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Nifty Products :)

NOT delicious from the asian market

Would NOT recommend this product to a friend. Or a non-friend, lol.




Yes, it tasted as icky as it looks.


I just HAD to find out, though. So bravely, we tried it. Umm, I will not buy this stuff again, that's for sure.

NEXT!
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Giving Thanks to the Turkey

Okay, so there actually wasn't a turkey this year. But... I cooked a small feast, and since this is a food blog, I figured I should post it here... to um, let the blog fulfil its food destiny, or something.

I spent over 5 hours in the kitchen today, straight, and tomorrow we shall feast!!!
Behold.

Potato Salad. No recipe. I couldn't tell you how much of what to put in it, either. It's just one of those instinct things, thanks to my mom for that. :P

Butternut Squash casserole. recipe here:
Butternut Squash Casserole

Chicken & Dressing. I get a little bit better each time I make it... Again, no recipe here...

"Killer Cranberry Chutney" recipe is here:
Cranberry Apple Pear Chutney

And, I had some apple cider just sitting in the fridge. It was not the best and so I thought I'd spice it up a bit. Mmm!
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Mmm, sushi.

Okay so Sushi is not strange food to me. At all. Delicious, yes; but strange, no. But it's strange to a lot of people. I was really proud of my friend from work who went out to eat dinner with me on Friday night because she tried the baby squid! And, she liked it!!



I was also particularly impressed with the smoked salmon. I have never seen a sashmi this thick before.

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A Cross-Country Conglomeration

Cross-Country Conglomeration


We talk about food at work a lot. So I started thinking about something I wanted to make tonight. It sounds sort-of strange but I was seeking to create something vaguely resemblant of Surin Baskets (appetizer at Surin West thai restaurant).

And you know what? This actually turned out to be pretty darned good.
I would have taken a pic of it, but I devoured it too fast.

Here it is.

- Brown some ground beef - drain it, then add mexican seasoning. ) I had a packet of Taco Bell chipolte so I used that; it had just the right flavor. I didn't use a whole packet)
- Add 1 small can of corn (drained)
- Add duck sauce and peanut sauce and cook for few minutes. (How much depends on your taste preference. Don't taste it until you put both in, though. The duck sauce is sweet so be careful not to overuse it if you don't like a sweet dish. Then again if you don't like at least a bit of a sweet dish you probably won't like this at all.)
- Remove from heat.
- Add fresh cilantro


- Add grated cheese (really doesn't matter what kind. I had colby-jack.)
- Serve over a soft flour tortilla.

- Top with salsa. Salsa??
I was out of sour cream, else I probably would have put that on there, too, or instead. I'm curious how it might have tasted. But the Salsa definitely added to the flavor, without adding the wrong element, somehow.

I'll have to try variations on this theme to see if I can fine tune anything, but for a trial run, I was pleased.

There is one change I will definitely make next time: the addition of minced peanuts. This will add texture, as well as flavor.
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Pics

Since I forgot to take a pic of the baby octopus sushi last time, here are some from Thursday night. Unfortunately this time I forgot the pic of the escargo. hehehehe






Okay so the photo quality sucks, but what do you expect from a camera phone at night in a dimly lit restaurnt? It's the content that counts. And it was delicious.
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Upcoming Events

This weekend: St. George's Middle Eastern Food Festival
Lunch hours are 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. each day and dinner is 4-9 p.m.

Birmingham German Club plans 32nd annual Oktoberfest, a festival of food and culture
this weekend, apparently.

The Annual National Shrimp Festival is held each year during the second full weekend in October on the beautiful beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Okay not really food related, but also upcoming:

Alabama Renaissance Faire Admission Free. (Wilson Park), downtown Florence, Alabama.
Saturday, Oct 25, 2008 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.;
Sunday, October 26, Noon – 6 p.m.

Oh yeah and nearly forgot! Tomorrow night!
Video Games Live
Live video game music, LOL! it's supposed to be all cool and interactive and light show and stuff too.
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Chicken & Alligator Soup

So, I decided to try something different today (surprise!!! lol) for lunch. They had "Chicken & Alligator Soup" on the menu at lunch. How could I not try it!? About the most "bizarre" item I've seen on the menu yet. So, I got there and was slightly disappointed: it was actually "Chicken & Alligator Gumbo." So, really it just tasted like gumbo. And I could not discern which meat was alligator and which was chicken since most of it had fallen apart.



All in all, it was still good. Even better left over tonight with my red beans & rice.
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Ramen Review

Leslie wanted me to keep track of all the ramen noodles I try from the Asian market so we'd know what to buy -- and what NOT to buy -- so here it is: my Ramen Review.

