Sundays

     Sundays, while a great day for churchgoing, road tripping, movie seeing, friend hanging (that didn't come out right even if there's always that friend - hanging with friends), were never really a routine day for anything in our household. This mostly is a direct result of my husband's work schedule, with which he doesn't often get weekends off. The times he does, we toss a coin between going out and doing something, or staying home to just have a relaxing day. Today happened to be one of the latter. I've been procrastinating hardcore with grocery shopping, and whenever I head to the store, I barely buy full meals worth of items. Some snacks here, some fruit there, maybe a cut of meat I'm really craving. Needless to say, our fridge is in a very sad state.

With Blueberries and Iced Tea

     Yesterday on the way home, my husband picked up some emergency provisions in case "the big one" finally hit southern California. He bought fruit cups (I asked for canned but these are even better), canned veggies, Vienna sausages (why............ god why...), plenty of water, and some canned chicken breast meat (it's basically the chicken version of canned tuna). I was too lazy to drive down for fast food, which none of us wanted to eat anyway, and didn't feel like shopping again for something fancy, so I broke out a can of the chicken and made grilled chicken salad sandwiches with Gruyère. Simple enough and truly delicious, between the crunchy, chewy crust, the ooey-gooey goodness of the cheese, and the subtle zing of scallions.

Mmm... cheese...

     Both my husband and daughter loved it so much (it's just a sandwich! in my mind) I had to make an extra one to satisfy everybody. Considering how simple it was, everything came together in under 15 minutes, I will probably be making a lot more of these in the coming weeks. Although not the lightest meal you can go for, it's definitely better than a big juicy burger.
    To make it more on the healthy side, I substitute butter with Earth Balance, a product from our old days of eating vegan; we haven't stopped using it since and rarely use real butter in anything unless we absolutely have to. My husband insists on whole wheat or whole grain bread over white. I use 1 full tablespoon of mayo per can of chicken (these cans are bigger than your regular small tuna cans) - each can makes two hearty sandwiches, or three leaner ones.
     On a side note, Gruyère is one of my favorite cheeses! To me, it tastes like parmesan but melts in an absolutely heavenly fashion. I can't remember where, but a long time ago I found a recipe for Gruyère and smoked Fontina grilled cheese... mindblowingly delicious. If you're a fellow cheese lover and have a penchant for parmigiano, do get some Gruyère and try it out in your favorite sandwich!
     While I'm sure most know how to make grilled sandwiches, I'm going to include what I used and did anyway:

Grilled Chicken Salad with Gruyère*
 Makes 2 sandwiches

4 slices of bread (we use 100% Multi-grain PLUS from Milton Baking)
1 12.5 oz can premium chunk chicken breast in water (less if you want smaller sandwiches)
2 green onions, chopped finely
1 heaping tbsp mayonnaise
Gruyère cheese, enough to cover one side of sandwich in thin layer
Earth Balance (butter), softened, enough to coat 4 slices of bread, approx 2.5-3 tsp
Ground black pepper as desired

1. Break up chicken in a bowl as finely as you prefer (we love it pretty mashed up). Add mayo, chopped green onions, ground black pepper and mix until thoroughly combined.

2. Spread Earth Balance/butter on two slices of bread and set aside. Lay out slices of Gruyère evenly on the other two slices of bread. Pile on as much or little of the chicken salad mix as you want.

3. In a non-stick pan, melt half of the remaining Earth Balance/butter on the lowest heat setting. Set the slice of bread with cheese and chicken in the pan and cover. Toast until the bread is golden brown on the bottom and the cheese is starting to melt (time varies depending on temperature - keep an eye out). Place one buttered slice of bread on top and flip, being careful not to dismantle the sandwich in midair. Cover again and toast until golden brown and cheese is very melty. Remove from pan, slice and serve.

Happy munching!

*I'm sorry the name is misleading... I realized today after listening to a Subway radio ad that these are actually called "tuna melts".

