no need to stir things up: offals and otcs

i've had a bout with the flu, it's been exam time and life outside has been calling so i've been pretty busy. been on a bit of nasty food binge lately with liverwurst and cream cheese sandwiches. on toasted oat bread it's extremely rich and sufficiently liver tasting. and yes, i have bought fresh red bloody liver to make liver and onions before, and i'll do it again. and it will be here. liver, however is not my favorite offal. that belongs to ngau pong, the spongey lung-like organ one can find in the dimsum dish 牛什 ngau4 zaap6 (lit. cow miscallany) that comes sliced so that you can see the air cavities inside. but that's a story for another time.


oh, and doesn't this just sound wrong? how can you not need to stir natural peanut butter? unless it's chockfull of emulsifiers and preservatives.. it's going to settle. something is slightly off.

i get so hungry when i read any food blogs. my bland food only seems bland when there's something for me to daydream about. down gluttony!

btw, of the two roberto's taco shops on mira mesa, the one by the strip joint has better salsa and a kick ass condiments bar loaded with hot carrots and radishes. it, however, is not as good as the roberto's 2 blocks up the street which is in a less seedy plaza. the end.

bento bloggers

i am fascinated with bento lunches. i used to make lunches similar to that in HS except they were almost always ugly, and usually only had 1 or 2 "sides" to accompany rice or pasta. the bento people have waaay too much time on their hands. variety is also not an option when 4 people share one medium sized fridge. they're so pretty though... for now, i'll just look and drool. here are some american bento blogs i found, they ahve links to other bento stuff on flickr and whatnot too. not quite pokemon shaped onigiri caliber, but the devotion is evident. although i find that some probably look prettier than they taste (raw broccoli, ick). the phenomenon of online bento blogs is really amazing..

http://mito.typepad.com/photos/bento/index.html

http://mrbentorodeo.blogspot.com/

http://www.getinmybelly.org/gimbarchives/cat_bento_boxes.php

Pomona Fish Market

imagine hushpuppies, popcorn shrimp, homemade coleslaw, and fried catfish with hotsauce. now imagine the little korean lady who runs the store rushing around taking orders at lunch at the outskirts of the funky revitalized artists' district in Pomona where it starts to blend back into the general shabbiness of the surrounding city. down the street is a dilapidated electronics repair shop and some vacant storefronts.

you've never lived until you've had a fried oyster sandwich. imagine an MSG coated crunchy outside and soft oyster resting on a bed of that slightly sweet relish coleslaw in a crunchy grilled hamburger bun. it was soo tasty until i started to get a bit sick of that coleslaw(i normally hate the stuff or anything containing mayo or cream) and felt like retching from the mayo-ness of it. about half the people that went in while i was waiting ordered the catfish combo. it's obviously the favorite, so i think i'll try that next time... with the fried zuchini. i swear i liked it!

wo meiyou mayo.

midnight snack

small eats from the local korean market (DB MARKET WORLD, 21080 Golden Spring Dr, Diamond Bar, CA) and leftovers from a chinese feast with the Magic Guys (as in, the Magic the Gathering). clockwise from the upper left corner: sichuan style spicy stirfried green beans, korean sesame marinated bean sprouts, korean spicy squid, peppersalt fried cod pieces ;)

so the story about the chinese feast. in the food court of a plaza on colima and nogales (fullerton?) across from the HK supermarket... there's this not-quite restuarant not-quite fast food place that serves a lot of cantonese style food among other things. it's like a big mishmash of popular dishes. they have this great deal where you can get 3 dishes for 10.99 (at dinner!) and if you order 6 dishes, you get a tureen of complimentary soup of the day. all this stuff is family style and includes the bottomless bucket of rice that's present in a lot of southern chinese restuarants in america. note that this isn't necessarily the case everywhere as some restaurants have less wasteful carts filled with rice from which servers will dole out a bowl at a time. this style is prevalent in higher class places and was quite common in HK. anyway, the 5 us us ordered peppersalt fried rock cod, spicy stirfried geen beans, a braised vegetarian dish containing tofu beancurd and cabbage, snap peas and shrimp in a garlic sauce, and i can't quite remember the last two... i think one was a leafy green called "hollow heart vegetable" stirfried in a fermented beancurd sauce, and.. yeah, can't remember it. must not have been a tasty one. i'll fill in the chinese names for them soon when i figure out how to use the language input for windows.

i think we walked out of there completely stuffed and with leftovers for a little over $26. this meal was immensely more satisfying than lunch that day at the cheesecake factory which really isn't that good and a bit overpriced. 3 people ran a bill over $55 for two entrees and a few extras! my friend ordered a "pad thai linguine" which came out to be a pasta dish in a goopy peanut flavored sauce. no bean sprouts, fresh herbs, chillis, tomatoes, lime, any type of bite at all. just an insipid attempt at fusion food. the buffalo chicken blazers(?) tasted neither like chicken, nor spicy hot sauce and they had this weird mushy consistency b/c the meat was blended with the sauce before being formed into patties. it tasted like something from a tv dinner. some of the celery that came with that still had mud on it. i'd expect that from a hole in the wall or a cheap eats place, but not from there! the tiramisu cheese cake was pretty good. seeing as it's the cheesecake factory, they'd at least get that right. yeah, ok, you get a lot of food.. but for the quality, it's not worth it. bling is not better. too cruddy to be anything but a standard chain restaurant. yeah, that place has a big X from me.

lazy me

so i've been kind of uninspired to do anythin gover break. since The ABC does such a great job of writing about food that somehow seems very similar to what i ate (i wonder why) you can check that out. his blog is infinately more interesting. and not just food.

the ABC presents:

Chinatown Restaurant (唐人街飯店)

and some other stuff. like noodles. and stuff.