Sugary Sweetness

plump, purple, plums a plenty!

Comida

Speaking of language, while in Japan my mouth kept spitting out spanish words and phrases. Como esta? Me llamo es Jaime. Toca la guitarra! Wrong country lady!

So back to the point of this post: the BEST part about Japan was the FOOD. We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate some more. But, guess what? We never ate sushi! Apparently Japan has a lot more food than just sushi :) But before I get started on all our amazing meals, let me tell you a little bit about our in-flight service on Korean Airlines.

I got a few snarly looks when I told people we were taking Korean air. I have no idea why because it was THE BEST plane ride I've ever been on. I thought it would be an icky combination of miserable and scary. It was the opposite. I was in high heaven. Literally. We were served two meals: the first was a traditional Korean meal called "Bi Bim Bop" which included white rice, beef, mushrooms, green onions, noodles, kimchi, and soup. It sounds normal, but it was one of the yummiest dishes ever. The second meal was chicken, broccoli, carrots, a dinner roll, and strawberry cheesecake. Steve had shrimp pasta. YUM! In between these two meals we were served juice and a banana or a hot roll with beef in the middle (sounds gross, but it was my most favorite snack of all time!) Before the service, they passed around hot towels, and after the service they came by with coffee, tea. AND all of this was FREE. AND we got free beer and wine the entire time. AND Steve knows how to speak a little Korean, so we made friends with the flight attendants. Two more things: when we got on the plane, we each had a blanket, pillow, headset, slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, and bottle of water waiting at our seat :) And lastly, free movies!!!!!!!! In between sleeping and reading, I watched Whip It, Dear John, Valentines Day, and Its Complicated. Whoo!Okay, so that was my little experience with Korean food.

Onto Japan!

Our first meal in Japan consisted of candy and weird snacks. We adventured down to the nearest convenience store and stocked up on chocolate, dried fish, mixed nuts, and other sweet treats. All of which had funny packaging or just sounded really strange. Crunky was my absolute favorite. Mostly because it said "Good me!" on the package and its called Crunky. Steve's favorite was probably the teeny tiny Apple Pie squares. It's a piece of candy about 1 inch square, that tastes exactly like a morsel of Apple Pie.

Our hotel served breakfast every morning. I was thinking it would be fruit and bagels, but it was an entire MEAL! Rice, mini hot dogs, salad, two types of soup, boiled eggs (or raw if you prefer), cereal, yogurt, donuts, bread, bagels, these weird bean things, coffee, tea, and orange juice.

For our first authentic Japanese dinner, a colleague from our Tokyo branch took us out for tempura (my favorite!). We even got to sit in a special dining area where we take off our shoes and sit on a pillow. The chef dipped various things into batter and fried it right in front of us. Along with tempura we tried some sashimi (scallops and bream), but I didn't much care for those. My favorites were the shrimp, asparagus, and eggplant tempura. We must have been eating for like two hours straight. We had countless pieces of tempura, a salad, soup, and all of that was followed by a bowl of rice with MORE tempura on top of it. I was having a hard time using the chopsticks so our colleague asked the waitress to bring out special sticks that were rubber-banded together :) How embarrassing! For dessert we all had fresh fruit. I had a mango and Steve had half a watermelon - the best watermelon I've ever tasted! :)

Speaking of fresh fruit, fruit in Japan is very very expensive!!! We saw a cantaloupe for $50.00!! Here are some cherries for 8000 yen, which is about $80.00!!! No wonder they never served fruit at our hotel breakfast. We definitely take fresh fruit and vegetables for granted here on the Central Coast. We can go to farmers market and get a basket of cherries for $3.00!

Another interesting thing about food in Japan is the plastic food models! In addition to flyers and posters and menus outside restaurants, they have plastic models of their dishes outside on display. Some restaurants didn't have English menus so this made it easy to decide what to eat. The models look SO real. Some dishes looked freakish and weird dishes, and others looked soo yummy.

On our first outing through Roppongi, we saw a food model with a whole crab on top of noodles. Steve knew right then that he HAD to have it. So that night, we found the place again and tried this delicious pasta! I had the eggplant, tomato pasta. It was similar to our spaghetti, but with an asian flare!

I think my favorite meal we had was our first lunch outing in Harajuku. Steve got beef over rice with soup and salad. I got egg and veggies over rice. It was simple, but SO yummy. One of the quaintest thing about eating out at a restaurant in Japan is all the cute little dishes they use. Everything comes on its own dish on a tray. The tiny bowls and chopstick holders are so cute. I told Steve we could have a Japanese themed dinner and have lots of little side dishes and use our new Japanese china!

