This is very similar to the onion tart that I sometimes make, except it uses a cracker-thin bread crust instead of the potatoes I use. This also has caraway seeds, which I definitely need to start using in things. Very tasty.
Next up was soup: Louisiana crabmeat bisque:
Not bad, and it had decent flavor, but it was much thinner than I expected. Compared with the crawfish bisque from Simplicity, this was kind of a disappointment.
My lunch: Bratwurst with "skillet potatoes" and sauerkraut:
The bratwurst was good and had a smooth texture, and went well with the mustard. The potatoes were a bit too filling after the soup and tart, though, so I left a lot of them for leftovers. One surprise was that the sauerkraut had a sweet flavor, and not the regular horrible sauerkraut sauer-ness.
Other lunches: Luke burger (bacon/emmenthaler/carmelized onions) and BLT (B/L/T/soft shell crab):
The BLT was my second option, as I have enjoyed the soft shell crab I've had in the past. This one did have a bit of an odd texture in the body. Since I've generally only had the tiny baby ones, this is probably just a size variation.
Also, I have no idea what to write on a receipt comment line, so I added the first suggestion someone had:
Placeholder post to remind me to edit this with details tomorrow. And I may need t back date it. Might as welll throw a link to that david sedaris video too.
I arrived in Austin around 1:00, and apparently was in a jetlag-induced haze until dinner. At which point I forgot to take pictures. Crap. In any case, we went to Simplicity wine bar to do a tapas style dinner. I'm probably going to miss items, but as far as I can remember, we had:
Spinach artichoke dip
Papas aioli
Wilted spinach salad
Sauteed calamari
Crawfish bisque
Wasn't there a meat thing, too?
It was good, and the crawfish bisque was certainly a better soup than the one at Luke's.
Oh well. Salad. Lettuce + tomato + spouts + a few onion slices + pan fried prosciutto "bacon bits" + pan fried poorly butterflied chicken with salt and pepper. I went with the assumption that the oil from the prosciutto and the juices of the chicken would soak down and provide a dressing for the lettuce. This worked pretty well, and was tastier than I was expecting. Had I thought it through a bit more, I would have put a bit of that mushroom brie in here as well.
National Scenic Byway:
"As of November 2010, there are 120 National Scenic Byways and 31 All-American Roads, located in 46 states (all except Hawaii, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Texas)."
Driving through Nebraska was one of the most boringly mind-numbing things I've ever done:
Kind of surprised that H-3 or the Hana Highway don't qualify for Hawaii, though.
Like three of them this evening, separated by fifteen minutes of being awake. No clue why, but I hope this won't make it super hard to sleep tonight. It was like this, but less fuzzy:
I almost didn't make anything fancier than "ham sandwich" for dinner, because I've had a headache going pretty much all day long. Woo.
I also decided to use my real camera, just to give a comparison to someone else. Admittedly, my camera is nowhere near that fancy cool, and I also should have checked the white balance a lot more.
Ok, 0.68 pounds of 26-30 shrimp. That should be 18-20 shrimp right?
Nope, 22. Take mean = 28, standard deviation = 2, this suggests my package of shrimp is something like two standard deviations off, so my shrimp are more deviant than 0.977 of all such packages. I'm not sure exactly what confidence interval I should complain at. The main problem with getting too many shrimp is that I have to peal and gut the damn things. Turns out I always forget how much I hate doing that.
Anyway, shrimp, with my salad accompanyments on the side. I simply fried the shrimp in a pan with some bacon grease, after first sprinkling them with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Plated:
Or with the cell phone camera:
Maybe I don't have a white balance problem. The plate should be white, but the counter really is about that yellow. I don't know. I could have taken a picture on my lanai to be a direct comparison, by it was dark by the time I started dinner, so it wouldn't have quite had the same natural light.
I can maybe win on the "eating local" aspect of things. Sliced Maui onion, Big Island roma tomatoes, local sprouts, Manoa lettuce dressed with dijon and local honey. The shrimp aren't local, but they did have local salt on them. Plus a chunk of baguette and a gob of butter. Nice and tasty, although I should have done something to temper the onion. The flavors blended nicely, with the honey offsetting the spice of the cayenne.
Tomorrow should be the same, as I bagged up the leftover shrimp. I figure a quick jog through the oven should perk them up.
Dealing with people who shouldn't really be allowed to drive. I don't think people understand that the turn signal is to tell other people that you plan on turning. You don't turn it on halfway through changing lanes. How does that help anyone?
I suspect the writer of this sign forgot to specify exactly what was "ice cold." I don't think it's actually possible to have an "ice cold yard sale" on Hawaii.
