad said to give it time, so I had been, but ultimately Matt brought it up before I had even decided when might be best. There really is no best time to do it anyway. To answer the inevitable question of why we broke up, without going into ranting specifics, suffice to say that we currently have very different goals in life and that we both feel we have a lot of things we need to accomplish before settling into a relationship where we are unsure of the future of said relationship.

Hopefully this will clarify some of my statements and actions on Facebook about being lost and single. I don't really mind being single and I am still on good terms with Matt, it was just a lot to go through between that and the fear of losing my job at Cisco. I decided to handle my mounting stress in the ways I know best - by traveling and eating good food. One day after Matt and I broke up, I booked a flight to visit New York City for four days to reflect, eat lots of delicious food, tour unique places, and go shopping in Soho. More to come on that later. After returning to San Jose, I learned that Cisco had extended my and some of my coworkers' contracts by three months, until the end of July. We all promptly spent the entire last weeks of April partying and eating out every single day. I felt like I was back in college. More to come on that later as well. I don't particularly feel that this serious blog entry should feature mood-lightening food.

So, as my entry title states, lately I have been questioning everything, particularly who I am as a person and where I want to go in life from here. I know that in the long run when I look back I probably will say that coming out here wasn't a complete failure. I have been learning a lot about myself, I am gaining experience at Cisco, meeting lots of new people and so on, but right now I am just kind of frustrated at everything and still mostly lost. However, things could be a lot worse in life - I still have my job at Cisco, and I am still living with Matt until the end of July when both our apartment contract and my work contract come up. And most importantly I have still found plenty of time to enjoy parts of my life, even if they are the simple events of talking to my supportive friends and family, seeing a movie, going places with coworkers, and of course, eating and cooking lots of good food.

My adventures with food return tomorrow morning. Featuring NYC pizza and local San Jose/Milpitas restaurants! Stay tuned.

Pixel Pipe

2010-03-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

I'm trying out this application for Android called PixelPipe that always me to send blog posts and photos from my phone, but I'm using the free version, so I'm not sure how well it works. Since St. Patrick's Day is on a Wednesday, we celebrated early with Matt's parents with some homemade, traditional food. It was filling, warm, and delicious.

*update* So, seems PixelPipelite is great for uploading pictures to the blog, but not so great for posts. I'm going to look into some other applications for blogging on the go, but otherwise I can probably just use the browser, or wait until I get home. *end update*

Oops?

2010-03-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I really don't care much for real life. Particularly that horrible truth that just about everyone seems to run into eventually - if I don't have a job, I don't have enough money to do all the things I want to do. But if I get a job, and I do earn the money, then I don't have enough time for those things anymore. And I definitely don't have enough money for everything. But if I get a better job with more money, than I have even less time...the circle of real life would continue. Ugh.

That was basically just a long winded excuse as to why I haven't updated my blog in a month...I was doing it at work (my computer and internet speed are both faster there), but now that I have been there a couple of months, they have discovered that I am decently competent and have started assigning me more work and training me for different work. Work that requires actual thought, instead of just mindlessly organizing data. So I haven't had time there like I used to. And the rest of life was already busy.

However, during the past busy month, I obviously still found time to eat and eat well. That is one thing I refuse to give up. I don't care much for instant and fast food, so I have been compromising on other things I would normally do to make time to cook full meals or eat at delicious restaurants.

Or, in the case of today, to go well out of town in the hope of finding something delicious to eat or drink and somewhere fun to explore. Today Matt and I went with his parents to Napa Valley to celebrate the birthday of one of their long time family friends. I had met these family friends over last Thanksgiving dinner, so they were nice enough to invite me as well. We all got up early this morning to take one of those wine tour charter buses all the way up past Napa onto Calistoga and finally stopped to tour and eat at a winery called "Castello di Amorosa."

I've only ever been to a few standard wineries before, but if you can guess from the first Italian word in the name, this one was very different from a normal winery in California. Very, very different.

That's the entrance.

There's one of its towers. And even a moat.

According to our energetic tour guides, this winery was built by an very successful Italian American winemaker to replicate, as closely as possible with modern California building codes still kept in mind, an Italian castle from the 13th century. I have yet to go to an authentic Italian castle, so I cannot say if I felt if he succeeded or not, but this still made for one heck of a unique experience. I did not expect to find a Renaissance style castle in Napa Valley, California, let alone one used for a vineyard, storage and bottling facility.

