June 24, 2013
Pardon the really dark photos of the sushi, they don’t do the food justice.
The burger craving is an intense and life-enhancing phenomenon. So is the sushi craving, but I hammer that one down more often than not, sushi’s too expensive in the Bay Area to enjoy frequently.
Usually, the need for burgers means we have to trek out to one diner or another and pay about $25 for a couple of burgers and fries. It’s mostly good but not so amazing that I don’t get a little squinty-eyed over the cost vs my satisfaction.
Then miracle of miracles: a mega sale on ground turkey AND I found the most amazing, simple turkey burger recipe. With a few Just Because alterations and voila! Magic!
Makes 8 fat round patties
2 lbs ground turkey ($5)
1/2 onion, diced finely ($0.25)
1/2 garlic bulb, diced finely ($0.30)*
1 egg white ($0.40)
2/3 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 Tbsp breadcrumbs ($0.20)
Burger buns ($2.49)
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and form into 8 patties. Cook over medium heat until they reach an internal temp of 180 degrees.
I made the patties, and the potato salad, then let PiC do the cooking and prep of the condiments and sides. His execution was flawless: he made surprise bacon! I danced with glee.
Sides: sprouts, cheddar cheese slices, grilled onions, sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions, sliced avocado, grilled mushrooms, bacon, ketchup, mayo.
These burgers were, I kid you not, the best burgers ever. Perfectly cooked, delicious, way more flavorful than turkey burgers I’ve gotten at any diner. Three bites in and I was already worrying about my next portion because clearly, I can’t have just one.
Total: $8.64 for eight burgers
*Strictly speaking, the recipe only called for a couple cloves of garlic. But you know me, I’m constitutionally incapable of using less than 4 times the recommended amount.
Potato Salad
1 lb sliced fingerling potatoes
Vinaigrette
1 Tbsp dijon mustard
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp water used to boil potatoes
1 Tbsp diced capers
(2 sweet onions) – used 1 shallot and 1/2 green onion
Boil potatoes until tender, 6-8 minutes. Reserve 1 Tbsp of the boiling water for the vinaigrette. Pour potatoes into a medium mixing bowl. Prep the vinaigrette ingredients: mustard, vinegar, water, in a separate bowl and whisk until mixed thoroughly. Pour over the potatoes, add capers, shallots and green onion (or sweet onion), mix evenly. Add salt and pepper to taste. I didn’t use any.
*The original recipe called for 5 cornichons sliced thinly and 1/3 cup of olive oil for the vinaigrette but I don’t know what cornichons are and I just plain forgot the olive oil. It was good anyway!
That’s the burger craving taken care of … about that sushi!
Now Serving: Sushi
We found Sushi Tomi in Mountain View with four star ratings from 1000+ reviews; that was promising. We ordered a soba, a hamachi don, and a sunomono with octopus.
The nine hamachi slices topping the sushi rice were thick slabs of fresh, delicious fish. I haven’t seen sashimi that size ever. The sunomono was full of great big pieces of octopus, not fried, but a little on the chewy and unseasoned side. Possibly how it’s meant to be but I was rather expecting to see the salad be dressed in some way. It was good enough not to induce regrets but I won’t order that again.
PiC’s soba was good, but since he always uses a bit of wasabi, slightly off-putting to me. The perils of sharing food! 🙂 It was tasty and flavorful even if I thought the portion was on the small side.
The bill would have been more reasonable except I misunderstood PiC saying he had added tip but not tax. That’s backwards to how I do it, adding tax to the main bill we split and then adding tip afterward, so our miscommunication led to a $50 bill. Not the end of the world, but pretty irritating that it went right over my head. Be more careful next time!
And speaking of next time, we wouldn’t make the drive just for the sushi but if we were in the area, we’d definitely go back and try other things.
Final assessment: I’m not the kitcheny genius that @mochimac is, so we’re not going to master the art of Japanese cooking anytime soon but perhaps that should be a project on our list.
Egads but I love good food. I’ll eat not great food too, but I really really appreciate amazing food. And more so when we learn how to make it at home. Mom was always a whiz at that. She could taste a meal once or twice and with some experimentation, reproduce it exactly or better.
