sushi - nigiri and box

It's been a few days since uploading pics of sushi. We've learned a couple types of fish and have been practising on cutting a whole fish down into usable pieces for sushi.







sushi - red snapper, sea bream, abalone, imitation crab



bottom row - box sushi with tuna, avocado and tobiko; egg nigiri (tamago)








box sushi - we make this kind of sushi in a box then cut it into squares. This one is tuna with wasabi mayonaise, kaiware (sprouts), tobiko, honey siracha sauce and siracha mayonaise.








sushi -

top row nigiri - tuna, albacore, salmon, scallop

bottom row - spicy tuna temaki (handroll), spicy tuna roll and scallop








oysters - one in a 1/2 shell with ponzu, chili radish and green onion; the other is a shooter with quail egg, siracha, green onion and lemon wedge










appetizer special - toro tartare. Toro is the best part of the bluefin tuna - it is the belly part of the fish. Tartare originates in Russia (Baltic states) and is a coursely ground, high quality beef mixed with salt, pepper and herbs, topped with an egg. In this case, the dish is fusion - substituting toro for the beef, garnished with green onions and topped with a quail egg and ponzu sauce.




nigiri - saba (mackeral), mussels, ama ebi (sweet shrimp) and aji (spanish mackeral)

a few days ago, i had a picture of an overgrown scallop liver. these two are normal sizes although different colors - one red, one brown. (See September 25, 2007 blog titled "nigiri").

Time is flying by! Graduation is next week - 8 more days of practice then the real world. I'm still unsure of future plans except to say I'll be in the sushi world. While prcrastinating on the job front, I do have a few ideas. I guess we'll both be finding out where the next home will be at approximately the same time... or stay in Southern California and become a beach bum. Hmmm, options.

disneyland

Whew! Still recovering alittle from the weekend. Last Friday, was mid-term day already. That means 2 more weeks until graduation... unbelieveable. Time is passing so quickly. Anyway, as a treat I went to Disneyland. It's only a few miles down the road from where I'm living and hear their fireworks display every night. I hadn't been there in a long long time - since I was a kid. Could it be almost 20 years ago? Wow. I'm old! Hehehehe. It was fun. There were alot of new rides I'd never been on before. Then there were a few rides, I'd been on before. Space mountain is a roller coaster in the dark. I'd been on it before but it had been fixed to take tighter turns, go faster and be darker.

There's this new concept called fast pass. You can only get one at a time but you get the ticket and don't have to wait in line as long. You just return at the time the ticket tells you and you maybe have to wait 10 minutes for the ride. I think the longest wait we had was 35 minutes without the fast pass, which isn't bad at all. It was a very nice day but tons of people - old people, young people, kids and tons more of kids being pushed in strollers. I got my toes ran over by strollers, stepped on, hair pulled... way too many people for me.

duck tongue

Tonight was an interesting dinner. Most of the classmates got together to hangout in Chinatown - this is a 'modern' one, located in a different town. If I didn't know it was Chinatown, I would have thought it a regular part of town with a few Chinese stores. It was all spread out and we actually had to drive to different areas.

Anyway, one of the classmates works in a Chinese restaurant and we've been wanting to try authentic Chinese food. Guess I'm willing to try almost anything once. We just picked a bunch of dishes that were recommended by our classmate. He did a pretty good job... one of the entree's was duck tongues - literally, with basil, black pepper and veggies. It was good. There were other duck tongue dishes but supposedly the tongues stink really bad and kinda ruins your appetite - basil reduces the smell so we went with that one.

I should have taken a picture for you for the proper visual. (hehehe) Oh and kinda raw chicken. It's called the House chicken special. It looks raw - the meaty part is real pale, the skin is on and looks raw as with the bones - the marrow is bright red. It really is cooked but on real low heat for a short period of time, air dried (I think) for a bit and returned to the low heat. Honestly, I had a hard time trying that one.

semi round fish

Still getting the hang of making the nigiri (rice balls). We get timed every day to get faster. Amazingly working with the nigiri - some of the classmates have forgotten how to roll sushi... they put too much rice in it and it doesn't close. So we get timed on our cucumber rolls as well. 8 nigiri in 2 minutes and 2 cucumber rolls in 2 minutes are the class goals. For me, the timing is not a problem butI still cut crooked... when you look at my rolls, they are more trapezoid shape. I think I just rush myself becuase when I'm not in a rush they turn out okay.

