Category: Food

Hey! you’re in California, where 99% of the USA’s almonds are grown, I thought as I grabbed this almond milk in the grocery store tonight.  It is very tasty – but they’ve cheated of course, adding vanilla flavor to it.

A sandwich, a salad and the milk did it for me.  Not a fancy dinner but such a nice break from eating in the hotel restaurant downstairs and waiting for one’s food to eventually appear on the table!

 

 

I stopped by the grocery store to buy some rice.  I like to cook a quick dinner even on Sunday night before I travel early on Mondays .. or maybe expecially on Sunday night.  Once or twice I have ordered take-out food on a Sunday night, only to discover late at night or early in the morning it was too spicy or too rich.

So I settled for my usual white jasmine rice from Thailand.  Next time I will try the Northwest pilaf with the wolf and the wild rice.

Gray wolves once lived around Washington state, including the Olympic Peninsula.  They are currently listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.  A few packs of gray wolves have returned to Washington the last few years, though – filtering in across the borders from Idaho and British Columbia.

Here’s a graphic from TIME magazine with some trivia about sandwiches around the world. The 1.96 million is the number of Facebook ‘likes’ for the Abu Dhabi-based ‘Just Falafel’ franchise that sells sandwiches with falafel balls on them (ground chick peas, deep-fried). Also mentioned are toast with kaya, a Southeast Asian spread made of coconut and sugar, the German fischbrötchen (a herring sandwich), a Japanese yakisoba-pan (sandwich stuffed with noodles) and the Australian Vegemite on toast (Marmite for me, thank you very much).  Here in the USA we have the hoagie, a split roll that comes stuffed with meat, cheese and peppers.  It actually goes by as many as 13 other names, among them sub, hero and grinder.

I am in Denver again for the week.   My time of working on the project is coming to an end, though.  

Namaste is a very polite and respectful way of greeting people in Nepal, said the menu athe Sherpa House Restaurant here in Golden, Colorado.   (Golden is just north of Denver). The was a variety of Indian and Chinese dishes on the menu and we opted for a ‘house sampler’ that allowed us to try several of the foods with rice and with naan (Indian flat bread).  There was yak stew on the menu as well !   My Indian colleagues deemed the Indian dishes just ordinary but we all agreed the restaurant’s setting inside and the ambiance was great.

‘O-K !  I give up!’, I thought on Saturday when I saw TIME magazine’s cover story that said : ‘Eat butter : Scientists labeled fat the enemy.  Why they were wrong’.  And I went out to the store and bought some butter.  I love my toast with Marmite and avocado, and from now on I will put butter on it and not margarine of any kind.

TIME says ‘New research suggests that it’s the overconsumption of carbohydrates, sugar and sweeteners that is chiefly responsible for the epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes’ .. but that ‘The war over fat is far from over. Consumer habits are deeply formed, and entire industries are based on demonizing fat.’

Paul, Thomas and I went for dinner at the Old Bamboo Vietnamese Restaurant in Seattle’s International District.  It’s the new incarnation of the Spring Garden Restaurant, but in our estimation not quite as good.  Afterwards we went to a bakery-cafe to pick up some dessert.  I picked the red bean mousse cake. It reminded me of the red bean-filled buns I used to buy at the 7-11 in Hong Kong.

We walk by the cute ‘Delectable Egg’ breakfast restaurant every day on the way to work here in Denver, and it always seems to be packed.  Since we stay in the Sheraton is right across from it this week, we decided to give it a shot.  Of course the menu has a Denver omelette on  : omelette filled with ham, cheese, green peppers,  onions.  One legend has it that the name was given by cooks working on the transcontinental railroad (although no mention of ‘Denver omelette’ appears in documents of the time).    Anyway  : our verdict is that the eggs served up are quite ordinary.  One more criticism : the coffee was too weak. So we will not go back frequently as regulars.

We had dinner tonight at the Watercourse restaurant : a place that serves up tasty vegetarian & vegan food on 17th Ave in Denver.  I had a stir-fried Thai pasta with tofu .. quite good, actually.

 

I went to dinner tonight with some directors and a partner from my firm.  We went to a swank new steakhouse here in downtown Denver called Guard and Grace.  The offering of steak on the menu is extensive.  I have to confess I did not really know there was another grill option below rare : blue rare or simply ‘blue’.    Even so, with all these options, I opted for the Alaskan black cod – and it was delicious.

We stopped by our friend Paul’s house tonight for cake and ice cream.  Paul is celebrating a nice round number tomorrow.  Happy Big Birthday, Paul !

What is an arepa? I wanted to know when we walked by a food truck selling them here in Denver.  Well, it’s the Venezuelans’ daily bread.  The little round bread is made of corn (somewhat similar to an English muffin).  It can be eaten as is, with butter, or really with anything that can act as a filling.   The ones from the food truck had mozzarella, salmon, baked beans, and many other fillings.

