Over the holidays, I took lots of pictures of food.  And I'm hungry right now while waiting for dinner to be finished (spaghetti squash! yum!) so I am obviously thinking about delicious food and wanting to look at pictures of it. You can too! Isn't that lucky?

Christmas dinner.  My plate would have been more full if I hadn't already eaten a million snacks.

My brother made cake for dessert and it was not very good, but my aunt made my favorite cupcakes and they were spectacular.

This is a sandwich from Zingerman's (local restaurant in Ann Arbor).  It had green chile on it, but the spiciest part was the dang mustard.  I seriously could feel it burning in my nose.  Ahh, the pain!

My brother and I went to a restaurant in East Lansing and he said I needed to get this soup because it was the best soup ever.  It's white chicken chili, I think.

I have traveled to many different restaurants in search of the best Philly.  (It's not in Philadelphia)

My mom made these for breakfast one day.....mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

My mom also made these, from some kit she bought on sale.  She kept calling them whoopie cushions.  (we also drank a lot of tea while I was there)

While I was back in Michigan, I went to my dad's temple for a latke dinner.  My dad is Jewish, if you didn't know that, so we also celebrate Jewish holidays (such as Hanukkah).  My dad's men's group was hosting the dinner, so I was already familiar with the side dishes -- cole slaw and homemade applesauce -- before the dinner even happened.

Also included in the dinner were latkes, of course, and hot dogs.  It was actually pretty good.

And a pickle.  Jewish people loooove their pickles.

After the dinner was over, the rabbi tried to convince us to stay for the service and menorah lighting.  He said they lit about 50 menorahs at once.  But my mom and I had plans to go out for dessert instead. 

Anyone who says they do not like dessert is in denial

At home, we celebrated Hanukkah by lighting our own menorah.



We also have a sticky window menorah, which I had the duty of "lighting."

I wanted to get the reflection of the Christmas tree lights in for the double holiday effect

I'm not gonna lie, part of the fun of Hanukkah is seeing what kind of presents we get.  It's usually some cheap thing my mom found on sale the year before, but it's amusing to see what she comes up with.  I'm not going to post everything I got for each of the 8 days, because my mom enjoys giving us underwear in hopes that we'll throw our old ones away.  Haha.  But here's a few things.

Matt actually used this oven mitt today

Adventure Time! (if you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up)

wool socks are the best field socks

So, Camille from Archives of Our Lives made a post about sushi and I was inspired to write my own recent sushi story.  Conveniently enough, Camille also sponsors Saturday Steals, which invites bloggers to write about a recent deal that they came across.  And though I didn't make my own, like she did, my sushi experience still most definitely was a steal.

I've never really been that into sushi.  One day, back in Vegas, I was at Trader Joe's and they had a little sushi four-pack.  I had never had it before and decided to try it.  That was probably my first mistake.  To make my first sushi experience a ready-made packet from Trader Joe's.  It was not good, and I ended up throwing most of it away.

I didn't try sushi again for another several years, until last Thanksgiving when I went to the Chinese Buffet (you know, the one that served chicken feet?) and I liked it way better than the TJ's crap.  I decided that if this weirdo buffet had decent sushi, then an actual sushi place must have some pretty darn good stuff.

I put that on the back burner for a while, and then last weekend I got a flyer in the mail for a place that opened last year, called Sushiya.  There was a menu and a 15% off coupon.  The menu had a variety of items, including sushi and cooked meals, sort of an Asian-fusion type restaurant. Matt and I were feeling adventurous, so we decided to try it.  We went over there and, since it was getting late, decided to order take-out instead of eating in.

Then things started to go wrong.  First, they gave me another person's food, and I would have left with it had another waiter not caught it in time.  A little while later, they came back with presumably the right food, and I went out to meet Matt, who went to Albertson's next door to buy some drinks, and we went home.

When we got home, we started putting the food out on the table and realized that part of our order was missing.  We had ordered orange peel beef and should have gotten two bowls of hot and sour soup but had gotten only one egg drop instead.  Since the place was close to where I live, we packed everything up and drove back.

I'm working on my confidence building in confrontational situations, so I went in alone to talk to them.  I didn't really have to do much, though.  They had realized their mistake and brought out the rest of my food as soon as I walked in.  This time, I took a look at it and saw that they gave us chicken instead of beef.  Thinking about the confidence thing, I decided to tell this to them, and they made me a new one right away, while also letting me keep the chicken one.  I also had to tell them about the soup, and they got that for me as well.  While I was waiting for them to cook the new food, a waiter came out and gave me a $25 gift certificate and apologized again.  It just goes to show you how being polite but assertive can result in good things.  I need to remember that.