Costco chicken: http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10181579&whse=BD_115&topnav=bdoff

#tbt #1 - Arami, Chicago

     It's #tbt! I figured on Thursdays of each week, I'd make a post about some yummies previously experienced before the creation of this blog. Since my first real post was about sushi, I thought I'd follow it up with some more. My husband, daughter and I spent good amounts of time traveling both domestically and abroad in the past couple of years. During Thanksgiving week, 2012, we flew to Chicago to spend the holiday since my in-laws were both out of the country on business. As much as I love traveling, I'm not all that for doing it during the holidays, but I was never much of a family holiday person to begin with. Sorry for the low-q photos, all were taken with an iPhone in a low-light setting... you know how that goes.
     The weather was fair this particular evening in the Windy City, and by fair I mean very, very, windy. No rain or snow was good enough for me. We drove from our hotel to the Ukrainian Village, which took no more than half an hour in semi-heavy traffic. From what I remember, Arami didn't particularly stand out in the row of window-fronts lining Chicago Ave. The entrance to the restaurant was small, barely noticeable and we wound up passing by the door a couple of times before finally noticing it. Inside, however, the restaurant had a warm, almost trendy atmosphere, with a small bar directly facing the door. The hostess greeted us and led us to a small table in a quiet room towards the back of the restaurant where a few other tables were already filled (it actually extended in pretty far, with two "separate" rooms - one with a long sushi counter, and another with tables).

Cold Sake Tedori Gawa - Flower Meadow

      We started out with a bottle of sake. I don't typically drink sake so I'm not a fair judge of it, but I had a small cup full to taste. It was sweet and refreshing with a mild burn going down and despite being chilled, the liquid really warmed me up.

Uni Shooter

      The whole experience at Arami was pleasant - both our waiter and alternate servers brought the food in succession, a "course" meal, and described what was present in each plate. This was the first time I had eaten uni, and it was amazing! It made me fall completely in love with the sea critter gonad, which was seasoned perfectly with whatever the chef put in the glass, and the green tobiko popped in briney bliss.

Secret Hamachi

      The Secret Hamachi, a chef special, came with truffle oil and king mushrooms on top with microgreens. The hamachi was fresh, as was all of the raw fish we ordered, but the combination here was really nothing memorable at $9/2 pc.

Toro Tartare Bite

      The toro tartare was good, with just enough fat to make the bite soft, although the whole thing wasn't overly flavorful.

Otoro and Chutoro

    Oh my, oh my oh my ohmyohmyohmy. The otoro was one of the best things I've ever eaten. I really hate to attribute the word "mushy" to raw fish, most sashimi is typically a tad mushy. The otoro was firm, and when bitten into, all of the fat in the meat just splurged and melted (ok, I realize this is a rather unpleasant image, I'm sorry). The flavor was intensely rich, not unpleasant at all as some may think when eating fat; imagine your favorite toro or maguro, multiply by 100x on the scale of deliciousness, and BAM! you have this otoro. In contrast, the chutoro, while having considerable fat content, was nothing like the otoro and was rather unimpressionable when consumed after.

Gyu

     These beef skewers grilled in uni butter with scallion came with roasted garlic on the side. The uni wasn't very apparent but it gave the beef a deep, lingering richness that I loved. The pieces of meat themselves were on the tough side, and one skewer was overcooked compared to the other.

Hamachi Maguri Ebi

     Tuna, yellowtail, shrimp roll. There was a spicy sauce on top, which gave the roll a really nice kick. This was better than most rolls I've had elsewhere.

Soft-shell Crab

     I love, love, love soft-shell crab! Everything about it is just so good, from the innards to the meat. The crab in this roll was definitely hefty, and it had much more crab meat than what you'd typically find with soft-shell crab rolls. The crab was quite sweet and succulent, and it left me wanting more.

Arami Ramen

     Since my daughter really couldn't eat any of the raw foods, we ordered a ramen for her to split with my husband. I tasted the broth, didn't eat much of anything else since the rolls were surprisingly filling. The soup was very good, the flavor quite different from other pork or miso based ramen, and my daughter ate much more than I had hoped. She did also munch on a small piece of the crab, which was definitely not on her list of favorites.
     Our bill totaled $175 after tip, which is rather pricey, but the food was worth it!

Arami
1829 W. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
(312) 243-1535

THE COW LEVEL

     I play Diablo 3. I played a lot of Diablo 3, especially in the past week. The game itself is all doom and gloom, with the Lord of Terror wreaking havoc all over the world of Sanctuary, but all is not lost.. Because: Whimsyshire. How do you say no to a game where you're wrecking purple and pink unicorns, teddy bears, and living flowers into bloody, pulpy messes while frolicking through a rainbow map? If you enjoy a good rpg, play it. Blizzard fixed it up nicely, so even if you disliked how boring it previously was, the new patch and content is pretty much guaranteed to make you happy as long as you are a fan of these types of games.

