Katsuya

This past Thursday, my friend N's mother was in LA and took N, me, and our friend J out to dinner in LA Live.

J and N had tickets to the Kings/Sharks game, so we had to eat a quick, early dinner. We decided on Katsuya, the famous Los Angeles restaurant.

Now, I'd never been before, but I've heard great things. To be frank... I wasn't that impressed with the food, even though the ambiance was stellar. However, minor disclaimer, sushi restaurants are rarely exciting for vegetarians. There's only so many avocado and cucumber rolls I can eat before I've eaten them all!

We started off with edamame (predictably good), and before we were even finished, our various rolls and dishes started coming.

First up, my vegetable bento box. Three little sample-size dishes inside: a fairly average vegetable roll, followed by mushroom and avocado in a really delicious sauce (didn't catch the name of it, whoops), and then vegetable tempura waaay over on that far end. All in all, quite tasty, but nothing extremely special, and left me a little hungry.

This is one of Katsuya's specialties--the Crispy Rice with Spicy Tuna. The restaurant calls this one of their specialty dishes and their "most flavorful", but my dinner companions were not incredibly impressed. While they did find it good, they didn't find the dish as awe-inspiring as the menu made it out to be.

Next up for my friends was the Spider roll; soft shell crab, ponzu, cucumber, and avocado. Again, a pretty typical sushi dish that was executed solidly. While all of the pieces were eaten, I don't think it was anything to write home about. The next roll however...

This was the one that was unanimously everyone's favorite... the Rock Shrimp Tempua roll. The base is tuna roll, topped with a few pieces of spicy tempura shrimp. These went really, really fast. According to my companions, their complete uniqueness added to the level of enjoyment. Really though, how often do you see a dish like this?

As you can see, I couldn't get a picture of the Wagyu Ribeye before N and her mother started tucking in. Cooked medium-rare and served sizzling on a plate with mushrooms, everyone said it was delicious. Apparently it was prepared and executed extremely well, and tasted wonderful.

I swear I just got a picture during a lucky people-free moment!

All in all, Katsuya's decent food was really improved by the ambiance and location. LA Live was bustling and exciting, as it normally is, and sitting outside and people-watching made the dinner even more fun.

Of course, the TV playing the Bruins game certainly improved it for me! Our fellow diners were extremely friendly and we struck up conversation with a few of them about their dishes. Of course, all of them had ordered and were raving about the Rock Shrimp Tempura roll.

Once we paid the bill, we snagged a quick picture in the wooden chair at the entrance, and we were off. N and J had nosebleed seats to the game, and I was back to school for an evening of Graham Norton and Arrested Development.

On a separate note, I'm back home in Massachusetts for the summer now! Expect lots of recipe posts now that I've got a full-size kitchen and my mother's well-stocked pantry.

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Roundup, and Jacks N Joe

Well, folks, life's been happening. School's been a little psycho, but my last final is Wednesday and I'm home next Sunday!

A quick recap of what I've been up to since I last blogged:

I got a behind-the-scenes look at my friend J, shooting for her fashion blog. Check it out here!

If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen that my friend L surprised me with macarons from 'Lette. They were just as delicious as they looked!

My friends and I built a fort. We're still ten years old. It's casual. We hibernated in there for an entire Saturday night with absolutely zero regrets.

I made some smores. I had to run extra-far the next day... just look at that delicious, melty goodness sandwiched between those graham crackers. Yummm.

But now, to the real point of my post: Jacks N Joe. Located just off campus on South Figueroa Street, this is a place solely devoted to breakfast. I've been here a few times and thought I'd finally share! There's generally a line out of the door, but the food is fast and delicious--totally worth the wait.

I cleaned my iPhone camera lens right after this shot!

The back side of the menu is devoted to various omelettes, cereals, and drinks. It's extremely tough to decide! Normally I decide on egg dishes, but everything I've ever tasted/bites I've stolen from my friends have been delicious.

