Nina Plays Bocce Ball?

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!

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?

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)

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!

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

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

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.