Speaking of pretty dishes, during our time in Shinjuku, we tried grilled eel. The eel came in a lovely little box. They had all sizes - small through extra large. This is the regular size box and the eel was grilled to perfected and oh so tasty. It tasted like a very mild white fish. It was served on rice with a side of salad and soup as usual. Tea is served at every meal. I ordered a Japanese omelet which is grilled eel inside an egg. I ordered a "Kora" with my meal - which is cola. I think they labeled it as "kora" because that's how they pronounce it!

Japan is full of awesome beverages. They had vending machines on every corner filled with japanese tea, iced coffee drinks, sodas, different juices and flavored water. The only western thing we really saw was coke zero and I saw Dr. Pepper once. We tried so many different vending drinks - I think my favorite were the iced coffees, "for relaxing time". Most of the bevs and interesting and humorous sayings written on them which made them even more enticing. Steve fell in love with Japanese beer and drank Asahi and Sopporo daily. We even had an alcohol vending machine in our hotel. They had everything like beer, whiskey and water, and lots of fruity alcoholic drinks like my personal favorite, peach flavored Slat. Great name, huh? On our last night out in Roppongi, we ran around the town with "Cola Shock" in hand. Vodka and coke in a can. One of the BEST mixed drinks ever.

One of the last treats we had we got from one of the subway stations. The Japanese stations are sooo nice. They all have little malls in them with lots of good stores, restaurants and treat shops. We picked up some donuts for the ride home. Steve got a green tea donut which looked like guacamole!

Some of you may be wondering if there were lots of McDonalds around and the answer is YES. There was a McDonalds on every corner. Our work friend told us that they pronounce McDonalds like "MacDonaldo" :) How cute is that. Makes it sound super fancy. All of the McDonalds were huge and had several floors for seating. The seats were plush, modern, and they were always packed with men in business suits on their laptops. We tried a burger and fries one night when I wasn't feeling too well, and it tasted EXACTLY the same. I assumed it might be a little different, but nope! Some other popular western places were Starbucks (we saw them on EVERY block), Subway, and Wolfgang Puck. I also saw one Outback Steakhouse, Lawrys, and Ruth Chis Steakhouse. Japanese people LOVE steak because I think it is hard to get good steak there.

Our colleague took us out a second time for Shabu Shabu. This was a real treat!! Shabu Shabu is thinly sliced Kobe beef, served raw on a plate. A bubbling pot sits in the middle of the table, and you take a slice of beef with your chopsticks, and swish it around in the boiling water for about ten seconds. Then Wa la! The beef is cooked and you dip it in a little dish with yummy sauce. It was soo delicious. We also dipped fresh veggies and raman noodles into the water and had a huge feast. It was probably one of the coolest meals I've ever had. Afterwards we tried EVERY dessert on the menu! There were these weird strips of transparent jelly that you dip in this molasses sauce. YUCK. Another one was this bean dessert, which was like soft pinto beans with sugar on top. YUCK AGAIN! Then finally we tried a yummy dessert that was a sweet jelly with a plum in the middle. My favorite was the green tea ice cream. I've never seen such bright green ice cream before. This meal must have cost a ton because I read somewhere the Kobe beef is very expensive and combined with this fancy restaurant and all the food we ordered, the bill must have been a few hundred bucks! Yikes! It was so cool that we were treated like royalty at these lovely dinners with our new Japanese friend and his beautiful wife!

I can't say enough how much we enjoyed the food in Japan. We were living in Cloud 9 with full bellies every day. We needed another week just to be able to try more food!! I hope this gives you all a glimpse of our satiable experience there.

Twenty Seven

Steve took me out to Madonna Inn on Saturday night to celebrate my 27th birthday. I chose Madonna Inn because I wanted to go somewhere festive and bright! Oh my, Madonna Inn was the PERFECT place for holiday cheer. They had the entire place decked out in snowy Christmas trees, giant ornaments, garland galore, flowers, tinsel, and everything else that you might consider to be a gaudy Christmas decoration. They had it all! My favorite part was the old-man band playing Christmas songs and other lovely tunes and watching all of the cute couples cha-cha-ing and swinging. I had a tender Filet Mignon (what else?!) and a complimentary (giant!) piece of Black Forest Cake, complete with a sparkling candle. What a treat!! Thank you Steve for taking me out for the third year in a row! I'm a lucky girl.

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Homemade oatmeal bread topped with blueberry-lime jam with a side of fresh peaches, juicy oranges, and a cup of Kona coffee. YUM.

Home Grown Fruit

Afternoon Delight

Food as Art

The only way Steve will eat a vegetable is if it is raw and in a salad...so we eat lots of salads. Salads are one my favorite things to make because all of the colors are so beautiful, and the finished piece is not only appetizing to the eye, but delicious and healthy. Common ingredients in our salads are spinach, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper (any color), cucumber, kidney beans, and although not pictured here, avocado, pine nuts or walnuts, chicken, and occasionally fresh pear, apple, or strawberry slices, and sometimes boiled eggs. My favorite salad dressing is Kraft Roasted Red Pepper with Parmesan Italian dressing, but we usually go for any variety of balsamic vinagrette or italian. YUM!!!!

