use real butter

Remember when I said I was going to eat sushi when my Gi tract healed up and my immune system returned to normal? Yesterday began our sushi tour. We decided to start with the familiar because I didn’t want to deal with any unpleasant surprises. Sushi Tora in Boulder is our local favorite.

a perfect day for sushi

Oh, but before I dive into the meal, I have been tagged by Sarah of Sweet Endeavors for a meme. Thanks Sarah! I haven’t been good about memes lately because of chemo crap and such. So here goes:

1) What were you doing ten years ago?
I was in graduate school at Cornell. I was working my ass off toward a PhD and I had just begun to realize that this gig was starting to suck big time.

2) What are five non-work things on my to-do list for today?
1) pick up my compression sleeve for my lymphedema
2) candy an ass ton of orange peels
3) apply dry rub to some pork shoulder
4) work out
5) give the pup a bath

3) What snacks do you enjoy?
1) jalapeño potato chips
2) jicama
3) mango
4) dill pickles
5) fruity popsicles

4) What would you do if you were a billionaire?
1) endow jeremy’s faculty position
2) open a free kitchen in my community to serve delicious food
3) promote math and science education the right way
4) teach kickass babes (and ONLY kickass babes) to tele
5) blog

5) Where have you lived?
1) Virginia
2) Ann Arbor, Michigan
3) Pasadena, California
4) Ithaca, New York
5) Colorado

6) What jobs have you had?
1) crash test engineer
2) flight crash analyst and programmer
3) NASA software engineer
4) web content manager, designer, and programmer
5) GIS and remote sensing chick

And I am tagging…

Amy at eggs on sunday
Graeme at Blood Sugar
Katie at The Wasatch Report
Kevin at Closet Cooking
Mark at No Special Effects

Sushi Tora elicits images of fresh ingredients because they have an amazing assortment of herbs and vegetables plated alongside their fabulous seafood (most of it flown in daily). My greatest beef with the place is their clueless wait staff - the typical (white) young urban hipster in Boulder who is lacking in knowledge of both sushi and waiting tables. They really detract from the overall experience.

probably one of the few things i dislike here

We started with a tiny bowl of noodles. They always hand this to you with your gari (ginger) and wasabi. I’m not a fan. This is probably the only thing that I’m not fond of and it’s not on the menu, you just get it by default. On to the business at hand, we ordered a seaweed salad from the kitchen because it is a fresh and light way to start the meal. Theirs is always perfectly seasoned with the right amount of sweet and sour and salt and mmmm.

seaweed salad

Typically when we sit at the bar, a delicious little something comes compliments of the chef. This time it was salmon collar. Wonderfully tender and fatty. It’s my second favorite part of the fish. My favorite - the belly.

grilled salmon collar, on the house

No fooling around. The only sushi I had on the brain during my chemo was toro - fatty tuna. It is like butter, but it’s fish, but it melts like butter, but it’s fish… The stuff is not cheap, nor should it be, because it is amazing. We splurged on some toro sashimi (from the specials menu) and some hamachi sashimi. I normally love hamachi, but I realized the folly of my ways when I sank my teeth into the toro. We should have sprung for two orders of toro and nixed the hamachi (even though it was good, it wasn’t toro).

toro (fatty tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi

Jeremy had a mind to sample some baracuda nigiri off the specials menu and I wanted my fix of crunchy tobiko (flying fish roe) with that smooth and rich quail egg on top. It’s like dessert, really. No really. He gave the baracuda a thumbs up.

baracuda nigiri and tobiko with quail egg

Like I said, I didn’t want to fill up on rice, but I love maki of all sorts and there was still room in the tummy. Spider rolls are a no brainer. I could eat soft shell crabs all day long. They make a decent spider roll here. We also ordered a half roll of the Tora No Maki which is salmon, avocado, tobiko, and unagi (fresh water eel) - the combination of which is silk and sweet in your mouth. Next time, we’re ordering a whole roll.

spider roll and tora no maki

As an afterthought, we made one last order of ama ebi. Raw sweet shrimp is terrific, but it’s the fried shrimp heads that I’m crazy about. The shrimp heads were enormous. I almost couldn’t believe those heads came from those bodies. I felt the heads were over-battered, which gave them that heavy fried feeling instead of the typically light and delicate feeling you get with most fried Japanese food.

ama ebi (sweet shrimp)

While we were still eating, our waiter approached and asked if we wanted any dessert. We found it peculiar that he should ask while we were obviously in the middle of our meal. We said no thanks and without asking, he snatched up our order sheet and totaled our bill. What is up with that? For all he knew, we could have been ready to order more (we weren’t, but still…) I didn’t like that guy.