1 forgot but it had 5 packets
(I'll update this if I can figure out what it was later)

2 clear noodles; eaten as a soup

Wow, this one was so simple yet so delicious. I love it. To the last drop.

3 the cabbage one from a previous post
It had chilies in it so it was really hot! Tasted great, a little sour like hot & sour soup. Clear glass noodles.
I don't recommend this one to the average noodle eater, though, lol.

4 Peppered Beef flavor that Leslie ate

We figured this one would be the hottest of all 3 but it was not hot at all, she said. Was good.

5 BBQ Chicken flavor that Steve ate

It was incredibly hot and spicy! Almost melted his face off! Suggested serving is to drain noodles, not eat as a soup.

6 Sesame Chicken flavor

Mmm, this one was tasty. Eaten as a soup. Not spicy. Another one I can just drink the whole bowl of.

7 Tom Yum flavor

I do NOT recommend this one, at all.
This doesn't taste anything at all like Tom Yum soup you'd get at a restaurant. Okay so I figured on that, but I couldn't tell if the slick pieces were fish skin or seaweed. The fishy taste comes from the small pieces of meat in the soup and it's actually seaweed, but I swear it was like eating fish skin if you ate a piece alone.
Oh yeah, and it's hella-spicy.
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Yay more Asian-inspired food lol

Okay, so David came over today to hang out. We decided to make lunch (and later, dinner) and well, most of what's in my pantry right now came from the Asian market, LOL. I'm sure that's no surprise if you've read any other posts in this blog. I swear, I am in love with that place...

So, for lunch we made a stir-fry. I forgot to take a pic of it! I bought a bunch of canned veggies at the market because they're cheaper to buy a big can there, than a tiny one at the regular grocery store. So it had bamboo, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and fresh onion. Served with some stir-fry noodles boiled on the side. And for the meat: chicken and pork cooked in hoisen/soy/peanut sauce, with a shot of Sriracha (Thai hot sauce). Very tasty! I don't know what all else he put in it. Hey, the man can cook OK?

I was inspired by the idea of something I made for dinner earlier this week. I wanted something to go with my awesome crazy noodles so I took chicken and coated it in hoisen & soy, and cooked it with bacon. This soy is not like the stuff you get at the regular grocery, either. It's thick. It's black soy sauce (wow, 3.25 online. Cost me $1.69 :D). "Black soy sauce contains caramel and sugar so that it has a slightly sweet taste and is darker and thicker then thin soy sauce." I chose it among the many brands because it had a dragonfly on the label.... XD but also because it looked really authentic. And I made a great choice.

Okay, so for dinner we pulled out one of my many soup packets I bought. This one: Hot and Sour. It smelled like ASS. (I am not exaggerating. It literally did!) We added some other things to it. He cooked some chicken with some stuff in the sauce and it really added to the soup flavor, which was surprisingly tasty despite the smell, ROFL. Among the add-ins were Shitake mushrooms (rather ironic considering what the soup smelled like...).


Yes, I take pictures of like, everything lately... I just love camera phones...

Oh... almost forgot. Those strange looking things floating in the soup are wontons, hehehe. Pork filled. ^_^
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Greek Food Festival & more Asian market

I'm such a dork. I have to have a blog for everything. I like being able to keep different things separated this way though. Anyway: Saturday. It was a good food day.

So, one of the Greek Food festivals was here this weekend. Me, Steve, and Leslie went on Friday night.

We were impressed that there is no dog in their food. *snicker* (Yes, I know, it means no dogs inside. :P)


Mmm, the smell of roast beast was delicious.


We wanted to go early because they usually run out of certain desserts early. So, I just got a gyro, and of course several desserts. And some grape leaves. Oh, and some wine. It was red sweet dessert wine; how could I resist!?


Saturday, Leslie went with me while I went and got a haircut from Peter. Then we met Tameka & Helena for lunch back at the Greek fest. I got the Pasticho. It sounds like ice cream, but it is pasta! Topped with something sweetish like cream cheese, called bechamel sauce. And it came with spank-a-pita. I mean spanakopita.


Oh yeah and we got some donuts, too. Yum! Swimming in hot honey, sprinkled with cinnamon.

