Mid-week Madness

The title of this post refers mostly to my inability to control myself at the grocery store, not an overwhelming work load (thank goodness!) Apparently, I feel so confident with where I am in my work that I not only have time to spend an hour at the grocery store, but then another hour cooking/eating and a good 40 minutes cleaning up various areas of my apartment, but blog about it all too!

Today's grocery haul. Most people who live alone probably don't spend $86 on a trip to the grocery store. In my defense, I am still stocking up on some basics like sugar and flour, but the most expensive items were the "family pack" of frozen tilapia fillets and 10 pack box of granola bars at $9.99 and about $7.00 respectively. The fish will keep and come in handy, but I might need to re-examine my granola bar preferences.

These were not on my list, but they looked really good. And if you end up with something not on your list, it may as well be vegetables. The green beans and garlic are drizzled with a little olive oil, salt & pepper and baked at 400*F for 20 minutes. I took them out once in the middle to mix around and make sure stuff wasn't baking to the pan too badly.

While the beans were roasting, I started on the main dish that sent me to the grocery store in the first place--fish tacos! I defrosted two fish fillets, cut them into taco sized chunks, coated them with a mixture of cornmeal, chili powder and crushed black pepper and put them in a pan with a bit of olive oil.

Beans at the end of their roast, crispy on the ends, sweet in the middle and smelling gloriously garlicky.

I set the table with the necessary condiments and warmed up the tortillas in the microwave.

And voila! Dinner time!

All of the post dinner clean up helped me avoid a total food coma, but didn't stop me from putting on my elastic waist PJ pants right after I finished. Like my pantry, I am FULL.

Dinner for One

And so it begins...again. "It" being life as a responsible adult, going to school full time, working part time, keeping my apartment looking half way decent and cooking for myself on a regular basis. Life under my parent's roof for the last two years was getting really way too comfortable, so I am excited to be on my own, but it's certainly a lot of change to deal with all at once!

Rule #1, (which I have been forgetting and paying the price for) is to start cooking dinner before you are ravenously hungry! Whatever you are working on will still be there after you finish cooking; unlike half of the ingredients you were going to use, which will disappear during the cooking process.

Luckily, I managed to save enough food to actually make some fairly decent meals so far.

Sunday: Pasta with sauteed farmer's market produce (onions, corn, tomatoes and mixed greens) and a healthy sprinkling of parmesean.

Tuesday: Brown rice and black beans with mixed veggies and salsa, topped with plain Greek yogurt. Took some of the leftovers for lunch today; just as good cold!

Wednesday: Whole wheat tortilla quesadilla with chunks of gourmet farmer's market veggie burger, garnished with avocado and salsa. Corn on the cob on the side.

Having finished my reading for school (at least for tomorrow,) it is now time to curl up with some reading for fun. I hope to get to the post about eating my way across the country over the weekend ;-)

Eating My Way East

It's been just over a week since I arrived in Charlottesville, and the details of my awesome cross-country trek with my mom to get here are already getting blurry. I have almost 400 photos documenting our adventure through 10 states and 3 time zones, and not a whole lot of time at this point to properly edit and caption them. But at least I will put the food related rundown here.

Day 1, Phoenix, AZ to Albuquerque, NM. The original plan was to get on the road about 9 AM. I opted to sleep rather than stay up late packing and we left around 11 AM instead. But, I got everything in the trunk and backseat of my Carolla that I wanted with room to spare. Go me!

Dinner in Albuquerque was at Little Anita's, where we split some sort of veggie enchilada platter that came with red and green chili sauce on the side and two fresh sopapillas for dessert. I'm glad I didn't try and eat it all on my own.

"Christmas style" a NM specialty.

I almost never get dessert at Mexican restaurants because I am too full from the rice and beans. I forget how yummy hot fried dough with honey is which is a shame.

Day 2, Albuquerque to Canyon, TX. The second day we ate lunch at Joseph's diner, along old Route 66 in Santa Rosa, NM. The dining area was appropriately decorated with old license plates and ketchup/mustard bottles on the formica tables. I ordered the Santa Fe chicken sandwich as shown below. Pretty good!

I also talked Mom into getting a piece of their homemade pie to go. I chose Coconut Creme over Apple and Lemon Meringue, despite Mom's slight nose wrinkle. Later, somewhere near Cadillac Ranch I pulled it out of the cooler and it made the whole car smell like coconut. Mom's tune changed when she had a bite, saying it was the best Coconut Creme pie she'd ever had. It was one of the best snacks I've ever had.