Overall, Sushi Tora still remains champ of Boulder sushi. We’ll see if they can keep the title over the next few weeks… meanwhile, I am thrilled to be noshing on sushi, my #1 favorite food of all time.

Damn straight. Look at what the lovely Katie sent to me in the mail yesterday!

so sweet!

I like to think of Katie as my twin in Salt Lake City because we both tele and have dogs. Except she’s not Chinese. And she runs faster (and muuuuuch farther) than me. And I’m pretty sure she’s taller than me. And she writes more eloquently than I do. And she can lead climb. And she’s more in tune with her inner peace while I’m in tune with my inner anger. But other than that… we’re like the closest thing to twins you can imagine! What a gorgeous little headlamp. What a stellar gal pal. Thanks, Katie!

This morning we set out to do a short hike only to find that the road leading to the trailhead was still closed. It usually opens by Memorial Day weekend, but they postponed the opening. We decided to walk the road and saw along the way that there were still sizable snow drifts and windfall (downed trees) strewn across both lanes. The campgrounds were also under a few feet of snow still. Late thaw. But we enjoyed our walk since I’m still physically weak. There was a lot to see like different stages of pussy willow blooms, bunnies, ptarmigans, fish in the lakes, tiny wildflowers, snow, and a gorgeous Wilson’s Warbler that sang for us. It was a gorgeous way to start the day. Check out the photo blog for all of the pics, but I’ll include some of my favorites here.

kaweah loves the snow

approaching brainard lake

mount audubon looms over brainard lake

puppy gets her morning swim in the icy water

scooby snack

wilson’s warbler

serenade

I told one of my tele betties that when my chemo was over I was going to eat sushi, salads, and berries for a month. Try forgoing some of your favorite foods for several months. You start to get a little punchy.

onion, ginger, carrots

The first salad I had when my blood counts had bounced back was with a favorite Japanese dressing. I have only had it on occasion in random sushi bars. They bring out a token salad sometimes, just iceberg lettuce with a tomato wedge and a few carrot shreds. I have to hold back my gag reflex when they serve it with Thousand Island dressing. If I’m lucky, I’ll score the gingery/vinegary dressing.

purée everything

A little guesswork and tinkering a few years ago and I’ve settled on a recipe of my own that comes pretty close to the dressing I like. It’s not smooth in texture or in flavor. It packs a punch, but if you love ginger, this is a good one to try with adjustments to your liking. I find it incredibly refreshing in the summertime.

toss dressing with salad and serve

Japanese Ginger-Carrot Dressing

1 cup carrot, chopped into chunks
1/4 sweet onion
1/2 cup ginger, peeled and cut into chunks
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup miso paste

Place all ingredients into food processor and blend until puréed. Toss dressing with salad and serve.

The university is on spring break this week which means very little to Jeremy other than the fact that he gets a reprieve from teaching relativity (special and general) and cosmology. His trusty graduate students are still in town and working on their research (I’m going to send them some cookies because they are such sweet, hilarious, and conscientious students), and he still has unbelievable amounts of work to do… But since he doesn’t have to teach and his students are quite smart and self-motivated, he has opted to spend this week with me! What a champ he is. Our intention was to ski on Monday, but the winds were ridiculously insane. So he worked at home while I baked and baked. Then we planned to ski Tuesday, and the National Weather Service LIED about high winds and then decided to update and reduce the winds after it was too late to drive out to the big mountains. Again - more work for Jeremy and I can’t recall what the hell I did yesterday (more baking and cooking, I suppose and then we had dinner with Beth in Boulder).

But today, I said screw the National Weather Service and we’re going skiing. Which we did. We chose Breckenridge because Vail charges $20 for parking and A-basin doesn’t have express lifts and we like Breck (well, we like them ALL). It wasn’t crazy busy, but it was busy for a Wednesday because everyone else was also on Spring Break or Rich Person’s Vacay or whatever. No new snow, but lots of nice groomers and damn it if it wasn’t a roasting hot day (40s?!? that is insane!). See here… some of the nearby hills are melting out.

heartbreaking for some, like me

Jeremy let me instruct him on some drills I learned from my women’s tele program today. This is a rare thing, seeing as he likes to hot dog it and blow off things like Good Form or Proper Technique. In the afternoon I said we could play, which we did. The upper mountain called to us.

ahhh, an express lift to the top

it’s still skiable

At one point Jeremy said, “Let’s see what’s over here.” So we skied over to the edge and what I saw made me salivate.

nice terrain behind the ropes

let’s go!