In the meantime, we're learning how to fabricate various fish. Today, we learned how to cut semi-round fish - like the red snapper and sea bream.

nigiri - shrimp (ebi), sardine, sea water eel (anago) and avocado eel roll

nigiri - sea bream (tai), red snapper, salmon skin temaki, sea water eel (anago), pike mackeral (samma)

food fest

Wow, what a weekend. We started with lunch on Friday at school and didn't stop eating all weekend. We had all decided to hangout after school and go for some sushi but our lunch was really good and everyone ate everything so we were quite full. We bumped the sushi time to dinner and in the meantime, we decided to explore nearby Chinatown and Olivera Street. Little did I know we were going to purchase various foods to try - alot of various foods. By the time dinner came around, we were even more full but went anyway. By the way, the sushi restaurant was quite disappointing.

Saturday started out with more food - lunch. Three of the classmates are Vietnamese and miss Vietnamese food so we went to Little Saigon and had some real pho. These guys are all buddies from Mississippi so they also have a southern accent which is great. We had some authentic pho then went on to explore all the shops and yes, we stopped at bakeries, markets, fruitstands - everything and got a taste of this and that. Whew! My belly was already full from lunch and you can imagine hanging out all day, how much stuff we ate. Those guys can really eat! Then of course, after all the snacks they were hungry for dinner. Then after dinner more snacks. We found a massage place too. I guess in Mississippi, the massage centers are real expensive so we all went for an hour massage for $20 each. Feeling better they were hungry again and we went to a cafe had some drinks and another dinner. By that time, my stomach really hurt and it was 11PM. Can you imagine eating for 11 hours straight? Holy smokes! But the foods we had were authentic Vietnamese and I got to try some new things - grilled goat, couple of different kinds of sea snails, banana flowers, jackfruit, beef tendons, tapioca starch cakes (similar to mochi), and somethings I've had before but this time around it was better tasting.

Today was alittle better as far as not gorging myself - I didn't hang with my classmates. My roommates returned from their vacation while I went to meet Iron Chef Morimoto. He made a few appetizers for everyone and just came out with his first cookbook.

Iron Chef Morimoto signing his new cookbook.

california culinary academy

With a loss for words, I had to take some time to ponder about this school and the what it means to the culinary world. There has been a great debate about the quality of education young chefs recieve here. It's one of the oldest schools on the West coast and up until a few years ago, had a solid reputation as one of the best in the nation especially with the pairing with Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. People had pride in this school and if you attended, it would distinguish you from other schools since employers sought out CCA graduates.

Let me start this day over with a frantic text message from a friend of mine. We are both CCA graduates and she had heard on the local news, CCA has a class action suit against them for fraud - increasing the price of this school with the promise of becoming a celebrity chef and lowering the learning standard.

With chefs becoming celebrities on television, the amount of students for culinary schools have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in the past 10 years. It's a booming business - a lot of people want to jump on the band wagon of being a superstar chef with the chance of being on television, having their own show or at least being extremely wealthy. To these people, good food is not really the issue - it's becoming famous or the income, that's their motivation. Then there are people who enjoy cooking and become chefs for that reason - make good food while hanging with friends, making people happy through their bellies. Personally, I think the latter people make better chefs and serve better quality food since their primary focus is food and the fame and income are a side effect.

Little do most people know the food service industry only has 2 classes - the poor and the incredibly wealthy, there is no middle ground. Only people that have been in the food industry know this... or have friends in the industry. You start out near the bottom of the totem pole and work your way up. After you put in about 10-15, 20 years, and get an executive chef position will you actually start making the income. The only time this education will help you is perhaps get you in the door and gives you a taste of everything from various food ethnicities, to computer skills, wine pairing and even a little management skills. To advance in these areas, one would have to be in the industry for experience which is the only way to excel.

Some of my classmates thought that by graduating from school, it would automatically put them in a management position. These were the people that had never been in food service before and believed the school recruiter. Others were there to get into the management position and of course, there were others that were recent high school graduates that didn't want to go to an academic college but to appease their parents, decided a vocational school would be sufficient.

People from all walks of life were in my class. Cooking has no age limit... the oldest classmate was in her mid-50's and the youngest ones just graduated high school. We had a good range of people in age and cookery skills - about half the class had prior restaurant experience. And for the most part everyone was eager to learn. It helped that our first instructor is a really good chef... Chef Glenn is also a great teacher and even went beyond teaching us what was in the textbook. It made our sister classes a bit jealous that we were making things not on the syllabus but we thoroughly enjoyed our first 6 weeks with him.

I really believe if you are motivated to learn, you will learn something so in essence, you get out what you put into it. I think most of my classmates were all really good and for the most part we all gleaned as much knowledge as we could. There were some students in our sister classes that still did not know how to boil water, make pasta or make a viniagrette salad dressing upon graduation. Granted, the entire time in school was not all good. Along with the good, there were some really bad instructors and even some instructors who were burned out but were sticking to teaching for a few more years until retirement and it is disappointing to have chef instructors like that.

