My new substitution for foie gras, and my favorite japanese food in the world (and I mean it.)

So yesterday I went to Kikuya's on Governor Drive for dinner. It's been kinda long since the last time I went there, with the trip back home and all that, but gawd, did I enjoy it. I was stuffing nigiris vigorously as Jenn was complaining to me about her woes. There were moments when I would just motion her to stop talking so that I could just close my eyes and savor the taste of the sushi. It was THAT good. I think the sushi chef thinks i'm retarded, cuz everytime I stop Jenn, he would chuckle to himself. Well then. Anyway, I've tasted really good sushi in Osaka, but this, THIS, is unbeatable. I believe myself to be extremely picky about food, but the fish is sooo fresh here, and the cut of the fish, the perfectly moulded and cooked sushi rice, the melt-in-your-mouth uni... there's heaven on earth after all. :D Well I order about 2 orders of uni, and 4 orders of other fish and the bill wasn't pretty. But was it good. :P
Just look at the presentation of the striped bass sushi. It was wonderfully cut, deliciously fresh, and beautifully decorated. The taste of the ponzu sauce, merged with the sesame seeds gave the fish a very very refreshing taste.
Okay, uni is my new substitution for foie gras. It has the same consistency as foie gras, and the uni here is the BEST i've ever had. It literally melts in your mouth, leaving a wonderful aftertaste. Apparently, Japan imports uni from near San Diego too!
Sorry for the splatter of wasabi on it. I was going to eat it when I realized I forgot the pictures. Heh heh. The Hotate (scallop) was big and really fresh! They have another version where it's chopped up scallops with spicy mayo and fish roe. Equally good.

Okay, so if you guys are really interested in more food from this place, there's a review on it on my facebook notes. So.

On another note, M booked the tickets for our Hawaii escapade! You know, for a man of immense intelligence and wit, the guy can't, for the love of God, multi-task. He tried to spell my full name, and got a letter wrong. So I corrected him, and all this while, he was poring through the travel options. And after he booked the ticket, and sent me the itinerary, I found my name to be 1) wrongly spelled like the first time he said it 2) lacking my last name. -__- It really was pretty tickling, 'cuz you know how people always say guys cannot multi-task? He's the epitome of that. Maybe it's because guys used to be hunters and need to be focused on one matter. Whereas us women had to look after the kids, do laundry, cook, blah blah blah at the same time. So it's in our evolution path. But yea, it was very amusing trying to quiz him on different things when he's doing something else, and just hearing how he's trying to answer them with immense difficulty, or just grunts when he gives up trying to talk. Ah, my best friend's pretty amusing at times like this. :)

My precious sista!

"如果我們兩個只能活一個，我希望是你"

I was reading my sister's blog, and she wrote this line for me (I had to cut and paste from her blog 'cuz I don't have the mandarin kit on my computer). For those of you who don't really understand mandarin, it means "If only one of us gets to live, I want it to be you". T__T I miss my sister! I know the reason behind her saying that is because of this recent serial in which one brother wants to donate part of his liver to save his younger brother, even though the former has a history of cardiac malfunction, rendering him unfit for surgery. *sobs* Yea, I was thinking about it when I saw that scene she's referring to. I'd rather my sister live. Man, she can have my whole liver if she wants. It's funny how we're separated by thousands of miles between us, and yet we think about each other at the same instances. It's like we're bound by an invisible thread... I guess that's what you call a family tie. Heh. I love my sister to death. If both of us haven't eaten for days, I would surrender all my food to her. And you guys know how I can't do without food. Yeap, I don't think there's anything in the world I wouldn't do for her. :) On another note, I think my sister is crazy. All she writes in her blog is that she's getting fat. If she gains a kg everytime she blogs about getting fatter yet AGAIN, I swear she must be a hundred kgs by now. -__- And to my sis: please eat! you know you get giddy spells, so how can you eat less! Please eat stuff with more iron- according to wikipedia, that means more meat, more fish, more tofu (I'm omitting all vegetable choices cuz I know that's out of the question for you). Take care of yourself ah. Please don't make me worry.

Treated like a princess.

There's always some people in life who treats you like a princess. Every night before I close my eyes, I thank whoever's up there for putting these people in my life. ^___^ 'Cuz it's friends like this who make the flowers smell fresher, the sky a little more blue, and the steps a little lighter. Thank you, you know who you are. :)

HAWAII!

So my best friend M. and I are going to take Honolulu by storm this thanksgiving! :D It's been almost a year since we hung out, so it'll be pretty cool! Can't wait. I need to get out of this darned place. Heh.