I took so many photos, but since this is a food blog and not a castle blog, I will just include a few more of them before getting to the main course.

View from the castle.

Main dining hall. We didn't eat here, but I guess the Governator and some other famous politicans have.

17th century replica of an Iron Maiden in the castle dungeon.

Okay, here is the room we ate in for lunch. Long tables, gigantic wooden chairs, and lots of Renaissance era styled art. The food was served as main course buffet style, and after a dessert, and of course, with however much red or white wine from their two chosen estate wines that you wanted. The wine, as hoped, was really good. I don't have any photos of it specifically because I was much too busy drinking it. While none of our party of four (Matt, myself, and his parents) bought any of the red or white served with dinner, we did spring for some of the delicious dessert wine we had sampled during a wine tasting earlier as part of the tour.

This food looks delicious right? Well, actually it was kind of a disappointment, considering how accommodating everything had been up to this point. All of the food was cold. Really, really cold. I guess it was for effect and to be gourmet, but as the room was already rather cold from a lack of utilities (the builder was going for authenticity remember) I found this aspect of the food less than appealing. Add that to my personal preference for most of my meat (aside from certain fish and tapas) to be warm, and also the opinion that I thought a lot of the dishes tried to be overly gourmet by loading on the variety of seasonings, and I wound up mostly eating the rolls and drinking wine.

I guess next time I want a really good meal in Napa or Calistoga I should go to a restaurant instead of a winery, but as this was all prearranged for the birthday party and also completely paid for, I probably shouldn't complain too much. The food wasn't bad; I was just expecting better.

Dessert by contrast was absolutely delicious. Chocolate and hazelnut cake from a local bakery and small but exquisite fruit tarts.

While I was worried this would be an awkward event considering I had met the hosts only once, it is always amazing how social people can become after the wine starts flowing...but even without that I actually had a really good time. I definitely want to go back to Napa and Calistoga in the future, and maybe even go on more winery tours, though I wonder if any of them can live up to the experience that was the Castello di Amorosa.

(oh, and if anyone was wondering about that last random post of a photo of a cat...seems my cat, Anna, got a hold of my phone/the phone became possessed and was posting stuff to Blogger via one of the applications I have installed. I did not eat her, will not be eating her ever, and hopefully that will not happen again)

Nina Plays Bocce Ball?

2010-02-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

As my friend Zachary pointed out to me today, lately I haven't had time to cook as much, so my food photos trend largely towards meals eaten in restaurants or even that last post about the food my boyfriend made. Sadly, that is the reality of the working life. Although I actually have quite a bit of free time at work (case in point now, as I blog at my desk), I usually don't get home until 6pm or later, and as I am someone who is used to an early supper, by that time I am famished. I don't like cooking anything complicated when I'm really tired and hungry as I find I tend to rush the process and make mistakes or have accidents. I know plenty of people who do cook elaborate meals after a long hard day of work and find that to be very therapeutic, but until I get used to having a full time job I just don't think that's for me. So, probably not too many photos of my actual home cooked food until the weekend or a vacation break or something. Although, I did make homemade mapo tofu sauce yesterday! But as indicated by today's title, mapo tofu is clearly not the main topic for today's entry.

Work may have detracted a bit from my cooking experience, but I do not believe it caused any compromises in the quality of my eating experiences. In fact, last week my temp agency, Buxton Consulting, paid for all of my group to eat an entire Italian buffet at this restaurant and bocce ball place, Campo Di Bocce of Los Gatos, for a "team building experience." I hope they do this again - it was great.

First course - appetizer (whatever it is in Italian, I forget) - breaded calamari.

Main course - buffet style, but it was a personal buffet set out only for our group, so it was fresh, warm, and delicious. Bread accompanying salmon, beef, fettuccine alfredo, spaghetti with meat sauce...they were nothing especially gourmet, but well done, satisfying dishes nevertheless.

Third course - dessert- Cannoli! After stuffing myself during the buffet part and drinking lots of red wine (also paid for by Buxton), I am not entirely sure how I had room for dessert, but this cannoli was excellent and I managed somehow.

