Spinach bacon salad

Welcome to 7th Kitchen!

Last night, we had salad for dinner. I first had this salad when I was a college student. My Japanese friend made this for me and I really loved it so I make this sometimes since them.

It is quite simple but it has bacon in it so it is quite satisfying. You can have this with some piece of bread if you like.

This salad has baby spinach, bacon, onion, tomato.

You cut and sauté bacon with sesame oil in a pan and add some vinegar, soy sauce and sugar in it. Then pour them over the salad. You have to eat it right away.

This salad reminds me a lot of my college days. We had so much fun. We would gather at somebody's apartment and just eat and drink all night, talking about nothing but silly stuff. If you think about it, it seems like we wasted a lot of time joking around but I think it was important for me to have those silly times with them. Often times, those silly times are the best memory of your life.

I am very grateful that I met so many great people in my life. I hope I will be able to keep in touch with them for a long long time.

Since I love eating, I realized that often times I connect my memories with food. Certain food reminds me of some people or some situation. I have good memory when it comes to food and restaurants. It seems like my good memory is limited to those two categories. I wish I had good memory in other area also. Oh well :-)

Shrimp Scampi and Labor day weekend

Welcome to 7th Kitchen

This weekend is a labor day weekend and it is a long weekend. Everybody is trying to enjoy the last long weekend of the summer. We are also enjoying this beautiful weekend.

We went to beach today and yesterday. It was very windy and we could not stay too long at the beach but it was also nice to hear the ocean and read books and enjoy each other's company on these beautiful days. It is not cold yet but I definitely felt the wind of fall.

I love summer so it is sad for me to feel Autumn, but on a bright side, there are so many great vegetables and fruits in the fall such as mushrooms, butternut squash, apples, etc. I love going upstate NY in fall to pick some apples and enjoy hot apple cider in a country side. This is one of the things I enjoy in the East. I used to live in California and I had never went to apple picking while I was in California. So even though I miss California weather, I also enjoy apple picking in NY :-)

Anyhow, today, I made Shrimp Scampi. Shrimp is one of my favorite ingredients. I love Shrimp and garlic combination. This Shrimp Scampi is one of the many dishes I learned from a Indian lady I used to live with.

It is very simple with garlic, red chili flakes, butter, cream, lemon juice, white wine and peserly. It does not take long to cook Shrimp so this is a very quick dish. This is good with pasta or rice.

It is creamy but not too heavy and lemony flavor makes it very light.

The other Shrimp dish I like is Shrimp Tempura. I haven't made tempura for about 3 years. Maybe I should consider making it again sometime this year :-)

Dinner in Manhattan & Japanese book at book off

Last night, I went to Manhattan to meet up some of my friends to have dinner. Unfortunately, I was so excited to see them and forgot to take picture of the food....

Well, before I go to the restaurant, I went to this used book store called "Book Off". This is a Japanese used book store and they sell many Japanese books with good price. I love book store in general and I can spend hours at book store.

I bought 2 cooking magazines and 3 fiction books. They were $1 each. Its a bargain.

Also, I found this book which talk about lack of communication skill education in Japanese schools. I just started to read this so I have not finished it yet but there were many points which I could agree. I think my communication skill is not great and it is not just because that English is not my first language but also I don't have good communication skills in Japanese which is my first language.

When I was in Japanese school, I never really had to give speech in classes, I did not have to actively participate in the class discussion, I did not learn how to debate or construct my opinion logically in order to explain my point. So, I was so surprised that I had to give speech in almost all the classes in university here in the U.S. And everybody was so good at giving speech in a class. I was shocked.

In Japan, people expect others to understand many things without actually telling them and use quite a lot of vague expressions. As a result, I think we have good sensing skills but not good communication skills. Well, I can not speak for all the Japanese people but at least I did not have a good communication skills.

When I first came to the U.S., I was surprised how people answer to my question. People spend a long time to explain what they want to say to make it easier for the other person to understand better. When I was asked some questions, I always answered in just one or two sentences. Part of it was my English skill but I think most of it was my communication skill. I did not even try to expand my conversation with details.

Now, I think I am getting better with communication skills. I still have many problems in my communication but I am trying to talk more in details and explain myself better to others. Also, this book will show more tips on how to train your communication skills so I am excited to read more about it.

Anyhow, after "Book Off", I head to the restaurant but my favorite Indian grocery store was near the restaurant so I went to get Ghee. Ghee is Indian purified butter and I used them when I cook Indian food.

Then, I met up with my friend at the restaurant called " I Trulli"

It is an Italian restaurant which is on 27th st between Park and Lexington.

I had octopus for appetizer and Pasta with tomato and eggplant for the main.

Octopus was tender and really good. Pasta was a bit too sour for me but it was good. (too bad I don't have pictures today.)

The service was really good and they have a nice big garden in the back where you can have dinner.

I laughed so much at the dinner. My face was hurting after the dinner. It was so much fun and three hours passed by so quickly. I really appreciate having great friends who makes me laugh.