Japanese, Mexican, American, and Filipino Food!

JAPANESE FOOD
I officially kicked off my summer on the 1st week of May by eating at Yama Sushi for the 30th+ time haha... My sushi partners were Iza and Nessa. I think we ordered about 11 rolls, which was a lot for our tummies!

Ready to eat with the chopsticks!

My dining partners

A lot of spicy tuna on top yumm

Mochi ice cream to the left and green tea ice cream to the right

I ate at Yama Sushi AGAIN the other night with Inna, Wendell and their relatives. I had the best service I ever had from them! Maybe because we had this awesome waitress who I've never seen before serve us and I guess they made our sushi fast because our party was big.

I love the quality of food served here in Yama Sushi.  I tend to compare the difference in the fish quality of another restaurant to Yama.  Some special rolls I recommend is the Screaming Orgasm (it really melts in your mouth), if you enjoy the taste of garlic try the Harry Potter Roll, and the Yama Crunch Roll if you like a bit of crunch!






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MEXICAN FOOD
On my friend's last days of being a -teen, we ate at Casa Don Juan near Downtown. Its not hard to miss on Main St. because the restaurant itself is quite colorful. If you long for authentic Mexican food, this is the place to eat at. I ordered the Mojarra al mojo de ajo, and assumed it was just a fish fillet with garlic sauce (I should've asked the waiter to specify more about the dish), but I got way more than that, a whole fried fish! I couldn't finish it in one setting! I feel like I got more than what I paid for including their tortilla chips and flour tortillas, which tasted home made to me =D

Mojarra al mojo de ajo

Shrine to Frida Kahlo

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AMERICAN FOOD
After my CNA graduation, my family and I ate at TGIF. I think all of their desserts are made for more than one person. Look at my vanilla ice cream topped with whipped cream and hot fudge. It was enormous!




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FILIPINO FOODYesterday my cousin, Dave, turned lucky number 7. We had the typical Filipino food served for his birthday. As you can see, all three of my cousins were excited! Not really, they weren't hyper yet:

Puto, carioca, pork bbq, pancit, fried fish, etc.

My cousins

Cake Cake Cake

The last couple of weeks was full of celebration!


Last Monday was my last day of training to be a nursing assistant. Well instead of training, my class and I just wanted to go straight to our picnic to eat sugary foods and drinks for a not so healthy breakfast! We ate muffins, animal crackers, wafers, Capri Sun, Tampico juice, apples w/ caramel dip and cake:

My instructor, Enid, picked out a cute little white cake with buttery cream frosting!

On Saturday night I went to my lovely friend's graduation party. It was journey to get her place (meaning getting lost along the way), I'm glad I made it on time! I loved the wonderful presentation of all the Filipino desserts, cookies, and cupcakes surrounding the cake. The Filipino desserts consisted of fruit salad on the very right, next to it are desserts made of sweet rice prepared in different ways! The three white ones are puto, which are steamed rice muffins, and sorry I can't remember the rest of the names of the other sweet rice dessert next to the puto!

This is the celebrant with some of her cake:



I know the cake is from Goldilocks Bakery. I didn't have to ask Michelle where she got it from because after the cake got all over her face, her intoxicated self caused her to keep saying along the lines of, "AH This was an $80 cake from Goldilocks!!" haha

Lastly, for Mother's Day, Bronsen made for my mom a moisty chocolate cake with strawberries inside. My mom ate it quite fast! I had to calm her down!

Traditional Russian Foods

On Orthodox Easter, Reggie introduced to me some of the traditional Russian foods eaten for this holiday. I kind of had an idea of what she'd prepare because she made me side foods before like carrots and onions marinated in vinegar. I asked her to help me out with this entry (her words are in italic) because I don't remember everything that was in each dish. Thanks Reggie <3

Name: Kvas
Contents: fermented rye bread, carbonation
(can be compared to American Root Beer)

Kvas tasted way better than root beer! The awards on the side of the bottle proved it:



Name: Venigrette
Contents: potatoes, pickles, sauerkraut, beans, beets, vinegar,
& a little bit of veg. oil

I absolutely loved the strong vinegar taste to this salad, I miss it:



Name: Olivye
Contents: potatoes, carrots, sausage, peas, eggs, pickles,
sour creme & mayonaise, pepper & salt.

This potato salad tasted like any other potato salad I've tasted except it was lightly flavored. I liked it this way because anyone could put as much pepper as they want to suite their taste buds:




Name:Vareniki (Russian style pierogies, dumplings)
Contents: milk based dough, pan fried onions, fork mashed potatoes.
Vareniki were cooked boiled and then pan fried.

The vareniki reminded me of the Chinese gyoza dumplings except there were potatoes inside instead of meat. The countries are neighbors so it would make sense these dumplings are influenced by China.
The vareniki were also lightly flavored and tasted yummy dipped in sour cream!
Here's Dan frying the vareniki:



Other foods were:

Name: Plov
Contents: beef, long grained rice, carrots, onions.
All cooked in a cast iron pot.
& then a side dish of pickles tomatoes.

I remember Reggie told me a lot of foods and soups taste better with sour cream. Its a Russian custom! I'm only used to pouring sour cream on burritos, tacos, and baked potatoes. Anyways I put the sour cream over the Plov and couldn't stop eating it!
These are the rest of the meals and Reggie's arm haha: