Day 341: Oops, I Did It Again

Dinner was such a rush tonight that I forgot to take a photo of my dish!  When I've made this mistake in the past, I either pulled a photo of the restaurant down from the web or used a photo from my library if we had been to the restaurant before.  Tonight I got nothin'.

We had tickets to a sneak preview of The Taking of Pelham 123 and grabbed a quick dinner beforehand at the food court of the San Francisco Centre mall.  This is no ordinary food court full of fast food joints.  This is San Francisco, so of course the food court is something special with a high end choice to suit every mood:  sushi, Thai, Korean, deli, burgers, soup, Mexican, and the list goes on.

We opted for Thai because we had less than 1/2 hour to eat and get to the theatre and that seemed like the quickest option.  I had a two item combo with steamed rice and chose pineapple chicken curry and sugar snap peas with fried tofu.  Both were yum.

The highlight of the night, however, was the movie.  Humor + suspense + a demented John Travolta = a fun flick.  Check it out at a theatre near you!

Day 256: Can't Get Enough...Soy??

Tonight's dinner, wok sauteed vegetables and tofu with brown rice, may be one of my oddest choices yet, for two reasons.

1 - I am not vegetarian and although I don't DISlike it, I am not particularly fond of tofu.

2 - I've just concluded a work project that was all about soy.  I should be sick of this stuff!!

But, for some reason, I saw this dish on the Buddha's Belly menu and just had to have it.  Unfortunately, although the veggies were fresh, delicious, and perfectly cooked, overall the dish lacked flavor.  A dollop of hot sauce and a couple of dashes of soy sauce and that problem was resolved.

The highlight of this meal was that it took place in LA with two of my very good girlfriends.  It's always nice when you can combine a business trip with some girly bonding.

Day 208: Payback is Delicious

I have owed Osha Thai a decent picture of their food and tonight I finally delivered!  

This is Osha's 4th or 5th appearance on 365daysofdinner.com and for nearly all of those, I only had my camera phone which takes pretty bad pictures of food.  Tonight I came prepared and am happy to have captured Osha's delicious food in a much better light.

The other great part of tonight's dinner was that our friends joined us, which meant that we could order more dishes than usual!  We started with two salads - one with pork and one with squid.  The pork larb is a regular order for us but the squid was a new one.  It was super spicy but a nice change.

Then we had pineapple fried rice (a favorite of ours and now of our friends'), panang curry with duck (normally we order it with chicken - we found the duck added little more than additional fat and will go back to chicken next time), and volcanic beef (pictured).

As always, everything was super fresh and packed with flavor.  I'm glad I was finally able to give Osha their due.

Day 192: I'm So Sorry, Osha Thai!

This is Osha Thai's fourth appearance on this blog, and all but one of the pictures suck because I never seem to have my camera with me at the time.  This is a terrible shame because Osha's food is phenomenal and deserves much more than my camera phone can deliver.

The  latest spontaneous Osha consumption occurred during a late night at the office.  The team opted to order:

- Chicken panang

- Spicy green beans with chicken

- Chicken fried rice

- Volcanic beef

I sampled and enjoyed them all.  Sure - it would have been better to eat it at the restaurant - but Osha never disappoints.  Even when you have to eat it while sitting at your cluttered desk.

Day 144: Saving My Energy

Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away and I have an enormous menu planned, so rather than cook dinner tonight we ordered in.  That freed me up to make my cranberry sauce - one dish down, only 7 or 8 to go!!

We ordered pork larb and chicken panang curry Gatip Thai.  As you can see, we also had some brussels sprouts, which I had purchased at the farmer's market over the weekend.  My favorite sprouts recipe comes from Tyler Florence of the Food Network.  Click here for his delicious recipe.

Speaking of recipes and back to the cranberry sauce I made tonight...  I used a recipe from Fine Cooking, one of my favorite food magazines.

Ingredients:

12 oz fresh cranberries, picked through and rinsed

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

2 tsp minced fresh rosemary

1/2 tsp finely grated orange zest

Take the zest off the orange before you juice it.  I recommend using a Microplane for this job, but you could use an ordinary box grater as well.

Combine the cranberries, sugar, orange juice, and rosemary in a large saucepan or pot.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 minute.

Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the zest, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes.  Let the sauce cool to room temperature and then cover and refrigerate.  

I don't know about you, but I always try to prepare as much as possible in advance of a big meal like this.  It helps to reduce the pressure the day of.  Cranberry sauce is one of those things that you can prepare several days ahead so I took full advantage of that and got it out the way.  Two days and counting!

Day 130: Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover

Poor Osha. Their food is SO good and yet my photos always make it look so unappealing. That's because the decision to go there is usual very last minute and we go straight from work - so I don't have my real camera with me and I'm stuck having to use my camera phone. Normally I give major props to the camera function in the Blackberry Pearl, but it just doesn't do food well. Sorry, Osha!

We are leaving for vacation tonight (gotta love the redeye!) and of course - I am not packed yet so we needed some fast, dependable, and of course - yummy.

We ordered our usual: Pork Larb (mild - which is plenty spicy enough!), Pineapple Fried Rice (comes loaded with chicken, cashews, and shrimp and is SO good), and Chicken Panang (coconut milk curry - can you say yum?).

Osha has several locatins throughout San Francisco - this one on Geary is not much to look at, but they sure know what they're doing with the food!