Sourdough Bread

New thing today, baking sourdough bread. With the sourdough starter, been making homemade bread. Pretty amazing and enjoyable.

Erewhon

New thing today, went to Erewhon in Calabasas. I had never been, and husband said they had a good deli hot menu, so we decided to visit for lunch today. Very… wholesome and thoughtful, also yes expensive but yummy. I got papaya later which you don't see pictured. Papaya was amazing. Pizza was cold and meh, but would have been better warmed up. Sushi was AMAZING. I was a huge fan. Dolmas eh. Coconut rice pudding really good. Overall I would say everything is of a high quality and I enjoyed it. They had a number of interesting ingredients i'll go back to try. I liked it. But be prepared it is pricey.

M on High

New thing today, went to M on High in Moorpark. Busy, steady but amazing. Service excellent, food took awhile probably 30-45 minutes, but fine because we were socializing and having fun. Friend ordered the pot pie - yum crust but I thought it was dry and she thought the bell pepper was off putting, but overall good. I ordered the short ribs with mushroom risotto. Amazing so so good. A lovely treat. Also highly recommend the "I'm Your Huckleberry" drink not pictured, but oh so good - lemony deliciousness. I recommend reservations but we really enjoyed our dinner there! We will be going back and recommending and going back with others. 

Top Chef Masters

New thing today, started watching Top Chef Masters. It came on automatically after I finished a Top Chef season. Surprisingly my new favorite background noise show. Has the Top Chef formula but is kind of boring. I can easily do other things while it's on, but is only interesting part of the time. Makes me restless but also has some gems in it. It also is fairly old so could be dated, but overall a new delightful discovery.

Sourdough Starter - Knead Ace

New thing today, developed a sourdough starter. For Christmas I asked for this on Amazon Knead Ace starter kit and got it. Then went ahead and followed instructions for the starter. The first batch I accidentally killed by mis-measuring and adding too much water. Second batch wasn't working, so I went off-script and fed it half the amount twice as often. Then I also warmed it with those therapeutic muscle warmer cloths, sort of mini electric blanket. The warmth really helped as it has been super cold. Now I have a healthy sourdough starter that has been doing very well. Was exciting to feed and care for it in the beginning. Now its more of a chore, but my favorite thing is the smell of the starter - amazing :)

Top Chef Season 10 - Restaurant Wars - Urbano!

New thing today, watched Top Chef Season 10 - Restaurant Wars. Spoilers up ahead (well for whoever hasn't seen it yet) !

Sheldon made Filipino food! And he won with Filipino food! And he did really well with Filipino food! He cooked with soul! He cooked with heart! And he cooked with my people's food! Oh it's pretty awesome and I just saw this episode. Was so excited and so happy that Filipino food and culture was represented so well.

Yeay Sheldon Simeon and the Urbano restaurant! This totally cheered up my Monday. I had a case of the Mondays today, so this was an awesome end to it.

Pepper Plant - Chunky Garlic

New thing today, tried this stuff on my breakfast - Pepper Plant - Chunky Garlic hot sauce. Delish!

Olives - Chili & Garlic

New thing today, tried these Chili and Garlic Olives from Fresh & Easy. Tastes just like Monday - yuck! Happy Monday folks!

My First Lasagna

New thing today, made my first Lasagna! I used the Joy of Cooking recipe. I made tomato sauce and meatballs from scratch which was pretty cool and easier than I thought it would be. The only downside is it just takes a really long time. Next time I will also know the better ratios for stuff since it was all new and I wasn't sure if it was enough or looked right. 

A few lessons learned.

In reading the recipe ahead of time, they mention "Cooked Sausage" but provide no amount of sausage so I wasn't sure if it was optional or required for the recipe. I figured it was optional, and in making the lasagna, it instead looks like it should have been in there. I left out the sausage on the grocery list and only made the lasagna with the meatballs since it looked like that would be enough meat. In making the lasagna I started thinking thinking it would not be enough. Instead it turned out alright and descent amount of meat in the lasagna. Final thought - add the cooked sausage in.

There was a phrase "1 medium onion, halved" which was confusing. I ended up choosing the interpretation, 1 medium onion that is cut in half and put in the food processor. Although it is very confusing... eh.

Anyway the other issue I ran into is not enough sauce. I thickened it too much, and it seemed like it wasn't enough. Luckily I had some tomato sauce in a jar, and added it at the end on top, since it looked way too dry when I finished layering. In the future I will make more from scratch tomato sauce and use it for the lasagna.

