Ouchies Food

i'm missing some teeth. actually, i've exiled them from my mouth and have replaced them with wooden dentures, just like george w. the first. had to fast for the anesthesia, and boy, was that some good stuff. i had to try really hard to keep from cracking up at the dr.'s instructions. afterwards i was really numb. and yes folks, i have a drinking problem. i keep missing my mouth!

so what's am i eating today? lots and lots of cold chicken broth. and very recently, a very small trader joe's blueberry and cream yogurt. i don't usually like yogurt unless used in savory dishes, so either i'm really hungry, or this stuff really is good. i'm trying to avoid reading food blogs. everything sounds tasty right now. even those weird american sushi rolls with cream cheese in it. hmm, kind of reminds me of a snack i used to eat as a kid. i'd spread a slice of ham with cream cheese, roll it up, and viola, deliciousness.

scrambled eggs

the brown bits in the egg are that "tianjian preserved vegetable" in the background. it's been a while since i've eaten any sort of 冬菜 or 菜脯 with scrambled eggs as a meal at home or in a restaurant. chinese comfort food? i'm a sucker for anything preserved, salty, and spicy. one of my favorite dishes in the whole wide world is 梅菜扣肉。i wonder where i can find Hakka and ChiuChow style food down here in SD? i always have a craving for preserved lemon duck soup. it's a rarity nowadays of sorts. not many restaurants seem to want to go through the trouble of making it, and places that do make it only make a limited amount of it per day and you have to order it in advance.

you can't find good preserved lemons in the supermarket. that is the kind of thing little old ladies who smell like mothballs (ah, memories) make at home. hmm.. who can guess what my next project is going to be?

fried tofu s&p

so.. i finally did it.. i took the plunge... and decided to fry something. using more than a few tablespoons of oil.



i've been wanting to fry this for a while, but have always had some other form of protein around until i've cleaned out everything except for the costco-sized bag of chemically chicken breasts that were most likely grown not on a chicken, but in a tank with all the other clones. used firm tofu that i drained and squashed the water out of with a use of two plates and a heavy bottle of soy sauce. the heat was somewhere on med-high with canola oil. i got the crispiness right. it took ~5-10 mins per batch. i have no idea how restaurants make it so tasty. they must put in an entire handful of meijing and spices. before the cornstarch coating, sprinkled ~3 tablespoons of a mixture of salt, white pepper, 5 spice for a block of tofu, and still not enough flavor. maybe it was b/c i didn't add msg? need to flavor more aggressively. and the green onion and chilies topping... i don't know how they do it. mines didn't come out dry and almost with crispy bits like theirs.

in the background you can see the lovely brown veggie curry. japanese style curry with carrots, zucchini, onions, potatoes.

btw, the muffins at Henry's are delicious. i'm not just saying it b/c i like the market. trader joe's breads and things always have a weird dough-y taste...

x marks the spot

so i was at the store and i saw a pyramid of angel food cake. so i decided to splurge a little. now that i had that.. well.. certainly i can't eat it alone. it would be like eating my way through a vast empty dessert without an oasis in sight. so i bought some berries to go with it. but just berries and cake can be like a fair maid in a saharan sand storm, so i had to buy cream to smooth things out.

i added a tsp or two of sugar and some cocoa powder to the heavy whipping cream to make chocolatey whipped cream. oh, be sure to use a real whip. the cream actually gets fluffier when it cringes away from the whips.



this lovely presentation was designed by one of my lovely apartment mates. note the pirate themed "x marks the spot" strawberry. thar be treasure here, folks.



this was my roomate's cake. i didn't want her to murder me in the middle of the night, so i tried to make it pretty. however, lighting at my desk isn't exactly the greatest.

i dumped my cake and berries into the bowl i whipped the cream in. extreme laziness.. AND i get the most cream. hehe.

"The Whole Food Meal"

i don't like energy bars. they usually have this weird gritty protein stuff in it, taste like codfish oil, and leave a chalky feeling in your mouth. the closest i'll come to something like that is probably a granola bar, but then those are waaay too sweet. i need to start making my own. anyways, one day, long long ago at school, i was hungry. having spent most of the night awake, i didn't really feel like eating any junk food. didn't want a killer tummy ache. shunning junk food, i skipped the food court and decided to try my luck rummaging around in the student store for something semi-healthy and still tasty. somewhere in between the little debbie ho-hos and the chalky gross cliff bars i found this:



the pro bar. no pictures of the thing. it was brown. i ate it. only saved the wrapper. i'm not really one of those super organic wheat-grass infused Juice Tiger types, but i figure that the people who do buy this stuff tend to be rather particular. the blurb on the back is about how everything in the bar is raw, contain raw dried fruit, raw seeds, raw unprocessed natural cane juice, raw etc etc. i think they had to put in lots of oil to hold the thing together, or it'd be too dry. that kind of showed when i took it outside to eat with my carton of OJ. it started exuding oils from all the nuts and stuff. however, it was tasty. did not taste like cardboard or overly sweet, nor was it heavy and preservative-y tasting. has a nice identifiable mix of protein (nuts) and carbs (rice, oats). i deem this bar safe for consumption.

liver and lotus root. not together unfortunately.

the market had some nice looking liver... i rinsed off the liver slices, dried them, then dredged them in some masa corn flour (the stuff to make tortillas from) that was mixed with some salt and pepper. then pan fried them.



a hunk of re-toasted french bread (not from that stale loaf) and slices of lotus root stir fried with a little salt.



some slightly freezer burnt slices of beef cooked up in garlic and worcestershire sauce, and chunks of zuchini and tomato cooked with some garlic salt, garlicky mashed potatoes.

some canned dolmas and marshmallows over a firepit, a lightnin' jack's bbq sandwich. i need to eat more... time for the market.

nothing to declare

stir-fried up some lotus root with soy sauce as a snack. then i cheated.

a friend came down to visit and found a reason to go to izakaya sakura. i'd always wondered what was there when i first saw it while visiting the pancake house. my friends had suspected a shady storefront for the mafia. i guess we were wrong.

despite comments from a college student (not me) "dude, these waitresses are pretty cute", the place was not engaged in any other sort of shady business. just good good food.