Wednesday, February 1, 2012

unintended hiatus and a new year.

it's already february and so it's a month late but happy new year! let's make 2012 an awesome one!

i had meant to post at least once in january, but it never happened! where did january go? i wish i could say it was all post-holiday madness but that really wouldn't be true. time just flew by!

i've never really been one for new year's resolutions - but i think it goes without saying that keeping this blog updated (on a somewhat regular basis) should be one of them. onward!

Saturday, December 31, 2011

the omnivore's 100.

years after the original post, i came across the omnivore's 100 on the very good taste blog.

so here it goes. the basic rule is to copy the post, bold/highlight anything you have eaten, and strike out the item you would never consider eating.

1. venison

2. nettle tea

3. huevos rancheros

4. steak tartare

5. crocodile (i've had alligator - is that the same?)

6. black pudding

7. cheese fondue

8. carp

9. borscht

10. baba ghanoush

11. calamari

12. pho

13. pb&j sandwich

14. aloo gobi

15. hot dog from a street cart

16. epoisses

17. black truffle

18. fruit wine made from something other than grapes

19. steamed pork buns

20. pistachio ice cream

21. heirloom tomatoes

22. fresh wild berries

23. foie gras

24. rice and beans

25. brawn, or head cheese

26. raw scotch bonnet pepper

27. dulce de leche

28. oysters

29. baklava

30. bagna cauda

31. wasabi peas

32. clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. salted lassi

34. sauerkraut

35. root beer float

36. cognac with a fat cigar

37. clotted cream tea

38. vodka jelly/Jell-O

39. gumbo

40. oxtail

41. curried goat

42. whole insects

43. phaal

44. goat’s milk

45. malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more

46. fugu

47. chicken tikka masala

48. eel

49. krispy kreme original glazed doughnut

50. sea urchin

51. prickly pear

52. umeboshi

53. abalone

54. paneer

55. mcdonald’s big mac meal

56. spaetzle

57. dirty gin martini

58. beer above 8% ABV

59. poutine

60. carob chips

61. s’mores

62. sweetbreads

63. kaolin

64. currywurst

65. durian

66. frogs’ legs

67. beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake

68. haggis

69. fried plantain

70. chitterlings, or andouillette

71. gazpacho

72. caviar and blini

73. louche absinthe

74. gjetost, or brunost

75. roadkill

76. baijiu

77. hostess fruit pie

78. snail

79. lapsang souchong

80. bellini

81. tom yum

82. eggs benedict

83. pocky

84. tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.

85. kobe beef

86. hare

87. goulash

88. flowers

89. horse

90. criollo chocolate

91. spam

92. soft shell crab

93. rose harissa

94. catfish

95. mole poblano

96. bagel and lox

97. lobster thermidor

98. polenta

99. jamaican blue mountain coffee

100. snake

my total = 61 not bad, i think!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

national bundt day.

so a few months back my friend sent me a link to an article from the blog, the food librarian. upon reading, i was immediately hooked and added it to my reader subscriptions. the more i read, the more i learned that mary, the food librarian, was familiar with my home digs! we may have lots in common.

of course, in the beginning, i would read the most recent post, but at the same time i'd delve into some older ones. and i discovered that there was a day devoted to bundt cakes! november 15th. i have nothing against the bundt cake and it's probably the style of cake i like to bake the most. there's so many different types of bundt pans that are so pretty, it makes it easy to make a fancy looking cake!

i told my co-worker/friend p about it, and she was excited about it, especially since since we and several other co-workers just recently had a dessert potluck day just for fun. so, in honor of national bundt day, the two of us baked bundt cakes to share!



p made a chocolate chocolate chip sour cream bundt (the one that looks pretty with the powdered sugar spinkled on top) and i made a double ginger sour cream bundt (the one that is less pretty due to the issues i had when i flipped the cake.)



when p and i decided to make bundts for bundt day i immediately began to think what kind of cake to bake. i began to scroll through some of the food/recipe apps on my iphone. i came across a recipe for a double ginger sour cream bundt in the epicurious app, which was from an issue of bon appetit. i tweaked it a bit and was happy with the results. it's a yummy cake, pretty moist, and the crystallized ginger and sugar sprinkles add a nice texture while eating. the original recipe called for buttering the pan and coating it with raw sugar, but what i did was to make a simple syrup infused with ginger, and then brushed the cake with the syrup, and topped it off with some sanding sugar. it made me happy when a friend of mine, as well as my sister, who aren't big on ginger, loved the cake!







happy bundt day!

Monday, November 7, 2011

november already.

september and october have come and gone with nary a post from me. where does the time go? for me, september began with lots of good eating and a quick trip to las vegas with my mother and sister. it continued with more eating, and keeping myself busy with little things, which continued into the month of october, with moments of pure laziness in between. october also found me baking rather frequently, becoming the proud owner of an iphone 4S (siri rocks!), and participating in choc walk on an early sunday morning. i'll touch on some of these in another post.

as of now, the ramen tour with my friend c is pretty much at its end - our pace had dropped off considerably since the summer, but we still made time to go. i hope to get the few remaining bowls posted very soon. we have one more stop to go from our original list, and our goal is to complete it before thanksgiving, which is closing in fast.

this past sunday night, c and i kicked off our "pho"n with phriends pho tour. (thanks c for the clever name!) the topic had come up during our ramen tour, and this pho tour is limited to shops with fun, clever, and unique names. we started it off at 9021pho. guess where that's located? yup! in beverly hills. geographically, this tour covers more ground than our ramen tour. we had originally agreed to complete the ramen tour before beginning the pho tour, but when the voucher is going to expire in a few days...we can't waste it. i had purchased a $15 for $30 voucher for 9021pho via bloomspot a few months back, and all this time i had thought it was going to expire on 11/15/11, but good thing i checked, it was set to expire on 11/09/11.



it's been rather chilly these days, so it was a great night for us to get warmed up with some pho. it's not the usual hole in the wall kind of pho place that we usually go to...it cost a little more than we what we usually see (trendy area!) so we were able to hit the $30 pretty quickly. my sister came with us, and we each ordered a bowl of pho, and started off with an order of crunchy rolls. instead of the egg roll wrapper we had expected, it was covered with noodles. definitely crispy and very tasty.





i opted for the hot and sour pho soup. it was great! it reminded me of the tom yum noodle soup that c gets when we go to three spice thai kitchen. along with some rice noodles that needed to be loosened up at the bottom of the bowl, it was topped off with some sliced carrots, baby bok choy, red onions, straw mushrooms (i wished there was more in it!), fish, shrimp, baby corn, and surprise - some chunks of pineapple. the sweetness of the pineapple was a nice contrast to the spicy heat of the soup. i topped it off with some asian basil and lime juice. very warming on a cold autumn night.