Saturday: I probably need a better plan

I took this week off for the KCC farmer's market, since I've been a bit disappointed with it.  My major complaint is that it's mostly prepared food, with only a few booths selling fruits/veggies/meats/ingredient stuffs. Because of this, it has less of a farmer's market feel, and more of a food court feel.  I'm going to see if I can make it to the Haleiwa farmer's market, since I believe it's run by a different group.

I still needed to get groceries, so I went out to Whole Foods, with the goal of getting a late lunch as well.  A new Kuru-Kuru Sushi opened up at the mall, and I wanted to try it out.  I've been to the one in Aiea, but the line there is always out the door, and they have crap parking.  I assumed that showing up at 2pm would decrease the likelihood of a line, but I still had to wait about fifteen minutes to be seated, and there was a line for the entire time I was there.  

I always think that I'm going to like the concept of conveyor belt sushi, but it always seems to fall apart in practice.  Kuru-Kuru has good dishes, with nice fresh fish and big slices.  However, it has the same problem that other similar restaurant styles: crapfloods. I don't think it's intentional, but imagine the following scenario:

1. Sushi chef makes a pile of one dish. Let's say, hypothetically, veggie croquette.
2. Those croquettes are put out on the line. A few people snap them up immediately.
3. The remainder continue to circulate, making the belt look full.
4. People start to recognize the croquettes, giving them the taint of being "old."
5. Repeat with other dishes (say, kabucha tempura or spicy tuna roll).

This produces a situation where the belt is filled with lots of crap, and customers ignore the belt in favor of directly ordering.  The girl with the iphone on my right, and the old couple on my left didn't take anything from the belt the entire time they were there, but ordered everything they ate.  If I'm just going to order my sushi, then what's the point of going to a conveyor belt sushi place?  

My solution to this problem is probably not ideal, but I can't figure out anything better.  This also probably only works when the counter is busy, as it requires a constant stream of hungry sushi-eaters (this was definitely the case at Kuru-Kuru today, and I believe, is largely their permanent state).  The simple solution would be to ensure that there is always one version of each dish available on the belt.  However, since people are unlikely to equally want each dish (ahi is almost certainly more popular than natto roll), this isn't a great method.  Of course, once you've run your conveyor belt sushi place for a while, you should have appropriate statistics on the relative popularity of each dish.  Therefore, you should be able to construct a belt that contains each dish in the appropriate proportions.  Another way to improve selection would be to fold in the placed orders.  The old couple, the iphone girl, and I each ordered unagi, as it never appeared (and is super delicious). If someone orders a dish, a second copy should be made at the same time, and placed on the belt.  This should help keep the selection up.  Finally, if that veggie croquette has been floating around for thirty minutes, take it off and chuck it.  Everybody's seen it by now, and no one's taking it.

After sushi, I did a bit of other shopping at the mall: a stick blender (since mine went walkabout when I moved here), and the game of set (because it's a fun game), and then went to whole foods for groceries.  The main goal was to get the ingredients necessary to make this:

I used this recipe, which I was initially suspicious of, as the sauce seems woefully underseasoned.  I was then reminded that I'd had it before, liked it, and then I remembered that I think I helped make it too.  Yay for memory!

Without the meatballs, the sauce wouldn't really work, I don't think.  It has a wonderful tomato flavor, but eating it alone with pasta would be a bit bland.  It could probably work as a pizza sauce, assuming you topped the pizza with other things.  In any case, I now have a giant tub filled with wonderful delicious meatballs and sauce, so I need to come up with a plan for them.  I think the plan is:

• Sunday: Meatball sub.
• Monday: Sketti and meatballs.
• Tuesday: One of the previous two, probably?
• Wednesday: Or, how about this: let's get a grocery store pizza dough, and make a stromboli! Om nom nom!
• Thursday: That was a great idea, so it'll be leftover stromboli night!
• Friday: I never have a friday plan.

I made 30 meatballs, and the above picture suggests I ate 7 tonight.  That was probably too many, so I think after pairing the rest of the meals with a salad of some sort, I should have enough meatballs for the week.