Math. I've never cooked with lasagna before. Since we were baking the noodles, I wasn't sure how long to boil them before putting them in the casserole dish. Also I didn't count the slices before starting to layer, so I wasn't sure how many to put in each layer. I ended up miscalculating and having to re-do a few layers, and having an extra lasagna noodle with no home. Eh, future - will plan it better. 

The Good News

It feels super risky cooking something from scratch having never made it before. It's a lot of food and I hate wasting, but I got over it. I also hate making mistakes, so I made a few, but the food still ended up edible and descent. I still would have liked to taste it without the canned sauce, but at least it was there and I didn't end up with a dry lasagna. 

Meatballs and tomato sauce were way easier than I thought it would be. I think I love this tomato sauce thing and may start making it from scratch from now on. So cool. I used canned whole tomatoes, and would totally be ok doing that in the future. A healthy and easy new food I can do a lot of things with! Yeay tomato sauce!

I'm excited to try this again and it's one of my husband's favorite foods so that's pretty cool. 

Verdict - yum :) Relatively healthy too! Really glad :) 

As a side note - I ended up watching The Godfather while making the lasagna - awesome. 

Custom Melt Veggie

New thing today, tried the Custom Melt Veggie sandwich. Really yum! Comes with garlic hummus, avocado, deliciously grilled veggies and pepper jack cheese! One of the tops and a new favorite!

Tuna on Lettuce

New thing today, had tuna on lettuce. I've been having lettuce wrapped sandwiches a lot at home lately. It's been too hot, and cold lettuce sandwiches and food is awesome. So today decided to try it with tuna. Basically I had pieces of lettuce, and would put a small dollop of tuna salad. Pretty tasty and low carb. Love it!

Chef (2014)

New thing today, watched Chef (2014). This came to our local cheap theater, so we had to give it a try ASAP! We didn't really feel it was a blockbuster full price worth movie, but it's totally worth a video rental or watching it at our local cheap theater. Although, it really is a good movie, so now that I've seen it, I would say it is worth supporting and going to a major movie theater to watch it. It was really cute and I liked it. If you like watching shows like Top Chef and are sort of a foodie, you will enjoy this. There's a lot of footage of cooking and creating delicious artsy and home delicious food. There's this silly scene were he makes grilled cheese but it was so... delicious! I also got excited at the food references to a Texas BBQ place and overall the story is quite nice. You will enjoy this, and you will probably get hungry, so I recommend watching this and then having a meal afterwards, such as Custom Melt in Moorpark - mmmmmm. You will be hungry, in a good way! Go support and watch this movie.

Unknown Japanese Place

New thing today, we were traveling and I tried these dishes at an unknown Japanese place. Gyoza, Vegetables and Ikura (salmon fish roe eggs) on top of salmon. Pretty good. Random food place, new thing. 

CPK - Lite Menu - Cedar Plank Salmon

New thing today, I tried the Cedar Plank Salmon from CPK. It was on the lite menu, so decided to try it. It came with a cedar plank! It was really really beautiful and delicious! Fresh lime, fresh cooked and ever so tasty! I've never liked a lite meal so much before! Beautiful presentation! Felt so refined even though it was CPK takeout. I would gladly get this again and I hope they have this on the menu for a long long time. 

Yogurtland - Toasted Coconut Caramel

New thing today, tried the new Yogurtland flavor - Toasted Coconut Caramel. OMG wow game changer. This was amazing. I am not usually a fan of caramel, but I like coconut so I tried it out. Was amazingly pleasantly surprised! So good! Try it! YeayYogurtland! Plus it's healthy, sweet and tasty! Stay cool!

The Alton Browncast - Andrew Zimmern & Samantha Brown

New thing today, listened to The Alton Browncast for the first time, and listened to 2 episodes - the interviews with Andrew Zimmern and Samantha Brown. This was pretty awesome because they are two of my favorite Travel Channel show hosts! I'm not a huge fan of the Alton Brown personality from the Food Network, but mainly because I don't watch him or pay attention. These podcasts were great so I may start having to pay attention to him. Anyway these were great interviews and it was really interesting to hear about my favorite travel hosts!

I love how Alton Brown wants to ask questions that have never been asked before and the way he engages and interviews people. I may be subscribing to this podcast. Anyway here are some highlights.

