日本Fall 2013--Part II: Eating Out

From the very beginning, our mutual love of food has played an important role in Keizo's and my relationship.  The night we met, he bought me donuts and coffee before I caught my train home and on our first real date, Keizo admitted he was still hungry before we had even finished the dessert that came with our meal.  All this is to say that we eat very well when we are together, and this trip was no exception.

The food pictured above is a sample of some of the things we purchased:

• dog-shaped bread with chocolate cream filling.  Why is everything in Japan so darn cute?  These days when I visit, I can't resist animal shaped bread; over the years I've also eaten pigs, pandas and turtles.

• a Japanese take on Italian pasta with shrimp, avocado and wasabi cream sauce.  This restaurant is in a relatively new complex near Keizo's local train station that also houses two bakeries, an import food shop and a stone fired pizza restaurant.  I like to refer to it as "Little Italy."

On this day our lunches came with a bread buffet and drink bar.  On the drink bar were two pitchers of fruit flavored vinegars.  I mixed mine with olive oil to dip the bread into, but other people were drinking them straight!  I suppose they tasted more like juice, but I was still pretty put off by the idea of downing a glass of something called "vinegar."

• minced chicken between slices of fried renkon (lotus root).  This dish is from our dinner of small plates at a yakiniku place in Tenjin.  We enjoyed a lot of delicious things, but the presentation of this one caught my eye: the ceramic plate with woven basket and tiny twigs, plus the large dollop of mayonnaise and salt for dipping are all so lovely.

• I am ashamed to admit I don't know the real name of the little ice cream place near Keizo's training ground.  I just call it the "Cow Shop" since it has several dozen miniature bovines decorating the interior.  They have a rotating selection of some of the most unusual ice cream flavors I have ever seen including tomato and carrot. 

Ordering is always a chore for me; what flavor do I want to try?  And with a double costing only 50 yen more than a single, which two flavors will go well together?  This time I settled on chai tea and Sweet Potato, which were both quite good.  The chai flavor was pretty strong, but the Sweet Potato was a bit creamier and had small, yummy sweet potato pieces in it.

While we ate out quite a bit (especially compared to my normal routine) we also cooked together a few times.  More to come in Part III...

Shortcuts

I've been complaining about a lack of time a lot recently.  Clearly I have some time since I manage to put these posts together...but meals with minimum effort are the name of the game as the semester draws to an end.

Simple shortcuts of late include sauce from a jar: 

The jar says nothing about how spicy it is!  I was expecting mild, but it's more like HOT!  I also think that my spice tolerance has diminished living on the East Coast (lame excuse, since my diet hasn't changed that much, but even my "medium" salsa is tasting pretty fiery these days.)

Sauce from a jar, plus frozen vegetables from a bag and some chicken, served over brown rice.  The curry came together so quickly since nearly all of it was from a package that the rice seemed to take forever.

I ate this bowl as is, but when I finished off the leftovers I added a large dollop of plain yogurt to cool it down a bit.

*****

My oldest and favorite kitchen shortcut is a box of brownie mix.  My mom started leaving the brownie making to me when I was in 3rd or 4th grade; which looking back was the start of my on-going relationship with the kitchen.  The beginning of my on-going love affair with food is harder to pin-point, since I am fairly certain it began mere seconds after my birth.

Anyway, I was in a baking mood last Sunday and Duncan Hines did not disappoint!  Minimal effort with maximum results...

...especially when topped with some tiramisu flavored ice cream.  No matter how crunched for time I feel, there's always time for dessert.

bistro 204

Inspired by our multi-course meal on New Year's Eve, Keizo and I decided it would be fun to make our own multi-course dinner at home.

The menu was as follows: a toasted baguette with olive oil for dipping; spinach and prosciutto salad; roasted corn and bacon soup; "Cheesetastic" pasta; Lemon-Dijon chicken; and chocolate parfait for dessert.








In all, I think it took about an hour and a half to put everything together, not including marinating the chicken or dessert, which was concocted in about 2 minutes from ice cream, mini cookies and chocolate syrup.

For me, the highlights were the salad and chicken skewers.  As far as Japanese bread goes, the baguette was delicious.  The soup was tasty, and of course my dessert cup was practically licked clean.  I was excited about the pasta, but I didn't feel like it lived up to its cheesetastic name.  It might be better with a different cheese than the one we used.

I've never really cooked courses before, and it was fun to work on my presentation skills.  There were a lot of dishes to clean up afterward!

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?

Do Nothing Day

Keizo arrived in Arizona July 18th, and said something like "let's go back inside" the second he stepped out of the elevators in the parking garage at the airport. Welcome to summer in the desert!