A few weeks ago, I ordered their "Seven Minutes in Heaven" french toast. Three thick slices of their homemade french toast, slathered with Nutella and topped with bananas, strawberries, and powdered sugar. My only complaint? I could have gone for more Nutella, per usual!

When I went on Thursday with my friends, I was determined to get photos of everyone's food. What I ordered is not on the menu--Jacks N Joe has their own "secret menu", and this is one of the items on it. They're loaded hash browns; a bed of hash browns, topped with two eggs any style, sausage, bacon, cheese, green onion, and aioli. Two pieces of toast come on the side. I choose to get my meal without meat, but it was nonetheless delicious and completely filling. I was comfortably full until dinner!

L got a make-your-own omelette. Price depends on what you order (she got a lot of vegetables and avocado) and sides are addition. However, as you can see, you definitely get your money's worth!

Coffee at Jacks N Joe is $1.50 for bottomless refills. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but my friends love it; strong coffee, refilled about every five minutes.

M ordered one of the combos--two eggs any style, bacon, homefries, and two chocolate chip pancakes. I had a bite of the pancakes... oh man. They were absolutely heavenly. Rumor on the street is that Jacks N Joe puts cookie dough in their pancakes (okay, not a rumor, but awesome nonetheless).

Jacks N Joe is pretty essential breakfast food; fast, delicious, and very reasonably priced. It's a good ten-to fifteen-minute walk from campus, so it's nice to stretch your legs after cleaning your plate.

For anyone interested, Jacks N Joe is located at 2498 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA. I highly recommend it.

And one last little tidbit: the LA sky a few nights ago!

Follow me on Instagram @kat_herine_w. I update there almost daily!

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Las Vegas

Okay, in my defense, I've done a lot in the past few weeks. Some pretty momentous things have happened...

I started making these Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies with the intent to blog... but I, uh, forgot to take pictures after the third step. (Bad blogger, bad blogger!)

I did my first SoulCycle class to benefit Swim with Mike, which supports physically challenged athletes. While I take regular spin classes at school, SoulCycle kind of kicked my butt! It was an awesome workout, and I came out sweaty, sore, and exhausted. That's the sign of a good workout, folks!

A-Trak came to my school to perform in a concert festival. I let my hair down (literally) and swung my head so hard that it hurt to turn the next day. Worth it!

Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day was on April 9th. My roommate D and I got a ZipCar and trekked to Union Station just for our ice cream. D had Coconut Seven Layer Bar and I had Candy Bar Pie. Mine was rich and peanut buttery... yum!

And... I went to Vegas for a long weekend! I went to play in an ice hockey tournament with my team. We stayed in a dump (like, cockroaches bad) but luckily we didn't have any bedbugs and didn't spend much time there.

We consumed a huge amount of pizza one night after a game and then immediately went to get frozen yogurt. Hockey's a tiring sport, everyone!

We didn't have much free time around our game schedule, but I went to the Bellagio one night with friends and suddenly realized that I needed a macaroon. Like, urgently.

My friend A and I sprinted around the famous fountain to get to the Sugar Factory in Paris before they ran out. We pushed through the fountain-watching crowd and ran through intersections trying to get the cookies.

It was totally worth it. While macaroons are definitely better at Ladurée, these were passable. My friend and I both had two; we each had a buttercream and a chocolate. Pictured is the chocolate.

After we consumed our treats, we wandered around the Strip for a little while. Obviously, we had to stop in Caesar's, just to see what the hype was all about.

It was in Caesar's that I began to realize that I didn't exactly like Vegas. No offense if you happen to love it, but Vegas just isn't real life. There's so many statues and frescoes imitating this amazing art, and end up butchering the meaning and care behind them. Also, casinos smell vaguely like cigarettes and desperation, but that may just be me...

Does anyone feel the same way about this? Vegas is a city that pops out of nowhere, where the only activities are drinking, gambling, clubbing, and sitting by pools. Everything seems so fake and shallow to me. Give me somewhere with a mild dose of history any day, folks!

On Saturday, once we finished our game, a few of us went to Caesar's, round two, for a dose of Max Brenner.