Finally, after eating and drinking and bonding over the food and wine, my coworkers and I were split up into teams to attempt to play Bocce ball. While I am not going to write out all the rules for this traditional Italian game (here is the wikipedia link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocce_ball), the basic idea is you want to bowl a bigger ball as close to the smaller ball as you can, and you want to get as many balls closer to it than the other team has.

This is at close as I made it that entire night, which I thought was pretty good (though it got knocked away by the other team during their next turn).

Watching the court.

"Passionately discussing" which team got it closer. They even provided tape measures, because sometimes the human brain is not so good at judging really similar distances.

Anyway, stories of homemade mapo tofu sauce are going to have to wait until later as I want to get out of the office before 6; I just thought I would share my culinary adventures that my company actually paid for. And yes, I also got paid as well. What a life.

Matt cooked!

2010-02-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

While I clearly enjoy cooking or I wouldn't have this blog, I have always believed in both of the parties in a relationship sharing all the necessary household stuff, including cooking. Especially now that I work basically just as much as he does, I was getting frustrated with almost always being the one to turn on the stove/oven/microwave right after getting home. It's not that he had never offered either, it's more that whenever he offered, it was almost inevitably the same two things - macaroni and cheese or pasta with canned tomato sauce. While I am a fan of both, I crave variety in my life and there are a lot of dishes I love a lot more. But finally, yesterday my boyfriend expanded his repertoire to include one of them - miso soup.

Delicious. I love miso soup. For those who aren't familiar with it, it is a traditional Japanese soup with a dashi (we used katsuobushi, or bonito in English, a type of fish, but other types of soup stock can be used) base, soybean paste (miso), and we added tofu, wakame (seaweed), and green onions. All these ingredients can be found at your local Asian grocery store.

The other dish is mostly comprised of what has been saving us those nights we are both too tired to do much of anything - Trader Joe's frozen vegetables and chicken. Definitely the supermarket with the highest quality frozen foods hands down, and one of the places I missed the most while in Japan.

Anyway, hopefully my boyfriend will be cooking more as I firmly believe he is capable of cooking different delicious things if he practices. I think his parents even picked up on my desire for this, because they bought him not one, but two cookbooks for his birthday, which I thought was great. However, as cooking is still something I think I enjoy more than he does right now, I figure I can live with compromises on not completely sharing the cooking (such as him washing the dishes, which he usually does) and concentrating on expanding my own food repertoire. What to cook next...

Let's Go Sharks?

2010-02-02T23:47:00.001-08:00

Today was my boyfriend's 26th birthday. To celebrate we went with a couple of his friends to a Sharks (NHL team) game. It was my first time to a hockey game ever, and I liked it more than baseball (based on a minor league game in San Jose). It was very flashy and fast. But the Sharks lost. 4-2 to the Detroit Red Wings. Oh well.

Of course, like most sports patrons, I had something to eat during the game. We wisely ate beforehand at a Togo's (a sandwich chain) to avoid most of the overpriced options, but I had a bad craving for french fries. Luckily they were relatively cheap and fresh.

My delicious and cheap Togo's sandwich before the game

The HP Pavilion Stadium (seats over 17,000 people -the game tonight was sold out too)

Warning! Flying pucks!

My fries!

I meant to take some pictures of the outside of the building and him with his friends, but I was tired and I forgot. I am sure I will find a way to deviously take photos of those same friends for this blog in the near future though...

As a random side note, the company my boyfriend works for, Brocade, sponsors a Sharks' zamboni. Great place for advertising, even if it was pretty ridiculous looking.

Finally, to celebrate my boyfriend's birthday with the appropriate traditional food, here is a photo of the birthday cake his parents bought him from a local grocery store. It was carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Very tasty, but so rich that to eat to any more than just a small piece was immediately stomach ache inducing.

The birthday boy with his cake,

And a close up of the nicely decorated cake.

All right, I think that was a pretty meaty post as I managed to update on time (more or less) and continue to blog regularly as I said I would. Considering how late it is here I think I did pretty well. Until the next post (soon if not tomorrow), have a good night!

