Yes, week. Russians love birthdays and they love to make big deals out of them, so I've had myself a looong birthday celebration =) Before the birthday celebration, there were many salads. Kind of a slim-down before the fattening-up.
The mushroom salad:
3 rehydrated giant shitake mushrooms, sliced, sauteed
Handful of baby carrots, chopped
Cucumber
Red Pepper
Greens
1 piece of toasted whole wheat bread, torn (poor woman's croutons?)
Wasaabi Dijon Dressing Lite (mmm, tangy!)
Also on salad: hot salt. Salt with a kick. =)
3 rehydrated giant shitake mushrooms, sliced, sauteed
Handful of baby carrots, chopped
Cucumber
Red Pepper
Greens
1 piece of toasted whole wheat bread, torn (poor woman's croutons?)
Wasaabi Dijon Dressing Lite (mmm, tangy!)
Also on salad: hot salt. Salt with a kick. =)
There were also some scavenging lunches. We are heading out to San Fransisco, Sonoma Valley and Yosemite Park tomorrow so there were some efforts to clean out the fridge. Here is a charming little lunch of a tomato, the rest of the baby carrots with some BBQ sauce as dip, two wasa crisps with the last of our salsa, a little cup of kidney beans (in the middle) with nutritional yeast on top and finally the remainder of some kale chips I made one night. For dessert: the last yogurt-strawberry cheesecake.
A note: nutritional yeast is amazing, I don't know why I didn't buy it sooner or use it more often now. It's kind of cheesy, kind of bready....kind of delicious when sprinkled on top of stuff!
A note: nutritional yeast is amazing, I don't know why I didn't buy it sooner or use it more often now. It's kind of cheesy, kind of bready....kind of delicious when sprinkled on top of stuff!
Here's a really messy ugly egg-white omelet (remainder of egg-beaters), rehydrated shitake mushrooms, last of the turkey bacon and some salsa. Sitting on the bottom there is actually a piece of bread that was supposed to add crunch but just added 40 calories and a some taste.
Actually, this was completely delicious and only came out to about 250 cals! Very filling.
Also, it helped that it was on such a pretty plate! =)
Actually, this was completely delicious and only came out to about 250 cals! Very filling.
Also, it helped that it was on such a pretty plate! =)
And finally, when the food ran out, and my willpower to eat healthy did too, there was the deli lunch. Sushi, cauliflower, kim chi, fake shrimp, calamari and some bean sprouts. Maybe this was healthy, but it's doubtful. It was certainly tasty though!
And now, for the birthday festivities. I chose Morimoto, the yummiest Japanese Modern Cuisine restaurant run by Iron Chef Morimoto. I went with the Parents and the Boyfriend, who better to spend a birthday with? The decor is amazing and the food was spectacular! I started off with a cucumber/wasabi saketini and we got some tempura rock shrimp, a salmon ravioli (the picture with the foam) and I got a roll of Uni for apps. Uni is sea urchin and while I've been told on numerous occasions that I had to try it, I was completely unimpressed.
I was, however incredibly impressed by the sea bass, shown here. It was buttery and served on a delicious broth. Unfortunately, 1/4 of a bottle of wine later, I couldn't remember what the vegetables underneath looked like.
We also got the famous Morimoto Duck Duck Duck. A trio of duck with a duck confit (?), a duck breast sliced on a roll with foie gras (not apparently) and a duck egg. It was tasty, but not overwhelming.
But oh my goodness, the star of this meal was the dessert. This is surprising since it's not a dessert restaurant but this was so delicious and rick and beautiful that it was perfect. Served with a candle for me to blow out =)
This is a good shot of it, it had popcorn, the rich dark chocolate cake, ice cream, fruit and ours even had some flowers on it to make it look just like an exotic garden.
All in all, a wonderful birthday =)
This is a good shot of it, it had popcorn, the rich dark chocolate cake, ice cream, fruit and ours even had some flowers on it to make it look just like an exotic garden.
All in all, a wonderful birthday =)
The birthday week did continue with a dinner at El Paso Taqueria (medium upscale Mexican) for my friends and party time for a joint birthday party on a rooftop. It rained cats and dogs right before the dinner and everyone arrived soaking wet. By the end of dinner (lots of sangria, a fish taco platter and bites from everyone else's dishes later) the rain had stopped and we enjoyed a beautiful night overlooking harlem. There were lots of people, lots more sangria and mini-cupcakes. I had 4. It was decadent. That was two days ago. I've been doing some serious calorie cutbacks for the weekend in anticipation of a delicious vacation. Hopefully I'll either blog from there or come back with great pictures of food, wine, hiking etc etc. Expect a very picture heavy post coming up!
Adios!
xoxo
Dr. Jules
Adios!
xoxo
Dr. Jules
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