As far as too many students - there were way too many classmates. Starting out, we had 32 students to 2 chefs... the main chef instructor and the assistant chef instructor. A huge ratio that only got larger when all the assistant chefs were laid off. Eventually, our class number dwindled down to 28 but that is still a large ratio especially when classes were suppose to be maxed out at 20.

Read the article yourself if you like. This is the link:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-06-06/news/burnt-chefs

I guess what really bothers me with the article and the current state of the school is that at the City College the culinary students attend school with a longer day, it's 32 times cheaper and the local restaurants would choose a City College graduate over a CCA graduate because of their retained knowledge, reliability, etc. Even when I was attending CCA in 2005, alot of my classmates had a difficult time attaining a job because prior students gave the school a bad reputation by not showing up for work, embellishing their resume and lacking ethics. It also does not help the school's image by firing the two executive chefs. The school President when I attended is no longer there either. I knew there were a lot of disgruntled students, which have made the newspapers and local television news but now it seems, there are alot more angry students out there that I thought. At least some of the instructors were honest with us... my three favorite ones were very upfront Chefs Glenn, Holly and Jason - they informed us from day one that we'd be overworked, underpaid and under appreciated but to be a chef, one has to really be passionate about the food. That the quality and reputation of this school was slowly going downhill due to the corporate buy-out and we should glean all we can from all our chefs because in a few years the school and our diplomas will not mean much in the food industry... it looks like they were correct. Corporations are in the culinary field as a means of capitalization - cram future chefs into a school and extort as much money from them as possible.

The following link was cited in the SF weekly article. I thought to look it up and see what comments are posted about CCA. This is the link: http://www.yelp.com/ in the search, type in california culinary academy in san francisco, california. While some of these critiques are valid, there is something called common sense that would make you questions yourself if you really want to attend this school.

If you ask, did I waste my time attending CCA, I would answer no. I think it was well worth the time and I learned alot. But if you ask if I wasted a lot of cash, my answer would definately be yes - the schooling is way overpriced for the quality of education and the sister schools in Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon are almost half the cost. The admissions counselor didn't even want to talk to me until I told him I was already approved for a student loan. Warning signals should have sounded in my head but my reasoning in attending school in San Francisco versus Austin or Portland, is with the farmland and ocean in proximity, students would get the best of both worlds learning about farm and ocean fresh ingredients. Plus the fact that San Francisco is an international city where diversity thrives, it would be a melting pot of ethnicities and international ingredients. With these thought all in mind, I reasoned that was the difference in pricing and it would be a better quality education and school.

gender controversy

Went on a tour with my class to the fish and vegetable market this morning. It was interesting to see the same fish at each market but some were better quality and some had better prices. We were told if we ever do purchase straight from the fish market, to get the freshest since it's local- watch the budget but stay locally fresh.

At the vegetable market, the age old controversy came up about gender - I'll just say innie's and outie's... on vegetables. We were speaking primarily about eggplants. Some say there aren't any genders because it takes both to make the flower which later turns into a fruit (eggplants are technically a fruit although it's prepared like a vegetable). Others say, there are genders and you can tell by looking at the bottom of the eggplant which one is female or male.

I really have no idea but do notice some eggplants have more seeds than others and the supposed physical difference. When picked young, eggplants have a little bit of seeds... or if picked mature, there are of course more seeds. Some mature eggplants have more seeds than others. The seeds are what make them bitter tasting so the less seeds, the better tasting the eggplant - and if you follow the gender rule - the males contain less seeds. So if you are shopping and don't want to waste your buck on the bitter ones, just look at the bottom where the flower was attached and figure out which one is male and purchase it.

Or you can plead ignorance (or just not care) purchase any eggplant, cut it up and soak it in salt. The salt will draw out the bitterness and will result in a sweeter tasting eggplant/ meal. Or you can just purchase the heavy one - heavy ones mean more veggie portion and less seeds.




Supposedly you can tell genders on any eggplant although these are a bit difficult.













American eggplant are the easiest to tell because of their size. These are a little bit better to tell the gender, if you decide to do so.

Can you tell the difference?





I got these pictures off of the internet - flickr. The bottom pictures is a little easier to tell which is which. If you decide to do some homework or research yourself I've been informed that the eggplant bottoms that look like belly buttons are females - they are indented and round whereas the males are not dented, most times smooth and look more like a slash or scar.

