Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

Nick and I went on a day trip to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. Every time I go up to LA it rains. Thankfully though, it stopped raining in the afternoon. We walked around the area looking at shops and restaurants. We visited Misturu Cafe. The line going in to this little shop is out the door, but they have the best imagawayaki I've had. Imagawayaki is basically two pancake like circles on top of each other with azuki (red bean) paste in the middle. We got these freshly made and they were so delicious. Nice and hot, the outside of the dough is a little bit firm, the inside is nice and spongy. The red bean is sweet and high quality.

Imagawayaki

Azuki bean paste in the middle

We stopped by Orochon Ramen for lunch. I saw this place on Man vs. Food. I was trying to convince Nick to take the Special 2 Challenge. It's basically a big bowl of super spicy ramen you need to finish in 30 minutes, including drinking all the soup. Nick ended up with the salt Special 1 and I had the miso Orochon 2. We also had dumplings as an appetizer.

Menu

Little Dumplings

Miso Orochon 3

Salt Special 1

There's three soup bases you can choose from: miso, soy sauce, and salt. The menu says the ramen comes with pork but the slices were so small, they were barely noticeable which was pretty disappointing. I'd recommend getting the add-ins like chashu pork or egg. The portion of soup and noodles is huge and it is SUPER spicy. The Orochon 3 was enough spice for me and I love spicy food. Nick's spicy tolerance is pretty high and he admitted his ramen was really spicy too. Overall, I don't think this ramen is worth the price. But we went for the experience and just to check it out.

I heard there's a better ramen place, Daikokuya, just down the street. We'll probably visit this place next time.

Nick and I also went to the Japanese American National Museum. It's $5 for students with ID and $9 general admission. Silly Nick forgot his ID. They had an origami exhibit there, it was pretty cool, the most interesting thing was the locust installation. All the locust were made of dollar bills and were hanging from little strings from the ceiling.

Upstairs they have the internment camp exhibit. It was very education. The exhibit documents Japanese immigrants first arrival to the US on the West Coast and in Hawaii as sugar plantation workers. Then onward through WWII and the internment camps up to present day. It was sad to see all the blatant racism that was happening during those times. And our government was the one perpetrating all of this. It was all very educational and I learned a lot of things.

I like museums and it reminded me of when I was traveling in Europe, I went to more museums that month than practically my entire life.

Pistou Soup

Pistou Soup

Pistou Soup is like a French version of pesto soup. It's a vegetable soup, and pesto sauce is added into it. This is from the Food Network book. Pretty easy to make, you add summery vegetables into the water, like zucchini. Overall good flavor :]

Freesoulcaffe

Vegan Key Lime Cheesecake

Freesoulcaffe is a little vegan place in Old Towne Tustin, CA. I always find vegan places have high ratings on yelp even if I believe they aren't that deserving. However, I really like this place. Even though its on the pricey side, I guess you gotta pay a premium to be meat-free. 

I've had the BLT, which is made with tofu bacon. (Forgot to take a pic, sorry!) It's really quite tasty, but you can't compare to real bacon. I think whenever comparisons are made to real meat, the vegetarian "fake" stuff can never measure up. So just take it for what it is, for tofu bacon it's pretty yummy. 

Key lime pie is one of my new favorite desserts. I've only recently discovered a love for lemony, citrus-y flavored sweets. So I decided to give this key lime cheesecake a shot. It doesn't taste as creamy as a regular cheesecake, but it's not bad. I didn't feel heavy and weighed down after eating. It had a nice lime zing to it. But even though it looks small its way to big to finish for one person. I wanted to share with Nick but he was busy with his 100 chicken nuggets.

100 Chicken Nugget Challenge

I thought I saw a promo on a McDonald's billboard for 50 piece Chicken Nuggets for cheap. So I dared Nick that he could not eat 50 chicken nuggets. But he got cocky and changed it to 100 nuggets. He wanted to go for 150 but I said it was unrealistic. Anyways, he started dying at around 30. But he made it to 50 and felt like poop after. It was really disgusting. They didn't have the promo by the way, so it ended up being 20 bucks. When we ordered at the drive through the guy working there was like, "Excuse me, how many?!" It was quite funny ^.^

The Hunger Games Movie

Watched The Hunger Games movie today with Nick. It was really sweet of him to buy the tickets for us. ^.^ I was pretty happy. I was excited to see this movie. I read all the books. I loved the first two. The third one was ehhh though. It wasn't as satisfactory in terms of the level of action. And then so many people die. Their deaths don't measure up to how important they were in the story though. Peeta and Katniss barely interact in the third book too.

