Austin

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

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.

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)

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!

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...

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

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.