Good luck to those that care about eggplant genders.

uni

Today's class was way cool. We all had a chance to dissect a sea urchin (uni)... it was better than a biology class! Taking a pair of scissors, we had to cut out the mouth in order to break it open. There's a lot of teeth too. Amaze me! It's a good thing they only feed on seaweed.

sorry folks...kinda graphic but I thought the sea urchin mouth was really cool. We cut it out in order to get to the eggs. And wear gloves because the spikes leach their dye and it gets all over the place - can't be making purple nigiri.

sea urchin - it's a spendy dish but tasty. The yellowish brown goop is the only portion you eat out of the sea urchin... it's the eggs. There are 5 egg pouches per creature.

you can have any type of nigiri as long as it's squid... we have different types of cutting skills but all the nigiri on this platter is squid... except for the cucumber and the orange stuff is tobiko (flying fish roe) mixed with strips of squid.

nigiri platter - tuna, sea urchin, halibut and pompano

the famous fish chips I was telling you about yesterday. dried, deep fried and seasoned... they are crispy crunchy just like a chip. almost everyone in class likes them. almost.

nigiri

Yesterday was the first day of second session. We still have 7 students - same ones so we're all familiar with each other. This session is only focused on sushi making - this is the class everyone has been waiting for and will be judged on our timing, skills and accuracy.

Our first task was to make nigiri - rice balls. We spent all day yesterday learning how to make a rice ball. It's a bit more technical than I thought. We have 8 steps to follow and when you're rushed, you forget the steps or better yet, mix up the steps.

Our class goal is to make 8 nigiri in 2 minutes. Yes, we're timed and today I only made 6 which most of them fell apart - not good at all. Some of my classmates made 5 and 7 but they were too big. So far, none of us has made a perfect rice ball - size, weight, looks. Takes practice.

We're also learning how to filet various sea foods. Yesterday was a review on how to filet salmon and tuna and how to cut it into sushi/ sashimi form. Today we dissected pomano (cute little fish), scallop and squid. Amazingly, the scallop had a huge liver - almost the size of my hand. I've never seen such a little creature have such a large liver before. So I asked if it was natural... thinking maybe the scallops were bred for their liver - like foie gras. Nope... that huge liver was normal - in season liver. Wow. Then we learned how to make bone chips - literally. We air dried the pomano skeleton then deep fried it, seasoned it and made good eats... like a potato chip -salty and crispy.

scallop liver - some are brown like this one, others are red

scallop liver dynamite

sushi - pomano, scallop (2 kinds - nigiri and in seaweed), shrimp

stuffed squid sushi

squid tempura roll

session 1 final

Final day is here and done. Whew! For the final we had a written and hands-on - time limit of 3 hours. I think I over-crammed because I totally blanked out on all my Japanese terminology. Luckily though, after intently staring at the test my brain started working again and was able to recall the correct answers.

We made a sushi platter comprising of:

2 cucumber rolls

1 California roll
1 temaki roll - and plating/ decoration also counts.

As well as an appetizer utilizing one of the Japanese cooking techniques. I made a shiitake squid salad with plating and decorations, searing it by fire. At first it looked like a clown face with the spinach leaves as the eyes, tobiko - red nose and the sauce as a smiley mouth... I had to change the presentation by putting sauce all around the plate and smearing it a the last minute. Good save. One thing I mixed up was my seasons... shiitake are currently in seasonfor Fall but squid is a Summer food item.

shiitake mushrooms, squid, spinach salad with a yuzu (citrus/ lime) sake sauce garnished with green onion and red tobiko.

shikai maki

More pics of sushi. Today was pretty much a play day to "invent" vegetarian rolls.

shikai maki (egg, tuna, white rice and adzuki rice)

green roll - with asparagus, green bean, kaiwara, avocado, cucmber with honey siracha sauce
















not sushi - this was a demo on some new products we just got... wasabi gelee (wasabi jello - the white square thing in the back) and gold foil gelee (3 gold colored balls) with red onion, avocado in a cherry tomato










novelty item - gold foil gelee (gelatin/ jello). this 2 ounce container is approximately $80.

bestest cake ever!

Ok, maybe not ever but this was a pretty good tasting cake... My roommate asked if I wanted to bake a cake for her work - September birthday people. Crazy thing is my other roommate's mother works at the same place and this month is her birthday. Anyway, she really enjoys pineapple upside down cake. I had a really good recipe too but somehow, it got misplaced in the move. I ended up having to search out a new one and I'm usually quite leery of new recipes - I like to try the recipe out before I present someone with a cake that way I can change the recipe if need be (and they don't ever get a horrid cake. How embarrassing!) Anyway, I ended up making it and it's actually one of the ugliest cakes I've ever made. I was really disappointed... but the flavor really makes up for it - makes you wanna cry it's so good. hehehe. I'm sure my roommates think I'm an alcoholic since I cook with a lot of it and even put some rum in this cake.

