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Burmese Food

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We took a quick trip to Tulsa to introduce our daughter to marine life at the Oklahoma Aquarium. In planning this trip (and realizing I hadn't posted on here in ages, we looked for a unique restaurant in the area. We found KAI Burmese Restaurant that serves food from Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Southeast Asia. Much of it is influenced by the surrounding cultures (China, India, Thailand, etc.). We ordered a lot of food, wanting to get a good feel for the type of cuisine. Appetizers: Tea leaf salad - super good, both adults liked it and the tomatoes were a thumbs up for the preschooler. Pickled or marinated tea leaves, shredded cabbage, sliced tomatoes, peanuts, crunchy soy nuts, sesame seeds, a bit of spice, and a well-seasoned dressing. I promise, under all the crunchy stuff there really are veggies Yellow something, orange something, and black something....vegetables, apparently  Tempura vegetables - the sauce was really tasty according to the husband, all vegetab
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Bingsu: a Korean dessert

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I am currently eating this because I probably won't post otherwise. (Well, okay, I was eating it when I started this post.) This is Bingsu: So much is going on in this bowl! The bottom layer is shaved ice with sweetened milk, over that is green tea ice cream, berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries), red adzuki beans covered in sweetened condensed milk, rice mochi pieces, and whipped cream. So, it's creamy but not heavy. This is the fruit and red bean variety, but the place I got it from also has a mixed berry variety and an Oreo cookie variety. Oreo might be too sweet for this. I liked the tartness of the berries to offset some of the sweetness. Honestly, it would probably be great with the shaved creamy ice, red beans, and sweetened condensed milk. The red beans were almost cake-like I guess. If you have had a variety of things with red beans, maybe you'll understand what I'm trying to say. I don't know that I've written much about Korean f
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West African food

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It's a busy time in our year, right before the holidays. My husband's working long hours, and my job as an elementary school speech-language pathologist means that my students are wound up for the break. So, my husband asked me to meet him after working late for dinner. As I arrived, I started looking for places to go, somewhere we had never been that had decent reviews. Up popped "Mama Sinmi's Chop House." It's a West African restaurant in OKC, situated right next to the East African restaurant "Queen of Sheba." We'd never gone to either one, so it was an interesting idea. Think breadsticks/chips/tortillas, we got this before we ordered We were greeted by one of the owners who gave us our menus and some water. We did our usual looking at the menu, glances at each other, and then finally asking what the other person was going to get. I think the owner by this time knew we were first-timers, though she asked to make sure. After talking with
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Washington (Seattle and Tacoma area): A Short Excursion

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A few days after our road trip to Houston, I took a short trip to Washington to visit some family. I had coffee and treats, did some grocery shopping, and had a great meal in a food court of a grocery store. The number one thing that this Okie girl always has to have on a trip to Washington is some excellent coffee. Coffee shacks are prevalent there, very similar to our snocone stands here. My absolute favorite (out of the 50 around where I stay there) is a place called "Brew It 4 U." Last year John and I drove up to Washington to visit our family and took it upon ourselves to visit the many local coffee shacks. This place stood out as the best we tried, so I try to go there at least once a year. We chat with the baristas working and tell them a bit about Oklahoma and they tell us about coffee culture in Washington. Yay cultural exchange! Brew It 4U, their signature drink The Flying Dutchman, and a yummy sugar cookie. For those of you not from Washington, coffee is o
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Houston: Mostly Asian Inspired Road Trip Food

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I apologize for how long it took to get this out. There are lots of pics that I had trouble getting moved over, along with starting a new job and the things that go along with working in education. But here's the Houston post I promised so long ago. Recently (like 2 months ago) John and I took a trip....down to Houston...in July. It was a very quick trip to go watch some people I like on YouTube who were doing a US/Canada tour, and it was my birthday present. Obviously the 15 hours we were going to be in the car required snacks, as we don't often like big meals when we are traveling. I didn't think to do some of this until the way back, so there are not so many pics of the snacks. Mexican Vanilla is essential in my family. Homemade teriyaki beef jerky (that I made with my mom) This was not at all as I expected. Since the people we were watching live in South Korea (even though they are Canadian) and we were staying in the middle of Chinatown in Houston, I
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Matcha Mania

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So, I am a huge fan of tea. Recently I even replaced my weekly coffee budget with a weekly tea budget. One of my favorites is matcha, or powdered green tea. It's probably more complicated than that, but that's the general idea. You add water, or milk in my case, and whisk it with a bamboo whisk. I take my matcha making pretty seriously.  my matcha set, stained green with use deliciously bitter. but I have to add a little honey to drink it I have also been on a quest to find Green Tea/Matcha ice cream. Several years ago for the summer Haagen Das made a green tea ice cream I adored. It wasn't cloyingly sweet. While its never come back to Oklahoma, I have found it in Fred Meyer stores in Washington. This pic is from the Haagen-Dazs website. I always stop at Fred Meyer to get this when I'm in Washington I was looking for something similar in OKC or anything matcha/green tea flavored other than typical tea drinks. Apparently there has been a green
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Southwest (including watermelon-strawberry-pomegranate fruit) and Sheer Craziness

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My new job starts next week, but I'll be working from home so I will still be able to make crazy and delicious things for my family. This week has been a little crazier than usual because of our Bountiful Baskets haul. Fruit, it's what's for dinner...and lunch...and breakfast  We have so much fruit. This isn't even all of it. This is just the stuff that didn't need to be refrigerated, was forgotten in the picture (bananas), or that we hadn't eaten the first day we got it (Italian Prune Plums). Apples, apricots, pluots, watermelon, avocados, limes, prickly pear cactus fruit, and the refrigerated grapes. We got tomatoes too, but we aren't keeping those. We're not big raw tomato fans. I've eaten most of these things, but one thing was pretty new even to me. Weird looking, huh? This is a prickly pear cactus fruit, also known as tuna. It's common in the Southwest, and this basket seemed to be aglow with Southwest foods. We'll talk more a
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