Afterwards, I took Leslie to the asian market afterwards because the yarn store was closed. I knew she'd love it, and she likes to buy her ramen noodles there (how do you think I got the idea?) She got a few but decided to leave the more adventurous moves to me. So, of course she dared me to eat the strangest packet we could possibly find on the shelf:




That package reads "Artificial Pickled Cabbage Fish Flavor", LOL. It also had pickled chilies in there so it was incredibly hot! It was really good, though. Those weird looking things are shallots. I just love how many crazy packets come in the noodles, hehe!!

Finished off with a nice cup of green tea with honey. Mmmm. And some of my Greek dessert, hehe.

I just couldn't leave the market without a couple of bags full of stuff again. Among the contents were something we just HAD to try. A Hello Kitty Collagen-infused juice drink. "WTF?!," we wondered? Apparently, Japanese women drink collagen to stay young & beautiful looking!
http://www.gadling.com/2007/10/08/big-in-japan-drinking-collagen-keeps-japanese-women-young-and-b/
I can't think of many old looking Asian women so it can't be bad, right? It was pretty tasty, too. I could drink one every day. It costs a buck a bottle, same price I pay for vitamin water.... oh, and a corn snack this time hehehehe.
And some delicious instant Thai iced tea mix! It needed a shot of cinnamon/sugar powder but was quite nice. Tastes rather like the stuff in the restaurant.



Here's what the "Golden Sweet Corn" looks like out of the bag. (Great use of company assets, eh?) It's good! Tastes & smells just like corn.... go figure!!
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Twitter

Hehe, so I decided to start using Twitter.com last week. Yesterday, I actually had something interesting to post to it - it was about my previous post, our Adventurous Foods day. Thought this was pretty cool: the folks who manage the Bizarre Foods show started tracking me on Twitter after posting that. hehe!

So hey, as a result of that, I discovered this, in case anyone else might be interested:
http://twitter.com/bizarrefoods
Updates from Bizarre Foods about upcoming shows, etc., on Twitter. :D
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Strange Food Day


So, I spent the day yesterday hanging out with David and Sarah, and we watched Bizarre Foods for so long that we decided we had to get out and have our very own food adventure. The place we wanted to eat at was closed for another hour & a half, WAH. But we found in the phone book an Asian market & restaurant. Wow, I've never been to an Asian market, so I was totally in heaven for a while as we browsed before going over to eat! We wanted, of course, to order wacky stuff. They were out of a couple things, including snails! We settled on Crispy Squid, and Clams. Okay squid is just like calamari only bigger pieces so that's not too weird, but oh-so-delicious it was!!! I couldn't believe how delicious the clams were either. Wow!!!!! I want more..... We also ordered their Hot-and-Sour soup and it was soooo much better than you would get at a standard Chinese restaurant. The individual ingredients all had such flavor, especially the pork meat. I bought a basket full of goodies from the store afterwards too, hehe. It was hard to not shop at the Hello Kitty stand....

On to the next! We wanted to go by the Indian restaurant and order the goat, but it was further away than another thought: sushi. Again, not too un-standard fare, but we went for the baby octopus. I've had it once before and it was awful, but theirs was simply scrumptious!!! Evidentially we all have a fond spot for foods that make other people cringe. I ordered pickled bamboo just to see what it was like, and actually really loved it... it tasted great with the Katsuo (bonito). Pieces of fish in its own sauce. Extremely fishy, and they don't often have it in. It would have been a bit much alone but blended so great with the bamboo. We also got a couple other rolls to fill up on: their Super Crunch roll is the best I have ever had. And some martinis to wash it all down with, because they had a most delicious Blueberry, made with puree, and I have a thing for blueberries!

We had to end the adventure there because we were too full, lol. But we went home and after a while, we got snacky again. So we decided to try the Shark Fin soup. NOT delicious. I think the cats would eat it, rofl!!! However the Crab Chips we got to eat with it were really good! ^_^ lol they really are chips with crab meat in them. Potato starch is the main ingredient, so I guess it's a potato chip. The texture made me think of a rice cake at first, but it actually tasted good, rofl.

We ended the day with a nice cup of green tea (from the market of course) with honey and amaretto along with some almond Pocky I got. Mmmm, I like Bizarre Food day.

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Recipes

Maybe eventually I'll list my individual recipes on this blog for my own reference and for sharing with others, but for now, here's a link to them, since after all this is a food blog, haha.

As of this posting, my host's web server is offline due to a power outage resulting from the hurricane. :( But I'm sure it will be back online before too much longer. Hopefully, for Rich's sake!
http://mermaiden.net/Recipes

If anyone's actually reading this, and finds those to be of some use, then please, enjoy! ;)

I'm post-dating this so it sinks to the bottom of the blog, but will still show up in tags...
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