On nom nom… :9

My blog has quickly become a food blog once again…

 

Today I went to my favorite Japanese lunch place, Kaita. Kaita regularly has special menu, which includes much of traditional Japanese home cooking along regular sushi and other stuff. Whenever I come here, I almost always get those special menus, but today was cold enough that this soba looked too good. Many people were ordering them.

20120120-222705.jpg

^ Kaita soba, combination of tempura, tanuki, and sansai (mountain vegetable) soba. The portion was quite big and I was full until a lot later. The group sat next to us saw our Kaita soba and they were ordering the same, too.

 

For dinner, we went to a new restaurant called Hong Kong Restaurant Chinese Food. With such a weird naming and being adjacent to a run down inn, we’ve never tried eating here even though we always pass by here. To our surprise, food was pretty descent. Some said it was more like family style food. We had eight people and ordered eight dishes, and finished them all!

20120120-230343.jpg 20120120-222715.jpg 20120120-222722.jpg 20120120-222728.jpg 20120120-222733.jpg 20120120-222738.jpg 20120120-222743.jpg 20120120-222748.jpg 20120120-230608.jpg

When we asked for no-MSG, the waiter kind of had shifty eyes, but I think we got our food MSG-less… … I think. (Why am I kinda thirsty now?) They also gave us free soup and dessert, which means I’m missing one dish in the picture, for crispy garlic chicken… That one was good, too.

Oh yeah we had two same-looking dish because someone loved the name too much: “Hokkien Tofu” and “Hokkien Fried Rice.”

Tanto (Japanese Restaurant)

We went to Tanto today for dinner. Haven’t been here a while, but it was still good restaurant, especially if we had a bit more people than just my hubby and me. We ordered a bunch of semi-unusual dishes today.

 

20120119-222728.jpg

^ Beef tongue. French kissing with cows, is what hubby said =__=;

 

20120119-222737.jpg

^ “Tanto’s signature dish,” says hubby. It is really good. Probably the best yaki onigiri (grilled rice ball) that I had, ever.

 

20120119-222745.jpg

^ Buta Mentai (pork cod roe). The sauce was excellent when dipping yaki onigiri in it. I want to try cooking this on my own.

 

20120119-222753.jpg

^ Sanma (pacific saury) with Japanese plum. I think in the middle was yamaimo (mountain yam). I don’t know about other people, but liked it a lot :D Sanma mmm plum mmm :9

 

20120119-222800.jpg

^ Tai (red snapper? sea bream?), ikura, shrimp in mizore (grated daikon) sauce. Really wanted to have rice to go with this dish, but too bad we ate all the onigiri already. We ordered extra rice dish, though by that time we finished eating this one…

 

20120119-222806.jpg

^ Tai Yakimeshi (red snapper on rice in stone bowl. The (cute) waitress will mix this for you right in front of you, and put them to individual bowl for you v

 

20120119-222812.jpg

^ You can eat it as is, or with dashi soup. I usually have it by itself for the first bowl, and with dashi soup for the second bowl.

 

By the time we finished eating, I was soooo full! It was such a enjoyable night with great company, great food, and laughter-filled conversation :D

Living Healthy

I’ve been wanting to bike/take train to work for some time (since last May during the bike to work week actually), and since I was passed out really early on Sunday after camping, I woke up super early on Monday, and decided that it is early enough for me to try biking to work!

Caltrain is big and using diesel engine, which makes it look very old fashioned compare to the ones in Japan.

One good thing is that it has two sections dedicated to store bicycles while the train ride. I found that the one in the middle car is more packed, whereas the one at the end (or beginning) is rather empty.

The driver’s seat is probably at upstairs, and so you can see where you are going right out the window downstairs. I’m a little paranoid and think what if something goes wrong and another train is about to hit ours head to head… so that’s why I sit in the middle car even if it’s more packed.

Caltrain cars are made by Japanese. I’m so proud of you, Japan ^_^ I didn’t notice this until right when I was going to get off the train on the first day, so I quickly unloaded the bike, went back into the train, snap a picture, and rushed out the train xD

When biking, I see more stuff on the road, too. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this if I were just driving, or even walking. (Shows how much I don’t pay attention to anything when walking x_x)

Caltrain only stops once every hour at my nearest train station, so I usually get there at least 5 minutes early. Train is usually late by a couple minutes at least, so I will be waiting there for a while, but it is good time to eat breakfast – something I’ve never done in past … how many years? Usually I just eat fruits there, then eat cereal when I get to work.