As if the heat wasn't rough enough, I had four more days of work to finish up. Faced with sitting home alone without a car for 6 hours a day or coming along and volunteering at camp, Keizo chose the latter and learned what it was like to try and keep the peace among a dozen feisty campers. Every evening after work we had some sort of social engagement; so much for a vacation! Finally Saturday rolled around and we made preparations for our much anticipated trip to San Diego. Saturday evening and Sunday morning were spent with Andrew and Megan in Tucson and we spent Sunday afternoon in the car heading west. We arrived at our rental bungalow around 8 PM, grabbed some snacks at the grocery store, made a quick trip to the beach just to prove to ourselves we had actually made it to the coast and called it a night.

It wasn't until Monday that vacation truly started, and we made sure not to overtax ourselves. After sleeping in, we grabbed bagels and coffee on the way to the beach. We tossed a ball around, Keizo splashed around in the waves and we walked out to the end of the long pier in Ocean Beach. By the time we got back to land, we were feeling a tad hungry. We stopped in an ice cream shop that only took cash and emerged with two mini cones. I had Blueberry Cheesecake, which was nice and creamy and just enough to tide me over until our next stop...

...2 PM happy hour at the Blue Parrot! We started out with Stone Pale Ale and added

a giant plate of nachos and

shrimp cocktail. The nachos were pretty average, but by 2 PM we were ready to eat anything. The shrimp cocktail was good, although I don't think cooking shrimp and pouring cocktail sauce from a bottle is really that difficult.

With our tummies extra full, we decided to get out of the sun for a bit and went back to the house for a nap. We finished off the afternoon with some relaxing on the patio and got ourselves cleaned up just in time to see the sunset on our walk to dinner.

We weren't too hungry, so we decided to try The Joint, which was a combination sushi/tapas bar. There was even a samurai painting on one side of the door facing off with a conquistador on the other. Clever.

We ordered wine, salad and two sushi rolls. The salad was arugula, cherry tomatoes, candied pecans with a light vinegarette dressing and helped counteract the heaviness of lunch.

For sushi we got a California roll (because we were in California!)

and what was listed on the menu as "Tempura Yam Roll" which was a thin slice of kabocha tempura with cucumber and yuzu (Japanese citrus) The yuzu stole the show, giving the roll a very unique flavor. It took me a few minutes to place what it was, but it instantly reminded me of Japan!

So "nothing" actually included a lot of eating and walking to and from meals, but no cooking and no real schedule and that is good enough for me.

East meets West

Since almost everything made on this blog is a mix of East and West, the title of this post really doesn't tell you anything about the contents.

Tuesday's fusion dinner was a kimchi nabe accompanied by some Mexican beer and finished with American-style ice cream for dessert.

We've been meaning to make kimchi nabe for a few weeks, since it would be an excellent way to use up some of the mochi that is still hibernating in the freezer. We picked up a packet of soup at the grocery store, chopped up a bunch of vegetables and added several varieties of meat from the freezer (chicken meat balls, bulgogi, and sausages.) Put everything in a pot and cover.

When it's ready to serve, use a ladle and chopsticks to transfer desired ingredients to your

individual bowl and top with a bit of shredded cheese. Cut the spice with some Corona.

When most of the meat and veggies have been eaten, add the starches to leftover broth. On Tuesday, this included a long frozen pack of udon noodles and some mochi. Keizo and I both decided that this was our favorite way to eat mochi so far; its gooey texture worked much better in soup than as a pizza crust.

We continued to clean out the freezer after dinner with some left over Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake from Shinya's going away party. Shinya is one of Keizo's teammates who after spending most of the season injured, is retiring from rugby and moving to Australia to be with his French girlfriend. (And I thought Keizo and I had a complicated long distance relationship, but at least there are only two countries involved--so far!)

Mmmmmm chocolate! The cake kept us fueled while we completed a surprisingly challenging, 500 piece, underwater themed jigsaw puzzle. I bought it at the dollar store at home before I left, and we estimated it took six hours (over two days) to finish. Six hours of entertainment for $1? That is a pretty good deal!

Strawberries in December?

The answer is "yes"!

Strawberries are a winter crop in Japan, grown in green houses of course. Their peak season isn't until February/March, and by then you are so sick of mikans you are willing to pay any price to get your hands on some. This early on in December, paying $6 for a pack of 8 strawberries is a bit much (thankfully the price goes down as they become more abundant.) But if you happen to be shopping at the end of the day, and you see some on sale for under $3 and you are already a bit tired of mikans because there is a huge box on your stair case, I can think of no good reason not to buy them.

And what better way to eat them than in a parfait with crumbled cookies and "Maple-Cookie" ice cream.

The strawberries also found their way into some breakfast smoothies as well, which were undoubtedly more nutritious, and only slightly less delicious.