Kaetta (I returned)

2010-02-01T14:16:00.001-08:00

Okay, that was a ridiculously long break from blogging here, but that's just life sometimes. For those of you whom I have talked via FB, LJ, or, the phone (yes, the phone) I have probably already sufficiently updated you on the events in my life, but for those of you whom I have neglected, I will provide a quick run through of the past few months of my life.

Since my last entry I have gone to Japan (as indicated in that last entry), spent all of my savings (in Japan), took the JLPT 2, gone to some crazy job interviews, successfully landed a job from one of those interviews, adopted a cat, received my first smart phone as a Christmas gift, traveled around the bay area, restored some of my savings, started receiving student loan bills, gone shopping for various things, and naturally eaten a lot of food. Delicious photo worthy food that I have been saving for my return to my blog.

And so, without further ado, the entry of the day - sushi.

Right across the street where my boyfriend and I live is a strip mall with various stores, including this sushi place with the ridiculous name of Cha-Cha Sushi. It's pretty small and we weren't sure if it would be any good or not, but this restaurant had some of the best sushi rolls I'd ever had. Yes, some of their creations were not traditional at all, but all the ingredients were fresh and delicious and they didn't charge me a fortune to have unagi (eel) with one of mine. The staff was also very very nice. Now I know why that place is always busy (it is one of the highest rated sushi places in San Jose, CA on Yelp actually) and Matt and I have already been craving to go back.

Strangely enough, despite it being one of the most naturally photogenic of foods, I do not seem to have any other recent photos of sushi. I guess that is simply a testament to how fast I usually eat my sushi, especially if it is coming from a boat or a conveyor belt. I will try and take more. But for now, another culinary surprise will be revealed when I update (no long breaks this time!) tomorrow.

Japan!

2009-10-18T00:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it is official now. I am somehow returning to Japan for the third fall in a row, for about two weeks from October 21st to November 8th. And no, while naturally this has been something I've wanted to do since I left Japan, I have not been hiding my actual travel plans from readers/Facebook friends/family. In true Nina last minute travel planning fashion, I literally booked the flight two days ago and bothered the wonderful Megan Elfman who is there studying abroad two days before that. In celebration, anticipation, and impatience for Japanese food, we had shabu shabu tonight. It consisted appropriately cut beef from the local Mitsuwa, carrots, enoki (they're a type of delicious mushroom for those who are aren't familiar with them) onions, tofu, and of course, shabu shabu ponzu sauce (citrus soy sauce). It was delicious.

The very generous portions of beef I just cooked all at once as I lack an electric skillet for the table and my boyfriend was very hungry and did not want to wait to eat. I need one of those skillets. Maybe in the near future...

In-N-Out Burger, an Ode

2009-10-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Oh In-N-Out Burger
Your delicious beef patties
And the freshest of cheese
On a succulent bun of perfect bread
And on-site prepared fries
Makes me forgot that
99.9% of the time I hate fast food
At least in the US.
And why you limit yourself to the west,
I will never know
But if it is to retain quality
Than it must stay so.
Such a delicious place.

I figured some bad poetry would serve as a better summary of how I feel about the west-coast based fast food chain (not franchise though) In-N-Out Burger than some boring long winded explanation about why I'm even including a fast food chain in my blog. Basically, they are proof that if you use the right ingredients (ie, what people use in their home kitchen instead of flavorless processed stuff) even quickly prepared burgers and fries can taste absolutely delicious.

Yum.

But after not one, but two fast food digressions in one week (even if they were delicious and reasonably portioned - the key!), it is back to healthy stir-fried vegetables and sandwiches for me.

Housewarming Party

2009-10-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

A week ago was the housewarming party I alluded to in the previous post. I apologize for taking so long to write about after the actual event, but as I also mentioned in that post, neither my boyfriend nor I have been feeling very well recently. Amazingly, I somehow made a complete recovery before the party after taking a nap, however, not even half an hour before the party was planned to start, Matt's health suddenly took a turn for the worse. His stomach was a mess, and he developed a high fever and severe exhaustion. As the timing for this was so last minute, and I had already finished preparing everything anyway, we decided to have the housewarming party anyway. Somehow I pulled it off, keeping Matt's friends fed and entertained even with Matt spending the majority of it semi-delirious in bed. I enjoyed the time overall, I just would still prefer that the next party progresses a little more normally. Whether he had gastroenteritis or Influenza Type A (my mom the RN did not think he had H1N1) we'll never know since he didn't go to the doctor, but he since spent most of this past week recovering from it I haven't really been cooking anything wonderfully exotic to blog about. Just the standard bland cold foods adopted a little for my standards and needs because I was eating most of them too. As I don't care for Campbell's chicken and rice soup (way too much sodium), I made my own using organic chicken broth, canned white meat chicken and enriched long grain rice. As for applesauce, I bought unsweetened (apples have enough sugar in them naturally!) and the toast was made from nice crusty sourdough bread. Only the bananas were normal simply because the organic ones at the grocery store didn't smell right for some reason. I think they were overripe.

