Notes of a Desolate Libra

I find that I am unable resist good food. And I get spoiled when I’ve had TOO much good food. Ok, this is the sign of a real foodie (not that anyone would argue).

My meal at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon is probably THE most decadent and delicious meal (and expensive of course) meal I EVER had. I was fortunate that my friend so kindly offered to treat me to a birthday dinner. Otherwise I would not have the money to walk in there for a few years.

Foie Gras~ (*hand over heart*)

This review really tells you what was included in the discovery menu and the author does a better job than I could ever hope to. My post is basically to rave about how much I enjoyed this experience.  It’s much like when I had REALLY good sushi/sashimi at Sasabune. Once you’ve been there… you can’t quite go back. I don’t regret it. At least that means I will work hard at improving my own cooking skills (which are lacking as of this moment)

However, I really wish I had gone to L’Atelier earlier, because as I do more research on the restaurant, I think I have positively fallen in love with the previous Executive Chef, Mr. Yosuke Suga. The last thing I could find on him is that he’s now currently the Executive Chef of the Taipei branch of L’Atelier. No matter, I will visit the Taipei branch one day and fawn over him then.

Another thing that impressed me is that they gave me a special treat – an extra dessert plate – for my birthday! the service definitely has to do with how much you love a restaurant. And I think a lot of times people pay the money not only for good food but also for the service.

Extra Special

That said, there are still many more wonderful restaurants that I have yet to visit in New York. But I’m making my way there!

New York City Food, Restaurants

This post was created per Jack’s request. Being that he’s the one hosting my site and is my personal all purpose tech support, I must abide by his wishes and do a thorough examination of my own feelings toward these two yogurt shops. Although I must apologize that I started this post BEFORE I left NYC in June and am just finishing it NOW…

If you’re not generally a fan of yogurt, you may still come to like these two frozen yogurt stores, Pinkberry (watch out for the obnoxious bgm, you can turn it off on the bottom right) and Red Mango. Their yogurts have a nice tangy taste and feel lite. My personal preference is for Pinkberry. Now hear me out. Basically most of the toppings are the same. On that note, remember that there is “mochi” available for your picking even though sometimes you may not see them among the other toppings. They are usually hidden away in the fridge somewhere. Toppings are probably a non issue since they’re mostly fruits, sprinkles, oreos, and all that good stuff. I can’t say I noticed much of a difference. I haven’t tasted all of the different types of frozen Yogurt (Pinkberry has Original, Green Tea, Pomegranate, Passion Fruit, Coffee, and Coconut; Red Mango has Original, Green Tea, Pomegranate, and tangomonium). But from what I can tell, really, the original is good enough for me (for the other ones you have to add money).

Anyway, I think for anyone who has tasted both stores, the general opinion is that Pinkberry is more “icy” and Red Mango is more “creamy.” It’s like the sorbet versus ice cream sort of thing. I’m just more of a sorbet girl (usually, if all the flavors are the same). I also think that Pinkberry is slightly more tangy than Red Mango. Interestingly enough, it seems a serving of Pinkberry will put you on the more decadent side (averaging ever so slightly higher on the sugar, calories and carbs scale). However, I think I can deal with 100 calories per serving (vs. 90 for Red Mango).

Whichever one you like, I really think it’s a taste thing. I know fans of both, and I know people who swear by one of them… my personal preference would probably be different from yours… the best way to find out is to have a taste yourself!

Pinkberry @ 32nd

Red Mango @ 32nd

VERSUS

Where you find one, you will very likely find the other right across the street or a few stores down. They are also rivals in their native Korea. I guess we all have different tastes, but consumers are usually the winners when there is competition.

New York City Food, Frozen Yogurt, New York City, Pinkberry, Red Mango

When I was in SF, I drank inordinate amounts of tea, mostly from teabags. I had a load of teabags that I didn’t know what to do with. I wanted to compost them, but the garden is not mine and I don’t want to mess with it (I’ll get my little window garden sometime!). So eventually, I remembered there was another way I could use them – as a beauty product!

