You Ate What...?

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 ...

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...

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...

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...