By contrast, the food provided at the party was all very rich and not nearly as healthy.

While not the best photo, this arrangement from front to back consists of pepperoni with cream cheese, baguette slices with melted mozzarella and tomato pieces, and fried calamari rings (from Japan! via Whole Foods).

A diseased Matt standing by the food (maybe that was a bad idea) and seasonally decorated table with some of the party guests.

A still diseased Matt now over on the couch but still near the food he cannot eat. Keith over on the left was trying to avoid photos but I got him anyway! Ha! Also in this picture are a bowl of nice thick tortilla chips, delicious guacamole (store bought, but the succulent Wholly Guacamole, the only kind that's any good if you're not eating homemade. I know from experience aka helping Valeria that making guacamole is a lot of work and shriveled lime soaked fingers) and another bowl containing pico de gallo.

Not pictured from the party are the large lasagna from Costco, dutch apple pie, and some delicious ice cream that Keith brought as well as some more chips from Ryan and Eileen. I also seemed to have missed some of the party guests on camera...just wait until next time!

Fortunately Matt is now fully recovered and as my stomach is just fine I hope to have more culinary adventures this week since last week was seriously barren of much cooking or even eating out at special places. As good as Papa Murphy's pizza is, it is still pretty standard pizza. However, this week already does look to be off to a better start by today's random gem of a dinner:
For those who do not know what this wonderful place is, this is a gyuudon, or beef bowl, restaurant, essentially a Japanese fast food place that I ate at ALL the time because it was so cheap and filling. I missed it so much and while I'd heard rumors of them existing somewhere in the US, I didn't realize one would be so close by. But...would they have the same food?

Well, clearly there have to be some differences, the plastic-ware, the styrofoam, and those vegetables in Matt's bowl look a little suspect for example, but otherwise the flavor was the one I have been craving. Even if I prefer Matsuya to Yoshinoya - it was closer to where I lived in Japan so I ate there a lot more.

So random and unexpected for me anyway (I'm not from this area) but absolutely delicious. I think we will be going there again soon.

Great...

2009-10-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

I am not going to rant here; that is not the purpose of this blog, but just like I said with the unsuccessful day of cooking, some things are bound to happen eventually. Such as the irony that is today. Today is going to be our big housewarming party (4pm) and today both Matt and I have stomach bugs. Good food is one of the critical elements of parties (especially for me) so I have been planning elaborate appetizers to prepare but now I can't really eat anything beyond toast and chicken noodle soup. Matt doesn't even feel like eating anything. Hopefully this is one of those stomach bugs that goes away fast. I don't feel like myself when I'm not craving delicious things to eat!

Finally! But first, a transformation!

2009-09-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

All right, I'm tired from being productive with job stuff, making a mess of the kitchen, and going to the gym so I will try to keep this blog post fairly short.

Today (Monday) was all around a delicious day as I figured out what I wanted to eat for lunch and dinner. I didn't feel like cooking anything elaborate for lunch,but I was bored with our usual easily microwavable meals, so I stuck my head in the fridge to see what was in there. As a result,

these rather boring leftovers (somewhat tough tri tip steak, hash browns, steamed green beans) from last Friday night

became this delicious sandwich! I actually liked the reheated-steak sandwich with Swiss cheese, sourdough bread and tomatoes a lot more than the freshly cooked steak by itself - as my friend Valeria said in a comment on my last post, never underestimate the power of sandwiches! I think it was actually my dad who taught me this trick - if life gives you leftovers (or weird canned foods or a lack of hot dog buns) make sandwiches! Previously unappetizing food can be saved this way.