Overall, I am liking this lifestyle a lot, and not having to drive is really great :D

Thai Temple Lunch

Hubby and I went to Thai Temple in Fremont to have some lunch last Sunday.

[Read more...]

Vege Soup Curry

Attempt to cook something healthy continues…

I’m always curious about the difference between soup curry and normal curry, but I made “soup curry” that I think what it is. (Soup curry is soupy version of normal curry?)

I put lots of veges in it: 1 onion, 1 carrot, 2 green peppers, 1 broccoli, 1 eggplant, 1 tomato. And, since I didn’t defrost any meat, I just put bacon in it. It turned out pretty good. It was more like curry flavored soup, but it had hint of sourness from tomato. I also put hayashi rice roux, which made the flavor to go more mild. Bacon probably helped in some flavoring, too. Next time I should put eggplant in the pot at the same time as broccoli and green peppers, or maybe even after that, since eggplant all melted by the time we were about to eat.

Mid-week Dinner

Don’t know how it happened, but we had a spontaneous mid-week dinner outing with friends. We went to Won Kee restaurant.

One of our friends brought their new born baby to dinner, too, and I got to hold him for a while. He’s so cute and such a good boy ♥

Sa-By Thai

We tried this new Thai restaurant called Sa-By Thai. … It was okay. Rather, I don’t think I will go back to this place v__v


[Read more...]

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated my sister-in-law’s birthday earlier this week. We went to The Kitchen.

Since we’ve been eating very healthy (not using any oil while cooking), eating typical Chinese food was very oily, but it was still good to have something like that once in a while. Hubby was gaining a couple of pounds after we went home.

GCC Walk

I haven’t really kept up with my GCC walk unfortunately… but once in a while, my teammates suggest us to go out for lunch and get some steps.

This time we went to Dakao, a Vietnamese restaurant. I came here very often when I first started to work, since they carry decent food at very cheap price. I think back then a Viet sandwich was $1.50 or so. It is $2.50 now :(

Aside from Vietnamese sandwich, they have various food. I’ve never tried anything but Vietnamese sandwich and Spring Roll, but maybe one day I’ll try one of them…

I had grilled pork sandwich and spring roll this time.

I usually get full from just eating one sandwich, so I just ate 1/2 sandwich and two spring rolls. My coworker was eating 3 sandwiches, which made me surprise. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eats 3 Vietnamese sandwich at once. o.O

Classes

A new class started at work. This time, JavaScript. I’ve taken programming languages back in college, but wow, that was almost 10 years ago. I did C++, Java, Visual Basic, … and I wonder how much of it I still remember… At least I remember in one of the MIS classes, my group (4 people) used Java/JavaScrpt/JSP extensively to create some NCAA database that can be browsed through the Internet, and we did so awesome that teachers didn’t even have any question when we presented it. My group was the only one which used Java/JavaScript/JSP, everyone else was using Access (does anyone even use Access any more?) and something else, and was not browsible through the Internet. We basically finished this two-quarter-long project in three days, too. Though, I admit, this wasn’t possible if we didn’t have this one Japanese guy. He is so brilliant, genius, and very kind-hearted person. Kinda google-stalked him on the net. Found someone who matches the description, but looks so different. Wonder if it’s him? o.O;

Anyway, the first class of JS was okay. It taught very very basic stuff, something I’ve already known. At least this class is more of hands-on/learn by doing class, so I hope I can relearn it quickly. 10 years of not doing any programming/scripting (aside from a bit of HTML/PHP coding here and there) made me so programming/scripting-dumb T_T

On Thursdays, I’ll have another class – Schedule Optimization Techniques for Managers. This will be the third/final elective course. After this, I take one more required class and I’m done! I can get “Project and Program Management” certification from UCSC Extension. After that, I *should be* going after PMP… but I don’t know, we’ll see…

For dinner, I tried to make Hainanese Chicken Rice except… I don’t know, my chicken turned out to be very hard… It was late, too, so I didn’t even bother with fancy decoration and stuff.

Maybe I should be using chicken breast with skin? And cook with lower heat? Next time I’ll try this recipe instead: http://cookpad.com/recipe/212045.

As you can see from my recent menu, hubby and I are trying to eat a bit healthier. Hubby is totally cutting down on carbohydrate… except he still eats some carbo here and there. Today he wasn’t going to eat rice, either, but when he saw me cooking the Hainanese Chicken Rice, he changed his mind and said he would try a bit… After eating a bite or two, he gave me all his rice to me, so I guess he didn’t taste any “chicken” in it v__v;