Anyways, the movie wasn't too bad. I actually really enjoyed it. The pace could have been faster. Nick fell asleep. He hasn't read the books and I think it'd be harder to understand what's going on if you haven't read them. But the film was very faithful to the book. No added or deleted parts that were important. Which is a definite plus. That's one of the most annoying things that can happen in my opinion. Like Voldemort and Malfoy's awkward hug in the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. -___- 

It so weird whenever I have to study I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing. And now that I have free time. I forgot everything that I want to do.... -___- oh man. I wanna do some baking though, I haven't made anything in really long time.

Spaghetti with Veal Parmesan

Today I made spaghetti with veal parmesan for dinner. I never worked with veal before, but I have had chicken parmesan which is something I adore. I heard it works with veal too so I tried it out since veal happened to be sitting in my refrigerator. Since I wasn't the one who bought these, I want to try the recipe again but with veal cutlets. So the pieces will be thinner and there would be no bone. The meat was very moist. The spaghetti I just cooked according to the package and added some olive oil after draining.

Veal Parmesan Recipe:

8 veal cutlets (but I used chops)

Salt and pepper

1 cup breadcrumbs

1 cup parmesan

1.5 cups flour

3 eggs, beaten

1 24 oz. can tomato sauce

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Basil, chopped

Olive oil

Mix together the breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese either on a large plate or on a piece of parchment paper laid over the countertop. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the veal to your desired amount. Dip the veal into the eggs, let the excess drip off then coat it in the flour. Coat the veal in the breadcrumb mixture.

Drizzle some olive oil into a skillet over medium heat. Place the veal into the skillet and cook about 4 minutes on each side until browned. Transfer the veal into a baking dish. Cover with the tomato sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese and basil on top of the veal pieces. Bake in the oven at 350F for 10-15 minutes.

Den jang jjigae, boh ssam, kahm ja jjigae

Nick and I checked out a Korean restaurant in Irvine yesterday called Kyo Bahn. We went around 3pm but they have lunch specials from 11am-2pm on weekdays which I recommend since it's cheaper. We got the den jang jjigae (soybean paste stew) for free. Since Nick is Korean I get him to speak his native language whenever we go to Korean Restaurants and we seem to get better service whenever he talks and I don't. 0.o Anyways, I have had a better version of this in LA, the one at Kyo Bahn didn't taste fermented enough for me. I like it when it has a really strong taste, here it was more mild.

Den Jang Jjigae

Boh Ssam: you use the pickled lettuce to wrap up the other ingredients. I'm not quite sure what they are but the pork, red vegetables, and the shrimp paste. I didn't use the peppers. But only put a tiny and I mean TINY bit of the shrimp paste on for flavor because that stuff is extremely salty! Then wrap it all up and stuff it in your mouth. This was my favorite dish from the restaurant. All the flavors blend really nicely. I think I would just order this next time because we had way too much food for two people. We were stuffed.

Boh Ssam

Kahm Ja Jjigae: this is pork stew I think. There are pieces of pork meat and on the bottom are potatoes. I am not a fan of potatoes. I only had a bite and gave the rest to Nick. But I thought this dish was just okay. I've never had it before anywhere else and everyone was raving about it on yelp that I just had to try. Overall it was just okay though, needed stronger flavor in my opinion. It was hard to mix in the spices on the top. The meat was nice and tender though.

Kahm Ja Jjigae

Swedish Pancakes

Nick made me Swedish pancakes when I got home from school last thursday. They were pretty yummy, I was actually really surprised since the only other thing he knows how to cook is pasta. ^.^ He pulled the recipe off the internet from here. We got the lingonberry sauce from Ikea, it's not sweet though, so the powdered sugar was a nice addition.

Swedish Pancakes

Enchiladas with Green Sauce

Nick and I went to La Sirena Grill after our hike. We ordered the carne asada enchiladas with green sauce pictured here. The sauce had a spicy kick. It was delicious, but I think on the expensive side. Practically 10 bucks but it's supposed to be all organic and eco friendly which is probably the explanation for the higher prices. Why does organic have to be so expensive?

Avocado Pear Smoothie

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, been super busy studying for midterms. Now I have a short break but finals start next week eek! >.< gotta study hard. I'm not doing too well this quarter though sadly, I'm studying but for some reason it's just not working out. Anyways, I don't really want to think about that right now, it's depressing.

I made this avocado pear smoothie from powerfoods. The taste was alright, I prefer the berry power smoothie. But it still felt clean and healthy which is good. Testing out the Frametastic again. You can see I made the little collage of my smoothie. It's free in the app store if you've got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. I really like Apple products. I have the MacBook Pro which is super handy for school.