What the "Finally!" in my title refers to is what I made for dinner: a recipe I have been wanting to attempt for around two weeks now - Japanese karaage (fried chicken)!

I have missed it so much. Since a number of you reading this probably already know how to make it or have a pretty good idea, I am not going to post the full recipe I used, but for those who aren't familiar with it, I soaked the chicken (boneless, skinless, thigh pieces with excess fat cut out) in a marinade that consisted of soy sauce, ginger, sugar, sake, and garlic. I then coated the chicken in cornstarch and then fried it in some very hot canola oil. Very hot. The chicken was never burned but some other kitchen implements were...hence the mess mentioned at the beginning. While it was a pretty simple recipe, I was very happy that my karaage tasted almost exactly like some of the ones I had eaten at restaurants in Japan. I served it over broccoli and steamed white rice.

Drink - Nigori (unfiltered) sake. I forget which brand right now but it was from Kobe and in a small pink bottle.

And in other food-related news of interest, on Sunday we went with Matt's family (including an aunt) to a good Mexican-American style restaurant in the small mission town of San Juan Batista.

It was called Los Jardines (the gardens) which should seem fairly appropriate with this picture here as most of the restaurant was outside in areas like these (look towards the back). Sunday had been a very hot day (easily over 100) but by evening it had cooled off so of course we ate outside. Los Jardines was also actually a fairly decent sized restaurant for such a small town.

But how was the food?

Carne Asada (roast meat, in this case beef), with rice and beans. Such a big portion but I was very hungry by this point (we had just gone to a Catholic mass in a very hot church) so that's ok! This food was delicious. Unfortunately not pictured, but one of the best parts of this meal were the flour tortillas that were also provided. I am so used to store-bought, chemically preserved flour tortillas that having freshly made tortillas was amazing. I need to make it a point to eat fresh flour or corn tortillas more often because the ones I have in the fridge just aren't the same. My taste buds and mouth can so easily tell the difference in both flavor and texture.

Okay, enough for tonight, I am getting hungry! More food to come...stay tuned...

Eating Out

2009-09-27T01:15:00.000-07:00

These past couple of days it seems we have been eating out a lot, whether it be for a social reason or simply one of convenience. I really do enjoy cooking, but sometimes, especially after that frustrating time from my last post, sometimes it is nice to take a break and enjoy a different meal or snack that, unlike a planned homemade meal, may be a completely spontaneous choice.

The first meal from this series was simple, but satisfying. Matt's mother Carol took me to walk around downtown Los Gatos late morning Friday, September 25. We found that most of the restaurants in the area she wanted to visit, Old Town, were too expensive, especially for lunch, so we wound up eating at a "Le Boulanger". It is just a sandwich place, nothing really fancy, but they don't seem to have any locations outside of the Bay Area (I checked) so it was different for me anyway.

Besides, I really really liked this sandwich. It consisted of chicken with hoisin sauce (a Chinese sauce), cucumbers, monterey jack cheese, and cilantro on sourdough bread. It was delicious and unique enough that I think I may try and recreate it at home. My usual sandwiches are pretty bland because I won't eat most normal sandwich condiments (mayonnaise, pickles, mustard, etc).

Anyway, despite having a normal simple dinner at home, we both decided to go out to eat again later with some of Matt's friends. As we were still pretty full by that time, Matt and I just snacked on the bread and had one drink each. As some at our side of the table had predicted would happen, appearing here are some pictures from Friday night at "Romano's Macaroni Grill Italian Restaurant".

Matt enjoying his "White Peach Sangria Martini" (at least, that's what I think it was, and it is in a martini glass). I had a "Leaning Bellini" in a silly glass that didn't photograph very well.

Ryan and Eileen with their delicious looking "Seafood Linguine" which I will definitely be ordering next time I go to this place and am actually hungry.

Finally, to conclude this post, here are some photos from Ikea which we went to on Saturday to look for a nightstand solve the crisis of Matt's alarm clock either being on my side of the bed (really disliked that) or on the floor on his side (also not a good idea). On the way out we decided since we have now gone to Ikea at least 3 times in the past month, it was high time to buy their dessert (we'd already had lunch there on another trip).

Matt had frozen yogurt.

I had their cinnamon roll. Delicious.

