Mole Delicioso

Mole Negro, by Michelle D

Español

Forrest y yo fuimos a un nuevo restaurante esta noche: Juquilita Restaurante Oaxaqueño. Te lo digo, ¡Fue riquísimo! Al padre de Forrest le gusta el mole, así que vamos a presentarle a este restaurante.

No parece nada especial: está en una pequeña plaza comercial, y no vimos su letrero y nos lo pasabamos la primera vez. No había nadie adentro, excepto los empleados, quienes eran una mujer y un niño de unos 10 años de edad. El niño venía para tomar nuestros pedidos, y suponemos que la mujer no hablaba bien el inglés. Creo que le confundimos un poco cuando le hablamos en español (porque yo quería practicarlo) ;).

Pedí el pollo con mole negro, que me encanta. Forrest pedió el mole amarillo. Pero entonces la mujer vino por delante y nos dijo (en español — supongo que el niño le dijo que estábamos hablando, o tratando de hablar, al menos, en español) que se acabó el mole amarillo. Ella podría hacer más, pero tardaría 15 o 20 minutos más que normal. Forrest cambió su pedido al mole verde, porque escogió el amarillo sólo por su color. :P

Aunque cambió el pedido, pasaba mucho tiempo hasta que nos trajo la comida. Pero, ¡cuando la llegó! Qué deliciosa y rica era. La próxima vez que Forrest tiene ganas de comer comida mexicana, vamos a volver a este restaurante. No es tan elegante como La Carta de Oaxaca en Seattle, pero creo que es tan sabroso.

Corregido por ashushada en Lang-8.

English

Forrest and I went to a new restaurant tonight: Juquilita Restaurant Oaxaca. Man, it was delicious! Forrest's dad likes mole, so we're going to introduce him to this restaurant.

It doesn't seems like anything special: it's in a small strip mall, and we didn't see its sign and we missed it the first time. There was nobody inside, except employees, who were a woman and a boy about 10 years old. The boy came to take our orders, and we assumed that the woman did not speak English well. I think I confused him a little when we spoke to him in Spanish (because I want to practice) ;).

I ordered the chicken with mole negro, which I love. Forrest ordered the mole amarillo. But then the woman came out and told us (in Spanish — I guess the boy told him we were talking, or trying to talk, at least, in Spanish) that the mole amarillo was out. She could make more, but it would take 15 or 20 minutes longer than usual. Forrest changed his order to the mole verde, since he chose the yellow only by its color. :P

Although we changed our order, it took a while before the food came out. But when it arrived! What delicious, rich food. The next time Forrest feels like eating Mexican food, we're coming back to this restaurant. It may no be as elegant as La Carta de Oaxaca in Seattle, but I think it's just as tasty.

Deutsch

Forrest und ich haben heute Abend zu ein mexikanisches Restaurant gegangen. Eine Frau und ein Junge arbeiteten dort. Wir bestellten schwarze und grüne Moles. Sie waren sehr leckere. Wir haben vor, dorthin zu zurückzugehen.

Von Rhenania korrigiert.

English

Forrest and I went to a Mexican restaurant tonight. A woman and a boy worked there. We ordered black and green moles. The were very tasty. We intend to go back there.

Wedding Cheesecake

Forrest and I just had the following IM conversation:

Me: some book suggests wedding cheesecake
Forrest: ooooooooooooh
Forrest: i looooooove you
Me: but that would clearly be a bad idea
Me: because I'd find you hiding in the kitchen even before the ceremony, bloated from eating allllll the cheesecake, and you'll just burp instead of saying "I do," and that's not so romantic ;)

Genmai Cha

Orange Strawberry Tea Infuser

English:

My coworkers drink coffee. A lot of coffeee No, you don't understand what I mean. At a minimum, they walk a few blocks to buy cups of coffee 3 times per day. Now, I like coffee. It's possible that I like it too much. :) But the level of my coworkers' coffee-drinking… oi!

