Chocolate Mochi Krunch

Eating THESE right now. SO good. Way better than their Hot Chocolate Mochi Krunch. Sorry I don't have a picture of the ones I'm eating now, but I reviewed the hot/spicy one here with pictures. I like the plain chocolate one because the other ones were like spicy arare covered in chocolate...and instead of these being like non-spicy arare covered in chocolate, they tasted like these rice crackers covered in chocolate. Mmm. Like a LOT of Japanese foods, these definitely have shoyu and sugar.

Random Freshman Year Food

Yes--I did take food pics way before I started this blog.
And you can see from the dorm pics why I gained 10 pounds freshman year (at least it wasn't the "freshman fifteen" though). I always ate what was pictured below + at least seconds + dessert. Pig!

Olivia to Wendy (in our dorm room):

Wendy to me:

Philly cheesesteak sandwich from Pat Brown's:

Again, I really enjoyed dorm food. Guess I'm not that picky? I think it was pretty darn good, considering what people kept saying about "dorm food" in general before I left for undergrad.

These are some food pics from Crossroads:

French toast & omlette (they had one to two omlette stations every weekend):

Green tea ice cream from ... oh no. That place on Bancroft that sells boba, ice cream, egg puffs, and other Asian stacks? The one right by the expensive candy store that just closed. Not Sweetheart Cafe....

This was from the Clark Kerr Campus dining commons. It truly is sickening how much I ate every day (I even ate more than what's below sometimes...or maybe usually). This was from the day I fell in love with bread pudding...and that is the bread pudding right there:

Back when I was in Rally Committee (UCRC), they had a BBQ right before the BIG GAME (Cal vs. Stanford) rally I believe. Yum.


A Thai House dessert (fried bananas and ice cream...and apparently a cashew and two raisins). I'm really not a fan of fried bananas. I've given it several chances too. I just like raw bananas.

Angeline's Wild Mushroom Jambalaya

Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen
2261 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94704
Website here

Sunday, 1.11.09

Wild mushroom jambalaya from Angeline's Louisiana Kitchen - Yum! Not too spicy...full of flavor...fresh green onions...plenty of big mushrooms...& vegetarian. Just didn't like the price ($12-something), although this place in general's on the pricey side. Cheri liked her roast beef sandwich (or French dip? something like that), and Gail said her shrimp was too salty. Cheri liked the shrimp but agreed that it was salty...and I didn't try it because I wasn't in the shrimp mood ... and they weren't fried (I usually hate unfried naked shrimp).

A Chocolate Pop Rocks Bar!

Consumed on Thursday, 1.8.09 on the way to Berkeley from the 'No.

Weird!! But I thought it was good. Ashley G. said the chocolate was good. Scotty and Ishii didn't complain (but I guess they didn't say anything good about it either). Oh wait--Scotty said it was like a Crunch bar but with Pop Rocks in it. haha True. I used to be scared of Pop Rocks, by the way.

Sorry for the awful picture below. I haven't figured out how to use my camera yet.


Did you know that Pop Rocks were invented in 1956 and introduced in 1975? More interesting Pop Rocks facts here.

Ficklin's Wine-Filled Chocolate Truffles

You're supposed to eat these in one bite because they're filled with liquid (it truly is wine-filled--not wine ganache-filled), but I managed to just bite the top off for this picture without getting things messy. Sooo good. These are from Ficklin Vineyards, where they sell one of these wines. I tried the one on the left; the red one's filled with their Raspberry Passport wine.

Christmas Day '08

Here's some of the food (the chicken nuggets are mostly for my two little-ish cousins) from Christmas at my mom's sister's place. Ham, turkey & chicken apple sausages, green salad, apples, green beans, green bean & tuna noodle casserole, sweet egg rolls (not egg rolls - rolls of tamago/sweet egg--the same thing they put on those bright yellow tamago sushi), etc.


My uncle made one of my favorite kinds of cookies!! He made Russian tea cookies last year too. He kept them chilled in the garage or laundry room or something. Sooo good cold like that. See--I didn't even have a chance to take a picture before a lot were gone:

Sakura-Chaya For Lunch

690 E Nees Ave
Fresno, CA 93720

This time I'm starting with the dessert, which almost none of the adults ate 'cause they're all watching their sugar. Here's strawberry ice cream-filled mochi with an indigestible (really) maraschino cherry:



Ryan's dinner (fried rice with a side of tako balls ... fried balls of octopus):



Mom's dinner (chicken teriyaki combination lunch or something. that asparagus-and-meat thing was good):


I had this, which was gross.