Okay, that's a long enough post from me tonight. Until I find or make more food to photograph or some more good food photos to reminisce about, I think I'd better get some sleep so I can continue to try make safe, fully concious decisions in the kitchen. As much as a kitchen catastrophe might be interesting to blog about, I usually prefer my food to not be completely scorched.

Disastrous (well, cooking-wise at least) Day

2009-09-23T20:33:00.001-07:00

Well, it happens. Sometimes as enticing and straightforward as the recipe appears, the result doesn't taste quite right in the end. Today the San Jose Mercury News ran some great looking Spanish tapas recipes. Tapas can be a lot of work, but I have made some successfully before (even if they were Argentinian and not Spain Spanish) and I already had a lot of the ingredients for one so I decided to give it a try. The recipe was for fried cod fritters, and I had my boyfriend fry some sausage since I figured the amount for the fritters alone wouldn't be enough for both of us for a meal. Despite my best efforts at following the recipe, the fritters tasted more like soft potato pancakes and kind of looked like a soggy mess with some bits of tasteless fish. The sausage turned out to be more turkey flavored than beef and even good olive oil couldn't save it. Oh well. We tried.

As I clearly have no desire to post any photos of my less than satisfying creation, I will instead reminisce on some past summer days of more delicious food. This is dedicated to my wonderful friend Liz who has won my heart over my NCC friends and even my boyfriend for showing me that someone besides just me is actually reading this blog.

A photo flash to the past of a delicious tempura appetizer from a sushi place on August 01, 2008 in Cincinnati, OH. I don't seem to remember the name of the place but it was pretty good.

I remember the name of this place though. This is "Buckhead", a restaurant located on the other side of the Ohio River so it is actually in Kentucky.

Liz and her niece (not her child!). I ate there with her and some of her family while visiting her at the University of Cincinnati on August 02, 2008.

I somehow don't seem to have any pictures of the food I ate there (too hungry from the long wait maybe?), but I seem to remember that the cheese boulders were absolutely delicious.

Instead here is a shot of the Ohio River and some of Cincinnati. Not my best photo of it, but Cincinnati is definitely one of Ohio's prettier cities, at least skyline wise. Dayton's is too small and Columbus's is just dull.

Ah...those were the days...even if they were only about a year ago, haha. Thank you for the great memories Liz!

California Coastal Cities - Carmel and Monterey

2009-09-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

On Monday, September 21st, we went to the cities of Carmel and Monterey for some relaxing site-seeing. Unfortunately, the weather was not what it was supposed to be and so I was unable to go swimming at Carmel Beach, and because it was cold we didn't stay very long in Carmel either. I only ate a couple things at a local bakery, and while good, not worth blogging about. I was too hungry and ate the cookies before I could take a picture of them anyway. Maybe I'll go back and try out some of their restaurants when it's supposed to be warmer there.

Monterey on the other hand wasn't nearly as overcast, so we decided to have dinner there on Cannery Row. The last restaurant we ate at there was quite good, but expensive during normal dinner hours, so we wanted to try another one. Our decision was made very simple when one of the restaurants offered us a free sample of warm clam chowder as well as a coupon for free clam chowder bowls for two. Perfect. The restaurant was called "Louie Linguini's" and they actually still have the same free coupon on their website if you look them up. It was a casual seafood restaurant filled with silly stories and photos about the fictional character "Louie Linguini" and all the crazy encounters with various celebrities and world events he'd had. There was even a large Bruce Lee plastic statue by the bathrooms for reasons unknown.

Campiness aside, the food was delicious.

The main reason for going in. Totally worth it.

Way too much food for one meal (we had leftovers) and not healthy at all, but the shrimp was full of flavor and despite the heavy breading, not oily or greasy either.

And as promised by my last explanation, the environment of the place!

Cloudy or not, isn't Monterey gorgeous? I want to go to the master's degree university here someday.

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Who knows what will be cooked up next...?