Max Brenner is a small collection of restaurants in big cities. While they do serve proper meals, they are well and truly known for their chocolate. My group (about eight of us) all ordered various desserts to share (or hoard).

This was a little molten chocolate lava cake, served with vanilla ice cream, a chocolate shot (no alcohol, just chocolate and whipped cream), and chocolate sauce to pour over the cake. A few people ordered this, and I had a bite of someone's, and it was a little underwhelming. The cake itself was dry and needed the chocolate sauce for moisture.

Vanilla ice cream, served with chocolate sauce, hazelnut bits, and little chocolate balls. Simple and delicious. I split this with a friend, and we loved it. We also ordered...

This is fried bananas, served with toffee and melted chocolate. It was fondue-style, so we speared little bits of banana and dunked them into the toppings and then groaned in appreciation.

This is one of Max Brenner's famous chocolate syringes. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's a huge chocolate syringe filled with their liquid chocolate. To consume, all you do is put the tip in your mouth and "inject" yourself with chocolate.

I didn't order one (I was really full... and a little sugar comatose) but those who did sat there with expressions of amazement. Next time, I suppose!

Alright, so don't judge me, but we all ate a lot that weekend. Still on Saturday, after a little bit of retail therapy, our team went out to a big Thai dinner at a very interesting place... Around when we got our appetizers, a Thai man got onto the little stage and began to "sing" various songs.

I'm 90% sure he was lipsynching, but whatever. By the time we'd all about eaten our meals (which took forever to come out, my gosh), he put "Gangnam Style" on... either a calculated move or a large mistake.

We rose en masse and proceeded to dance in front of the whole restaurant. And then we moved onto karaoke.

Credits to MS

Crushed it during a particularly rousing rendition of "Dancing Queen". Yep, we went there.

We terrorized the restaurant for almost an hour with our various karaoke and dancing endeavors--by which point we all realized we were absolutely exhausted and went back to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning, we got up nice and early and hit the road back to LA. We hit some traffic on the way back, but the car I was driving was equipped with Planet Earth DVDs. I know lots about caves and seasonal forests now, everyone!

We stopped at Chipotle on the way back and then finished our drive in relative quiet, exhausted after lots of hockey games, eating, and sightseeing.

Keep an eye out for me on Instagram to keep abreast of what I'm up to in Los Angeles--I promise there's lots of food there! Find me @kat_herine_w

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Sugar Cookies

I have a serious sweet tooth, guys. Especially around Easter... I swear, Cadbury Mini Eggs are going to be the death of me.

Yesterday, I was craving a sugar cookie, but I had no eggs, and only two tablespoons of butter. Therefore, I took to Pinterest for an eggless cookie recipe! My cookie was so delicious yesterday that I went grocery shopping this morning, invited my friend N over, and made a batch.

One major bonus to an eggless recipe? Taking some, uh, quality control samples of the dough! For science's sake, of course.

They're buttery, delicious, and only use six ingredients! (Recipe adapted from Planet Weidknecht)

To make twelve large cookies, you'll need:
 -1/2 lb unsalted softened butter (two sticks)
 -1 cup granulated sugar
 -1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
 -1/2 tsp. baking soda
 -1/2 tsp. salt
 -1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Forgot to get my salt out for a picture--oops!

Start by preheating your oven to 325˚F.

Get out a mixing bowl and pop your softened butter in, then pour your cup of sugar over it. Grab a fork and cream your butter and sugar together... or, if you have a hand mixer, cream it the easy way! Basically, you want to combine the butter and sugar until they make a light, fluffy mixture. There should be no pockets of sugar or butter.

Next, pour your vanilla into the creamed butter and mix it thoroughly, so it is evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

After that, pour your flour, baking soda, and salt on top of the creamed butter.

Here's the time-consuming part--using your fork, mix the dry ingredients with the butter. It will take a while. Your arm will probably hurt (well, maybe I'm just weak). You want the mixture to come together into a nice dough.

Pro tip: If it's a little too dry, add a tiny amount of water and thoroughly mix the dough. When dealing with dough, you want to add very small amounts at a time so you don't make it too wet.