Andrew Zimmern - I had no idea he was an addict who struggled, recovered and succeeded. He goes into a bit of his story in this podcast and that really surprised me and made me appreciate him a lot more. I also loved his perspective on life and travel and how he tries to appreciate other cultures through the Bizarre Foods show (also a favorite). Overall a very interesting interview.

Samantha Brown - She has a luggage line! So exciting! I did not know that. I also appreciated her perspective on travel and the way she finds connecting with people and finding her own path and adventure more exciting than "hitting the greatest hits list" when traveling. They talked about getting lost and staying safe and travel preferences, as well as traveling and eating off the beaten path. They're both fun to listen to and also a great interview.

Fun new thing! Learning to travel life in your own style :)

JAPADOG

New thing today, tried JAPADOG! These are Japanese style hot dogs with the crazy kooky tones and flavors of Japan. I was fascinated and wanted to try it. I wasn't sure what to order, so I got one of the popular dogs - #3 Okonomi. I got a combo with Canada Dry and Ketchup Lays - also both new things. I loved the Canada Dry and Ketchup Lays. I was disappointed with the Okonomi dog. I'm still curious about the dogs, so I will try the #1 Terimayo dog next time as I heard that was good. I am very curious about the other hot dogs. Overall a fun new experience. 

Custom Melt - Tuna and Cuban

New thing today, had Custom Melt Moorpark deliciousness again! It was a bit of a rough Monday, so we had dinner out. They had run out of the Irish Melt, so decided to get a Tuna sandwich instead. Unfortunately they brought me a Cuban instead of my order, but it looked amazing anyway. Here's a photo.

The Tuna was AMAZING DELICIOUS! Oh so good! Wow! It had some heat/spice to it which was really nice.

And of course, the chips and cheese dip. Fresh chips are incredible!

Oh and the Pinot Noir is excellent as well.

A nice dinner to end a not so nice Monday. Cheers all!

Din Tai Fung - Americana Glendale

New thing today, tried Din Tai Fung at the Americana at Glendale. Din Tai Fung are Taiwanese dumplings filled with soup. My sister raved and loved it, so we had to try it and took mom out for Mother's day celebration there. 

The husband likes ordering these better than dim sum ordering - as you have a menu sheet and choose - sort of like for Japanese sushi. Then you get 8-10 pieces per order so it's larger for sharing. 

We got the pork dumplings here. 

There's a special way to eat them. As the soup is hot and may burn your tongue, they recommend breaking the dumpling into a soup spoon, drinking the soup first, then eating it. We did this for some dumplings, but I found that if you wait awhile, and let the dumplings cool off, it's worth it to just bite it whole and get the mouth full of juicy warm soup into your bite of dumpling.

These are the shrimp and pork shumai dumplings filled with soup, which a few of us thought were tastier than the regular pork ones. The fuzzy in the photo is the steam :) I liked these dipped into soy sauce and a bit of vinegar, than chomped whole once it has cooled - if you can fit in your mouth :) Good stuff.

Bak Choi - plain and not great. Sort of a waste, but at least it was healthy.

We also got wonton soup and pork friend rice. I have no photos of that, but it was average. I prefer regular dim sum wonton soup and I wasn't loving the fried rice.

Below are the to-go containers. I like how they bagged it up for you, and mom took the goodies home.

Overall I was a bit underwhelmed. We waited an hour for our table, but they at least had the tech to get my phone number and send a text when our table was almost ready, so we could enjoy ourselves around the Americana and just come back once our table was almost ready. That was awesome. Service was EXCELLENT overall! It was a packed night but everyone was fantastic. At the entrance you can watch them make the dumplings, so that was really neat. Overall just a fun experience.

The food itself wasn't that great. I felt like I wasn't loving the flavors. But it was rather a fun experience and a very very new one for us all. It was more fun than flavorful. Others at my table liked the food better and I would gladly go back. I thought it was good, just not great. Also my heart still belongs to regular dim sum! 

Try it! There are a ton of fans and it really appeals to quite a few people :) 

Butter Brickle Ice Cream

New thing today, tried Butter Brickle ice cream. Sister-in-law has an ice cream maker and has been making homemade ice cream. Today was a birthday, so we got to try her homemade butter brickle ice cream! It was wicked awesome delish! It's a toffee flavor and was pretty incredible. Mmmmmm.