may 10, 2013 dinner

the first camping trip of the season calls for grilled salmon! we live in a tiny apartment with no room for a grill, so camping brings out a whole new side of food for us. accompanied by brussel sprouts seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper, wrapped in foil, and allowed to ponder life's deeper meaning in the campfire coals for a good half hour or so.

august 6, 2012 dinner

 clockwise from top: takoyaki (filled with wheat and soy and sugar, oh my/oh well), saba shioyaki (salt-grilled mackerel, one of my comfort foods!) and renkon (lotus root) cooked in butter. what's the occasion? an old friend i hadn't seen in over ten years is in town. she's from chicago, and i'm from seattle, but we became friends when we both lived in japan, i in hiroshima, her in kure, about 15 miles away. (coincidentally, today is the 67th anniversary of the bombing of hiroshima.) a group of us met up at maekawa bar in the international district and ordered a bunch of small plates to share.

this was so obscenely delicious it made me want to dance down the street. it's like okonomiyaki without the batter and noodles and cabbage, just pork wrapped up in an omelet, drizzled with the same tangy, sweet sauce and mayo.

some gyutan (grilled beef tongue) was also consumed, which i quite enjoyed. it was sliced really thinly, and flavored sparely with salt and pepper. i did not get a good photo of it, probably because i ate it too fast. all in all, it was great catching up while enjoying some izakaya treats.



august 4, 2012 dinner

after breakfast, we drove up to paradise. the weather was absolutely perfect, not a cloud anywhere. the beginning trudge uphill up to panorama point is a superhighway of a trail, but the further you hike, the more it thins out. a lot of people turn around about halfway. we pushed on, although part of it went through snow on an incline - kinda sketchy without poles!

you could see for miles. that is mt. st. helens peeking over the horizon in the distance.

the wildflowers were everywhere. here are some magenta paintbrush.

marmots were moseying about. this one seemed to relish the contrast of the sun on his back and the snow under his belly.

naturally, godzilla was our amiable hiking companion. although his boastful posing on the way back held up our party a bit.

following a not very picturesque lunch of leftover sausage, eggplant and zucchini, we decided to tackle the silver falls trail, which leaves directly from the campground. this waterfall, on the ohanapecosh, is definitely worth the hike!

the trail winds through some mossy forest, strewn with massive boulders. part of it passed through old growth forest (the trail links to both the grove of the patriarchs trail and the pacific coast trail).

we'd passed some hot springs upstream of here, but didn't linger, as the day was sweltering enough. returning to the campground, we saw that some folks had the right idea!

i dunked myself in the river a couple of times, but it was freezing! we'd hiked about ten miles that day through temperatures in the 80's, so it felt good to get some of the grime off, though. anyways, on to the campfire pig greens. ridiculously easy. cut a cabbage into eighths, wrap each with a piece of thick bacon, dab butter here and there, and salt and pepper the whole thing. wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil (more than one layer strongly recommended) and place in the campfire coals. Turn occasionally - it'll be done in, oh, 45 minutes, or longer if you want to leave it in the fire..

as the piggie greens sizzled away in the campfire, we grilled up some cod for fish tacos, using this amazing recipe.

eaten open-faced on butter lettuce leaves. (we are foolish, and brought living lettuce camping. it sure takes up a lot of cooler space! next time we will wash and prep the leaves at home.)

the spicy citrus sauce and mango avocado salsa on top made for messy but oh-so-delicious eating.
(note: right now, this photo is upside down. i will fix it later. for now, marvel at the amazing gravity-defying fish taco!)

july 20, 2012 lunch

today marks the third day in a row of going out for lunch this week. today, my dad, aunt and i went to tengu sushi, which is a kaiten-zushi joint next to the movie theater at northgate. there are a LOT of lackluster conveyor belt sushi places in town, but this one is a real find. not only are prices competitive and sometimes cheaper than the other places, you can really taste a difference in the freshness of the fish. since i'm off rice for now, i snacked on a sashimi plate of sake (salmon), maguro (bluefin tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail tuna). their raw salmon is so buttery!

this was a real shocker. i was excited to see sake kama (salmon collar, but translated as salmon cheeks) on the menu, and thought i'd supplement my raw with some cooked. i assumed i was getting one, maybe two cheeks. when they brought out a portion the size of my head, with the tasty faces of not one, but four salmon, i knew i wasn't going to make it through it on my own. (my family was happy to partake!) these were unbelievably good - melt-in-your-mouth tender in a way you don't find in a regular fillet, unctuous and rich, with salty, crispy skin. yes, they had veggies on the menu, but everything was either coated in tempura or drowning in a sugary sauce, so i passed on the roughage for this meal.

bonus: i saw a pileated woodpecker on the way to lunch!