Catch-up Time!

It's catch-up blog time! These photos are actually in reverse order of when they were taken, due apparently to my inadequacies at uploading.

During this time, I also braised some leeks. Having never had leeks, I found them delicious. However, in the photo, they looked horrifingly unappetizing.

I also made some hoecakes and some oyster stew, neither of which came out very well. The hoecakes were too thick and so didn't really fry up crispy. The oyster stew was just plain bad. The butter kept separating from the cream and it was way too spicy. But oh well, it happens, right?

Finally, I seem to be missing a picture from Imo's Pizza in St. Louis. I don't usually like thin crust pizza, but this was really good. It wasn't too tomatoey, the toppings were under the cheese, and it was a bit more acidic than a lot of pizza. I ate way too much.


This is my Mom, Travis, and I sampling some original Ted Drewes frozen custard in St. Louis. It was amazing! They have many other flavors. The one that caught my attention the most was called The Great Pumpkin, which was pumpkin pie mixed with the frozen custard and topped with whipped cream and cinnamon. Yum!


This is a fried scallop sandwich from Malibu Seafood. The scallops and the fish there are really fantastic, but this sandwich was really only so-so. The cheese was too thick and not quite melted, and the scallops really had no inclination or reason to stay in the bun where they belonged.


These are some blonde brownies I made, which if I must say - they were delicious. They were a big hit at my office too. Nutty and chocolatey without being overwhelming. It's a Paula Deen recipe, so of course not good for you in any way whatsoever.


This is a sampling of goods that I got from Wonder Bakery in Downtown LA. The two smaller pastries weren't very good, in fact, I can't even remember what the top one is. The longer thinnish one is a BBQ pork bun. I think it might have been better with regular pork instead of BBQ, I wasn't a big fan. However, the square item is honey cake, and it was sooo good. It had that great spongeiness of angel food cake, but with better flavor. I highly recommend it.


And finally, this is a honey-glazed cornish game hen with rice pilaf. It was really good too and also a Paula Deen recipe. Sadly, I didn't really like the rice as much after getting the glaze and hen-juice all over it. The things I do for the sake of bad food photography. Seriously, I know the photos need a lot of work. Travis says something about white-balance, but I don't even know what that means.

So that's it! I'm all caught up on my food blog! But, I'm still cooking, so hopefully more to come soon. Today I found some raw peanuts at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, so I'm hoping to roast those. Plus, brussel sprouts are in season, and I have some fresh salmon from Santa Monica Seafood to play with. Sounds like a fun weekend!

Last China Blog

So, in an effort to get caught up on this whole blogging thing, I'm throwing out one last China food blog. Yum!


This whole fish was really good. We had fish like this a few times, always with this sort of sweet and sour crust on it. It was quite delicious, if difficult to eat family style. In the back right, there is a plate of baby bok choy - we must have had this at every meal. In fact, there were several times that the vegetarians in the tour group pretty much subsisted on baby bok choy and rice.

China did not seem to be an especially vegetarian-friendly country, or at least not the places we ate on our tour. One man in our tour group seemed especially frustrated that they seemed to think that vegetarians only ate vegetables (I was never quite sure exactly what he wanted. He complained one day that a friend of his took him to a Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing the night before the tour started, and all he had to eat was grass. I never figured out if he was being literal or not.) Once, they threw in some tofu, and that seemed to appease him a bit.


Mmm, this was from our dumpling feast in Xi'an, possibly my favorite food of the whole trip (the closest contender is some homemade noodles we had outside of Xi'an). After a number of cold dishes, some noodles, etc. we started the dumpling feast. There were either 17 or 19 types of dumplings in all - enough for everyone at the table to have one of each. My favorites were some of the seafood and duck, least favorites included something so spicy I couldn't breathe and this walnut thing (too thick, ugh). They were also shaped beautifully - many of them were shaped like the food that was in them. I found this link that has more pictures of the restaurant and dumplings. By the time we left, I was so full I thought I might explode, and we had to walk what felt like miles (but Travis insists was not far at all) in 110 degree heat.

There are more pictures on my flickr site of foods that I saw but didn't eat: stinky tofu, soup dumplings, a steamed bun restaurant, and something very tentacle-y. Just click on the China set on the right hand side.

