Category: food commentary

I’m better now. I got to visit the family. It was awesome.

I have lots of food in my freezer. I poached some perch last week. Perch that I had bought in 2004. Thankfully, it still tasted like fish, and not like freezer burn. The poaching wasn’t all that interesting- I used some chicken stock, wine, and the leftover steaming liquid from the last time I made mussels (sometime last year). I took the poaching liquid after the fish was done and reduced it. I’m saving it for who knows what. I took the leftover fish and shredded it, then made it into salad for sandwiches (openfaced on TJ’s Garlic Naan- not as good as Deep or Pillsbury). It’s pretty good. A little fishier aftertaste than canned tuna.

I need to do something involving chicken. I have three in my freezer. When I finish with those, I can make tons and tons of stock. Which will then clutter up my freezer. It’s neverending. (Nanana, nanana, nanana.)

D&D tonight.

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This was not as good as we were hoping. The lapsang souchong made it way too smoky to drink straight. It wasn’t bad with tonic and some lemon. The smell was the most intriguing aspect of it. First whiff? Sweet. Second? Smoky. If you are a local friend, I will probably end up sharing this with you at some point, because I can’t imagine that I’ll get through it on my own.

It does photograph well, though. Please enjoy this shot of Qi with Stephen Fry hosting QI in the background.

Photo stolen from Lydia.

I’m not entirely sure that these pancakes are any better than the Bisquick of my youth, but they were tasty and easy to make. They didn’t make any more of a mess than using Bisquick.

D&D tonight.

No baby yet. Poor li’l Bruno. If only he’d known how disappointing a birthstone aquamarine is. In my opinion, the only one worse is August with peridot. Both of those stones are just so wishy-washy about their color. Be blue! Be green! Don’t be pale and washed out, it’s just sad. Take a stand, gemstones!

I don’t think sweetbreads are my thing. I went to Left Bank with my parents last night and decided to try them. They were… a little strange. The texture was kind of like scallops, strangely enough. The flavor was mild. They were served with mashed potatoes, which wasn’t a great idea, in my opinion. The textures were similar but just different enough to be really strange. Nevertheless, I’m glad I tried them.

I had some challah left over in the freezer, so I made French toast on Saturday. I froze most of it and have been eating it for breakfast. It’s tasty. I’m glad I had some real maple syrup! I bought it for the apple-rutabaga soup and haven’t used it since.

Yesterday was the Ghostwalk session of the D&D ‘minicon’ that my friends have been holding. I dusted off Mynnyd and brought him to the adventure. I nearly killed him straightaway- it was pretty funny. R☆ (and by extension, Cooper) was away at Stitches West, so Summer and Mynnyd were the only frontline fighters. Summer’s the awakened bear companion of the druid Berg. A marilith did about 100 points of damage in a round against both of us, plus constitution damage. (It took Mynnyd from 110 to 12 hit points!) Thankfully, we were both able to get healed so we could try to kill her again, but she teleported away, and we lost our chance. Oh, well. We were able to stop her evil plot, so all was well in the end. We’ll get her next time.

This month’s “Cake Day” at work is not cake, but soups. I was a BAD FOODIE and decided not to bring one in. The apple-rutabaga soup is too much prep hassle to make for my coworkers (plus there’s the bitch step of sieving it, since my blender is not as awesome at pulverizing as Barbara May’s is). Potato-leek is an unattractive grey color and basically an unexciting soup (as is chicken noodle). The chicken tortilla soup separates into layers (plus, I think it’s a little too spicy for general consumption). My attempts at pasta e fagioli have either had mediocre flavor or set up into an un-soup-like consistency (no links for the first time I tried it, I never posted it). Let us not speak of the time I attempted ribollita. Matzoh ball soup is… well, I make it from a mix, there’s no challenge there. Cream of roasted cauliflower, also unattractive. I was unimpressed with my attempt at making cream of mushroom soup, although I should really try that again, since I screwed it up the first time. Hm, what other soups have I made? The creamy scallion-mushroom soup isn’t great (although a pretty color). Oh! The lentil soup! That was GOOD. I could have made that.

I wonder if the sweet potato gratin dish could be made into a good soup. Sweet potatoes, cream, maple, chipotle… sounds promising to me.

Also, I was too busy to make soup- we started our new campaign last night! My new character is a rogue named Kaya Marquette. (Terrible name, isn’t it?) I came up with a pretty decent backstory for her, but I can’t divulge it here. I want to keep it a secret from the other players until it comes up in story. (Just in case they read my blog- long shot, I know).

Did you know about this? I certainly didn’t know about this.

