Soooo Fulllllll

For our fourth wedding anniversary, we went to Horizons, THE haute vegetarian cuisine restaurant in Philadelphia.  Adding to the excitement, we tried the chef’s tasting menu with the accompanying wine pairings:

The wines are: Allan Scott Sauvignon Blanc (from New Zealand) to go with the soup, Argiolas Vermentino (that’s a white wine from Italy) to go with the ravioli, Auroch Tempranillo (a smooth, mild red from Spain) to go with the tofu, Terranoble Carmenere (another red, from Chile) to go with the seitan, and Pfeiffer Muscat (from Australia) to go with dessert.

The soup:

Fresh tasting, bright green, and absolutely lovely.  I tried the wine before tasting the soup, and I liked the wine much better after a few spoonfuls of soup.  Very nicely paired!  I confess I did not really taste the golden beet relish, but it added nice texture to the smooth soup.

The ravioli:

Well, cream and leeks will get you everywhere with me, but I also enjoyed the salty seaweed caviar and the oyster mushroom ravioli itself was yummy as well.  But the best was yet to come.

The tofu course:

Oops, I started eating this before I remembered to take a picture!  It started out much more elegant-looking.  The heart-of-palm cake was the star, for me, of the evening.  It was like a crab cake, but better!  Sweet, with a little bright acidity, soft with a perfectly crispy exterior, moist and creamy on my tongue.  Wow.  The tofu was good too, and the fresh corn and zucchini.  I think the garnish might have been pea tendrils, or at least it reminded me of that.  My husband claims I ate more of this than he did, since I totally cleaned my plate and he left a few bites, “saving himself” for the additional two courses yet to come.  It’s possible.

Grilled seitan:

My husband loves seitan, a lot.  This seitan was amazing.  The texture and flavor were beyond perfect.  I am not a fan of olives or capers, and I feared this dish would be spicy, but I ate every bit of it.  There was a mild spicyness, and a lot of deliciousness.  Probably it would have been just fine without the added “taco” with avocado and smoked tofu underneath, and certainly would have been a little less filling, but I liked how the smooth cool avocado complemented the meaty seitan.  I could imagine having all the ingredients of this dish inside a burrito…mmmmmmmm!

OK, so now we were stuffed, and I was a little sloshed from having to keep up with the wines.  I usually do not drink so fast, but since the wines were geared to the courses, I was making sure to maintain the pace.  But there was still dessert, and muscat.

The muscat arrived first, and just a sniff made me dizzy…but then I thought maybe I was just dizzy anyway.  Sweet but not syrupy like port, the flavor reminded me of the fruit candies we get with our bill from the local Thai restaurant, but also reminded me of a childhood flavor that I could not recall enough to name.  Then we were presented with an array of three desserts, saffron crème brûlée, blueberry cheesecake, and peanut butter cake:

The crème brûlée was perfect, with the paper-thin caramel crust giving way to smooth and delicate custard.  The blueberry cheesecake with drips of lemon-herb sauce was fantastic.  I think I have not yet had enough blueberries this summer.  Unfortunately, the peanut butter cake could not stand up to the magnificence of the other two desserts, and came off as a poor third, though it might have been better on its own.  Comparatively dry and without the subtlety of flavors of the other two, it lost out.  If it had been a rich, moist, smooth dark chocolate something, the story might have been a little different.

I would be hungry after writing this, but I am still feeling pretty full.  As my husband remarked, “I remember this feeling.  It’s the feeling of being completely stuffed after eating at Horizons.”

Yeah.  It is.

Useful!

When I was first given my Nintendo DS, I knew that in Japan people used them to learn English.  Now THAT’s useful, I said to my husband, who of course was the one who told me about it.  They should have a program so I can learn Japanese.

Well, now they do, so I bought it.  I can say yes, no, bad, good, hello, goodbye, and thank you, and I am learning how to correctly pronounce karaoke, karate, futon, ninja, anime, manga, tsunami, and samurai.  “Futon” is difficult for me!  It is more of a sound effect than a word, as I hear it.

One of the really neat features is that you can listen to the nice Japanese lady say each word, then record your own pronunciation, then listen to your pronunciation, then listen to you and the nice Japanese lady saying the word in unison (or not in unison…darn futon!)

There are silly little games, like whack-a-mole, well, tap-a-gopher, where you have to tap the correct gopher according to the words shown on little placards below each hole.  And word search.  The first time I looked for kamikaze in a word search, it was tough!  The letter combinations are not what I’m used to!