Anyway, we ended up with a ton of food.  It was actually kind of ridiculous how much we got.

hot and sour soup

Seafood Tempura (shrimp, salmon, crab, scallops and vegetables in a flour batter)

Sushiya (this is just something random, whatever the sushi chef decides to make at that moment, and it is awesome)

Orange peel beef

And the extra mistake, orange peel chicken

Everything was really good.  We'll definitely be going back, especially since we now have $25 free.  Everyone makes mistakes, and the manner in which they were corrected made all the difference.

I've been trying this new thing lately, called making dinner at home.  It's a good idea!  I can't believe I used to hate going out to eat.  I seriously thought I would die.  That was a weird phase in my life.  Now I'm making up for it, I suppose.  But perhaps a bit too much.  Hence the making food at home.  Matt does some cooking too.  Here's what he made the other night.

Looks good, huh?  The sweet potatoes were awesome.  It's just chopped up potatoes (I think they're technically yams, actually) and onions with chili powder and olive oil baked for about an hour and 10 minutes.  So yummy.

Last night I was invited over to his parents' house for dinner and tonight we were lazy and had frozen pizza (because I had class and got home super late) but we didn't go out and the pizza was on sale for $4, so that's pretty good.  I spiffed it up with pico de gallo and spinach. 

Tomorrow I have caving class, which also goes late, so I'm trying to figure out how that will work.  My plan was wild rice stuffed pork chops and asparagus, so I'm hoping I can convince my chef to make it for me.  Tee hee!

I really want to make healthy dinners at home every night and work out on a regular basis.  I just have so much stuff going on all the time and it's hard.  Like tonight, after work, school and groceries, I was home for the night by about 8:30.  That's pretty typical.  Maybe I'm trying to do too much?

What I made for dinner.

One of the best things about Albuquerque is that it has a very diverse range of food types and restaurants.  In other ways, it can become a challenge to decide where to eat.  Matt and I often resort to listing them, "Okay, do you want Mexican, Italian, Asian, American, Mediterranean....?" And so forth.  But since I don't have all the time and space in the world to list all of our favorite restaurants, I am limiting it to our top 3 Mexican/New Mexican places, which we recently decided upon one day.  So without further ado...

The main reason we like Monroe's is because it has a beautiful patio with a fountain and birds fluttering around here and there, so we usually go when the weather is warmer.  Their food is good, but there isn't that one thing on the menu that really makes it stand out from other Mexican restaurants.  One thing I really like is that they have rotating specials, but they don't post them to their website so it's always a gamble as to what they are, although they're usually good.  The service is kind of interesting.  Waiters aren't assigned to a specific table; instead, they all go around finding out who needs refills, their check, etc.  It's a pretty good system because it means there's usually someone around to help you.  The owner is sometimes around as well.  He's really friendly and it's easy to tell he really cares about his restaurant.  During busy times, you can often find him out in the parking lot directing traffic.  He's cool.  The service is usually pretty consistent, especially when he's around, but sometimes it's slacking a little.  If you order Mexican food (they have some other things too), you get complimentary chips and salsa.  It's usually freshly made, but occasionally we've gotten cold chips and salsa that's close to going bad.  Altogether, though, it's pretty good.  Oh, and there's also a fish tank that we like to look at after we pay our bill.  It's always fun to see if there are any new babies swimming around.


We had a tie for second runner up, the first is La Salita

La Salita is actually more New Mexican than Mexican.  Everything is always covered with cheese and it always tastes good.  We've ordered in and to-go and it is consistently good quality.  Everything on the menu is great, but the two things that stand out most to me are their tacos and chile rellenos.  The taco meat is seasoned perfectly to give it a distinct flavor, the taco shells are always fresh and crispy, and it's covered in delicious shredded cheddar cheese. MMMMM!!!  So good.  The rellenos are authentic New Mexican style and they're the best of their kind that I've had.  The batter is perfectly crispy and the cheese is oozy gooey goodness.  They also give out complimentary chips and salsa.  Their salsa is served warm and is a mixture of their signature red and green chiles.  This is probably the place we go most often, since it's the closest to where we live.  The manager knows our names.  Haha.

The second, second runner up is Los Cuates

Of all the places mentioned so far, Los Cuates has the best green chile, hands down.  What makes it so good is that it is roasted instead of steamed.  It tastes the best this way and is classic New Mexico.  Roasting green chiles is one of the best smells ever.  Their carne adovada is also really good because it is served in chunks rather than shredded, which is how La Salita does it. (However, their tacos have nothing on La Salita)  They are also the only place I know to get a really good Navajo Taco.  The service is pretty spotty, and it takes a long time to get refills, boxes, and the check.  The last couple times I went there, I was with Matt and his sister and they put us on a high top table, which is small and doesn't have much room for three people to spread out.  It's also a little cold in there.  But we really like the food, which is enough incentive for us to keep coming back. 
Number 1

And the winner is....