Meanwhile, this is finals week.

seafood cucumber roll for those that don't like seaweed

tuna avocado dynamite

fried salmon asparagus sunset roll

weekend mini adventure

Kinda busy but fun weekend. Had a chance to go kayaking which was a lot of fun out in the Newport bay area. It was real nice - there was a wildlife sanctuary there. Saw couple of cranes, pelicans and couple of fish jumping. Haven't been kayaking in a couple of years... and yes, I did wear a life jacket and I still don't know how to swim.

Then I went to my first ever hockey game. Anaheim Mighty Ducks against the Phoenix Coyotes. There sure was a lot of fighting on the ice. I don't get hockey - I get the part where the puck is suppose to go into the other teams net but other than that I'm totally clueless. I kept asking my friend but it was more like the blind leading the blind. Makes interesting entertainment. Mighty Ducks lost 1-2 after going into over-time.

sushi for lunch

Today we made 2 rolls - salmon skin and shrimp tempura. For practice, we made the two rolls we learned yesterday - cucumber roll and california roll. We also covered a few more plating styles.

Today's assignment and plating:

shrimp tempura roll

salmon skin roll

california roll

california roll - triangle shape

cucumber roll

cucumber roll - tear drop shape

my lunch tray

some of my classmate's lunch trays

ham mono!

Yahoo! We finally started making sushi today... with the easy ones. I think I need more practice though. Regardless, it was a yummy lunch!

These past few weeks we have been studying the hot entree side of the kitchen going through all the traditional types of cooking - raw, grill, steam, simmer, deep fry, noodle dishes, rice dishes and now finally, what we've all signed up for! There were some good meals in the other types of cookery but this sushi stuff is the bomb! We were also studying ettiquette, napkin folds, displays, plating, etc. From today on, we will studying only sushi - other wise called ham mono.

My instructor - Sensei - was telling us our goal when we complete school is to make one cucumber roll (kappa) in one minute. We all thought that is really fast but he said a poor sushi chef can make 160 rolls in one hour - that's alittle over 2 1/2 rolls per minute! Then an average sushi chef can make 180 rolls in an hour... and a really good chef, well this person can make 200+ rolls in one hour - and this is making the roll, cutting it and plating it. That is really fast.

flower cucumber roll with sesame seeds - it definately took me longer than a minute!

california roll (top)

cucumber roll with sesame seeds

spicy tuna roll (top)

california roll with tobiko

earthquake

I did wake up to something strange yesterday. I didn't know quite what it was and thought that the cat got in my room and pounced on the bed... but it wasn't the cat. My friends said it was an earthquake.

Had it confirmed today after class. The earthquake was a 4.7 - a baby. Hey! My first earthquake experience. So strange since I lived in San Francisco, and I don't think there were any the whole year and a half I was there. There were two that I do know of - one before I got there and one after I left but none while I was there.

So my roommates got me interested in playing on the Nintendo. We played some weird line game and of course, I lost a majority of them. Believe it or not we played 42 games. They finally went to sleep but I kept on playing and forgot all about the time. When I looked at the clock it was almost 2 AM. It's a good thing I don't need much sleep during the week since I have to wake up by 530! At least the traffic was light this morning due to the Labor day holiday.

freshness - a different meaning

There was a video we watched in class of a sushi bar in Japan. The little shop was full of fish tanks where you choose your meal by just pointing at the fish or whatever creature you wanted to eat. The sushi chef would get it, slice it up and serve it. In this instance, the guest picked some sort of white fish, when the chef presented the plate to the guest the fish was still breathing - trying to breathe by opening and closing it's mouth. How freaky. Then the guest went on to a crab... I'm not sure what kind it was but it looked like a snow crab. The chef chose one of many in the tank, ripped off it's leg, fixed it up and served it. It was funny because the leg was still twitching on the plate!

Wow, that's fresh seafood!

I went to this party and met someone else with a Harley. I sure do wish I brought my bike with me, I'd have another person to go riding with. I sure do miss it! Just a few more months of not riding. Or perhaps I can convince my roommate to let me ride hers. Hehehe...

former students

Interesting enough... when I was working in the Virgin Islands, a new sushi restaurant opened up. It's the only sushi restaurant on the whole island. Needless to say, it did extremely well. And the owners are former students of this school. And when I worked in the Tetons, I went to Jackson Hole at least once a week. There I tried out a sushi restaurant and come to find out those too are former students. Small world, eh?