We stopped for the night in Canyon, TX a small town south of Amarillo. And ate really good Thai food for dinner, who knew!? I got the noodles, and my mom ordered the fried rice.

The tomatoes and fresh cilantro were very yummy additions to the fried rice.

Day 3, Canyon to Tulsa, OK. We spent the morning exploring Palo Duro Canyon, the nation's second largest canyon before getting on the road. Due to our later start, we stopped randomly in Elk City, OK for a lunch/stretch break. It being rather warm, ice cream for lunch seemed like a good idea, and this large ice cream cone sign did not disappoint. We split a chicken sandwich with fries and got our own ice cream concoctions.

Sadly there are no photos of the actual food. The rest of the food from the trip is not well documented. I was taking lots of photos of the scenery, and we often ate dinner rather late in dark restaurants.

Day 4, Tulsa to St. Louis, MO and day 5, St. Louis. We took a break in the middle of the country for a day, which allowed us to swim in the hotel pool a few times, bruise our knees and noggins at The City Museum and eat at St. Louis' frozen custard institution, Ted Drewes. Clearly we weren't the only ones with the idea on a balmy Sunday afternoon.

The long lines gave us a few minutes to choose what we wanted from the extensive menu.

We ended up with "Cardinal Sin," chocolate fudge and cherries, sundae style and a "Big Apple," apple pie a la mode, blended shake style.

Obviously, it was delicious.

Day 6, St. Louis to Louisville, KY. We really didn't have any bad days on our trip (we are so lucky!) but I think this was one of my favorites. We covered 4 states (MO, IL, IN and KY) spent the morning in a great park at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers (birds for Mom and a jogging path for me!) and visited the boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln (which is in Indiana, not Illinois, sort of messing up our lunch plans.) And that is all before we got to dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville. Not sure what about it captured my eye in the guidebook, but I am so glad we went and very upset that I left my camera charging at the hotel. Completely wonky decor and rich, Southern food. It's described somewhere as the restaurant that Dolly Parton and Salvador Dali might open together, which sums it up well.

Day 7, Louisville to Beckley, WV. Our morning in Louisville was spent at the Kentucky Derby Museum, so now I can at least say I have been somewhere, even if I haven't technically seen anything since the Derby was not in session. The afternoon was spent driving through horse farms and into the hills of West Virginia. We arrived at our hotel, which shared a parking lot with this sign.

Mom and I decided pretty early on that since neither of us had been to one, we should try a Cracker Barrel on this trip. We had a chance to almost every day, since they are roadside staple in every state we passed through, but the stars didn't align until our last night on the road.

I started with a cup of veggie soup, which tasted like...veggie soup. Topped with corn bread though it was pretty good. I also ordered the blackened catfish sandwich, not pictured because it was one of the most uninspiring meals I have had in a long time (probably since my days as a counselor at sleep away camp!) Two pieces of white bread with a fish fillet on the top, served open faced with cole slaw and about 3 pickles slices on the side. Will definitely not be ordering that again.

However, I would stop at a Cracker Barrel again for this:

The Baked Apple Dumplin' with about a pint of vanilla ice cream on top. I am happy to report that the meal ended on a (sugar) high note!

Day 8, Beckley WV to Charlottesville, VA. The drive between the two cities was only about 2.5 hours but we stretched out our last day as long as possible and didn't arrive in C-ville until about 5 PM. After checking out of our hotel in the morning, I stocked up on some locally made food for my new pantry (maple syrup, jam, honey mustard and orange basil salad dressing) and we headed out of town. Our route took us past White Sulphur Springs, home of the Greenbrier Resort.

Mom didn't think it would be appropriate for me to start school on the East Coast without knowing about the Greenbrier, so we took a small detour, left my road weary Carolla with the valet (ha ha) and went inside for lunch. The main building was decorated by Dorothy Draper, who I would like to rejoin the living and decorate my apartment. Bold florals, tropical colors, black and white marble and real hand towels in the bathroom!

Feeling not quite dressed for the dining room, we headed to the pool (via shuttle!) for a meal of salad and "fresh potato chips" with blue cheese crumbles.

