Holiday food porn

I have decided to chronicle fancy restaurant food porn, largely because I discovered, to my great dismay, that I cannot actually remember every single fancy restaurant meal I have had. This puts me at a disadvantage during family conversations, which can often revolve around "Do you remember Such-and-such restaurant and how good the such-and-such special was?" Then I feel sad because it was probably an amazing meal, and really, I would very much like to remember and savor the memory.

( In which my dad takes us to a fancy restaurant )

And then, my sister and I cooked up a storm today, after many encounters with Murphy at the supermarket(s). My sister was dead set on making tiramisu, since it now seems to be her signature dessert (I'm not complaining! She feeds it to me whenever I visit!). Alas, Andronico's did not have the brand of marscapone that she normally uses, and she judged the ladyfingers as slightly too expensive.

By the way, I have just completely fallen in love with Andronico's grain aisle. Grains! In bins! Semolina flour! Brown rice! Corn meal! Orzo! And.... new things that I am trying to learn how to cook, like quinoa and bulgar and wheat germ and all that fun stuff! My sister stared at me rather strangely because she did not quite understand my excitement about grains. But... quinoa!! It just sounds nifty, doesn't it? Sadly, there were no steel-cut oats in bins, though they had rolled oats, so minus a few points for that.

Anyhow, we ventured on to Trader Joe's, who was just out of marscapone, and then to Safeway, at which we found marscapone (still the wrong brand, but by that time, we had about given up). Then we couldn't find ladyfingers, so we ended up substituting with pound cake. I personally thought it tasted ok, though the sister was rather irritated about the marscapone not settling correctly and the very faint butter flavor to the tiramisu. I just don't think the stars were aligned for tiramisu, or something.

( Menu )

And tomorrow, sushi! Whoo!