Food on the home front...

While I continue my rigorous hunt for a job it hasn't stopped me from having fun in the kitchen.  Ill give you a few meals (maybe not all in the same post) we have eaten at home lately to maybe give you a few ideas...

Last night my wife and I had a green curry with jasmine rice and pan-seared sole.  A couple of thoughts on that:

• Sole is a great fresh fish fillet, although I only recommend thin filets and pan FRYING or deep FRYING it if you're like me, because if you're like me sole can taste mushy in the mouth.  Without giving it that crisp crunchy texture on the outside its not so palatable to me. (feel free to disagree)


• A lot of time a green curry (with coconut milk, lemongrass, ginger, stuff of that nature...) or a massaman style has potatoes in it.  BUT I found some acorn squash.  SO I split and seeded them, and cooked them in the oven for about an hour at 350.  Later after letting them cool, I peeled and cubed them, then sauteed them in a pan(in an attempt to 'seal' them to a form before mushing into nothing).  Then added them to the curry, later it was delicious to eat the curry and rice with the heat steadily building in my mouth only to hit a junk of sweet roasted acorn squash to counter the heat.


• The acorn squash also helped to thicken the sauce as it cooked(because of course some of it did break down into the sauce).  I say the taste was great, DO IT!

I have not had the pleasure of experiencing the 99 Ranch Market or Ranch Market till moving to California.  Love it!  Its about a five-minute walk from where I live and I am one of the only Caucasians I ever see in there...but HECK, that place is loaded with all the stuff I always wish I had to do food right, but couldn't find in a regular grocery store.  Mostly considered Asian products with far-reaching 'hands' into India, West Africa, some Spain, Caribbean...probably a few more cross-culturally crossing over each other!  And the produce, meat, rice, noodles & condiment sections put the other grocers to shame!

The Sole my wife had in Thinkers Village, Liberia (in West Africa) will always be the 'unforgettable' fish dinner to my wife Stephanie who had it on our Anniversary last year (possibly with the many fresh fish and sashimi meals we had in Cancun on honeymoon too!).  Delicious!

The Dish, Zao Noodle Bar, Cooking at home...

That's right, time for me to get back in the swing of blogging what I like most...food and fun times with my wife (no it's not necessarily in that order, calm down Stephanie).

So out here in Cali there is like a gazillion places to walk or hike (or swim,  or bike, or yada yada - you get the picture).  But Tuesday we went to Palo Alto CA where Stanford University really takes up most of the town/city and we went to The Dish, aptly named for several large satellite dishes.  There is a course up there that is about 3.7 miles in a loop with hills and valleys.  If you come park on the Alpine Roadside (Pier Lane) it's an additional 1.3 miles of walking, so you get a full 5-mile walk...which wore us out!  But it was a nice area in the hills with local 'wildlife' like students, cows, and ground squirrels(that was meant to be funny).  And the animals couldn't be bothered by you, so you don't see them moving along when you come by!

Later we went downtown to one of Stephanie's favorite places that I have never been to called Zao Noodle Bar and I loved it!  Great pick Stephanie!

Stephanie had:

KUNG PAO CHICKEN: Crispy chicken breast, red bell pepper, green onions, and peanuts in a sweet-tart kung pao sauce with a spicy kick! Served with jasmine rice.

I had:

THAI GREEN CURRY CHICKEN: Chicken, bamboo shoots, green peas, galanga, kaffir lime leaf, ginger-garlic-lemongrass, and green curry sauce with jasmine rice.

Then we headed on over to Peets Coffee & Tea for a Caramel Freddo (Frappuccino)...yeah baby!

Later that evening I kicked out a little supper.  I had some olive bread (baguette style) - I made out of Italian herbs, marinated green Spanish olives, and black kalamata olives - that I used to make pizza.  Cut the bread in half, flipped it over, used some sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, pepperoni, shallots, garlic...broiled it off in the oven till the mozzarella cheese, cheddar, and jalapeno jack mix were bubbling like hot lava on top.  Stephanie was leaving to meet up with her friends but since I stayed home and was not driving, I had a glass of red wine with mine.  Delicious!

It was a good day, heck it was a wonderful day!  Thanks, Stephanie for coming up with the plans!  (one of the many reasons I love my wife)

Enjoy a few pictures, although I don't have any of the food we had at home...shucks, I will have to start remembering that!

Traveling Europe

When we left the Africa Mercy (Mercy Ships) ship when it was in Tenerife, Canary Islands I (Tyrone) had never used any of my vacation/leave/holiday days from the 18 months working at the base nor the 12 months onboard the ship.

So that allowed Stephanie and me to continue to travel and meet up with old friends in Europe in January and February before having to go back to work in March.

Some days we took good pictures, some days we couldn't be bothered.  I didn't take a great number of pictures of the food because I needed both hands to eat and wipe my mouth without soiling or greasing up the camera...but what pictures we did take I will share below.  Then of course Stephanie had to edit what pictures would make the cut since I am not as demanding.  There are a few blurry pics of restaurants or food places, but I thought they should still be seen in case you may one day be there and recognize that I loved the food at that restaurant.

A lot is going on with us right now as we settle back into living the life of a U.S. citizen so more stories and eats may be blogged about later as I recall fond memories of our travels.

As you will see just a few pics in England, it was cold & snowy.  We also spent time in Belgium too (Brussels) but then again, we just felt too cold and wet to be bothered.  But those places were just as great!

Click on the link to go to the album.  I used fairly simple picture albums so If you have a slow connection it should still be less painful than usual to see them.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7TnLRcjnd1bNPqFj6