Tea does amazing things for bags under the eyes. It has antioxidants that are good for the skin. Just squeeze the bag of tea until it’s relatively dry (so you don’t get tea into your eyes) and then lay them down flat on top of your eyes, covering as much surface area as you can. Then leave them there for about 10 minutes. I’m not sure how many times you can do that, but I would suggest using them once or at most, twice. Also, when you are saving teabags (to be used later), put them in the fridge to keep the temperature low. The cooler temperature will keep the bags
So the next time you have a batch of teabags that you don’t quite know what to do with (black tea and green tea work the best, herbal tea not so much), why not try to use them for some eye pampering!

When I left SF, I left the bag of teabags to my roommate. I hope she figures out how to use them.

Yummy and useful!

VoCaL Food, Makeup, San Francisco

Being that now I’m living on my own and need to 1) eat, 2) save money, 3) explore cooking – the natural conclusion is that I should start cooking on my own. Another concern of mine is that I don’t want to waste anything… the Evolution of the Plum Chicken is a very good example of what usually happens with my food…

When my housemate brought home some plums, both of us knew that they would all be in the garbage within 3 days since neither of us can possibly eat so many and she didn”t even touch them because she had too many already. So on the second day, I decided to do something about it so that the plums don’t go to waste. The way I wanted to do it was to cook them. Since I didn’t have the equipment to make jam, I decided to make plum compote.

1) There was still some rock sugar left from my Red Bean Soup so I decided to melt that for my sauce instead of using regular sugar (which I never bought).
2) I washed and cut the plums. The put them in the sugar water to cook.
3) The skin of the plums come off very easily after a few minutes in the bath of hot water. I picked out all the skins with chopsticks.
4) The finished products, which I split into two containers, were: plum meat and plum sugar water, which I stored in my gogo no koucha (yum) bottle.
5) Ok, so this wasn’t really what I had in mind and was far from what the recipe instructed… but… at least now the plums won’t go bad.

Plums, oatmeal, sugar plum sauce

6) The plum meat I used for oatmeal topping – extremely delicious. I wolfed down the oatmeal (ok so I was hungry too).
7) I couldn’t figure out what to do with the sugar plum sauce until I just figured I might as well try to make sweet and sour chicken with it.
8) I had some chicken breast meat that I removed from the chicken I bought 2 weeks ago, which I marinated with small amounts of salt, soy sauce, and corn starch and put away in the fridge. I stir fried it until about 80% cooked. (may need to add water in the duration)
9) I poured the plum sauce and stir fried some more, then finally added a bit of corn starch so the sauce would thicken.
10 ) And finally, the result:

Plum Chicken

Amazing what a Chinese mind (Don’t be wasteful! Be creative and you can put EVERYTHING to good use.) can do, right?

The remaining plum sauce became:

Yummy Sweet & Sour spare ribs

VoCaL Cooking, Food

Ah the life of a freelancer…

Ok,these days I’ve been working the most insane hours and I leave my phone on all day because I use it as an alarm (ok I know I don’t need it on for just that reason) and I have to catch a call if an agency calls me (and they don’t really have the same concept of “appropriate” time as normal people…). I sleep at 5am and wake up around 7 or 8am to see if there are new projects or do same day projects, then I plop back into bed if there’s nothing else going on… waking up usually around 2-3pm… then cook/eat one meal for the day…

Life is not too exciting… so my new indoor hobby has become (as I expected) – cooking. It’s actually very zen when you stand there and chop vegetables. And it certain takes a lot of innovation to figure out how to mix the left overs from last night with what’s currently expiring in the fridge to make a decent meal… generally ending up eating the same thing for days because one batch from the supermarket is too much for one person to eat in one meal…

Today I had a vendetta against eggs (actually it’s just because I’m excited to have eggs in the house – bought them 2 days ago), so I cooked steamed double eggs (salted and regular, 1:2) with vermicelli and also steamed eggs dessert (used condensed milk instead of sugar，didn’t put plastic wrap on top because I didn’t have any… and it still turned out smooth!)… mmmmm… cholesterol…

There are some others…

So I see why freelancers gain weight...

Musings Cooking, Food, San Francisco, Translation