Beginning - a real one this time

2009-09-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

All right, this time I am determined to keep up with this blog on a more regular basis. As it already has a long formal introduction from my last post, I would just like to add something simple before I begin blogging about the good stuff. This blog is EDIT: Initially but not exclusively END EDIT dedicated to all my friends from NCC, especially those who lived in or regularly visited the room in Ward my junior year of college and who cooked for me, taught me to cook, or even bravely allowed me to cook for them . That includes, but is not limited to, Yusuke, Valeria, Peggy, Matt R., Tsuyoshi, Megan E., Jislaine, Jun, Michico O., Kimberly, Jack, Megan O., and so many more wonderful friends from International Club and elsewhere who really helped expand my knowledge and appreciation of really good food.

This blog will not be a pure recipe blog but simply feature all and any good food that I ate, be it at home, or restaurant. However, I decided my first feature meal will be one that I did indeed cook, because it was recent and I was particularly proud of it. It is so American (I am American after all) and not that complicated or gourmet, but still delicious.

This was thinly cut T-Bone Steak broiled with an Apricot Teriyaki Glaze (my first time broiling meat without setting an oven mitt on fire), twice baked potatos which I found seem to be a midwest staple but unheard of here in California, and a vegetable medley with brown rice. I don't think I need to include a recipe for broiling beef (I like medium rare) or for steaming the brown rice, but here is what I used for the potatos and vegetables:

Twice Baked Potatos (one variation anyway)
Cook potatos in oven or microwave until soft. Cut potatos in half. Scoop out the insides and put them into a mixing bowl. Mix with butter salt, pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, and nutmeg. Replace the potato insides and bake until slightly brown on top.

Italian Peppers and Tomatoes (using all fresh vegetables/fruits)
Heat olive oil in a skillet at medium heat. Dice garlic. Cut peppers and tomatos as desired. Add the pepper and tomatoes to the oil, as well as garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. Serve over the rice.

Drink pairing - definitely a good red wine. We had French table wine, but a good merlot from any country should work well too.

Finally, as much as I talk about food, I would like to bring attention to the reason I gave this blog the title of "World Cafe" and not simply "World Food." The word "cafe" evokes the image of unique setting that one does not go to out of a necessity to consume food, but rather for the ambiance and often even the company of friends or loved ones. While some people may indeed to prefer to eat by themselves, in many of the cultures I am familiar with, eating is all about the event, sometimes even more than the food itself. This is basically my convenient excuse to post photos of things other than food, as each picture of food has a story that I would like to share behind it anyway. Besides, narrating my own story through food clearly should not be very difficult for me. Such is my life.

As for the story behind this food and why I was so proud of it? This was my first time cooking more than just dessert or a snack for my boyfriend's parents. I was very nervous and trying out some new things at the same time, so I was just happy it turned out well in the end.

My boyfriend Matt P. and his parents, Marc & Carol, in our dining room area in our apartment, San Jose, CA

The next entry will feature some restaurant food as that is what I would really like to talk more about, (the food is usually more photogenic than my food) but at least I have now written an actual blog entry!

At last

2009-08-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

So, here I am, about to create my first food blog, something I've been meaning to do for a long time, although I realize it is hardly an original project even based on how long many of the url's relating to "World Cafe" were already taken on Blogger. However, I am tired of general blogs detailing random mundane information pertaining to daily life and relationships - I have already gone from Freeopendiary to Xanga and then to LiveJournal based on whatever my group of friends were using and the time - each time I become quickly bored with it and ended my relationship with those sites rather unemotionally. I was never one to wish every single detail of my personal life to be keystroked and submitted and then read on a screen by people I may not even know, or if friends locked and completely abandoned, people I may no longer care about. Still, the fact that I am here creating a blog does mean I do want some people to read about some parts of my personal life, just this time I think I should write it about something I really care about and not try and conform my entries to general ranting philosophical posts about life, the universe, and everything. I care the most about food. Lots of food. Good food. Food that is generally healthy but that is occasionally unhealthy taken only in moderation. Food that represents an excellent variety and satisfies my pallate. I am learning to be a "foodie" and I don't feel elitist at all for saying that. I am simply of the opinion that once a living being's needs of knowing they are going to be able to eat and having a safe place at which to do that eating are fulfilled, they should definitely then go on to satisfy higher wants and needs. I am pretty sure that is what humans have been doing for centuries - fulfilling wants and needs. Just as I am doing here once again; finally fulfilling a satisfying desire to write about something I feel very passionately about, and even post some photos I have taken of that subject while I'm at it. Bring on the food!