Here’s my little reward for Tuesday, the smallest serving of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, barely a big scoop packaged in a tiny tub.   Even so, it still packs 45% of one’s daily saturated fat allowance! And I learned today that Häagen-Dazs was actually established by Reuben and Rose Mattus in the Bronx, New York, in 1961.  Coffee was one of the three original flavors (vanilla and chocolate the others).

For some reason I have always assumed it’s a German brand .. but here is a full explanation from Wikipedia : Mattus invented the “Danish-sounding” “Häagen-Dazs” as a tribute to Denmark’s exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War, and included an outline map of Denmark on early labels. The name, however, is not Danish, which has neither an umlaut nor a digraph zs – ä is used in Finnish, Swedish and German, but Danish uses æ for the corresponding sound (both of these are contractions of “ae”), and zs is used in Hungarian – nor does it have any meaning in any language or etymology before its creation. Mattus felt that Denmark was known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the U.S.  His daughter Doris Hurley reported in the PBS documentary, An Ice Cream Show (1999), that her father sat at the kitchen table for hours saying nonsensical words until he came up with a combination he liked. The reason he chose this method was so that the name would be unique and original.

I stopped at the liquor store on Monday to buy some wine, and spotted some Cape Velvet cream on the shelf as well.  A brandy-based creamy aperitif, the stuff has been around a long time, at least since I was a student.  I believe the label shows the landing of Jan van Riebeeck’s three ships (Dromedaris; Reijger and Goede Hoop) at the future Cape Town on 6 April 1652.   Van Riebeeck volunteered to undertake the command of the initial Dutch settlement in the future South Africa. He oversaw a sustained, systematic effort to establish an impressive range of useful plants in the novel conditions on the Cape Peninsula – in the process changing the natural environment forever. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had an important and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region. [Information from Wikipedia’s post for ‘Jan van Riebeeck’].

My friends Dave and Michael and I were at the Coastal Kitchen here on 15th Avenue on Saturday night.   The ‘special’ menu item is ono, said the waitress. Ono? Is that a white fish? I wanted to know. (Yes).  And so I ordered it, but had to look up the fish at home.   Ono is its Hawaiian name; it is also called a wahoo. (Not to be confused with Yahoo, of course).

The days are so short this time of year! – the sun sets shortly after at 4 pm.  So when there is a long holiday weekend just ahead as well, it adds a sense of urgency to get things done before night has fallen and everyone is settled in, and you are not.  So I write two e-mails for work, and then took some old clothes to Goodwill, dropped old electronics and light bulbs at a recycler and also made a stop at the Asian grocery store Uwajimaya.  I cannot claim that I am a foodie, but I do like to ogle all the fresh and outlandish food that is on offer there.  I came away with more mundane items like green tea from Japan, and a six pack of Asahi beer.

I’m playing with words in the heading .. it asks ‘more egg nog?’.  (The Afrikaans word ‘nog’ loosely translates to ‘more’).  Well, I have my new iPhone, and the two pictures below were taken with it.  Amazing how crisp the pictures are.

I bought this ‘chia pod’ to snack on at work, partly because I liked the container and the stubby little spoon.  (The spoon reminds me of the wooden ‘spoons’ that used to come in the rum-and-raisin ice creams we bought on the street from the ice cream man as kids). So what is chia? It’s a flowering plant in the mint family, native to Mexico and Guatemala, cultivated by the Aztec in pre-Columbian times. (Source : Wikipedia).  The seeds have lots of good stuff in : omega-3 fatty acids among others, hence its availability in fancy packaging in city food stores.

I need to get up earlier in the morning so that I don’t miss my breakfast at the hotel .. but my problem is that they take too long! First I get seated, then a second person comes and pours me my coffee, and then a third person comes and takes my order.  Then I have to wait for it, even if it’s just oatmeal.  Oatmeal and cereal should be out as a buffet item and ready to go.

Our project manager treated us to a dinner at a French restaurant in lower downtown Denver at Coohills Restaurant.  The dinner was wonderful, but the service was oh, so slow.   I had apple tart and rum &raisin ice cream for dessert.  We started at 7 pm and was finally done by 10 pm (dessert was served shortly before 10).  Then when we walked back to the hotel, I noticed we crossed a street called Wynkoop Avenue.   It turns out the street is named after Edward Wanshear Wynkoop (1836-1891), a founder of the city of Denver, Colorado.  Wynkoop served as an officer in the First Colorado Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War, attaining the rank of major of volunteers, and was brevetted a lieutenant colonel in May 1865.  The Wikipedia entry does not say as much, but he must have been a Dutchman with a last name of Wynkoop.

My friend and colleague Gus arrived in Seattle for a few days of work here this week, and invited me out to lunch today. Since it was a blue sky sunny day, we picked the Seattle downtown waterfront to go to and ended up at Elliot’s Oyster House on Pier 56.  Hey! We can order Oyster Rockefeller, said Gus.  I did not know that’s a baked (or broiled) oyster.  It’s quite good. (I’m too squeamish to eat raw oyster).  We also ordered Dungeness crab cakes.  I learned something new about the Dungeness crab as well. They are named after Dungeness, a small coastal community right here in Washington State.