Once your dough has reached the proper consistency where it sticks together uniformly, you can roll it into balls and then flatten them out. I like larger cookies, so I only put six on a sheet. Flattened out, the uncooked cookie should be about 2/3 of the size of your palm. Pop them on your cookie sheet, bung the sheet into the oven, and cook for 7-9 minutes.

The edges will look well-done and the middles will still look puffy and slightly undercooked. Leave them on the cookie sheet for about five minutes to let them firm up before transferring to a cooling rack (or a cutting board, in my case). The middles will fall and become much more solid.

These cookies firm up beautifully and have a slightly crunchy edge while the middle is chewy. They are crazy delicious.

N and I had a few each... but they're so good! Totally worth every sugary, delicious bite.

Once all the cookies were cooled, I packed all but one up and sent them off with N to give to our friends. Dangerous to keep around my apartment!

All in all, these cookies take about 45 minutes to make from beginning to end. If I had a mixer, they could be done in probably about 25. While the creaming and mixing take a while, these cookies are worth it!

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FIA Fashion Show

In February, a friend asked if I would go to an open call to model for a runway show at my school. I humored her. I went in after a Physics exam, got my measurements taken, and walked up and down for a bunch of girls.

I didn't get any email from them for weeks. I assumed that I had gotten cut and never got told...

I got an email a few hours after I resigned myself to the idea that modeling was not for me, saying that I was chosen to walk.

Knock me over with a feather. My sarcastic, cynical father told me that this could be my "big break!". I scoffed... but I was thrilled.

Last Friday night was the show.

I got out of my tennis class at one, and ran home to shower and get my stuff ready for a long afternoon. I scoffed down a bowl of cereal and scurried off to be backstage for a final fitting at three.

(Just for comparative purposes. Makeup is magic, everyone)

I was one of the first models to arrive, so I ran around taking pictures like a dweeb. Here's backstage... which was pretty much a hallway. Lots of clothes in a small space--it was hot back there!

The runway. The show was held in one of the ballrooms on campus. Once everything was finished, the lighting was awesome and the DJ was bumping. There were hundreds of people there!

This was the hair station. We all had loose waves/curls... I had about half a can of hairspray on my hair to keep it in place, but I loved it!

Makeup was done in a little tiny green room off of backstage. Since there were lots of designers, all of the models had pretty neutral smoky eyes and natural looking faces and lips.

Fast-forward a few hours, and I was dressed in my first outfit of the night. The designer is Eight Sixty. I really liked the dress! One of my friends in the crowd described it as "flirty" and I definitely agree.

Once I walked for Eight Sixty, I dashed around backstage to change for my next look, a top for Zoë Miyori Fujii. Folks, you literally have no time in between looks. You get backstage and change faster than you've ever changed in your life. There are assistants taking your clothes from you and handing you new ones, and as soon as you're all zipped, coiffed, and adjusted, it's time to go back on the runway.

My next look was for Aviator Nation. I don't have a good picture, but I was wearing cutoff corduroy shorts and a white sweatshirt. I didn't have to wear shoes down the runway! Definitely a weird feeling but I enjoyed it.

Side note, if you're looking for any cool and comfortable sweats, hit them up. I'm seriously considering ordering one of their sweatshirts after wearing it last Friday.

After Aviator Nation, we had a brief intermission. Once the show started up again, I had a few minutes to dork around and take some more pictures. Obviously, here's the inner workings of backstage--lots of girls in a small space!

This was my last look of the night, for Affera. The designer is an architecture student who dabbles in jewelry-making in her spare time. Her stuff is seriously cool. If she ever starts to sell her stuff, I will be first in line.

Once I was done with the show, I jumped out of my heels, grabbed a goodie bag (new nail polish and earrings!) and found my friends. Obviously, I was super hungry... so we made a beeline for frozen yogurt! I think I deserved it.

I got back to my apartment at eleven, washed my face, and fell into bed. I dreamt of beautiful clothes all night.

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