nairb codex

I know my last post was pretty blunt and a bit harsh, but I wanted to officially say that I’m not mad at her and I definitely don’t hate her. I just couldn’t continue with the relationship we had. We’ve since talked, and although I don’t expect us to be best friends or anything, I think we’ll keep in touch from time to time.

It was, in fact, my birthday yesterday. Normally I don’t really look forward to my birthday. It’s not that I don’t like birthdays, it’s just that I tend to have very unmemorable birthdays, so it’s just another day for me.

This year, however, was different. Although my day wasn’t all that great because of some work annoyances, my evening was perfect. About two weeks ago, my best friend Stoyan called and said he and Alex would be in LA over my birthday and were wondering if I’d like to have dinner with them. Since I often can’t think of good places to eat, I entrusted Reiko to help me decide. She chose Yuzu, which I’m pretty sure is her favorite restaurant, and for good reason.

After that, she took care of everything. Thank god for my wonderful girlfriend, because my birthday dinner was perfection at its best! The food was amazing, the atmosphere was cozy and romantic, and absolutely no complaints having spent the evening with 3 of my favorite people. Read the rest of this entry »

Although I didn’t mention about the 1st harvest, this morning for breakfast Reiko collected a salad and some baby bok choy for breakfast. The salad is really light and really fresh. The salad was so fresh, that I think I can safely say I know the taste of freshness.

We are planning our second crop and I think we will try to make the lettuce more crisp and the baby bok choy more wide (ours are pretty skinny). We’ve been reading up on growing techniques and hopefully some of the things we’ve learned will help improve our future harvests.

Okonomiyakisoba

Over the past couple days, I’ve made okonomiyaki with yakisoba (technically Hiroshima style) 3 different times. I guess it’s safe to say that it tastes pretty good, otherwise Reiko wouldn’t keep asking me to make it. Since okonomi means “what you like” and yaki means “grilled” or “cooked” (put it all together and you get “cook what you like”), I’ve named my dish okonomiyakisoba. My recipe is based off one from Harumi Kurihara, the Martha Stewart of Japan. I completely admit that Harumi’s recipes are easy and taste great.

I’ve made a couple other dishes from her cookbooks as well, including baked cheesecake (tasted great!) and tempura (also tasted great!). To be honest, I didn’t know I was capable of making such a good cheesecake. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I’m already planning to make more of her recipes in the near future.

I’m sure that title has no meaning, but it’s the figurative translation for tiramisu, which I just happened to make last night and it just happened to make both Reiko and I happier. I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out and the flavor was really good, I just need to work on the whipped cream/marscapone part.

Although the recipe for tiramisu is quite easy, it’s actually more difficult than you think. I had to re-do the cake 3 times (the cake was actually good, the first 2 times it was stuck to the baking paper and would not come come off), I also had to re-do part of the whipped cream/marscapone because it wasn’t foamy/whipped enough. In the end, it came together and as this is one of Reiko’s favorite desserts, I think it’s safe to say by the expression on her face that it was a success.

Last night, Reiko and I went out dancing to a newer place in Gardena. We’ve been there once before. One of the nice things about the place is that it’s not crowded, so there’s room to practice big moves (you know all that cool stuff you learn from YouTube).

We showed up just after the class had finished, so no one was dancing yet. It’s always a little awkward to be the only one on the dance floor, because you know everyone is watching you. We did it anyway. We pulled off some new patterns we learned at home just before we went to the club as well as a couple other tricks we know. It seemed like everything was quiet, except for the music, when we were dancing and as soon as we finished, everyone resumed their conversations. I’m not sure if it really was like that or if I was just in the moment when I was dancing with Reiko. Regardless, I had a great time dancing with Reiko and I’m already looking forward to the next time we dance together (maybe tonight?).

Living in California, one would expect to experience an earthquake at some point. I guess it turns out that even there are frequent earthquakes in the area, they are often too small to feel unless you are close to the epicenter. Reiko said she’s only experienced 3 earthquakes in the time she’s been in Cali. I was fortunate enough to experience my first earthquake, at a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale at 11:42:15 AM (PDT) on Tuesday, July 29, 2008. All that really happened is my office building shook for a second or two. My office is about 32 miles from the epicenter, so I’m sure I would have experienced the quake more if I was closer. To my knowledge, there was no real damage as a result of the quake.

Me in Palm Springs

This past weekend Reiko and I went to Palm Springs for the Salsa Mambo Festival. Prior to going to Palm Springs, I wondered why people go there because it’s in the middle of the desert. Now that I’ve been there, I’m still wondering why people go there. It’s ridiculously hot (it was 105F during the day and 90F at night), it’s tiny (~45,000 people in town / ~415,000 in the metro area) with not much more than some shopping and a few restaurants (mostly chains and fast food), and it’s hot (I know I said that already, but it was *really* hot for me). That being said, we had a great weekend, heat and nothingness aside.

We had the good fortune of taking classes with quite a few pretty famous instructors/dancers, including Edie the Salsa FREAK, Jorge Elizondo (the Bachata King), Josie Neglia, & David Nieto (2008 Mayan World Salsa Competition Champion). We also got to see performances by many professional dancers, including Liz Lira and Cristian Oviedo, as well as some of the previously mentioned instructors. One of my favorite performances was the Victor & Gaby performance combining salsa and quebradita (the bouncy one to fast Mexican polka) and all of the Paso de Oro performances (some of those kids were absolutely amazing!).

Final thoughts on the weekend, I thought I was in pretty good shape, but after 3 days of workshops and some evening dancing, my body is pretty drained. A big part of it was the fact that we were forced to eat differently, both schedule and menu. We’ve already registered for the next festival in Palm Springs over New Year’s and are already planning how we can accommodate the workshop schedule and lack of food choice.

Normally during the week, Reiko cook’s our meals. It’s probably a good thing, because I seem to be rather slow when I cook, plus I really like everything she makes for us. Weekends are the time when I try to cook for her (since I need more time than her). This weekend I made a seafood casserole that was super yummy and chicken cordon bleu with parsley rice. The chicken was really good, but I’d like to improve on the cheese inside (need me some melty, cheesy goodness when I bite into it!). I know that aspect of it could be a lot better. I also want to try stuffing the chicken breasts instead of cutting them in half, more for the looks once it’s finished. The recipe for the chicken came from Emeril (hence the reason for this post’s title), with only a few slight changes based on what I like and what I could get in the grocery store. I’m coming to realize that Emeril has a lot of really good recipes and his style closely matches my palate. I also used his recipe for making the strawberry ice cream I made awhile back.

Reiko and I have talked about taking some cooking classes, but we haven’t found anything in our area yet. I think some knife & prep skills would especially help me in being faster and more organized when in the kitchen. A few months ago Reiko bought a Japanese cookbook for me. I haven’t yet made anything from it, but I keep planning to. When paging through the cookbook, it looked like there were a lot of dishes that I would like to eat and I’m sure Reiko wants to eat them too.

About half the things I’ve made for Reiko have been my mother’s recipes. I think she now loves Midwest cooking (casseroles, “salads”, etc). If you’re not really familiar with casseroles and “salads”, I’d highly recommend reading (or listening to) How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor’s Guide for a ridiculously hilarious explanation of the common food dishes in Minnesota.

In the next week or two, we should be able to start eating all the vegetables we’ve been growing (minus the arugula, which unfortunately died due to excessive heat). The baby bok choy and the lettuce and Mesclun mix look amazing. They’re getting sooooo big! I think I can safely say that we’re both really excited to start eating our beautiful vegetables.