I went driving to the west coast of Oahu, and this picture basically sums up what you see over there. There are some big fancy houses with walls and gates. There are old houses that were big and fancy forty years ago, but are now kind of run down and in need of painting. There are tent cities of homeless people living on the side of the road.
Eventually I reached the end of the road at Kaena point.
On the drive back, I saw a mongoose run across the road. I really don't know what they look like, so I just drew a squirrel. It's pretty close
Oh hai! Iz almost done with oil change!
Another mongoose was hiding under one of the cars parked at the beach.
Since my original plan for lunch fell through, and I'd been driving around all day, I decided to stop at Honolulu Burger Company to pick up dinner instead of cooking. Because I'm lazy. I've read about them before, as they use Big Island beef, and do a lot of locally sourced ingredients.
"Blue Hawaii" burger with truffle fries. The burger itself was great, very moist and full of flavor. However, the blue cheese kind of trampled all over that. The bacon was pretty much lost to the cheese, although the onions could push through. The fries were a bit greasy and because of that, were pretty limp and soggy. Not really the best truffle fries ever. I'll probably try this place again, since they're really close to where I live, and there are a lot more burgers to try. I don't think I'd agree that they have "Best Burgers in Honolulu," but they probably do have the best tasting meat.
Lunch today was at Kurukuru sushi, which I wasn't super happy with last time. Today was better than that time, possibly because it wasn't as busy. They still have the "you have to order all the good stuff, because the conveyor belt is full of crap" problem.
Well, that and shrimp tempura. Om nom nom.
Also whatever the fuck this thing is. I know the picture's super blurry, so I'll describe it: There's a pile of fried rice (with tiny american flag), with a half hotdog octopus, a block of some other rice/grain something, and a block of lotus root (I think?), and a tiny bottle of milk in a plastic cup.
Here it goes again sixteen minutes later in an even blurrier picture.
Here's another problem of ordering from a menu at the conveyor belt sushi place: if you see something that looks good (that Jackson Pollack piece there. I have no clue what it was, but it had some fish, seems to have been fried, and came dressed with spicy mayo and katsu sauce(?). It was yummy. Anyway...), that's invariably the moment that everything you've ordered shows up (the ahi and unagi). These were very good, with the ahi cut super thick, and the unagi toasty warm. Mmm.
I didn't take a picture of it, but I also ordered chicken karaage before calling it a meal. Unfortunately I then ate it too fast, and ended up burning my tongue. I was eating fast because it was getting close to the beginning of the movie that was the reason I was out and about today:
The reissue of Ghostbusters was this week, and I looked online earlier in the week to see where it was playing. It seems to only be playing at the theater that's hard to park at, so instead I decided to check the listings at the theater in the mall by WF. My actual though: "The Man Who Fell to Earth? I'm absolutely sure no one remade that. Is that a reissue too?"
Yes it is. Given that most movies that are advertised now look like shit, I think it's probably a good idea to buy tickets when they just give up and re-release good movies from the past. I've not seen it before, but it seemed like a good idea. Pretty depressing story, but definitely worth seeing. There were only about six people in the theater, and all of them were much older than me.
After the movie, it was time to get groceries. I stopped by Barnes and Noble to see if I could find a second book to take with me on the flight this week.
Well, that's certainly too big to read on a plane. I guess I'll have to stick with only one book.
Today's dinner:
Pan roasted romaine salad with scallops in onion sauce.
The salad is pretty simple. Slice in half, wash, heat cast iron skillet to 10000 degrees, drizzle olive oil on the lettuce, roll it around to coat evenly-ish, add lots of pepper, put in the pan, listen to sizzle, roll it around a few times, remove and plate. Top with some sprouts you bought today because they looked cool, a chopped roma tomato, and some macadamia nuts (also looked cool).
The scallops weren't too hard either. Add a gob of butter to a pan, add sliced maui onion, and let cook until they're soft. Scoot them to one side and add the scallops. Let them sear while you squirt some garlic paste (from the tube that never runs out) over the onions. When the scallops look mostly finished (although I used what is apparently the main rule of seafood: "You're going to cook it too long, so it's done before you think it's done. Even when you think you're pulling it fast enough, it's probably still too long."), add vermouth to deglaze, and then another bit of butter because, hey, why not? Pull scallops to plate, crank the heat and reduce the vermouth/butter/onion/garlic mixture to a glaze/sauce. Pour over the top of the salad.
Also warm a chunk of bread in the oven, and then cram a bit of mushroom brie inside.
Slice the lettuce and scallops, and then take a picture that the camera decides has a different orientation than you are expecting.
