Thanksgiving Menu!

This is mostly for my own benefit... and it doubles as a post. Sweet.

butternut squash soup
some sort of salad

rolls

sausage and wild mushroom stuffing
roasted brussels sprouts
green bean casserole
mashed potatoes

turkey

tarte tatin
pumpkin pie

Noraebang

I'm going to go to karaoke tonight... sober. This should be interesting. Maybe I'm not done with alcohol forever and always anymore?

Madras Pavilion

I ate myself into a food coma last night. Madras Pavilion is way too tasty for its own good which is why I spent 10 hours having cracked out dreams (instead of like 4 hours).

We started the meal with mulligatawny soup, which is lentil based. Very good and actually sort of filling. We followed with amazing samosas which were served with some sort of herb chutney (I think it had to have cilantro and mint) and some sort of spicy Indian bbq sauce. After that was the dosai which are giant crepes with a spicy potato and pea filling served with an amazing coconut dipping sauce and some sort of smoky tomato sauce that's almost more like a chili without, you know, meat because MP is a vegetarian place and apparently also kosher. And after all that they bring out the entree which consists of saag paneer (creamed spinach), lentil daal, and chana masala (think chicken tikka masala, except with chick peas instead of chicks) accompanied with rice that had been cooled with veggies and saffron as well as raita, "pickles" and naan. Dessert shows up and it's rasmali and it's too good for words.

I guess this will be a double post sort of day to make up for my sleep. :)

Assorted thoughts

For dinner I heated up some leftover chicken and made couscous stuffed red bell peppers. It was pretty good and Colby ate like 2 cups of couscous because Colby:carbs::black holes:matter. I'm also in the middle of making a crustless quiche and sipping on homemade hot chcocolate. I'm also not the least bit motivated to post recipes, so I thought I'd share links to things that I think are noteworthy.

First and foremost, I've mentioned on twitter that Aiming Low is one of my favorite blogs. It's funny and relatable and gives me something to read on the bus... or, you know, anywhere I have my phone. In the past two days, the founder of the blog, Anissa Mayhew suffered a massive stroke and is in the ICU. The writers at Aiming Low have started a page to keep updates on her condition and started a way to send help, but mostly are asking people to keep them in their thoughts/prayers(if you're into that sort of thing). Most people who read this blog probably don't read Aiming Low, but I wanted to share this not just because I'm a fan of the site, but because I sort of understand what their family is going through.

On a lighter note, The Delicious Life is posting a lot again (yay!) and has compiled a list of assorted recipes from Thomas Keller's book Bouchon.

And now thanks to Chris, my new favorite blog is On Becoming a Laboratory and Domestic Goddess, written by "Dr. Isis". She's funny and has an awesome taste in shoes and is a must read for all you female scientists out there. (Do I know my audience or what? Hello people from the astronomy department! ;) )

And finally, here's a visualization of the risks associated with the HPV vaccine. Seriously, you should probably get it if you're female, single, and plan to be sexually active between now and t = infinity.

Miso Glazed Salmon

I've been chronicling what I've been eating for about a week now. I told a few people about it (so, like... Colby), but it's sort of embarrassing how much I eat. I guess I understand now why I've gained so much weight. It's easy to blame it on school and stress, but in reality, I've mostly just let myself go because I'm lazy. I'm taking the opportunity now to refocus my energies in getting healthier by eating less and exercising more. I'm definitely not going to turn this into my personal diet journal (because that's what my super secret livejournal from high school that has since been deleted was all about), but I'll share insights into how much it sort of sucks and what I'm eating (since that's really what matters on a food blog).

Dinner tonight consisted of an awesome salad (if I do say so myself), leftover gnocchi, and miso glazed salmon

miso glazed salmon in parchment

2 salmon filets
1.5 T miso paste
2 T brown sugar
1 T hot water
1 T soy sauce
1 small clove garlic, grated
1/2 tsp grated ginger
salt + sichuan pepper
olive oil
parchment paper

set oven to 400. Whisk together miso paste, water, brown sugar, soy sauce, grated garlic, and grated ginger to combine. Drizzle salmon filets lightly with olive oil, only to coat. Season with salt and sichuan pepper on all sides and coat with about 1/2 of the glaze (save the rest to dip in the salmon). Place the salmon in parchment and crimp closed. Place in a baking dish and cook for ~20 minutes, or until the salmon is 145 deg in the middle.

You could also just use cooking spray instead of olive oil, but I hate cooking spray like... a lot. Also, black pepper for sichuan pepper is also fair game.

We got our (wild caught) salmon from Costco on our (yuppie) shopping day. Unsurprisingly, the pieces are freaking huge, so I only ate half. Thankfully, Colby liked the recipe and ate the rest of mine as well. :)

woo.

Since I'm tired, here's a picture I drew for Chris

yupping out.

Real Estate Intervention is kind of a depressing show. It makes me scared for when we have to sell our house, but that's not going to be for some time. Right now, we're finishing up fixes to the paint job and furnishing the rest of the rooms. We had a rather yuptastic afternoon, starting with bamboo bathroom accessories from Crate & Barrel, a quick trip to Verizon to fix the trackball in my BlackBerry, a stop a Nordstrom Rack (which is *awesome*) and then finally a tour of Costco where I was taunted with hordes of ridiculously cute little kids.

I guess I don't have too much to say. I roasted a chicken. It was tasty, but I'm not done tinkering with the recipe. Also, roasting chicken scares the bejesus out of me because I'm never sure if I'm giving myself salmonella. Hopefully I'll figure it out before I make a huge mistake and end up in the ER.