I don't want to drink 3 coffees (or mochas, actually) for, hehe, 3 reasons: it's an expensive habit, it's a lot of calories, and it's a lot of caffeine. Because of this, I've bought genmai cha*, a type of Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice. It's a loose-leaf tea, so I also bought an infuser. How cute, no? And, why is the strawberry orange? That's a good question. :)

Spanish:

Mis compañeros de trabajo beben café. Mucho café. No, no entiendes lo que quiero decir. A un mínimo, ellos andan unas cuadras para comprar tazas de café 3 veces cada día. Bueno, me gusta el café. Es posible que me gusta demasiado. :) Pero el nivel de beber café de mis compañeros… ¡ay!

No quiero beber 3 cafés (o mocas, en realidad) por, jeje, 3 razones: es un hábito caro, son muchas calorías, y es mucha cafeína. Por eso, he comprado genmai cha*, un tipo de té verde japonés con arroz integral tostado. Es un té de anillas, así que también compré un infusor. Qué precioso, ¿no? Y, ¿por qué es anaranjada esta fresa? Ésa es una buena pregunta. :)

* I usually mispronounce "genmai cha" as [ʤɛn mɑi ʧɑi], like I've got some vowel harmony going on or something. :P (It should actually be pronounced something like [ɡɛn mɑi ʧɑ], if you were trying to follow the Japanese pronounciation (while still speaking in English).

Chicken Salad

Chicken Salad

I made myself some chicken salad from scratch today. I didn't even follow a recipe! (This is a noteworthy accomplishment for me, since I'm normally one of those by-the-letter recipe-following non-cooks.) Forrest will even vouch for the tastiness of my chicken salad.

I didn't have walnuts, but I think they would have been a nice addition. So in the recipe below, I'm adding 'em. I'm recording the "recipe" below, in case I forget what I put in it. :)

Chicken Salad

• rotisserie chicken thigh & drumstick, shredded
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 3 inches of cucumber, chopped
• 1 or 2 slices of red onion, chopped
• dried cranberries, about ¼ cup or so
• handful of walnuts, chopped

• two big teaspoon glops of mayonnaise
• sprinkle of lemon juice (equivalent to squeezing a slice)
• salt & pepper, to taste

Combine chicken, celery, cucumber, onion, cranberries, and walnuts in a bowl.

Add mayonnaise. Stir until evenly distributed.

Add lemon juice and salt & pepper.

Yields: 1 main course serving, or 2 side servings

Happy Thanksgiving

My First Thanksgiving on My Own

This is the very first year I've not gone home for Thanksgiving. It feels weird. But Forrest, Jerry, and I made a pretty good showing at our Thanksgiving dinner. They cooked most of the food — I only contributed Stove Top stuffing and fudge-in-a-box — but I kept them supplied with clean knives, pots, pans, measuring cups, etc by washing everything as they cooked.

We have sooooo much leftovers now! We, um, possibly had too much food: roasted turkey (only 8 pounds!), stuffing (both in-bird and on-stove), mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, lefse, waldorf salad, peas and pearl onions, pumpkin pie, a mini cranberry tart-pie-thing, fudge, chips, milk, Dr. Pepper, Johannesburg Riesling, Franciscan Merlot (2004 vintage, a little too young), and some mead. And we still need to make turkey carcass soup!

Decaf, Half-Caf, Whatever

Single-Blind Coffee Taste Test

This weekend I had an annoying headache for much of Sunday, which I'm attributing to caffeine withdrawal. I had switched to half-caf at work to avoid just such a thing, but when I drink 2–3 half-caf cups of coffee every day, they add up. Forrest suggested I do a taste test to see if I can even tell the difference between half-caf and decaf, and switch to the latter if I can't.

So I enlisted my friend Hugh's help in doing a single-blind taste test between half-caf and decaf. (I didn't compare them against regular coffee, since I'm perfectly happy with half-caf and don't want to discover now that I actually prefer the fully leaded version. I'm looking to downgrade, not upgrade, my caffeine intake.)

Hugh made up three cups of coffee — using the "odd man out" approach is a bit better than just two options to compare against. Each cup was discretely labeled A, 1, or unmarked. He obviously knew which was which, but he left the room while I tried to distinguish between them so that he wouldn't influence my decision.

