My all time favorite weekday dinner is a good breakfast. Breakfast foods are (for the most part) simple to cook, incredibly tasty, and appropriate to serve with toast, my all time favorite side dish. Today I made a simple omelet with leftover roasted asparagus and goat cheese. I topped it with arugula, as my arugula needs to be used up, or will end up in the trash. Of course, on the side....a nice piece of toast. No recipe needed, I am afraid to say, so instead, I will regale you with stories of my recent trip to Super 88.
Super 88 is a large Asian grocery store. Tonight my roommate Mai was headed there for some ingredients she needed, and I decided to tag along. For those of you who have not been, you should know that this is a place that makes use of all of your senses. When you first enter, walking past a food court of freshly prepared Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese food, the smell of fish sauce greets you. Oh, fish sauce. I will be addressing this later in my upcoming post featuring Mai "Advice on using fish sauce from a real live Asian person" After you enter, and are past the fish sauce-food court-glory, the bright florescent lighting, the even brighter food packaging threatens to blind you. But look! Have there ever been treats more CUTE? Yes, Japanese desserts especially have mastered the cute factor. Pink rice buns with smiling faces? check. adorable baby animals on boxes of cookies and snack cakes? check. Even the dried anchovies have a precious wide eyed baby fish adorning their cellophane bag.
I ended up purchasing frozen rice buns with bean paste, which I plan to steam tomorrow or Sunday, and a box of Pocky. Oh yes, Pocky. When I was in college (very briefly, but I digress) There was an Asian grocery store downstairs from one of my classes. I dragged two friends in, and we stocked up on Pocky and Hello Panda biscuits, and seaweed snacks, and I felt quite happy with myself to have found someone unaware of the sweet and addictive snack and introduce them to it.
And Oh, were there choices of flavors...Just look at the this picture, which is actually only part of the Pocky section.
I ended up picking a flavor of Pocky I had not seen before: chocolate cheese. Yep. cheese + chocolate + a sweet cookie stick. Fabulous. Also, the powers of Poky are not to be under estimated...you know that it can tame Zombies, right?
Thank you to Siobhan for turning me on to these ads recently, whether intentionally or not.
Hannabelle, I finally have had a chance to check out your blog. It is great. The chicken with 40 cloves of garlic is one of my favorites! It is very adaptable..for example, last week I added curry powder and mango chutney and it was delicious served over basamati rice along with typical curry condiment (banana,pineapple,toasted coconut). Keep on cooking! love from your food loving coworker.
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