My comfort food of the day - tempura ice cream with a side of green tea ice cream (cuz the filling was vanilla, and I prefer green tea. Hoho.) No, I did not gobble the whole thing by myself: I shared the sin with Renee. Both of us went for a jog at our respective gyms consequently. Californians. They rub off me, I swear. Renee offered to pay for dinner cuz she felt bad about being flaky last Saturday. I didn't let her pay, of course, but the thought was appreciated and felt. :) I guess I'm feeling a tad better, thanks to all the sympathetic posts and text msges I've received the past day. Thank you guys. Since I'm feeling better, I shall bombard this post with samplings of food I've been cooking in the last few weeks. Recently, I've been cooking up a storm every Sunday night, and packaging the food into several Ziplock plastic cases for lunch from Monday till Friday. It's like a manufacturing line, really. So I'm stuck with the same food for lunch everyday. It usually tastes like heaven on Monday, and by Friday, I was ready to feed it to the dogs. So voila.
My first ever cooked meal ever since I was back in San D. I think I put the most effort in this one, prolly because I was still craving the mixed vegetable rice back in Singapore. I made a sorta meat-pie (which was possible due to the heavy ass steamer I brought back, only to find it online at Ranch 99 at 30 bucks. -__-), stewed wintermelon with dried scallops, and my favorite tomato omelette. And rice, of course. Yea, lasted 5 days.
Which after a few weeks of cooking other stuff, I got lazy and decided to make stewed pork mee hoon. It's kinda like a traditional fare, cooked with those canned stewed fatty pork. Only I got too health conscious, and threw out all the fat, and rinsed the lean meat twice before throwing it in to simmer with the bee hoon. Added carrots, cucumbers, pork, spinach etc. Very bland. Very healthy. Uh, very bland. I threw it out after thursday. Thriftiness has its limits.
I cooked this for dinner the other day. Was craving the simple udon sold in Tokyo, you know, the 400 yen noodle shops? I just made some ponzu sauce mixed with stock and mirin, and used it for the dipping sauce. No msg! :) The poached egg worked out beautifully as well.
And thus the manufacturing line. This, my friend, is my lunch for the rest of this week. Shredded chicken breast with spaghetti in tomato mushroom sauce with loads of garlic. Mm, I heart garlic.
And this is seared duck breast with a red wine reduction, from George's by the Cove. Surely you didn't think I cooked this. Ha.

P.S: Renee just got back from her workout after one and a half hour, and declared it as a "short workout". And I was feeling proud of my 25min jog. Someone strangle her for me, please?

Tonight, I don't need an audience. Tonight my music is all I have for company. I just want to be alone. The feeling is intangible... my heart is hollow, my mind blank and my room reeks of loneliness. Yet, I don't want to let anyone in.

I talked to my mum as usual tonight. I put on an apathetic voice to deter her from asking too much about me. In my heart, I really want to reach out to her, and pour my heart out to her. Yet, I refrained from doing so. It's almost like my mind wants to, but my heart feels too tired. Or maybe, I just didn't know how to put it into words. So I hung up. I can't handle my friends asking how I am. I don't want to pretend to be alright. It's too exhausting. So subconsciously, I keep pushing away my friends. I let the conversations trail off... am I wrong in doing that?

Being alone heightens every sound and sensation. The echo of the dripping water in the pipes, the warmth of my comforter around me. The rustle of the pages of the novel I'm reading. I just want to go to sleep. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, ready to face another brand new day.

What am I exactly lacking in my life? What is it that makes me feel unwell? Am I going into depression? Or am I thinking too much into matters? Where do I find the answers? Who do I talk to? What can I do to make myself feel better? It just occurred to me that I haven't truly felt happy in a long while... I'm falling. Who can be bothered to catch me this time around?

You know, considering that I got up at 4.30pm, my day (or rather, evening/night) was pretty constructive. After all, who can do three loads of laundry AND clean the whole apt within such a short time! Hohoho. Now my hands smell of bleach no matter how much moisturiser I slap on them. You have to admit, there is some therapeutic value to cleaning the house and doing laundry. You just feel like... you've accomplished so much! I even managed to squeeze in dinner at this quaint Italian restaurant in PB (Caffe Bella Italia- sorry i gobbled up the food before I could take pictures. Will review it the next time I go) with my friends from school. Dave is leaving me to move downtown *sulks*. It's not really like super far, but at the same time, it's gonna be harder for us to meet. And I'm without my shopping, movie-watching, bitching-about-people mate. Sigh. We had a super quick dinner, cuz service was really fast. Was gonna head to a house party with Renee but she flaked on me the last min cuz she's tired. So, I'm here, bored. So bored I went to the grocery store and stocked up on tomatoes, tomato juice, cherry tomatoes and pasta sauce. For some reason, I've been craving tomatoes recently, everytime I'm bored, be it on the plane or just being bored out of my brains on a Saturday night. I think this is the first Saturday night I'm at home ever since I got back from Singapore. I keep telling myself that I'm saving calories not drinking anyway. Gawd. I'm so boring. I know this is a terribly boring post, but well I'm bored, so you guys just have to suck it up and be bored by me. Misery seeks solace in company. Man, I wish they sell Peppridge Farm bread here over on the west coast....