And damned if I couldn't tell the difference! I was very mildly suspicious of cup A, thinking it was the half-caf and the other two were decaf. But really, I couldn't tell a major difference and I wasn't even sure there was a difference. I made up my mind at that point to switch to decaf, since my silly taste buds don't know any better.

Afterward, I asked Hugh which was which. It turns out that the unmarked cup was the half-caf, and the other two were decaf. I was so wrong. :P

So I start my weaning off of caffeine tomorrow!

JIT Mochas

JIT Mocha

I like mochas; just ask my wallet. But I get free coffee at work, so I'm not buying as many mochas as I used to. Yet I miss my mochas...

So, I tried to come up with a way to satisfy my mocha cravings while still taking advantage of free corporate coffee (which tastes better than the Kool-Aid here). I really don't care for ghetto mochas. Instead, I came up with something that I still find tasty, even if it's not quite the same as a real mocha.

I present to you the JIT mocha! (JIT stands for "just in time," if you're not in computer science.) You've got the coffee in the mug, and the chocolate Hershey's Kisses in your mouth, and they mix "just in time" as you sip the coffee. If the coffee's hot enough, the Kiss melts right away, making it a very rich, chocolately experience.

So now you know. :)

THE Lasagna

This is the lasagna. The lasagna to which all other lasagnas are compared... and found lacking. This is my mother's lasagna. It has ruined me for anything but this recipe; I no longer order lasagna in restaurants, despite liking lasagna, because I know I will be disappointed by the restaurant's poor imitation of my mother's lasagna. I recommend you never try any, lest you be forced to cook your own lasagna from scratch forever after.

Mochas Seduce My Wallet

Café Spending in 2007

Oof.

As you can see, mochas (the bulk of my "café" purchases) are the bane of my wallet. On the one hand, I do enjoy them. I don't think that all spending is bad if you feel you get proportional pleasure out of it and there aren't cheaper options that are equally good.

So I enjoy my mochas while sitting in bookstore cafés... But I'm not sure I'm actually getting $80(!!) worth of pleasure out of them each month. That's like a mocha a day. What was I doing in August?? Two mochas a week seems more than sufficient for me, and that would only be $26 a month ($3.25 × 2 × 4). Huh. So I suppose I buy café foods along with my mocha far more often than I thought I did...

Like I said, I'm not against buying mochas and food per se, since I do enjoy the experience of consuming them while sitting in bookstore cafés. But I am against mindless, unconscious spending. I really wasn't very aware that the café purchases were adding up so fast, and sometimes I do just buy the mocha at the bookstore out of habit.

So. Hopefully I can keep track of "Have I had 2 mochas this week yet?" in my head from now on. :P

Way Too Much Beef Stew

The first recipe I decided to try out in my shiny new slow cooker was beef stew. I found the recipe in my cookbook, which said it was good for both medium and large slow cookers. Great! I thought, My slow cooker counts as "medium" for this book, so we're good to go!

Do you see where the flaw in this logic might be?

So if the amounts in the recipe are good for both a medium and large slow cooker, and my slow cooker is at the small end of this cookbook's "medium" scale... Yup, it made waaaaaay too much beef stew for my poor little medium slow cooker. Being the oblivious, inexperienced cook that I am, I didn't realize this fact until I'd already added the carrots and potatoes, cooked all the meat, and mixed in the celery and onion. Only when I went to scoop the meat mix into the slow cooker did I realize there was no way it would all fit and still leave the recommended 2-inch gap at the top.

So I pulled out all the carrots and potatoes, divided all the ingredients in two, and immediately refrigerated one half. I then refilled the slow cooker, this time with only half of the ingredients. Four hours later, I cooked up some rice and had a very yummy, very tender beef stew for dinner. :)

There still remains one problem, however. Just a half-batch is almost too much food for me. There is at least 4 more servings I can get out of my leftovers, and that's not counting the second batch that I'm cooking up now. Oi! I'm hoping I can give some of it to my local friends...

Update, 6:10 PM: Hey... couldn't I freeze the excess? What wonders of modern technology!