And we crossed over to Peak 7 where there were some double blacks that I had never checked out before. Of course, it was mixed hard pack and tracked up powder - complete hard pack on the faces. While I was skiing down Art’s Bowl I heard Jeremy above me making strange scraping sounds and the next thing I knew he flew past me on his back and there was no way for him to stop as it was slick and steep. I skied down after him as he slid for a good 15 seconds over a lip trying to get his skis under him and his edges in - but to no avail. He finally slowed down as the face leveled a little. Scared the bejeezus out of me, but he immediately signaled that he was okay. Then we saw another dude yard sale it next to us and slide even further down the mountain since his alpine skis popped off about a hundred feet above where he stopped.

I dare say this may be my last tele day of the season seeing as my next round of chemo is tomorrow and by the time I’m feeling strong again, the ski hills will be closing shop for the season! But then we can switch to spring mountaineering and then summer hiking and oh, the possibilities are endless for a Colorado girl. Life is always Good if you make it so.

Once home, we were pooped, but in the good way. And I had already planned a super quick and easy meal in anticipation of our poopedness. Teriyaki pork chops - GRILLED! Even though it was 35F on the deck and a cold wind chilled our bones, we had a spring inauguration with the first grilling of the year.

fresh green onions, garlic, ginger

pork chops

I got this recipe in college from one of my apartment mates - a 5th generation Japanese from Seattle. Andy was like a goofy, sweet, and brilliant brother to me. He and Alex had just moved off campus and the first time they went grocery shopping they came home with bags and bags of junk food: chips, cookies, soda, ice cream. They gorged that evening while I ate some homestyle Chinese food I had made for my dinner. As they lay on the couches moaning and holding their tummies they declared, “That wasn’t a good idea.” So they started cooking for real and making some pretty nice meals (we agreed to cook separately for some reason, I can’t recall why - it may have had something to do with my sports practices). One day, Andy was on the phone with his dad for a teriyaki recipe and I asked if I could get a copy because it smelled terrific.

adding sugar to the marinade

placing the chops

It’s great to dump everything in a ziploc bag. Green onions, ginger, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and the pork chops. I also love to buy skinless, boneless chicken thighs and chop them up to skewer on the grill - delish. Andy’s recipe said to marinate for a minimum of 30 minutes. I go 24 hours. The doneness is up to you, but you should be aware of the dangers of undercooked pork. Still, I like my pork to be juicy and not leathery, so we typically shoot for an internal temperature of 160F and then off the grill we tent it and let the pork chops rest for 5 minutes. While we don’t *really* know what we’re doing, this is our general guideline and if you have better advice, then please hit me with it!

grill to a proper internal temperature

Because I have to be careful about certain raw foods - particularly leafy vegetables and knobbly berries and because vegetables wreak havoc on me for a good amount of time during my treatment, I have been craving salads and veggies like nobody’s business. But today, today I am in tiptop shape (which is why they hit me with the treatment tomorrow), and we grilled asparagus and had Japanese cucumber salad with the chops.

spring IS beautiful

I know folks think skinny asparagus is all the rage, and I used to prefer skinny to fat asparagus spears… until I had fat spears picked not more than an hour earlier from a professor’s garden in graduate school. Heavenly. I mean, sweet beyond compare and crisp and juicy and I was sold! I’d like to point out that skinny isn’t always good. Some of them are stuck up, stupid, and they have no muscles. Oh wait, I was talking about asparagus, right? ;)

a great topper to the day

Teriyaki Pork Chops
from a college apartment mate

4 pork chops (or a pound of chicken thigh meat - boneless, skinless and chopped into pieces)
1 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sugar (or more if you like)
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 stalks green onion, minced
2 tbsp ginger root, minced

Mix all of this into a ziploc bag and marinate for at least 30 minutes, but I prefer overnight with occasional flipping for even marinate. Grill to appropriate internal temperature (we do 160F and then off the grill we tent the chops with foil and rest fo 5 minutes). To grill the chicken, we skewer the pieces and grill on medium high for 5 minutes and flip and grill for another 5 minutes. Take remaining marinade and boil in a pan. Strain the sauce and thicken with cornstarch to serve with pork chops or chicken skewers. * I like to use chicken thigh meat because I think it has better flavor and is juicier than breast meat.