The salad lived up to its description, the one downside was the large chunks of veggies were a bit hard to cut with the faux cutlery.* Mom and I were expecting the fresh chips to be more like fries, but their thin, crispy appearance didn't stop us from dunking them in the extra blue cheese dressing and eating them all.

*which our very friendly waitress rinsed off and put into a fancy bag for us when my mom said we wanted to save it (cringe, although I kinda wanted it as a souvenir too)

After exploring the Greenbrier, it was almost past time to get on the road. Neither of us really wanted the adventure to end, but we had a lot of work ahead of us in Charlottesville to get my apartment set up. There are only so many things you can fit in a Carolla, and furniture isn't one of them! Thankfully, my housemate is a wonderful person and she took me out the next day to pick up a futon and some used items at the Habitat for Humanity store.

After seeing cousins and a massive trip to Target, I had to put Mom on a plane back to AZ. It was a bit rough saying good-bye, not because we wouldn't be seeing each other for a while, but because we had such a good time together. Thank you for everything Mom!!

The apple doesn't really fall far from the tree, does it?

PB, B & J

After two failed attempts (Friday and Saturday) of getting up at a normal time so that I could go jogging before it got really hot, I managed to get myself up, dressed and out the door before 9 AM today. Before I left, I drank some water and ate about 1/2 a banana. By the time I finished my jog, cooled off a bit and stretched, it was about 10 AM and I was very ready for some breakfast.

Although eating 1/2 of a banana and leaving the rest behind runs in the family (my maternal grandfather did it all the time) I know that my immediate family members don't look too kindly on this practice so I wanted to use up the remaining half before it got brown. I toasted some wheat bread, smeared on some PB, added a layer of banana slices and some homemade strawberry jam and made a sandwich.

Note the triangles. This is the way all sandwiches should be cut in my opinion. Even wraps/subs should be cut on a angle so you have a nice point to stick in your mouth. Corners and flat edges don't make nice starting points for sandwich enjoyment.

The day got off to a good start, but my level of productivity has been in a downward slide post-shower. I am tired of packing, and I saved the hardest part for last---my clothes. Why am I so attached to things I don't even wear?!?

It's Friday, Friday, Friday

Friday means I can start dinner preparations with one of these!

I sometimes start dinner preparations with one of those on days that are not Friday, but beer tastes extra nice at the end of the week.

Tonight's menu was adapted from last week's Joy the Baker "Quinoa Black Bean Mango Salad" recipe. I didn't use any millet, nor did I substitute anything for it. After putting quinoa on the stove to simmer, I sliced up this beauty:

and threw it in a large bowl with chopped green onions, black beans and some lemon juice.

Later I added the quinoa, a little olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Quesadillas (no kimchi in these, unfortunately) and scrumptious cherries rounded out the meal.

A nice start to the weekend, which isn't shaping up to be much different from my week---more packing, school paperwork, meals out with friends and tying up of loose ends. Road trip to Charlottesville, VA starts on Wednesday!

Sticky Rice

Remember this? It had been sitting in my closet for a few months waiting for the appropriate crowd to help me make it. The quorum (Andrew and his girlfriend Megan, Keizo and myself) was reached in Andrew's apartment a few weeks ago.

Step 1: Open the box. Marvel at how a few silver packets, a tiny plastic shovel and tray plus a bit of water is going form freakishly convincing sushi in a few minutes.

Step 2: Pour ごはん (rice) packet into largest compartment.

Add a few drops of water and mix with shovel until rice-like globs form (very sticky rice!)

Step 3: Empty たまご (egg) packet into appropriate trough and repeat same steps as for the rice, smoothing the top part down.

Step 4 & 5: Repeat with まぐろ (tuna) packet. Next up is the いくら (salmon roe) which is slightly more complicated (and perhaps the most convincing of the bunch!) Add いくら packet to smallest compartment and mix with water. Fill adjacent compartment with water and use dropper to transfer red gelatin to water trough. Oh the marvels of chemistry!

Step 6: Assemble the sushi! Aroma of grape Kool-Aid aside, the ikura roll below really resembles the real thing, don't you think?

All of our work resulted in six tiny sushi, their diminutive size indicated by the invasion of my finger in the photo below. We each tried a small bite, and came to the not very surprising conclusion that they looked way better than they tasted. Their texture also left a whole lot to be desired.

It was a very fun experiment though, and even knowing how awful they taste, I really want to try another one of the kits. There's one that makes ramen!