The scallops were cooked just right, but didn't pick up much flavor from the sauce. I kind of expected this, since they have really dense flesh. Still, the sauce was also designed to be a dressing for the salad, and that worked pretty well. The tomatoes had a good acidic balance to the fatty rich sauce. The macadamia nuts added nothing, except deliciousness.
I think the plan for this week is going to be:
Saturday: See above.
Sunday: Something similar. I bought some shrimp, so I think the plan is to fry them, and have them in a salad form.
Monday: Same as sunday (I got lots of shrimp).
Tuesday: Something with chicken. I bought a big breast, so I think I'm going to either split it, or cook something and save half for
Wednesday: I did get prosciutto, so I could do a saltimbocca thing. Maybe use the brie to make a sauce of some sort? I don't know, I have some time to think it through.
Thursday: Quiznos, because they have one in the airport.
Friday: Austin. All of it. Or, pending me not finishing my "giant monster formula," something smaller than a city.
Yes, that is a brandy snifter. Turns out someone put the dishes in the dishwasher, and then completely forgot to turn it on yesterday. Besides, it concentrates the aroma.
The color's right, but it's incredibly weak. Purplesaurus Rex was never that strong of a flavor, but it was much stronger than this. I'm hoping that it's just a case of the powder not dissolving enough, but that seems a bit unlikely.
I've been thinking about getting some fish, and cooking it and having a salad to go with it. Since I had that for lunch, I had to come up with something else to have for dinner. This helped me steal have an idea:
It's a good thing I remembered that I had too much soup last time I did this, so I made a more reasonable serving size. Unfortunately, I forgot that spoons left in hot soup often become hot themselves, so now my tongue is burnt. Oops.
I'll probably do the same thing again tomorrow, and then do a standard saturday grocery run.
The reason this is the last review is that pretty much all the concerns I'd had in the past seem to be resolved now. I don't know if the Grylt people have spies reading my blog, but they even had a scale for checking the weight of the fish. Again, I don't really care what the weight is, but since everything is sliced freestyle, having the scale makes it clear that the portions are defined.
Another change was the romaine salad. I ordered it, and was a bit confused when the girl filling my order took the lettuce back to the grill. While she was back there, one of the other workers said, "good choice on getting the grilled romaine salad." What? Grilled romaine? I checked the menu to see where it said that, and didn't see anything about it.
The result of grilling the romaine?
Yeah, when the salad is so good that you eat it first, that's a good salad. It tasted like they oiled the cut side of the lettuce, and then peppered it and put it on the grill, but it's possible that it just picked up some pepper from the grill. It was topped with tomato, grilled red onion, parmesan, and a little drizzle of honey mustard dressing.
In any case, I think they've sorted out the problems after opening, and I think it's probably going to end up a regular lunch option.
I took the time to come up with a menu plan yesterday, and then ignored it today and went out to eat at Donburiya Dondon at the mall:
No, I didn't stitch two cell phone images together just for funsies. It's kind of a weird place. They're in the food court, and have the fast food side on the right, where you can order food and it's made and you pick it up and sit down like a regular food court. However, they also have their own sit down area on the left where it's the same food served like a regular restaurant. That's actually the reason I stitched the images together.
I got the katsudon, which was decent, but not as good as I've had before. This one had the same problem that katsudon always seems to have: insufficient broth. When it's made well, you have the pork hiding under the egg, all of that sitting on delicious dashi soaked rice. Plus, the dashi soaks into the egg, so you don't just have boring egg, you have tasty egg. That's not to say that badly made katsudon isn't still super delicious. The katsu was crispy, the egg wasn't too boring (it seemed to get most of the broth), and the rice was still decent, if not an umami treasure.
One of these days, I'll have to try something else at this place instead of just getting the katsudon.
Also, fun story from when I was eating dinner: A family with a little girl (who is maybe two at the oldest) are walking by, when whammo! the girl walks right into a chair. Her dad makes sure she doesn't fall, and they continue on their way. About six feet beyond the chair, the girl turns around and gives the chair a look that best translates to "what the fuck is your problem, asshole?"
After yesterday's traditional dinner, I decided to try something similar:
Ditalini taco! I had hoped that eliminating the long spaghetti strands, these would be easier and less messy to eat.
This was not true.
Also, as a side note: spaghetti tacos are not macatacahodo 360s. These are different things. They are similar in that they both cram other things into taco shells.
I forgot to do the menu plan yesterday. The plan for the rest of the week:
Wednesday: I'm thinking about getting fish, and doing fish tacos of some sort.
Thursday: This would be leftover fish.
Friday: Ok, maybe I didn't do the plan yesterday because I don't have one.