So far I have only done the very tiniest first bit.  But there are supposedly 10,000 vocabulary words and 1,000 lessons.  You can use it to learn to write kanji too, so maybe I will learn that as well.  There is a dictionary/phrasebook contained in the program for use when you travel to Japan, and if you fail to speak you can use the sketchbook function to draw a picture of what you need!

I do not have any current plans to visit Japan, however.  Maybe someday!

Mid-January 2009

I apologize for the extremely uncreative title.  But this is a catch-up post.

It’s mid-January already.  The marking period ends next week and all the kids are overwhelmed with projects and tests.  It’s only a week since we came back from break and it seems like break never happened.

My wonderful husband went to California last week to do some work, mostly videotaping but some web-tech stuff also.  Once his work was done he stayed for an extra couple of days to hang out with friends and play Rock Band with people who could really handle it…unlike those of us who played on January 2, who benefitted from the “no-fail feature.”  No, these were people who could keep my husband on his toes!

Meanwhile, I was home, working.  I had to do all of the chores myself: cooking, taking out the trash, feeding the cat, etc.  Which really is not all that hard to do.  I took advantage of my opportunity and last Tuesday I roasted a chicken, using a recipe from the Garlic, Garlic, Garlic cookbook involving roasting some garlic, then putting the roasted garlic, a halved lemon and some herbs inside the chicken before roasting the chicken.  Afterward, a sauce is made with pan juices, more lemon juice, and the roasted garlic.  The bird comes out really tender and yummy!

I’m still eating chicken.

I am down to a last sandwich-worth of chicken salad, however, so that is pretty good.  I had some of it as soup, when I came down with “the virus going around school” last week.  I woke up freezing cold and wet with sweat several times a night for two nights in a row, and was achy and dizzy and very brain-fogged.  It made teaching a challenge, especially on Friday.  So anyway, I made a really easy chicken soup, as shown here:

Easy chicken soup, by teawithbuzz

• 3 cups water
• 1 tbs “better than bouillon” chicken base
• about 1 carrot, chopped
• about 1 stalk celery, chopped
• about 1/2 cup chopped cooked chicken
• 1 handful egg noodles

Put water and chicken base in pot, bring to a boil.  Add carrots and celery, simmer 5 minutes.  Add chicken and egg noodles, simmer until noodles are tender.  Serves 2, or serves one for dinner and serves one again for lunch the next day.

I slept a LOT over the weekend to recover, and I feel much better now, plus I have my husband back now, and he cooked a yummy stir-fry for dinner!    I enjoy having someone else cook dinner!

It’s the best!

Warning: girl stuff in this post.

Ever since I started shaving my legs and armpits as a teenager, I have been inept at it. Which is to say I tend to nick myself with the razor and it hurts.  So I have avoided shaving.  For years I didn’t shave at all, which gave some people the impression that I was vegetarian (I have no idea how that follows, but there you go) or possibly lesbian.  Why not “European” or “contra dancer” I don’t know.

For some more years, I shaved only in the summer, when my skin is less covered by clothing, and again right before any fancy winter event I might attend wearing sheer hose or a sleeveless dress.  Then even more recently, I bought one of those rotating-tweezer devices that yanks out your hair by the roots.  These work best when your hair is 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch long, so I  shave a week or two before I actually want to start using it and then just use that.  It works great, but the first couple of times each summer still hurt, as you might expect from yanking your hairs out by the roots.  And I do not enjoy pain!

In a couple of weeks, it will be New Year’s Eve, and time for the annual Hogmanay Ball.  I have a new outfit this year, and it is sleeveless, so I figured I’d better shave this weekend so I could use the rotating tweezer thingy and look all smooth and conventional for the ball.  I pulled a box out of the cupboard that contained a free razor that had arrived by mail several years ago addressed to my husband and set aside for “just in case.”  My husband uses an expensive electric shaver, so I figured I would use the freebie.

I showered, and tried the new razor on my armpit.  I had to double-check to make sure it had done something.  No scraping!  No burn!  It felt like gliding a piece of plastic under my arm.  And the shave was very very smooth!  I did my legs: same sensation.  No cuts!  No pain!  This thing is amazing!

I can highly recommend the Gillette Fusion razor to all of you who shy away from shaving due to nicks and cuts from your usual razor.  The five blades really do change the amount of pressure per blade (I can say that with confidence as a physics teacher) and it makes for very smooth skin afterward.  Here is a closeup of the blades:

In addition, the blade cartridge comes off the handle, so you just have to buy more blade cartridges when they go dull.

So, if you are looking for the best razor, ladies, go for this one.  I can’t speak for how it works on faces, so if there are any guys who manage to read this far through all the girl talk, you are on your own as far as testing it out.