try not to cry

i'm peacing out for a week go to on a cruise to mexico with the famiry (yea, i said it)! we are going on carnival and we're hitting up mazatlan, puerto vallarta and cabo san lucas...not in that order. so unfortunately you won't be seeing posts for a while--try not to cry. however, you can definitely count on me taking pictures of EVERYTHING that i'll be eating so don't you worry, the posts shall continue when i'm back :)

korean bbq--aka eat until you die

i've never had korean bbq before so i managed to convince ang and will to hit up federal way (ghetto, i know) for some all you can eat action. except they called it 'no limit korean bbq' like it was texas hold'em. so we sat down then started naming off every kind of meat possible and then they re-appeared in 5 minutes and had our table PACKED with food. it was nuts!!



the tables were cool though--they had a grill set up in the middle that was propane powered so we would bbq the raw meet ourselves (or sometimes they'd come around and do it). we ended up getting one refill of the meat (mostly for will) and i wanted to DIE. i don't want to see meat again for a really long time. what i like about korean food is that they always have tons of random side dishes, so it was neat to try the little kim chee dishes and so forth. there was one dish that tasted a bit noodle-like, and then the waitress claimed it was squid...but i don't know that i believe her.

for $15, it was definitely worth it. although as i sit here updating typing this 3 hours later, i still have a food baby....

risotto

i've been cooking a lot of risotto lately, so on friday i decided to de-stress a long day of work by making a new kind. i found this recipe and thought it sounded real yummy (http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1714564). i didn't use the shallots, subbed chicken sausage, added tomatoes, and subbed veggie broth. i was a little iffy about the arugula, but it all worked out in the end! mcvick came over and ate two huge helpings and claimed that i should use that to lure in the boys...so i suppose i have a new secret weapon?? well i guess if i'm blogging about it...it's not so secret anymore, haha.

chicken rochambeau...wtf?

on friday, blake, stephanie and i were headed out for lunch but didn't really know where. we were going to do pho, but weren't able to find a restaurant (my fault) so we ended up at the new orleans creole restaurant in pioneer square instead. it seemed like a pretty legit place, althugh i think the owners only allowed old ladies to work there. with our entrees (which were really cheap), we got a salad, corn fritter, rice and beans. we only made it thorugh the salad and corn fritter before we had to take our food togo since we had a meeting at 1:30. yea...service was a bit slow.

i ordered the chicken rochambeau (mostly cause of the name)--pretty much the lunch version of an eggs benedict. english muffin with ham, butterfried chicken breast and some creamy sauce on top. i scarfed it down in about 5 minutes in my cube with my sexy headset on and the phone muted...hehe. i'll have to go back again and try out the jambalaya that blake and steph got since they approved!

obasan

i am still getting used to this blogging thing as you can tell from the picture. i realized when i was down to the last pieces that i had forgotten to take a picture :( well good news is we only got four rolls so all four rolls are being represented there!

i've decided obasan is one of my new favorite sushi places even though it's been there for quite some time now. there's a really cute lady who runs it, it only takes 3 mins to walk to from my apt, and the sushi is a great deal! lots of options, not too expensive, and they are very generous with their fish. as i mentioned in my sushi making experience, it was AMAZING having someone else do the work for me.

also, obasan means grandma in japanese so that's cute as well :)

grazie tutta bella!

tutta bella won some fancy award given by their version of the bible (Pizza Today magazine) so they decided to celebrate by giving away one free pizza to every table from 8/16-8/22. naturally being me, i had to partake and forced my friends to partake with me :)

i've never been there, so i was excited to try it out. we were expecting there to be a long wait, but we only waited for about 5ish minutes before we were seated. we ordered a pizza each (5) so we could get some variety. the pizza was okay. i lived in naples for a short stint so i know how neopolitan pizza is supposed to be and they make a good effort, but the pizza is just wayyy too flimsy and the toppings were sparse (with the exception of the argula/proscuitto pizza which i highly enjoyed). not gonna lie, i'll probably spend my pizza money elsewhere in the future.

more beef

so apparently i have an obsession with beef lately, but i decided it would be fun to attempt a steak salad for dinner one night. i ran home after work (ok, bussed) and created my own marinade (hoisin, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar and pepper), then marinated the tri-tip for a little over an hour before grilling it.

