Making Brisket

It was a rainy Sunday so we decided it to be a quiet day - no going out or visiting anywhere. It is usually a winter dish, at least for me since it is stew type dish, but I decided to make a brisket today... I don't think it is something Japanese makes but it is like a tomato base beef stew.

Got a great chunk of brisket cut (over FOUR pounds at Whole Foods) and placed it in a heavy pan (1st picture), after scrubbing salt, pepper, garlic and Thyme on it.

On top of that, place carrots, celery and onions along with a whole can of crushed tomato, which gives enough liquid for cooking (2nd picture).

After covering the pan with foil, dump whole thing in the oven at 350 degree for 3.5 hours, yes 3.5 hours, but you don't have to anything but just wait.

After 3.5 hours of waiting, you remove the meat from the pan, and put the pan back on top of the stove top for 30 to 60 minutes (while doing this, you can add some potatoes). After the liquid was evaporated to a half of the original, you put the meat (sliced it into one quarter inch thickness) to heat them through... (3rd picture)

Now it is ready to eat... Are you READY?

Seafood Lunch

Coming back from the beach, we stopped by at a restaurant in City Island in the Bronx. It was an Italian seafood restaurant, so we got Manhattan style clam chowder (compared with New England style which is cream base, it is tomato base) as a starter. The waitress apologized that she over filled the bowl, but I was like "no need to apologize but THANK YOU for doing that". It was very tasty (not over powered by tomato taste) and you can taste the clam and the vegetables.

For entree, we got Italian sausage rigatoni (no picture, sorry) and fisherman fish fries - flounder, scallops, shrimp and clam fries. They were so tender and juicy inside and crunchy outside. They went very well with home-made tartar source. Surprisingly we did finish all the fish dish, but we could not do the pasta, so we asked them to doggy bag it to go home. We will definitely come back here.

Beach Day

It was another beach day - starting August on the beach was not too bad.

This has been a cooler summer this year, and we have not had above 90 degrees days yet. July is the hottest month in the east coast, so we might not have very hot days this summer.

Warm start with no wind but SW wind coming from the ocean started picking up so it was a nice beach day after all. You can see the light house from the beach which we have never climbed up. Maybe sometime after it cools down a bit.

Smell the Summer

You can smell the summer in New York (or in the U.S.), which reminds me the one I smelled 10 years ago, when I started the summer school at University of Pennsylvania. After getting off the train and walking through the campus, you can smell the summer, especially after the rain.

There are a few things reminding me that it is summer after all, even though there have been no over 90 degree day this year yet - ice cream vendor and this building with thousands of air conditioners sticking out from the windows.

You can see an ice cream vendor all over the city which serves soft serve ice cream along with commercial ones. I personally have never tried but there is always a line of people.

Many old houses or buildings don't have the integrated cooling system installed, so we still use window installed air conditioners (not like Japanese style) which are pretty noisy and bulky. This building in Brooklyn Heights has been catching my eyes since every single window has the same unit. I guess the building installed them and nobody has changed since then. You don't see this in Japan, do you?

Brown Stone Houses

Brooklyn Heights is famous for many beautifully preserved brown stone houses.

When I work from home, I have flexibility on my schedule, so I go to the gym during the day, usually in the morning after checking e-mails and completing urgent matters. On the way to the gym, I walk on beautiful tree lined streets with many brown stone houses. They were originally built in the late 19th century or in the early 20th century as one family home, but these days they have been converted for multi families home (one or two apartment(s) per floor). The name explains the reason why it is called, and it was an unique architect method in that era, vs. brick exposed ones you can see in this picture towards the end.

Aren't they beautiful?

Turf and Chicken?

Surf and Turf - this is the expression you would see at a seafood restaurant usually. Surf represents seafood, while turf does beef. I guess people still want to eat meat at a seafood restaurant after all.

Coming back to my topic. Since we made steak and chicken (not seafood) for dinner, I named this combination turf and chicken. Too straightforward? Originally we thought it would be a chicken day, after eating kind of heavy meals over the weekend, but ribeye steak was on-sale at Whole Foods, an organic food store chain, we could not pass it, how cheap are we? We ended up eating grilled lime marinade chicken and steak along with potato salad and roasted carrots. I know Japanese don't roast the vegetable so often, but it is so easy and tasty to do. You just need to put salt and pepper (and other spices, like thyme and garlic, if you like) with olive oil, and dump it into the oven at 375 to 400 degree for say 20 to 30 minutes.

Too many topics about food?

Party School - Penn State!!!

Yes, we got the No.1 spot back. I am talking about the party school ranking by Princeton Review.

A little bit about MY school Penn State (The Pennsylvania State University). It belongs to the Big Ten conference, which consists of ELEVEN east to mid-west schools, such as Ohio State and Michigan. They are all academically top ranked and as are their sport teams, like football and basketball. Penn State was the last school who joined to this originally TEN school conference in the late 1990s. If you ask people in the U.S. about Penn State, they might say about football, a huge football stadium, and ice cream (YES, ice cream. We have our own creamery on campus where the founder of Ben & Jerry studied).

Join me to celebrate this prestigious come back with a beer in your hand, would you?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/07/27/2009-07-27_penn_state_tops_princeton_reviews_party_school_rankings.html