Sacrilegious Sushi Dinner

I bought some sashimi-grade salmon from Uwajimaya, the giant Asian grocery store in the International District of Seattle. I trust their sashimi-grade fish more than I would, say, Safeway's. This is only 0.2 pounds of salmon, and was enough to leave me stuffed. (Only half of that is shown in the photo in this post. I kept the other half in the fridge until I was ready to eat it.)

I've heard that it's hard to make good sushi yourself, and I'm sure someone with real sushi chef training could have filleted this salmon better. But really, I just slid the knife along the "flakes" of the salmon and it practically fell apart on its own.

Then I got sacrilegious on its ass. ;) Normally, when I order sushi at a restaurant, I try to hide from the sushi chef as I cut my nigiri into 6–8 smaller, (my-)bite-size pieces. But after filleting the salmon, I realized that I might as well pre-cut the salmon into the bite-sized pieces I like. No sushi chef here to hide from in shame when I'm in my own apartment!

I'm not sure how you could have a more mutilated Japanese dinner experience. Let me count the ways:

1. That's a huge bowl full of long grain rice (rather than Japanese short-grained extra-glutenous rice), moistened with seasoned rice vinegar and sugar (rather than proper sushi vinegar). Note that it's not in separate little rice pads for the salmon.
2. Soy sauce with ground mustard instead of wasabi. (This substitution was suggested via a quick Google search. It worked surprisingly well, actually.)
3. Salmon cut into tiny cubes, piled in a heap with absolutely zero presentation value.
4. A fork for stabbing said cubes, and a spoon to shovel a bite of rice behind the salmon on the fork.
5. Served on Western-style plates, not sushi plates.
6. A glass of milk, something I'm sure isn't commonly served in a society of lactose-intolerants. (I appreciate my mutations!)
7. A coffee mug for the tea (at least it is jasmine tea...). Said tea was brewed in a drip coffee maker.
8. And Pocky and Hi-chew for dessert. Also not served in nice Japanese restaurants, although these are Japanese candies... :P

Not sure how I could have made this more sacrilegious and still resemble a sushi dinner. :) Regardless, I very much enjoyed my meal, which is really what counts when cooking for yourself, ne?

Homemade Bread

In a fit of domesticity, I baked a loaf of white bread from scratch last night. I was inspired by Forrest, who made his own bread the night before. He kept interrupting himself on the phone to murmur about how tasty his bread was. I got jealous, so I baked up some of my own.

I followed S. John Ross's bread recipe, which is very simple but also explains some of the why of the ingredients and where you can modify the recipe for different results. That's the kind of recipe/instruction I like. :)

Basic Bread (small loaf)

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 rounded cups flour
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast

Dissolve sugar and salt in water in a large bowl. Sprinkle in yeast and let sit for 10 minutes. Add butter.

Add flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Move to a floured bread board or countertop. By hand, continue adding flour until the dough is a smooth, homogeneous mass.

Set in a warm place (such as a warmed oven), covered, to rise for 45 minutes. Take out, punch down (using flour as necessary if it's become sticky), form into the desired loaf shape, then put back in the warm place, covered, to rise for another 45 minutes.

Bake in a non-preheated oven at 350 °ree;F for 30-45 minutes or until deep golden brown. Remove from oven, brush lightly with melted butter or olive oil, then let sit to cool for 1 hour. Enjoy!

Yield: 1 small loaf.

Source: S. John Ross.

I took photos as I went; you can check out each step on my Flickr page.

Midway through the first rising step, I called up Forrest and talked with him about what the consistency of the dough should be. He agreed that the bread was probably a little too dry. I took it out of the oven, added a tiny bit of water to it (maybe a tablespoon?), mixed it up until it was doughlike, then put it back to rise some more. This interruption of its rising step probably accounts for why it didn't double in size like it was supposed to the first time, but rose just fine when left alone for its second bout of 45 minutes.