There was so much amazing food on this trip - the first thing we ate still stands out, which was this amazing fried rice and dumplings at our hotel in Beijing, which we ate while extraordinarily jet-lagged. We couldn't understand how we could be expected to eat so much food, and we eventually gave up, embarrassed. Only later did we learn that it is customary to serve too much food, and it was be considered rude to ask for less or to complain about it being wasteful or anything like that.

That in itself should give you an idea of how hospitable and friendly the Chinese people generally are. China is really an amazing place. The people obviously love their country, and they are so proud of it's sights, sounds, and food - most people we saw seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in seeing tourists enjoy their surroundings. It seems like I have so much to say, but I think wraps it up pretty well. Next, I'm on to catching up on the various things I've cooked and eaten since getting back to California! Yay!

Chinese Breakfast

I really loved breakfast when we were China. The thing about Chinese breakfast foods is that, well, they really don't exist. The Chinese eat roughly the same types of things for breakfast that they would at any other time of day.

I think this breakfast was the 2nd day of our tour, in Beijing, and I remember sitting down to eat and just being so pleased with the world in general, it was really quite good. There's nothing like mixing bacon with spring rolls, grilled tomatoes, fried rice, and dumplings.

Our breakfasts were always buffet style, and they were always a mix of Western, Chinese, and Japanese foods (I suppose because of the large number of Japanese tourists in the hotels). I could never quite figure out what that pastry was, but it was delicious. But my favorite, by far, was dumplings. I could (and probably did) eat dumplings at every meal. I mean, you can put anything inside them, so it's really an all-purpose food.

brought to you by: China!

So, I went to China recently, and I ate a lot of seriously awesome food. It led to me making a decision to expand the food blog beyond food I cook and into food that I eat. This is the first lunch we had upon joining our tour group in China:


I was so excited.

Basically, most of our meals involved sitting at a round table for 8 with a giant lazy susan in the middle. Waitresses would constantly bring out more dishes with enough for everyone to grab some food. This particular lunch had 15 dishes, and I would say that was pretty standard while we were there. It was a really good vacation for food. I really love the cabbage (under the chopsticks) and also the fried corn in the center. The pork on the right side was braised and served in a large pot. I don't remember what was in the empty space, but obviously it was delicious, since I finished it prior to remembering to take a photo. :)

This is a picture of a dinner where you can see the lazy susan in use:

I'm awfully tired this evening, I really just wanted to throw my upcoming blog changes out there. I have more China food to discuss as well as some things I actually cooked! So long for now.

Veal and Creamed Spinach

This one is actually from last weekend, but it was pretty yummy. Recipe can be found here. It was really quite good. Not sure how Travis felt about the veal, but I thought it was pretty tasty. Plus, I love creamed spinach, and this was the first time I had ever attempted it.

However, there seems to be some sort of regional difference between "bunches" of greens. This recipe calls for one bunch of spinach, and the collard green recipe that I love calls for one bunch of greens as well. But, that is never enough. You can sort of tell from the photo that there is too much cream and there are way too many onions. Next time I will just have to remember to buy extra spinach!

There probably won't be much cooking going on this weekend. Yesterday Travis and I went on a 6-mile hike at Malibu Creek State Park (fun but totally exhausting), then to see The Hangover (so so funny). There was some good food to be had though. Had my first falafel at the Malibu Country Mart, which was delicious, and rotisserie chicken with roasted potatoes at this place by the movie theater, which was not so delicious.

Today I'm just marinating some flank steak for dinner to have with baked potatoes, and I'm about to go cut up some strawberries to make strawberry shortcake for dessert. Sort of cheating though, instead of making my own shortcake, I got those little cups from the bakery. Oh well, there's other stuff to do! And with that, I'm off.

Shrimp!

This isn't a recipe that I checked off or anything, I just really liked the photo and wanted to share. I had originally planned to make a shrimp and artichoke bake for dinner, but it just didn't sound good anymore. So, I just followed the directions on the Old Bay seasoning container and ended up with the most delicious peel and eat shrimp I've ever had. I had no idea it was so easy. Leaves me with plenty of time to clean up and get ready to go see the Avett Brothers this evening.

French Coconut Pie

This is a French Coconut Pie that I made this afternoon. Despite my best efforts, I still managed to overcook one side of the crust a smidge. I blame the fact that I was simultaneously trying to beat Guitar Hero World Tour (which I did!).

It tastes sort of similar to a chess pie, but with coconut. Mmm... it's a shame I already had one piece today.