Suzy Wong's House of Yum

"Suzy Wong's House of Yum" Isn't this a great name for a restaurant! The food is really yummy at this relatively new Nashville Original. According to Nashville Scene, Suzy Wong's—which takes its name from the 1960 William Holden film The World of Suzie Wong—is a playful pan-Asian paean, riffing on traditional dishes from Korea, Japan, China, India and beyond.

I ate dinner with 4 foodies and a baby. Suzy Wong's has a unique cocktail menu, consisting of drinks that feature smoked ginger vodka and blackberry mojitos. Some in my dinner party tried the cocktails and were satisfied with them. The short menu has Asian tapas, soups, salads and family style entrees. We had a great time enjoying our "Shared Plates" and "Yum Bowls".

• Sea Salt Tossed Edmame - a classic
• Vegetable Gyoza Pot Stickers - these were awesome - so delicate and very flavorful.
• Curried Tofu and Potato Pockets - I wasn't too impressed with these, the flavors just didn't work well for me.

• Kung Pao Green Beans - delicious by themselves or with brown rice
• Coconut Chili Fried Rice with Egg - this was a unique dish - the coconut was subtle but still made its presence known in each bite - probably my favorite dish of the night.
• Green Curry Coconut Steamed Mussels - the name explains it all. I don't usually eat mussels, so I cannot really judge the quality but the broth was flavorful and went well with the brown rice.

At this point, we were content with the meal and feeling happy when the waitress (who was very attentive) came over to tell us about the desserts - Wantons with Pumpkin Filling and Ginger Chocolate Fondue with Fresh Fruit, Fortune Cookies and Candied Ginger. We ordered one of each and savored them one morsel at a time!

This was a truly excellent dinner. The food was great and all the vegetarian options place this restaurant high on my "will go back" list. I can't wait to go back and try the Vegetable Summer Rolls and Garlic and Holy Basil Egg Noodle "Lo Mein"

Have you been to Suzy Wong's House of Yum? What was your experience?

Celebrating Julie and Julia

I watched Julie and Julia today. Meryl Streep is awesome! The relation between Paul and Julia Child is portrayed so nicely, I really hope that the real Julia Child had such a relationship...
The food in the movie was great too. I completely understand how FOOD - cooking it, eating it, and writing about it helped both Julie and Julia maintain their sanity and get more out of their life. I have experienced this power of food many times in the last few years. When the going gets tough and I start to drown, the food rescues me... Today I resolve to write more regularly.
See you all soon!

A Culinary Excursion in the Boston Area

Hello Friends! I have been in the Boston area for the last few days and have enjoyed eating out. I don't think these restaurants are on any "Top Places to Eat" list, but we enjoyed the food. Here is a quick list:

Saturday: Arrived in Boston
Lunch at Little India - an Indian restaurant in Waltham, MA. We had the buffet - palak paneer, naan, aloo gobi, kadhi pakora, samosa, boondi raita and rice. Very satisfying food.
Dinner at Wagamama in Quincy Market. An Asian place with very flavorful and bold dishes. We had a rice dish, a stir fried soba noodle dish and udon noodles.

Sunday: Off to Northampton, MA
Lunch at Northampton Brewery. Always a good place to sit out in the sun and grab a bite. I loved their fried fish sandwich. The batter has beer from the Brewery.
Also had ice cream at Herrell's. Couldn't leave Northampton until we went to Herrell's.

Monday: Trip to Harvard Square in the evening.
Dinner at Border Cafe - very flavorful mexican and cajun food. We decided to go into this restaurant because of the number of people waiting to get in. The food was definitely worth the wait. We had black bean and corn empanada, chicken quesedillas, cajun blacked chicken and a black bean slad in a taco shell. Brought back the leftovers and had them for lunch the next day.
Desserts at Finale - we bought individual cakes and took them home to eat later at night. We had the Ultimate Chocolate Cake, Dark Chocolate Decadence and Lemon Tart. Yummy!

Tuesday: Duck Tour in Downtown Boston
We grazed on snacks in the Prudential Mall - Munchkins and Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts and a stuffed pretzel from Barnes and Noble cafe.