(grilling is one of my new favorite things since my roomie and i just bought one this summer. his name is charlie...don't judge.)

for the salad, i had arugula, grilled onions, cherry tomatoes topped with blue cheese crumbles and a balsamic dressing (i'm looking out for my figure). it turned out fabulously!! go me!

purple

this last monday, i headed to one of my favorite lunch spots (purple) for lunch with some publishers and emily. despite purple's extremely heavy doors and chairs, they dish out some pretty good eats. for an appetizer, we split their lobster mac and cheese. earlier i had mentioned that this was comparable to capital grille's (located across the street from purple), but after tasting this version, i've decided that purple is the clear winner. really the dish is an entree, but if i were to eat that entire dish for a meal, you'd find me napping underneath my cube for the rest of the afternoon.

you can't tell me that doesn't look amazing!


for my entree, i got a side of pasta salad and a bacon caramelized onion pizzetta. the pasta salad was pathetic--especially for purple. it was dry, the pasta was stuck together, and it had no taste! the pizza on the otherhand, was fantastic. the crust was good and you really can't go wrong with bacon on anything. the walk back to work was a struggle after all that yummy food (minus pathetic pasta salad).

pasta FAIL!


mmm...bacon

sunday funday

sundays are great days because brooke, matt and i recently decided that we are going to start a regular brunch routine!!! for me, it's like the equivalent of a little kid being told they're going to disneyland EVERY WEEK. today, brooke bailed for some unknown reason but we still forged ahead. original plans were to go to coastal kitchen up on capital hill but since my stomach was about ready to eat itself, we settled for queen anne cafe. it is a really cute and simple diner type restaurant with solid food. matt's friend ordered the biscuits and gravy, matt got the denver omelette, and i got the veggie eggs benedict. now you know me and my meat loving ways, but when i asked the waitress what she thought about the veggie benedict, she said it was probably the best thing they made at the restaurant. how could i turn that down?! well, she was right. it was damn good. but with a combo like portobello mushroom, roasted red pepper and spinach, you really can't go wrong. they could've toned down the spinach a bit though. i also decided to opt for fruit instead of hashbrowns and attempt to balance the meal out. i had no idea i was going to get a fruit basket on my plate either. needless to say, i'll be back for more.



then for dinner, i headed over to cat's parents on the eastside and kent was grilling up some steaks and it was bomb.com. yea, i said it. i always ate steak as a kid cause my dad was obsessed with t-bone, but i never really knew how to differentiate between the cuts. we had prime tenderloin tonight (not to be mistaken with top) and it was so so so good. the steak was grilled real well too (i like my meat pink)! it's been a good eating day for this little one :)

national s'mores day

in case you didn't know, national s'mores day is on 8/10. now what does this mean? should everyone go home and buy the fixins and start roasting marshmallows over their stove top? probably not. however, if you live in a foodie city like seattle, you have restaurants like the library bistro giving away FREE S'MORES in honor of this holiday for exactly one hour.

blake, casey and i, against our better judgement, thought this would be the perfect appetizer to our to be determined lunches. since the library bistro is only a block away, we decided to partake. i was unsure of how they would create these s'mores on the sidewalk for people, but i should've known they'd have their shit on lockdown. they ended up putting a huge chunk of marshmallow on a stick, torching it, and then gave you a boat with cracker crumbs and chocolate to dip it into. it was delicious, and then after i finished my last bite, my stomach was NOT happy with me :( i suppose i can't handle sugar like i used to.

beef.

one perk of the job is the frequent invitations to indulge in fine dining. welcome to the world of media. let's be real. account manager salary can only buy you so many fine meals ;)

monday night, I had the pleasure of dining at the capital grille. i've been a few times and it never disappoints! for our appetizer, we split a lobster mac and cheese (delicious and on par with purple's), followed by a chopped salad and then a filet mignon (medium rare, bien-sur) with dungeness crab on top. oh, and for desert was a coconut cream pie--but i'm a salty girl so i only had a bite of this. the steak was very very tasty but could have used a wee bit more of salt. we also had cakebread sauvignon blanc wine to go along with it. very tasty stuff. i've never been but apparently that winery is the place to go if you're ever in napa!

here is a picture of the main entree. it's not very clear cause the capital grille is one of those fancy mood lighting places.

voila!

bienvenue!

it was only a matter of time until i took my love of food and threw it onto the web to share with whoever (whomever?) out there feels the need to partake with me in my eating adventures.

i'm not exactly sure what this blog will be so don't get all judgemental. you can definitely bet that i won't be capitalizing my sentences.

to start off this food-venture, i share with you my attempt at making sushi this last weekend. i love, love sushi and i've made cali rolls as a kid, so how much harder could spicy tuna rolls be? lesson learned: it is WORTH EVERY PENNY (this kind of capitalizing is acceptable) to pay for someone else to do it. second lesson learned: a little fish goes a long way.

there were three of us, and with $60 dollars spent on supplies, we made NINETY pieces of sushi...and had about FORTY pieces leftover. luckily we were able to pawn it off on some others later that evening. it was pretty tasty though. no one got food poisoning, so i would call it a success :)

the ingredients


the workers


the final product! yum yum.


the leftovers...