The Handy Market - Saturday BBQ Special

     On Saturday, we finally went and bought some of the locally famous BBQ at the Handy Market in Burbank. Rather, my husband went to buy some on the way home, and subsequently spent $45 on a tri-tip roast and a rack of baby back ribs because "this is what you asked for". Isn't he the sweetest? One thing I always have a problem with is portion sizing, whether it be cooking or serving food, I usually overdo it in every way possible. This is a perfect example of that... I had sent him a text asking him to pick up one pound of tri-tip and a rack of ribs, never really stopping to think just how much food that is for two adults and a toddler.
    The meat was smoky and flavorful - the tri-tip was a bit on the rare side. Their homemade BBQ sauce really has a nice tang and spice to it. I usually eat BBQ with very little if not no sauce, I dipped everything I could in plenty of this. Lots of leftovers for the next three days.
     The Handy Market is also where I try to buy most of our beef, whenever we don't grab it from Costco. The butchers here are friendly and I've gotten them to fulfill almost every request.

Burbank's Handy Market
2514 W Magnolia Blvd. Burbank CA 91505
(818) 848-2500

Ninjin, Santa Monica

      Last Friday, my husband and I were in Santa Monica for a show at the Broad Stage. We left a bit early so we would have ample time for dinner and perhaps some tripping around at the Farmer's Market on Fairfax and 3rd before showtime at 7:00pm. "What do you want to eat?" I asked him in the car as we slowly inched our way down the 405 at right about rush hour time, which actually means any time on this particular stretch of highway. "Anything, I'm starving," he replied. "How about sushi? Maybe we can find something nice". Being rather clueless to the good eats around SM, I briefly Googled decently rated sushi restaurants near the Broad Stage. Ninjin, along with Sushi King, popped up on Yelp at around 4 stars. 

     Lucky for us, this little hole-in-the-wall of a restaurant was on a street currently under renovations. The entire mid-section of Colorado Ave. was coned off, with the remaining lanes incredibly uneven, giving us a ride bumpier than Indiana Jones at Disney. The restaurant itself doesn't provide parking, and since street parking is out of the question, we drove around to a nearby grocery store and parked there.

Edamame

     We were in before the dinner crowd, so seating wasn't an issue; there was only one other party in the tiny restaurant. Unsure of the portion sizes, we ordered the edamame (not gratis), a roll, a sushi combination, and received a bowl of miso soup with the nigiri plate to start. The beans were the perfect balance of sweet with just the right crisp and the miso had a lovely ocean flavor unlike most misos I've had previously. I could seriously drink that soup all day.

Black Dragon roll

      All of the fish and seafood, minus the uni, were incredibly fresh and delicious. However! Both of us really disliked the sushi rice. Simply put, it was extremely undercooked and this is coming from someone that typically loves al dente rice and pasta... on the rarer side. I've tasted my fair share semi-raw rice while cooking risotto at home, and the sushi rice was exactly that.

Uni (Sea Urchin)

      The uni was the only raw food out of the bunch that didn't taste too fresh. Good uni is, perhaps by far, my favorite - it's creamy, sweet, and tastes of the sea. This uni, however, had a bitter tinge and an overwhelmingly unpleasant aftertaste that left me drinking water non-stop between paying the bill and the car.

Chef's Choice, a casual "omakase"

     Every piece of nigiri was succulent, even the tomago (egg) that I've spent every trip to any kind of sushi restaurant avoiding. Since I have no prior experience with it, I can't say whether it's better or worse than other tomago, but I can say I loved it! It tasted just like egg custard, with a firmer texture of course. The only thing I didn't care for at all was the imitation crab - no, no, nope, no thanks, NEVER, except wrapped snuggly inside a roll.
     We planned on ordering more but the rice was really an appetite killer. It just felt like it sat funny inside my stomach, and I really didn't want any more of it. My husband agreed and we asked our waiter for the check, which totaled out with tip to be under $45.

Ninjin
607 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 451-9800

Setting sail...

Not really.

Just typing some gibberish to test out the whole template and whatnot.

Hello, how are you doing?