Wednesday: in Newton
Lunch at Pizzapalooza - met friends for lunch. There were 5 kinds of vegetarian pizzas - a terrific treat for a vegetarian like me. We had the cheese pizza, white florentine pizza (ricotta, spinach and carmelized onions) and veggie pizza (mushrooms, spinach and mozzarella) - it was delicious.

Tonight is our last night. My mom is making pav-bhaji. Time to go and savor the pav bhaji now.

I missed the NFNS last weekend, but I hope to watch the repeat show in the next couple days and then post. Stay tuned.

Next Food Network Star - Ina's Dinner Party

The challenge this week was to shop for a dinner party for 12 on a budget of only $60!
My tip for shopping on a budget - buy beans and use them for stews, salads, and dips.

I came up with two possible menus:
Appetizer: mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and parmesan cheese
Main course: Mac n' cheese with overeasy egg, roasted asparagus
Dessert - nutella palmier with a side of fruit

Or I could go the Indian route and make
appetizer - potato and onion fritters bhaji
entree - a black bean usal with garam masala served on basmati rice, cabbage-carrot slaw pachadi
dessert - shrikhanda with pineapple and walnuts

Are there 11 people interested in being guinea pigs for this challenge?

Catching Up

It's been a looooooong time since my last post. Just about two months... But I am back. The demands of my day job have gone back to a level where I can have a schedule that allows me to cook regularly, explore new foods and post once every week. Hopefully I will be able to complete many of my unfinished posts and projects.

Here is what I want to do:
1. Finish writing about my experience of following Michael Pollan's advice - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
2. Blog about the Next Food Network Star Season 5
3. Get recipes for authentic Indian food from my mom, who is visiting me right now, and post them on the blog.

Let's see how much I can accomplish before my day job starts demanding more of me.

Trying to "Eat Food"

Breakfast:
Bagel from a local bakery with Organic Neufchatel cheese spread
1 organic egg
Coffee with real sugar and organic milk

Lunch:
Salad of cherry tomatoes, red leaf lettuce, whole wheat tortellini, chunks of Parmesan with a dressing of basil olive oil, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar
Blackberries with a sprinkling of sugar

So far, so good. Still need some work on "Not too much."

"Eat Food" - It requires some serious thought...

I finished reading In Defense of Food - An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan a couple nights ago. It was a great read - very interesting and insightful. He sums up his philosophy, his guiding principle in 7 words - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Reading the book has really made me examine what I was eating. This morning when I went grocery shopping at Publix, all I could buy was fruits, vegetables and couscous.I could not buy bread or my usual backup lunches - Smart Ones and Lean Cuisine, because some of the ingredients were, quite simple, not food. I then went to Whole Foods and bought bread, eggs and asparagus...

I think my choices of prepared foods and ingredients have changed pretty significantly in the past 5 years. When I lived by myself I didn't think much about what I ate. I was at my heaviest weight then. I joined Weight Watchers, started watching what I ate, but just in terms of how many points it was worth. So most of the foods in my house were low fat and fat-free. They did not taste that good, were not really satisfying and in hindsight not even real food. I quickly gained back the 10+ lbs. I don't think it was all because of the food, but I believe it played a role.

Over the years, my husband and I have raised our awareness about food, where it comes from and what is in it. My husband drinks soymilk, I drink organic milk from family owned farms; we eat organic eggs from free-range chickens and organic cheese most of the time. Starting today, I will be eating bread that has ingredients that I can buy in a grocery store. And as I ponder over MichaelPollan's message of "Eat Food", I am sure I will be making more changes.

I leave you with some thoughts from In Defence of Food - An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (pg. 204-222 in the large print edition)

The first time I heard the advice to "just eat food" it was in a speech by Joan Gussow, and it completely baffled me. Of course you should eat food - what else is there to eat?...Taking food's place on the shelves has been an unending stream offoodlike substitutes, some seventeen thousand new ones every year... Ordinary food is still out there, however, still being grown and even occasionally sold in the supermarket, and this ordinary food is what we should eat.
But given our current state of confusion and given the thousands of products calling themselves food, this is more easily said than done. So consider these related rules of thumb...
Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food...Don't eat anything incapable of rotting...Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high fructose corn syrup...Avoid food products that make health claims...Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle...Get out of the supermarket whenever possible...Shake the hand that feeds you...

I will be writing about my experiences following these rules of thumb and the other two principles - Not too much and Mostly plants.

Be mindful! Keep thinking!