I went over to Sara’s yesterday for sewing fun, and we stopped by this Indian grocery near her house to get samosas (which were ridiculously good- I ate three). Anyway, I found all these Pillsbury products in the freezer cases. I bought one Pillsbury product (Indian bread stuffed with peas and paneer) and two Deep products (malai kofta and a spiced layered bread). Very intriguing stuff. I was going to eat one of them for dinner last night, but then I didn’t (good story). I’ll probably eat one tonight unless I go out with the MV crew.

Oh, speaking of my Mountain View peeps, R☆ and Jer finished the table yesterday. Now we can be slightly less paranoid about spilling stuff on it. Pictures! Unfinished and finished. It is very big and awesome. We have lots of space for mapping. No, it’s nothing like the over-the-top gaming table I linked to before (nor do we have anything as high-tech crazy as this one), but it makes gaming much more comfortable now that we’re not crammed around a rectangular table.

I went to Wondercon yesterday in San Francisco. I met up with some friends and we traipsed around the dealers’ room in search of merchandise. I was looking for Pinky:st dolls (which I found), and TeapotGirl was looking for a Booster Gold action figure (which she didn’t find). We also ended up buying some Voodoo Baby dolls– I got this one for Barbara May.

The four of us (TeapotGirl, John, Barbequed, and I) had lunch over in the Metreon at a restaurant called LJ’s Martini Club and Grill. Apparently it’s moving locations soon. John and TeapotGirl got pizzas, Barbequed had salmon, and I had duck ravioli (with roasted garlic cream sauce and forest mushrooms). The sauce was fabulous, and the mushrooms very tasty. The ravioli were slightly less impressive. I found a small bone in one; that kind of sucked. I think the sauce would have been better on maybe a more basic cheese tortellini or something. Ooh, or make a soup out of the sauce and mushrooms. Nah, that’s be too rich and gross after about three bites. It was really good, though.

We got dessert, too. Creme brulee and a flourless chocolate cake. Debbie got a lovely tawny port.

LJ’s was overpriced but good. Since it’s moving to (I’m guessing) a less convenient location, I can’t see myself going back. That garlic cream sauce was just magnificent, though. Mm!

Until I start cooking again, it’s restaurant reviews for you!

I went out with the MV crowd (well, there were only four of us this time) to Tsunami Sushi last night. We tried to go to Tomi, but it was too damn crowded. If you’ve ever walked along Castro Street in Mountain View and looked in the windows, Tsunami is the restaurant that has Finding Nemo on an endless loop.

Decor: Very nice. They’ve got a tatami room in the back for larger parties.

Service: Good. Drinks weren’t refilled with any speed, but the food came out quickly. They gave us free dessert (tempura bananas). One of our water glasses was cracked, but it was replaced quickly. We ordered agedashi tofu “for the table,” and it came out with three pieces, which caused annoying division of tofu blocks with chopsticks.

Food: Pretty decent. The miso was good but nothing special. Jer said the pickles in the seaweed salad were good. The salmon was really tasty, the snapper and eel less so. And hey, free dessert (which came in four pieces, so they did notice eventually).

Price: Too high, in my opinion.

Conclusion: Probably wouldn’t go there again. But on a Monday night, when Sono is closed, Tomi is full, and you don’t feel like driving to one of the other million sushi places in Mountain View, it works.

Oy, I really have to start cooking again! I’ve been going out to dinner too damn much. Or skipping dinner in favor of some popcorn. I’m lacking inspiration, sadly.

The family got together on Saturday night to go to Nora’s Cafe for some French bistro fare. Their steak frites is excellent. J, Barbara May, and I got it with the pepper sauce, while Mom opted for a bernaise sauce (which she said was good but only room temperature). Dad got mussels, which he and I thought were a little overdone. Oh, and the fries weren’t hot enough, which was sad, because they had a really nice flavor. Although the pate on the charcuterie plate was good, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the rest of the meats. However, the green salads that accompanied everything were really good. Very flavorful arugula and the like. Barbara May got some French onion soup (over there, I hear they just call it “onion soup”), but I didn’t try it. I hope it was good.

The desserts were kind of a mixed bag, too. I got the very disappointing Fraise, which didn’t actually have any strawberries at all, just an overly sweet gel.  J and Barbara May got profiteroles, which were tough. Mom got Rhum, which was rum raisin ice cream (her favorite) with whipped cream and what seemed like a fifth of rum in it. Seriously, this was über-boozy. If I were to get dessert there again, I’d get the Norvegienne, which is vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and Grand Marnier. I was debating between that and the Fraise, and I totally made the wrong choice.

However, the excellent steaks and yummy salads really helped to make up for the shortcomings in the rest of the meal. I would go there again, but I’d just order more carefully.

I went over to Jer’s yesterday to watch the Super Bowl. And by “watch the Super Bowl,” I mean “sit on the couch and play Dawn of Sorrow on Jer’s DS while he watches the game.” A couple hours after it was over, I had to ask Jer who won. I really was not paying attention at all. We got takeout phô. It was decent.