By the way, my new clipboard gadget works wonders!

1st day of school

Amazingly enough today's commute to school only took 45 minutes and the return trip was only 15. It was definatly a good commute even if I did forget my iPod at the house. That's alot of singing to myself for entertainment. It's a good thing I didn't have any passengers!

So... today was the first day of school. Not bad at all. There are a total of 6 of us... and one other female besides me. I'm the only one with kitchen experience and 5 of us want to open our own restaurant. Three of the guys are buddies and are nail technicians. They want to get a few years sushi experience before they open a sushi restaurant locally. The fourth guy is the one that wants to be a sushi chef and travel around. The other female works at a health food store, wants sushi experience so she can help out in the health food store kitchen and implement her own ideas.

Me? Well, I'm hoping to open my own restaurant one day but still have to decide which kind... a sushi restaurant or a bakery. These past few years I've been working as a pastry chef/ baker and I've been wanting to return to the food side versus staying in desserts. I enjoy both but ever since I was little I wanted to open a sushi restaurant. It wasn't until I attended culinary school that I got interested in baking. Perhaps because the pastry instructor made the class really fun. Or because you got to punch the bread dough and vent out frustrations or because it came naturally or maybe just a combination of all three. I think the only reason I would not start a bakery is that most of the famous bakers are women. When you see a famous female chef her skills are all in the baking or pastry world. You rarely see a good female chef cooking. Even while attending culinary school - there was only one female chef instructor and the rest were pastry/ baking instructors. It's just assumed that if you are a woman, you go to the dessert side. I kinda don't like that. Course, you don't see very many women sushi chefs either. So that's where I want to focus on right now.


Anyway, today was easy. We were assigned our text books, signed waivers in case we chop off our fingers or die from some sort of negligence, recieved our uniforms, knife kits and showed the chef our cutting skills. We chopped up some cucumbers and pototatoes. Course, since those are the only things we cut - those were the only things prepared for lunch. It was interesting for sure. But as the class progresses, whatever we make is what's for lunch.


I wasn't able to use my new toy clipboard since my notes were all taken in the kitchen during our cutting demonstration. I'll get to use it tomorrow. The setup is an hour of lecture, 3 hours of hands-on and one hour of eating lunch/ cleaning up. 5 hours total per day.

I think my other classmates might have an easier time learning since they do not have any restaurant experience. I learned French techniques in cooking and that's what I've been untilizing everywhere I've gone for the past several years. So to learn the Japanese style, I have to pretend to forget how to cook and re-learn how to cut vegetables and so on. It's a bit different and takes some getting used to. When I really concentrate, I do well in the Japanese style of cutting but then again that was just cucumbers and potatoes today.

I went to the grocer and got more potatoes and cucumbers for the house. What better way to perfect cutting than by practicing at home? I just wish my roommates ate potatoes! They are on the Atkins diet and don't eat rice, potatoes, bread and very little sugar. I think my influence is rubbing off though (aren't I evil?)... I see them eyeballing my rice at dinner.

LA

Started out my roadtrip to Los Angeles. This time I just went straight on through since there was a time crunch. I left Monday and arrived Wednesday afternoon after spending some time with some relatives and friends.

Well, I made it to LA. Whew the traffic is awful! And I thought the beginnings of Austin traffic

was horrid. So I thought I hit rush hour traffic and was talking to some people about it. They laughed at me... said I must be new around here since there isn't any rush hour traffic - that it's always that bad which ever time to go for a drive.

I drove my route to school. It took me an hour (for 27 miles) and one of the instructors told me an hour is a good day... wait until it rains or there's an accident then the commute will take about 2-3 hours. Great... what a way to wake up in the morning! At least I have some good tunes in the car!

Blalock Canyon in Oregon - as with my recent road trips... it rained from the time I left Washington to the time I crossed the border into California.

Mt. Shasta, Oregon

front yard harvest

While at home, it was the perfect timing to pick some fruits. The parents and I went out and picked most of the plums and asian pears. Some of the Bartlett and Bosc pears were ready as well. The apples will be ready near the end of next month. All the melons have been ready - I sent dad some melon seeds last summer. I think a couple of them were called Santa Claus melon, Christmas melon and I don't even remember the rest but he planted all including cantelope, honeydew and watermelon... what a feast!

dad with his grapes


















dad and a praying mantis









picking plums in the front yard













the pickings - pears, asian pears and plums

update from Washington

Aug 16, 2007
Sorry I haven't written on my blog in a while. Sometimes, I didn't have access to the internet and most of the time, the internet access was dial up which was really killing my patience. I had to wait until I got to a location with high speed access.