Tiny Caker Baker

For Christmas, Helya gave me a Cupcake cookbook with recipes so lovely, I had a hard time refraining from ripping out the pages and framing them in my living room. Choosing which cupcake to bake first was even more difficult. I narrowed it down to two based on the ingredients I already had on hand and went to work. 

I spent an entire Sunday afternoon mixing, sifting, stirring, and frosting. I usually don't enjoy baking because accuracy is key to successful results. I am the worst when it comes to precise measurements and ingredients. But I wanted to take a stab at these delightful treats because I knew it would be worth it in the end. However, my biggest initial mistake was deciding to half the recipes. I didn't really know what to do with 48 cupcakes, so I thought 24 would be more manageable and I could just half every ingredient and it would still be accurate. You tell me what's worse: too many cupcakes or dividing 1 and 5/8ths by 2? In hindsight I would have been much better off with cupcakes coming out of my wazoo. Fractions belong in hell. Well, with Steve's help, I managed to convert all of my ingredients into weird amounts like 13/15ths of a tablespoon or somewhere between 3/4 and 7/8ths of a cup. I think that may have had something to do with the outcome because in my opinion, they weren't sweet enough and were a bit dry. On the other hand, Steve ate about 20 of them all on his own so they must have been alright. 

The best part about all of this is that I tried something new and I didn't fail. I've never baked 100% from scratch, so it was an accomplishment and something I will definitely try again. Tiny cakes on deck:  Dark chocolate molten lava :)

Mocha Chocolate with chocolate whip frosting and cocoa powder

Banana Pecan with butter cream frosting

Festivities

I didn't feel as festive this year as I usually do during the holiday season. Maybe it was the 90 degree weather leading up to December, or maybe it was because I had to work on Christmas Eve. Regardless, I managed to put up my mini Christmas tree and decorate the house a bit.

We arrived in Bozeman on Christmas morning and my mom made us breakfast as soon as we walked in the door. After our tummies were filled, we opened presents, and napped, watched movies, and relaxed. My mom made a beautiful pork roast for Christmas dinner and I ate like it was my first meal in weeks.

My little brother got a Glock from Santa. Yes, a REAL Glock gun. He is so gangster. I wanted nothing to do with that gun, but Steve had something else in mind. :)


I didn't even know Steve was into guns, but ever since we got back from Montana that's all he can talk about. He's been reading gun magazines, internet articles, and has been practicing his shot at the local shooting range. Boys will be boys!

We only spent a few days in Montana, but every moment was so lovely. We ran errands downtown Bozeman in the 20 degree weather and I was stupid enough to forget my scarf, hat, and gloves. Luckily, every store you walk into has the heater blasting to about 80 degrees. My mom and I had a warm drink at the local wine bar and I had the BEST spiked coffee ever. It was regular coffee with a cute little creampot of white chocolate liquor. SO GOOD. The rest of the trip was spent playing RockBand with the family and eating - LOTS of eating :) We went to The Mint so Steve could try some Buffalo tenderloin. He absolutely loved it, which was surprising to me, because that was the first time I'd ever seen him eat steak of any kind.

I was so sad to leave, but glad we had such a nice time in icey Montana. We got home Sunday and had the whole entire week off of work to rejuvenate and enjoy the last days of 2008.

Thanks for everything Mom! We love you!

Thanksgiving Used to be Easy

This year, I cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner for 4, on my own! It was quite the challenge trying to figure out how much to make, what to make, and how to make it! Thanks to my mom for all of her patience and help...I probably called her about 500 times during the week with questions and she saved me when I nearly had a panic attack at Vons scouring the aisles for water chesnuts and Knorr Vegetable Mix. Anyway, the dinner came together perfectly and my guests were very happy.

Since Steve doesn't like very many veggie dishes, I had to be creative coming up with something to serve besides a salad. So I put together a fruit and veggie appetizer spread with fresh veggies, dip, guacamole and tortilla chips, cut up apples, pears, and raspberries, and spinach dip served with a warm baguette.

The main course was a 12 pound turkey stuffed with my mom's homemade stuffing (with apples!), garlic mashed potatoes, gravy (made by Steve's mom), cranberry sauce, and dinner rolls. We had TONS of left overs which was good because one of my favorite things of all time is warm leftover turkey sandwiches smothered in gravy.

For dessert, Steve's mom baked a homemade berry pie. I usually don't like pie, especially the crust (unless of course, the crust is made from crushed Oreos), but this crust was amazing. It tasted like cookies. So, the pie was incredible, and Steve and I were left with 3/4 of it for leftovers :)

So there you have it - little me, hosting my very first Thanksgiving Feast. I actually had a blast preparing everything and I learned a ton! Hopefully next year I can cook Thanksgiving for my family! :)