:: Am I the only one for whom food is a wondrous thing?
August 27, 2008
*looking around*
Is it really Wednesday? The last Wednesday of the month? Already?
Geez.
I feel like it’s been ages since I last blogged, and it’s probably due to the action-packed-ness of life. Let’s see. When we last met … oh, that was yesterday? Good grief!
Well, since yesterday I’ve:
~ discovered that I would need to make 81% more money than I do now to be “equally comfortable” in New York.
~ forced myself to go to a networking event in the downtown area (I hate driving in downtown, especially during high traffic), exchanged business cards with two people, and got out of the scary dark neighborhood safely.
~ met with NY friends who were in town for a couple days, and recommended that they try public transportation to get back to the airport. Happy to report that went smooth as silk, and they enjoyed not sitting in traffic greatly.
Spending since Friday?
~ we had a mandatory work event on Saturday so I combined a help-a-coworker-out situation with the work event so we could carpool part of the way: + saved on a little gas.
~ went to tea with a coupla the gals: – $14
~ visited a comic shop: priceless (and I didn’t spend anything): $0
~ bought ten pounds of pork shoulder ribs (that’ll last our family a good while, we cook it various ways and I like pork): – $10
~ did my “home”work at Borders: free air conditioning! and made money, of course.
~ brother actually paid a bit of money towards household bills: + $100
~ missed a friend’s 21st birthday party because my train was late: $0
~ went to the networking event at a bar: $0
~ went to another bar afterwards to meet up with my friends: $4 for a burger I bought before getting TO the bar. Tacky? Only if the staff were around. We hung out on the patio after 10 when drinks were no longer allowed outside so there were no witnesses, and their kitchen was closed by the time I got there anyway.
My car is being a brat and celebrating our fifth year together by falling apart in tiny ways:
1. The auto lock on the driver’s side doesn’t work.
2. The window on the passenger’s side doesn’t work.
3. The “cabin” light switch needs strange toggling to work.
4. The heater went out this morning.
June 19, 2008
Walking out the door, I caught myself glancing at my closet and assessing what kind of day it would be, and what outfits I could put together for the rest of the week. It seems my lunch organization is bleeding into other areas of my life.
It also seems like after being on a spending and splurging cycle for the last three weeks where I couldn’t stop the budget bleeding out on little things I’d normally control very carefully, I’m back to being content with what I’ve got, and even in the mood to go through and clear things out. Thank goodness!! I’m not into self-flagellation over this stuff, but it’s such a relief to be back in the right mindset that doesn’t undermine my efforts to keep it together.
While my personal damages weren’t on a large scale, it definitely turned into a hefty bill when combined with the insane gas prices. I think the gas expenditures have gone up to about $300+/month! I’ve been diligently trying to reduce other fixed costs to compensate, but I’ve been spending like I have money: going out, the trench coat ($23), going out to lunch last weekend ($10), new shoes ($11), buying a graduation gift for a work friend ($24), and having to give my cousin a fat $50 check for graduation. In short, enjoying life a liiiiitle more than I can afford.
Ok, that last one was not negotiable, I’m the only cousin who came to the graduation and it’s only fair that I give him what I gave his sister. It’s a family tradition that at least one older cousin will gift the younger cousins a check for their graduations.
It might not seem like much, but when the budget’s stretched tight, it makes a difference. The end of the splurge cycle comes none too soon, because I hate the feeling of treading to keep my head above water.
I had to wonder, why is it so hard for someone who is normally so at peace with being frugal to break out of a spending/splurging mentality? Sure, I figured it was temporary, but heck, I felt like I was in the grips of a six armed bear for a while! I knew I needed to NOT spend money, but there was always a reason that overrode my “Uh, well, you don’t have the budget for that …” hesitation.
And if it’s this hard for me? When I’m accustomed to self denial and maximizing returns and stretching every resource to cover the necessities? Heck, I spent half an hour deciding whether or not to get a haircut this week. Then I realized that after spending over a hundred dollars I shouldn’t have, I should pass on my $14 cut. *sigh* How incredibly hard must it be for people who haven’t had to practice this?