Things at work are going ok. Just a few more days left before I move on to California. When I first got into town I was working from 830am-11pm… then my schedule changed to 3-10pm… then it changed to split shift 1130-130 and 4-10… then it changed from 1130-1 and 430-10pm. It’s a good thing that is my only job! But working split shift kind of ruins your whole day since you can’t sleep in and you really can’t do much in between. I think I’d rather work 16 hours straight than work a split but that’s just me.

A friend of the family comes in almost everyday either for lunch or dinner. She’s a massage therapist. We had set up an appointment for me to go in. I really didn’t want to since my only day off is Sundays but we had scheduled it for this morning. She’d been wanting both my dad and I to stop by her store but we seem to never have the time. Anyway, wow! I didn’t realize I had that many sore spots until she was rubbing on my back! I was ready for a nap after that but I had to get going to work.


Aug 17, 2007

Oi! I’m such a nerd! I just got this notebook gadget. It’s way cool and I can’t wait for school to begin so I can take notes and play with my new toy! This clipboard holds normal paper but you use a special ink pen to take your notes. Then when you are finished with your notes, you hook the clipboard up to the computer and it transfers all the notes, graphics, and etc straight into a Microsoft Word document. You can also edit it to change the font and colors. Isn’t that awesome?

I saw this contraption a few years ago while attending culinary school but didn’t think much of it since I was a “good” student (hahaha!) and transferred my written notes to the computer everyday. But after awhile of course, I stopped transferring the notes because it took too long and I couldn’t get my graphs and hand drawn pictures to turn out. So pretty much the first couple of months I have really good type written notes and the rest of my notes are still in notebooks and now I don’t even remember what half of that stuff means since I can’t decipher most of my handwriting. Huge bummer! Then by the time I really thought about getting it, school was over and there wasn’t a need for it.

This will be such a time saver! It’s user friendly too – at least so far.

I’m really looking forward to school! My last day of work is tomorrow. Then I’ll be packing all day Sunday and leave out early Monday morning. I’ll take a few days to see my grandmother in northern California and some friends. I should be in Los Angeles by Wednesday and school begins the following Monday. How exciting!

I only wish I could take my bike with me. I have some friends in LA that also ride and wouldn’t that be great - to have fellow Harley riders to ride with all over southern California? But the bike is returning to the dreaded storage and I’ll be driving supposedly more safely in a 4 wheeled vehicle. At least the mother will be happy and not worry as much.

Plans after school are still unknown. Oh! So for those that didn’t know… I’ve chosen to specialize in sushi. It was a huge toss up between pastry school but I think I’m going to focus on this for awhile since I’ve been working the past few years in the pastry/ baking field. It’s a change of pace and the school I’ll be attending teaches pretty much everything you need to know about traditional sushi. It’s a 2 month course so I’ll be finished with schooling in October.

It’s amazing to think that I’ve grown up with sushi and have been making it on occasion throughout the years and am actually going to school to re-learn how to make it. Even with working in restaurants making sushi, I really don’t know the names of the ingredients… or at least the English translation and it kind of flusters me when people ask what some of the food items are and I just tell them the Japanese name. Then they still ask what it is and I have to reply, I have no idea. Take for instance inari… been making it for years and really like it. But I didn’t know it was fried tofu. (As far as personal consumption, when you purchase it at the grocer, there isn’t a label on it. You just look at it and know it’s inari. I guess for bulk restaurant purchases they have to put the label on the package.) I wonder if that’s personal complacency. Or perhaps ignorance? Hmmm. Makes me kinda have to think.

all road trips contain hail

Whew! So I left Denver this morning and rode thru Wyoming. It was real nice - sunny but with a cloud covering the whole way. It was actually alittle cold!


Going through Cheyenne, I didn't realize it was fair time. They call it Frontier Days. I saw the signs for it but thought perhaps that was normal for that town - to have it everyday of the year. Had I known it was their fair, I would have spent a day there to hangout... live music, rodeo, games - all fun stuff I haven't gone to in a while. I'll have to return there sometime and check it out properly.


Although I missed seeing all the fair stuff I did manage to get my own rodeo ride. Whew! There was construction on the interstate and the roads were uneven. I'd see a sign that would say 'bump' and slow down but there would be no bumps in the road. Then a few minutes down the road after I would think it would be safe to speed up, I get the bump of my life... I almost got bucked off my bike a couple of times. Kinda fun, bad on the back but at least the vehicle behind me stopped tailgating.


