Car Talk

As I get prepared to take delivery of my new 2011 Nissan Versa (more to come on that later I'm sure) I look back at the best car I've ever owned...my 1992 Toyota Tercel.  I bought it brand new when I moved to Las Vegas.  It was bare bones.  A short and not complete list of things it did NOT come equipped with...radio, cup holder, passenger side mirror, head rests, power steering, trunk light, clock.  Don't even think about luxuries like power windows, airbags or automatic transmission.  Air conditioning was installed since I was in Vegas after all and a radio was installed 6 months later. 


Over the next 8 years I took that car EVERYWHERE.  While in Las Vegas I took trips out to Los Angeles and down to Tucson.  It then made the 3,000 mile trip back to Maine through snow in June in the Colorado Rockies and  Mississippi River flooding in the midwest.  I took it on way too many trips to Massachusetts to even count and it also traveled to New York before settling for a year in Vermont and going international with a trip to Montreal. 

It was a great car.  I'm still trying to match, if not beat, its fun and easiness.  Let's see...

Sushi

I recently spent a week cat sitting for my friend Jeanne.  She said she wanted to take me out to lunch to say thank you.  It's a fantastic gesture but my initial reaction was " Going out to eat is not as much fun anymore."  Although I am doing really well making creative and varied vegan recipes at home I don't go out to eat often and so I'm really not comfortable or confident yet.  She suggested Japanese and I was initially skeptical.  My experience with Japanese/sushi has been limited to some mediocre tempura and the sushi from Shaws.  But I went online and browsed some menus and was really pleasantly surprised and the amount of food that I could choose from and how appetizing it all sounded.  Instead of having to pick the one thing on the menu that I can eat and just dealing with it this sounded like it could open up a whole new world of eating out!

We decided on Yosaku on Danforth Street.  I had walked by many times during the summer and they have a great patio and it always looked like people were enjoying themselves. Although the weather was cold the sun was bright so we headed out for a short walk and then we arrived:

They have a really great menu that was laid out in a very clear way for a sushi novice like myself.  It was even highlighted to show those items that were vegetarian.  I had done a little homework before so I felt ready to order.


We started out with the steamed, salted edamame.  I love edamame and it's a great way for me to get a shot of protein.  Plus, as Jeanne said, it just feels good to suck those little buggers out of the pod.

Below is my meal.  Ume shiso (plum sauce and mint) roll on the left and sweet potato tempura on the right.  I have nothing but yummy praise for each of them.  Throw in some ginger and a nice hot tea and it definitely made a meal.

 

This is Jeanne's lunch.  She shared an avocado and cucumber roll (on the left) with me.  On the right is chicken tempura. 

 So, Jeanne knew our lunch was going to become a blog post so she wanted me to throw in some story about how a table of hot guys hit on us.  However, I'm sure if that table of guys had seen us acting like this it might have made them think twice.  What a great meal :)

Sucks Being You

I can write this post safely warm in my home with my car safely and warmly tucked away in the parking garage. I'm getting so much free entertainment tonight that I may never need cable again!

Hope you have a shovel!

They are going to flip when they see this!

There they are.  Well, they aren't flipping but they do look perplexed like "What the F#*k do we do now??"

Wait, this guy's plowing all of State Street.  Maybe he can help.

Random plow guy to the rescue.  Got lucky this time.

Going Back In Time

Last weekend I helped organize my parent's pantry.  Like most people they have better things to do with their time than weed through boxes of cake mix and rice mixes to see what's expired and to generally organize the remaining contents.  Lucky for them I don't have better things to do with my time and I could give the husband in "Sleeping with the Enemy" a run for his money.  Remember he makes Julia Roberts organize the cans of soup precisely and hang the bathroom towels so they are perfectly aligned...yup, that's me.

There were a few fun surprises and they had nothing to do with the food in the pantry.  The first was the discovery of an address book hidden was in the back.  For kicks I opened it up to my name and saw a State Street address.  I though "oh, wow...mom has been keeping this up!"  Then I realized it was my old State Street place that I vacated in 1995.  I gave it to my mom and she found listings for people that she had no idea who they were...no idea.

Then I came across a stack of about a dozen envelopes that were all labeled, with a label maker such things as "cereal", "juice" etc.  Now, the first thing that strike me is hilarious is that my mother would never, ever have used a label maker on anything.  That sort of organized approach just doesn't exist.  She swears she never had a label maker.  The envelopes contained coupons.  These coupons all had expiration dates of 1989.  Some have no expiration date.  I was really tempted to walk into Hannaford and check out with a stack of them.  Just to see the cashier reaction.  Except I would probably either get a cashier with no sense of humor or just a plain stupid one who wouldn't even get the joke.  Some of the products were pretty funny.  There was Micro Rave Brownie Mix and Suzi Wan Rice Mix.  In fact, there was an entire envelope marked "Suzi Wan".  Who knew. 

I wish I had taken some pictures but I usually only think of that days later when it's too late.  I'm happy to say that 4 trash bags later the pantry looks pretty good.  For another 20+ years...


UPDATE:  Mom did take pics.  I'm late in posting them but it truly is scary how perfectly aligned those cans of soup are...as I said before it's very "Sleeping with the Enemy".  Just another reason I'm single :)