banana pancakes and the travel bug

The travel bug has bitten me - bad. I already want to go back to Japan, and it's the one country besides the US I've been to...there are so many more to see! And who knows when I'll even be able to travel again.
My latest interest, however, is Thailand. On the plane from Chicago to Tokyo, I sat by two very nice and interesting students about my age; one was a girl from Seoul, returning home from studying in the US. The other was a premed student going to teach English in Thailand for a few weeks, after hiking the base of Mt. Everest. It turned out the girl from Korea knew a bit about Bangkok, the Thai capital where the other student was going. We all talked about Thailand for awhile, and she said that if we ever visited Bangkok, to find Khao San Road, a mecca for backpackers from all over the world.
I looked it up the other day, and the street looks fascinating - kind of a hippie beach town meets a crowded strip mall. This site had some really cool pictures of the road. It's also fascinating to trace the road itself on Google Earth.
In my reading about the road, I discovered that street vendors often cook up a treat called banana pancakes, made right in front of hungry tourists and drizzled with chocolate sauce or sweetened condensed milk. I tried it for myself last night using this recipe, but substituting sour cream with a little sugar since we didn't have any yoghurt. The result was delicious!

yum

This is how good the food was at boot camp. Kind of makes me wish it wasn't over.
(Pictures courtesy of Kimiko ;-)

sushi night

We had a sushi-making night at the home of one of my Yosakoi friends the other night. It was really cool to see how sushi was actually made, and try it for myself. Plus we got to eat some other amazing Japanese food as well.

There were lots of colourful chopsticks to choose from. There were also forks available, but one of the girls who was there said "It tastes better with chopsticks." I think she's right.

The first step was to cool down some cooked white rice and combine it with a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar. I learned how to stir the rice with a "slicing" motion so it gets sticky, but doesen't form big lumps.

Next, we put down a seaweed sheet on a little bamboo mat, and covered about half of it with rice.

After the rice comes the sushi filling. This one has sliced carrots and cucumbers. We also made some with cooked salmon.

These are the seaweed sheets we used to wrap the rice mixture.

We curled up the rice and seaweed inside the bamboo mat. Once it was made into a roll, we took it out and sliced it up.

This is another kind of sushi we tried - it has egg and cream cheese in the middle. I was a little apprehensive about the combination, but it was actually good. The cream cheese made it sweet.

We ate our sushi with a variety of other Japanese foods. In the bowls is miso soup - cubes of soft tofu in fish-flavoured broth. There was also salad and gyoza, little meat dumplings. And for the very brave there were pickled plums - probably the most sour thing I've ever tasted. We also had brown rice green tea (in the blue cups), and banana bread for dessert. Definitely a meal I wouldn't mind repeating...

i heart chinese food

I am full. As a last-day-at-home outing, my family took a trip to see Night at the Museum (a pretty funny movie, actually) and ate at our favourite Chinese restaurant.

The difference between this trip to the restaurant and the other trips that we usually make is that today is not a Fast Day. In the Orthodox Church we fast on certain days and seasons to remind us of the sacrifice Christ made in giving up his life (we figure giving up certain foods for a little while might not be so bad), and also to remind us of the simplicity in the garden of Eden before living things ate each other. On these days we don't eat meat, poultry, eggs, or dairy. In other words, most of the other trips to the Chinese restaurant involved eating fruits, vegetables and sea creatures that don't have backbones (in ancient times things like shrimp and other spineless sea-snacks were considered 'trash', and therefore are ok to eat.)

That's just fine with me, because even though today we were able to enjoy honey chicken and an unidentified meat wrapped in bacon, I was also able to ingest the food of the gods. Yes, I'm talking about coconut shrimp. And when I say food of the gods, what I mean is that if I were suddenly whisked off to Mount Olympus in a parallel universe where Greek gods are real, and was offered the choice between a container (platter? goblet?) of nectar and ambrosia, or a plate of coconut shrimp over rice, I would consider (for a good three seconds, at least) and choose the coconut shrimp. It's really that good.

It was a nice end to a long stay at home for the holidays. Tomorrow it's back to work, back to school, back to chaos. Right now it's time to pack...wish me luck.