I arrived in Idaho Falls, Idaho and was heading out to Rexburg where I'd be staying the night when all of a sudden a rain storm hit. I've driven through tornado weather before and that's what it felt like. It got super cold all of a sudden, the wind actually blew me off the road! There was rain and hail. I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me so I pulled to the shoulder of the road. Even the car drivers couldn't see and of course, I almost got hit on the shoulder. People were driving all over the road. After a majority of the traffic passed me by, I braved it back on the road and found cover at a gas station. That was a tough and drenching 45 minute break!

I didn't know what kind of pictures to take of Wyoming since I spent last summer in the Tetons and have a large amount of Wyoming pictures.

I saw this sign of a buffalo in the distance. It's on the border of Colorado and Wyoming. Course, it doesn't do Wyoming any justice but it was the only thing I could think of at the time for a picture.

Montana/ Idaho border

Washington - welcome home to cornfields.

denver

Made it to Denver. It was a really nice long ride with great weather. Saw lots of bikers on the road and some really good scenery. The air is a bit thinner in Colorado due to the elevation. I stopped a few times for fuel and pictures and thought I was going to be stranded. After shutting the bike off, I had a difficult time re-starting. Got a bit nervous and stopped pulling over.






Raton Pass, Colorado

amarillo

I left Austin this morning and have been trying to outride the rain throughout the day. For the most part, the ride was really nice. I even got sunburned arms! I sunblocked my face but for some reason, I forgot my arms. I arranged to take a different route returning to Washington going through little parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

When I lived in Texas before I went on a bike trip through the middle of Texas. There's a town called Brady that is the geographical center of Texas. I thought I'd pass through there as with Amarillo to see the Cadillac Ranch.

During one part of Texas, I kind of zoned out, taking in the scenery and forgot a gas stop. I saw some civilization and construction and just totally forgot to refill the tank. You can sure bet 30 miles later, I was wishing there was a gas station close by. I really thought I'd be pushing the bike... and dreading it - those hills would have been really tough to be pushing that metal chunk! The gauge was in the red and I had no idea where I was or how close the next town would be. Luckily, remembering my almost running out of gas ordeal last time on my trip to Texas, I slowed down from 80 to 60mph and just kept going, going, going, going. 15 miles later, there was a town named Post - out of nowhere, it just popped up. Then I realized I was further along the route than I thought with a record of 126 miles for the tank. Way cool!

In between the sun, the rain was present with dark clouds and lightning in the distance. It would rain but the sun would be out. Crazy! By the time, I would give in, pull over and put on my rain gear the rain would stop. After the 2nd time, I told myself I would just ride through the rain since I was about an hour to my destination. And that 3rd time, was the most rain I went through all day. After about 3 miles I grudgingly decided to pulled over. It got alittle cold so I applied my rain gear and after a mile it cleared up and was hot and sunny. With the suit on, it was like a sauna! But I rode on with only 30 miles to go. Whew!

I made it to Amarillo and took my rain suit off! Ahhhh. Even though it was hot out, it felt like air conditioning! So I'm spending the night in Amarillo, leaving in the morning for Denver.

Brady, the heart of Texas.

Cadillac Ranch in the background with my bike.

I finally got to go to the Cadillac Ranch! That was partially the reason I rode this route. I've been wanting to see it in person for a long time.

life changes in an instant

Wow, this past week has been a blur. Partly because I was bored and ended up getting a second job. And partly because of family. With this second job, I've been working 13-15 hour days which certainly make a long day although time passes quickly since I just work, sleep and repeat the process.

Family issues... pretty much everyone knows I stopped the seasonal trail to save up to return to school. In the meantime, I would enjoy the warm weather and ride my bike all over Texas. It has kind of been the way I planned. Texas is warm and I do ride my bike although I did not account for all the rain and stormy weather. Usually by now the lake has dried up and green grass, brown from the heat and drought. This year is unusually wet for Texas, and doesn't make good riding weather but there have been some real good rides.

To sum it all up. I got a job offer... and I'm moving.

ROAD TRIP!!! Heck yeah - another cross country trip! Wow, this is totally way cool to be riding my bike so much. I'm so very excited! After being neglected so much these past couple of years, I think my bike is just as happy! More mileage = more fun.

This time back to Washington state to hang with the parents (and work to death). My thoughts were I'll be working the same hours but a different location. The parents need help so here we go... I'm moving Tuesday. I should be in Washington by this Friday if all goes well. I'll be taking in another portion of the US by bike and sticking to the main interstate. I will stop and see some friends along the way and perhaps take some cool pictures so it's all in great fun.

Life in an instant. Whew! Takes you by surprise sometimes.

I'll be back to Texas, but I'm really not sure when.