Okay... so I have a confession... As you can see evidenced in the photo here, I really like eating bread dough. Really like it. I'd been snacking on little bits of it as I kneaded it, but I wanted more after it was already nice and loaf-shaped. Well, this is my bread, so I can snatch off an end piece and make the loaf misshapen if I want to! :) This is why the finished bread isn't quite as symmetric at its two ends as you might expect.

Next, I'm thinking of making my own Auntie Anne's pretzels. Mmm...

Bought Myself a Slow Cooker

While I was staying with my folks, my dad made some beef stew in his slow cooker. It reminded me that I'd always liked the idea of slow cookers, and now that I'm going to have a non-negligible commute, I'm going to feel even less like cooking than when I was 3 miles from work. But I could toss stuff in a slow cooker and eat it when I got home. :)

So I've got myself a 3-quart slow cooker — this Hamilton Beach one had good reviews compared to some of the others, but wasn't as pricey as the Crock Pot name brand. I'll wander down to B&N tomorrow and pick out a tasty-looking cookbook to go with it.

Hopefully I'll be able to find myself a brown-bag–friendly group at Microsoft to have lunch with, so I'm not wasting so much money on eating lunch out every day...

Nutritious Dinner

Nutritious Dinner

I don't think any meal I ever had in college came close to this level of awesomeness.

I was just kidding around when I called Forrest up to tell him that I'd purchased only satsumas and Spam at the grocery store. "No, of course I'm not going to eat them together. That'd just be gross."

But by the time I got home, I really did want to eat both of them tonight. So I had a satsuma for an appetizer; a can of thinly-cut, crispily-cooked Spam for the main course; a bottle of beer to drink (I was out of milk); and another couple satsumas for dessert.

Yummers!

Teeeaaa

So I have a lot of tea.

Empty Fridge

I'm renting a room in a house from my mom's cousin's neighbor. It's an Eichler house, which is a cool design although not sturdily built. The woman has lived here for ten years, yet it feels like she hasn't fully moved in yet. This is what her fridge looked like when I moved in.

Piglet Cookie

So, first off, my bad with not posting in, uh, a while. I'm all moved in to Sunnyvale and doing language-related programming work for Apple. Good stuff.

Also, the computer cable to get the photos off my phone doesn't feel like cooperating any more. The current plan is to blog them off my phone.

This here is a Piglet cookie that Lisa wanted me to take a picture of. This was at Pier 39, when my family took my dad out to lunch to Bubba Gump's for father's day.

Mystery Beer Night

Alpha Theta, Olya's coed frat, occasionally hosts what they call "mystery beers." They had about one hundred different varieties of beer and other malt beverage, all hidden in several ice bins. People stood in line, drew a number out of a (duct tape) hat, and either drank or traded away their selected beer.

I drew an Old Brown Dog Ale, which was pretty decent. I also tried a sip of Dogfish 120 Minute IPA. This was apparently an expensive, rare beer, and tasted surprising sweet. Pretty good, but if it IS, in fact, expensive and rare, I probably won't be having it again any time soon.

Coffee Cat

On highway 17, going between Santa Cruz and Walnut Creek, we stopped at Scotts Valley looking for peppermint hot chocolate. They were out of the syrup, but they did have big bins of green coffee beans for sale. They roast their own coffee.

Forrest bought Jerry two pounds of the stuff. The cafe is really nice — lots of space, comfy chairs, big tables — and the employees are very friendly. If you ever happen to be in Scotts Valley, give them some business!

Update, 5/24: Flickr photos — sign, interior.

Categories: photos, coffee, shopping

Brown Sugar & Bourbon Salmon

It was my turn to cook dinner (actually, it's been my turn many times over; I inherited a strong dislike of cooking from my mom). We had some frozen salmon, so I went browsing through AllRecipes' "Quicky & Easy" for something to make.

I wish I'd taken a picture of it: the salmon with brown sugar and bourbon glaze was very tasty. And half an hour from start to finish, assuming your salmon is thawed. Will almost certainly make this again at some point in the future.

Also, I learned tonight that, no matter how yummy molasses-and-granulated-sugar brown sugar is, you shouldn't eat too much. My stomach doesn't feel so good right now. ;)

Categories: cooking, recipe