serene’s posterous

I am trying to limit the eating of meat to only one meal per day, because I don't really like cooking meat and I think it is better for the environment to limit the consumption of meat.  The main problem with not eating meat is that I seem to get hungrier more quickly so I try to combat that with a bigger variety of food.

This lunch from a week or so ago was freshly cooked quinoa mixed with leftover baked beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes.  I also added some steamed broccoli for greens.

We went there for a late lunch after a saturday morning of climbing at PG Sunnyvale.  Well...climbing for the other people in the group, but more like floundering and banging my knees for me.  The restaurant was still quite crowded even though it was past 2.30pm, but we managed to get the last 4 seats by the door.  Eu-Jin and I got the Ryowa ramen, when the other 2 in our group got the vegetable ramen.  The sesame ramen broth was tasty, but I think I would like to try the vegetable ramen next time since it had a lot more healthy greens.  I don't quite like the setup of the restaurant, because we had to sit in a row, making chatting a little more difficult.  I do think the Ryowa ramen was marginally tastier than the Kuro ramen at Maru Ichi, but I am not really comparing the same things.

I got some taro milk tea with pearls from Verde across the street for dessert.  It was quite disappointing because the pearls were soft and soggy.  Maybe I should have tried their grass jelly instead.  I much prefer the roasted barley milk tea at Tea Era, even though it is marginally more expensive there.

Eu-Jin and I have never been to this restaurant, but I guess this isn't particularly unexpected since we rarely dine out unless we are meeting up with friends.  And even then, we tend to go to the same few places.

We had a good dinner.  Although the portions initially seemed small because the dishes came in smallish metal cups, but it was certainly very filling.  Since it was a bigger group of friends, we ordered samosas as appetizers, and 6 other entrees (a mix of vegetarian dishes as well as chicken tikka masala and a lamb dish).  We had rice and naan with these entrees.  Although I was quite full by the end of dinner, I couldn't resist ordering the mango lassi, which was excellent.

I like the cottage-like feel of the restaurant, and the cute dinner plates.

After splurging on Fraiche again, I decided I needed to make my own frozen yogurt.  It is actually amazingly easy if you start with Greek style yogurt.  The recipe is from 101 Cookbooks.  I used one tub of Trader Joe's plain Greek style yogurt and stirred in a bit more than 1/3 cup of sugar.  The frozen yogurt's texture gets a bit better if I stick it into the freezer for another hour or so after churning for about 25 minutes.

I forsee that our ice-cream maker is going to get a lot use in the coming weeks until I get sick of frozen yogurt.

   

Our friends on their round the world vacation were in the area for a few days while they prepare for their next few legs in South America.  I am envious!

This meant that we ended up meeting up a few times this week to catch up, listen to their stories about their adventures thus far and their travel plans in South America.

I haven't been to Caffè del Doge along University Ave.  The cafe was packed even at 10pm on a Thursday night.  Since it was late, Eu-Jin and I didn't want to get coffee even though it smelt really good.  Instead we got the regular hot chocolate and the thick hot chocolate to share.  It was quite pricey for hot chocolate made from powder, but it was tasty.  The thick hot chocolate was more like a chocolate pudding.  It came in a martini shaped glass and was maybe overly rich.  The regular hot chocolate was very good, thick and creamy.  I don't think we will be heading back there anytime soon, but next time, I would like to try a latte.

Egg Salad with greek yogurt mixed with curry powder, and steamed green peas for the color.

It was probably not a wise decision to eat a baked potato (Kumpir) and drink pomegranate juice when I was feeling ill from possible food poisoning.  But I was greedy, and didn't want to pass up the chance to eat Kumpir, which is a Turkish fast food, on the last night we were in Turkey.  This was somewhere in Sultanahmet, in a cafe selling Kumpir, lots of baked goods, and juices.

Eu-Jin thought the potato looks nasty, probably because I picked the red cabbage to be stuffed into the potato.  The preparation is fast, the guy gets a potato fresh from the oven, and mashes it up with butter and what looks like cheese.  I got to pick what to stuff the potato with, and the sauces.  Other than the red cabbage, I think I picked olives, corn, peas, carrots and some kind of red sauce and chili.  It was very tasty, but I really should have stuck to plain bread on the account of my bad stomach.

I usually prefer drinking tea over coffee.  I liked the tea served in pretty little tulip shaped cups in Turkey so I drank a lot of tea.  It was just great to have something warm after walking around in the cold, and it was relatively healthy because I don't usually add sugar to my tea.  Although I don't know if I would be able to taste the difference, turkish tea or çay is prepared in a special way.  The tea is prepared using 2 stacked kettles, the bottom kettle steaming the loose tea leaves in hot water in the top kettle.  You end up with very strong tea, that can be diluted by adding appropriate amounts of water.  According to my Turkish friend, tea prepared this way doesn't have the bitterness of directly boiling the tea.  We even saw electric versions these kettles!  And the tea was cheap.  We paid half a Turkish lira for a glass on the Bosphorus ferry.

Turkish coffee (Türk kahvesi) is just way too strong for me.  The second photo was taken when we took a short break in a coffeeshop in the middle of the Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) in Istanbul.  You get a tiny cup of coffee, with grounds at the bottom of the cup, so you have to carefully sip the top, making sure you don't drink the grounds too.  This was our only experience trying Turkish coffee, because after that we chose to drink tea every time.

   

I had bought a head of green cauliflower from Sigona's on Sunday for only 99 cents.  It is too bad the orange and purple ones there were already moldy, otherwise I would have also bought some at the same price. 

I had only about half a head of the cauliflower left and it was starting to show signs of mold, so I decided to roast the cauliflower with garlic, yellow sweet potatoes, and some carrots for color.  I think I like the green cauliflower better than the regular white ones because it is slightly sweeter.

Photo by Eu-Jin.

The day we went on the Bosphorus public ferry cruise, from Eminönü to Anadolu Kavağı (on the Asian side of Istanbul, near the Black Sea) and back, was particularly rainy and miserable.  The sightseeing would have been much better on a sunny day.  A peril of traveling in Turkey in winter - rainy weather.

One of the highlights was the Kanlıca Yogurt, served with a heaping spoon of confectioners' powdered sugar.  When we stopped at Kanlıca, staff on the ferry brought on board several trays of the local yogurt to sell to the passengers. The promotion tactic was amusing.  He caught the interest of the passengers by holding the yogurt cup upside down - showing that the yogurt didn't fall out.  That was one of the best yogurt I have had - smooth and creamy.  Perfect with the powdered sugar.  I am glad I quickly got up and paid the 2 Turkish liras for the tasty yogurt.  By the time Eu-Jin wanted to get some, after tasting my yogurt, it was sold out!  He had to make do with drinking more Turkish tea.