Sakura-Chaya's Holy Roller - Fresno, CA

* Please note: I do love the other food items here!!


Groooossss! I was excited to try something new the other day, but this was just nasty. Not the nastiest--but definitely gross. The menu's description says the Holy Roller is "shrimp, avocado, gratin, soy sauce, black pepper in communion; put inside an avocado shell topped with tobiko and cheese mix then baked." Sounded interesting, but it wasn't. There was hardly any shrimp in there, the "cheese mix" was overwhelming, and I felt like I was eating a bunch of fat (it was mostly avocado and mayonnaise). I don't even think that stuff had any cheese in it. Who knows?

AND it was freaking $10.95. Disgusting. I like or love their other dishes though!

690 E Nees Ave
The 'No

Pan De Sal

Denny's family gave us these yesterday. One of my favorite types of bread that I'd only known about because Gail's aunt used to bring them to her when we lived together. They're soft, slightly sweet, and really good...and they came from a Tropical Bakeshop (locations in Vallejo, Union City, San Jose, Daly City, Sacramento, West Covina, Las Vegas, and a couple of Hawaiian cities...oh--and Kent, Washington).

Hot Chocolate Mochi Krunch

Hmm...this is new. Central Fish had it. The idea of something made of chocolate & mochi attracted me, but this wasn't actual mochi. It was more like spicy arare (Japanese rice crackers) covered in chocolate. Uh...meh. Maybe just knowing that it was just that (I think it really was) made me dislike it. Dad ate a few though. They're not horrible; I just wouldn't spend money or waste calories on them again.

Sorry the pic below is so bad. Still using brother's camera.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Wanted to give my parents a fast, easy breakfast that they could eat over the next few weeks, so I made whole wheat pumpkin pancakes and then froze them. So now they just have to take a pancake (or more) out from between the wax paper and pop them in the toaster. I'm planning on making more pumpkin things to freeze so they can eat my cooking/baking foods after I'm gone (aww...so sad) and so I can use up the pumpkin puree. Pancake recipe below. Pictures now (still using brother's camera).

The dry and the wet:




I also wanted to use up the buttermilk (too bad I still have like 1/4 of a cup left still). Look at how puffy these are!:


Some got a little black.


RECIPE I USED (original here from Pinch My Salt):

• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (the orig recipe calls for 1/2 cup cake flour + 1 cup whole wheat flour)
  
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon + some pumpkin pie spice (orig recipe calls for cinn, ginger, & nutmeg)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoon oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
  
  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the first eight ingredients (whole wheat flour through spices)
  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together last six ingredients (buttermilk through brown sugar)
  3. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and blend together with a wooden spoon until just combined. Lumps are fine; just make sure all flour at bottom of bowl is mixed in. If batter seems too thick to pour, you can stir in a little more buttermilk.
  4. Drop pancakes by ladleful onto a medium-hot griddle. Pancakes are ready to turn when edges start to look a little dry and you can see small bubbles forming on the surface
  
  *NOTE: I didn't see bubbles in mine when they were ready to flip.

I think I'm turning Japanese

I've been eating a lot of Japanese food and being exposed to a lot of Japaneseness since I got home, which I love because I'm soo Americanized.

My parents made zoni (or, more formally, ozoni) for today (New Year's is big in Japan) for my grandparents. Usually we just eat the oden my grandma makes on New Year's Day with a lot of friends and relatives. This time, just the grandparents (all six) were invited, which was nice because I hardly ever see them just by themselves. Anyways, zoni's basically a simple Japanese soup with mochi as its main ingredient. Yes--mochi in soup. We put mushrooms, nappa (cabbage), wakame (seaweed), shiitake, and mochi in it.

I <3 Imo Now

Imo is like a Japanese potato. Don't these look like Totoro?? Er...brown Totoros? They're kinda slimy and slippery and are really difficult to skin (I cut myself at least three times using a safe-ish peeler). I kept dropping them on the ground.

Here's what they look like peeled and cooked (on the left). Carrots, shiitake, and daikon on the right: