Journal Article #11: Food in Japan

When I travelled to Japan for three weeks, I was so not accustomed to how amazing their food was. Their cuisine was somewhat, Italian and French influenced. I remember I went to a very expensive French café that served $15 coffees with a small sandwich. I also remembered I went to a very expensive European influenced desert place that served $15+ pieces of cakes that were amazingly decorated. I couldn’t eat expensive food throughout my trip in Japan, so I opted for breakfast from 7-11. Surprisingly, their 7-11 foods were always fresh and restocked every 6-8 hours because it would be sold out when it was displayed. I always bought a natto maki and ikura and spam o-nigiris for breakfast to make sure I had enough food. These little snack items were only $2 dollars each and they were so nutritiously healthy and delicious tasting. I also went to a lot of different types of Japanese cuisine that were not sushi. For example, I tried monjayaki, okonomayaki, yaki tori, izakaya, ramen, and yaki tori places. All of those different types of Japanese cuisine were amazing and they all were different and similar. There was a lot of grilled cooking in Japanese cuisines. The manners at the dinner table were also quite different in Japan compared to America. In Japan, you have to, may I stress, HAVE TO, say “ita-taki-mas” before you eat. Also, slurping noodles when eating ramen are a MUST to tell the chef and the cooks that the ramen tastes delicious. There are so many different cuisines in Japan that I haven’t tried and I will probably be going back to Japan for a longer period of time the next time I visit my friends there. Happy eating!! -_-V

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P.S.- Attached are some food images from Japan. I love the ramen one!

Journal Article #10: Blowfish

In our class, you asked if anybody would try the seafood, blowfish, or the Japanese name it goes by, fugu. A few people raised their hands. I was one of those students. You may ask why I would try it? The blowfish is so deadly that if not prepared correctly, one might die from the poison called tetrodotoxin. The one main reasons of why I would try blowfish is because I love seafood. That might not be a good answer to many, but the blowfish is a rare seafood delicacy that is really expensive and really unique. I love trying new and exciting foods, even if it means the cost of my life. Only a couple of chefs have the license to prepare the blowfish around the world, meaning it is hard to find a restaurant serving this type of fish. Also, you can have bragging rights if you do try this rare delicacy. (Not that the bragging rights are on the top of my list of reasons of why I would want to eat it!) But my last reason for wanting to try this fish is that I heard that it tastes really good. Why wouldn’t you want to try food that tastes good? I would love to. And given that it is really hard to pass the exam to cook and serve fugu, I feel that I can trust my life on my fugu chef and his skillful technique when he is preparing the blowfish for me to devour.

word count: 251

Journal Article #9: Food Diary for 1Day

This is my food diary for one day. I will tell you what I ate and why I ate it. In the morning, I woke up really early at 8AM and I decided I was really hungry. I opened the refrigerator and there was nothing to eat that I can just microwave or spend a lot of time cooking. I decided to open the freezer compartment and I realize, I can microwave the $1 television meal from Banquet. I was, sort of, craving pasta and meatballs so I decided to microwave it while I was walking my dog. The breakfast meal itself, wasn’t quite so satisfying. For some reason it tasted a little bit sour to me? Maybe I did not stir or microwave it correctly. Eating about 75% of it, I decided to throw it away because I did not want a stomachache at work. I end up driving to work and while I am working, I started snacking on some mix nuts and beef jerky. The beef jerky was left over from eating it in class the day before. The mix nuts were bought by some other interns that are working with me. I snack a little and by 2PM, I end up at BJ’s in Oakridge Mall to have lunch. I was still craving pasta because the breakfast meal definitely did not fulfill my pasta cravings. I decided to go for spaghetti with roasted chicken and tomato sauce. I didn’t realize that it was 1700 calories and I specifically remembered in my other nutrition classes that females are only supposed to have 2000-2500 calories a day. I freak out for a little bit and I was debating if I should continue with ordering what I had in mind. I decided, f*** it, I am a skinny Asian girl and I can use a bit of calories. Given that I lost about 10 lbs in the 7 months because I didn’t eat enough and I didn’t have time to eat, I told myself my body has the extra calories to spare. I was pretty satisfied with my lunch and by the time I went home at 5PM, I fell asleep until 11:30PM. I woke up and I remember I promised my girlfriend I would have dinner with her once she came home from work so I decided to cook 3 cups of rice (the leftover rice will be good in the rice cooker for about 1-2 days) and to make guacamole. For the guacamole, I used two fresh guacamoles, 1/4th of a whole white onion, and a pinch of kosher salt and grinded and chopped it in the Cuisinart blender for about 30-45 seconds. I also opened up a bag of tortilla chips and a can of black bean dace. The black bean dace was to accompany the rice, while the tortilla chips were for the guacamole. For my late dinner, I ate a little bit of both with my girlfriend when she came home because I knew I couldn’t have that many calories and I would gain weight if I ate a lot at night.

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Journal Article #8: A Lesson Well Learned.

Why I would eat taboo things and not feel ashamed for doing so. I love chicken hearts, gizzards, liver, tongue, blood, tripe, eyeballs, and a whole bunch of other intestines, organs, and body parts from all different kinds of animals. Why waste a perfectly tasty meal when all that scares you is the name of the food you are eating? This is a lesson I learned when I was little. I traveled to Missouri to my uncle’s place when I was really young and I tried something very rare and illegal. I was sitting in my uncle’s restaurant and they were cooking soup. Remember, I LOVE SOUP. So I ask them what the soup is and they said it was turtle soup. Not those tiny little turtles you can buy as pets. It was a huge turtle that they had accidently caught while fishing. I then remember seeing a dead turtle in the morning coming into the back of the restaurant. The first thing that I thought of was “EW!” I’m not going to drink or eat turtle soup. Back in San Francisco, you cannot eat turtle or drink turtle soup from so I thought it was completely weird. I went back to my uncle’s home that evening and they brought home soup. I did not think they would bring home or feed me the turtle soup that they cooked in the restaurant. I drank a bowl and I thought to myself, this is really yummy. Little did I know it was the turtle soup. My cousin then starting laughing because she said that it was turtle soup, the one I said “EW!” I then realized, I shouldn’t hate food for what it might be made of or from, but hate it if it doesn’t taste good to me. It was a lesson well learned.

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Journal Article #7: My MOST FAVORITE Tomato, Beef, & Mushroom Soup.

My most favorite dish to cook is tomato, beef, and mushroom soup. This soup/dish is very versatile because it can accompany any carbohydrates that I would like with it. I usually pair this by itself, with rice, or with macaroni or any pasta that I have. Tomato is my most favorite fruit, or vegetable, as some people might call it. I love the sour and sweet taste that it gives. It is the most refreshing and delightful fruit. It is amazing paired with ground beef, which for the ground beef I would season it with salt, sugar, rice alcohol, soy sauce, sesame oil, fine white pepper, and some cornstarch. I would then add big chunks of portabella mushrooms to the soup too. Because I sauté about 1-2 pounds of ground beef first before I put anything in the pot, the beef becomes very flavorful so I add the tomatoes and mushrooms to sauté all the ingredients and bring the flavors together. After everything cooks together for less than 5 minutes, I add about 8 cups of water and bring it to a boil for about 20 to 25 minutes. After 20 to 25 minutes of boiling, all the flavors from the beef, tomatoes, and mushrooms come out into the soup and it tastes amazing by itself or with rice or pasta. If I add pasta to the soup, I would add a little bit of garlic chili sauce to make it a little bit spicy. If I decide to add it to rice, I would add little bits of red Thai chilies, to make the soup pop. If I decide to drink it on its own, which I usually do, it will just taste amazing by itself and I won’t add anything to the soup. If you want the exact recipe, just comment below! And happy cooking to everybody!

word count: 295

P.S.- add green onions in bowl if desired for some refreshing greens!

Journal Article #6: My Weirdest Food Experience EVER.

My weirdest experience with food was when I went to a Mediterranean restaurant with a close friend. It was my first time in an actual Mediterranean restaurant serving Mediterranean food. My close friend had gone to a Mediterranean restaurant before, but only once. When we arrived, got seated, and got the menu, we had no idea what to order. It was all so foreign to me. There weren’t very many pictures the food and the food’s name on it or next to it. It didn’t help that all the words on the menu were unrecognizable to me. The waiter came by and we asked him what he would recommend to us. He wasn’t too helpful because he recommended five items on the menu but he didn’t describe the dish too well either. His English was a little bit hard to understand and I just ended up picking the first thing he recommended to me. When my friend and I got our food, I had no idea how to eat it. It was a plate full of random splabs of food that did not come with rice. I used my fork to try each and every thing on the plate to see what the flavors were. My friend told me quietly that she thinks that I should eat it with the bread that was given as the appetizer. I tried looking around the restaurant to observe and see how people were eating the food because observation of how other people eat would teach me, somewhat, how I should eat the food. It did not help because everybody had different dishes and they were all eating differently. I ended up just using the bread to hold all the different things on the plate and eat it with my hands because it tasted the best like that. It was the weirdest food and restaurant experience ever--- not knowing how to eat the food that was in front of me.

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Journal Article #5: My Dog & My Food.

Human food and my dog. Two things I love in this world are food and dogs. But these are the two things that cannot go together. I will never give my dog human food that I will or have eaten. My dog will never be able to eat what I love without dying or getting really sick. Three things that I can easily think of that my baby puppy can never eat but I love are chocolate, mushrooms, and berries. I have to admit though, being the not so tidy and clean person that I should be, I have left mini chocolates pieces and chocolate mocha coffees in my car with my dog. Thinking that my baby would never be naughty and chew or eat anything my car, he has on several occasions already, eaten all the chocolate stuff in my car. The first time, I seriously freaked out and wondered why I was so dumb to leave my chocolates in my car. My girlfriend quickly tells me to feed him a spoonful of hydrogen peroxide. She researched and heard from a couple of friends that a spoonful of hydrogen peroxide is safe for dogs and will help them throw up whatever is in their stomach. I quickly let my baby lick a spoonful of hydrogen peroxide and quicker than you know it, he threw up everything in his stomach. With no side effects, that is my choice of a solution when he eats something that he should not have. I have more than a few stories to tell about my baby puppy and human foods that one journal entry would not be enough to tell them all. But hopefully, you would comment below if you have a story to share too!

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P.S.- my dog is too cute!