Feb 012012
I’m going to try and blog some of the places I eat on my travels here and there and everywhere. Don’t expect witty culinary criticism. However, I do tend to find some fun spots.
My SG and I decided to head into Old Towne for dinner tonight…feeling a bit sushi-ish, but not in the mood for A-Float (fun for taking the spawn, but average quality otherwise) so we headed towards another sushi restaurant we’d been to a few times.
It’s not there.
But we’re adventurous eaters so we said, “what the hey,” and decided to try the new tenant: Musha Izakaya.
Izakaya was described to us by the manager as “Japanese Tapas.” Okay, I get the concept. This is apparently a chain out of Japan, where they have 10 or so restaurants, this is their third in the US (LA area only so far) and the Pasadena local had been open all of seven days. The new location isn’t even on the website yet Each has a slightly varied menu with a few signature dishes that carry throughout.
Given that it wasn’t even seven yet, the place was pretty full. No problem getting a table, but tables didn’t sit empty for long. We sat at what had been the old sushi bar. It’s a little more lighthearted now, not as dark and moody in decor, the kind of place where everyone greets you as you come in.
It’s cold out for So.Cal (59degrees) so we both had miso soup to warm up. Forget your little plastic bowl of miso with a couple of chunks of tofu floating around at the bottom. A good size serving with carrots, large cuts of green onion, taro and shitaki mushrooms. Since we were in a sushi mood we ordered a spice tuna roll. Good. That was followed by yellow-tail carpachio — definitely not Italian — but served as thick sliced sashimi, with uni and a sprinkle of fried onion and a very light sauce I’m at a loss to describe. Very, very good.
The best, I’ll use the description off their website:
MUSHA’S CHEESE RISSOTO Italian dish with Japanese creation. Japanese grain brown rice cooked with chicken broth. Then pan fried with bacon onion and a touch of heavy cream. Served in a whole cheese bowl to your table.
That cheese bowl is a massive wedge of Parmesan cheese, with a bowl cut into it, so as they serve it into the bowls you eat it out of, it scrapes the Parmesan into the risotto. I could eat that until I was sick, it was so good.
Those three things were more than filling…that and a split pitcher of Asahi. They have a bunch of unusual beers and saki’s imported from Japan (but neither SG or I can handle saki) and everything that passed us looked and smelled wonderful (okay, not so much the squid ink pudding that was in the cold counter in front of us).
Definitely a place I’d go back to.
Jan 082012
I just found out this morning.
Jan 082012
It’s been out for over a week, but man I’ve been so damn busy
Light Me Up
A Deputy Joe Short
Holiday 2011 Release #40
Author James Buchanan
ISBN# 978-1-60820-514-1 (ebook) $1.99
Release Date December 2011
Cover Artist Deana C. Jamroz
Ebook: 26 pages, 7000+ words
Available At: MlrBooks (ebook)
Amazon.com (ebook)
There’s a nice review at Jessewaves. “Light Me Up is told in Kabe’s voice which is quite different from Joe’s and I was pleasantly surprised at his sense of humour and I loved his appreciation for the natural beauty around him .”
The Official Blurb: Two hot guys and one cold mountain. Just how far can mouthy, yet submissive, Kabe push his favorite deputy, Joe, before he gets what he really wants? The Christmas tree may be the goal, but it’s not the prize. Walk in Kabe’s boots for his and Joe’s first Christmas together.
Excerpt:
I got up early the Wednesday morning the week after Thanksgiving, since I’d spent the night and Joe hates it when I sleep in– like flips the mattress over on me if he thinks I’m sleeping too much, hates it. So I was standing in front of the big front window, wearing a thermal shirt and flannel lounge pants while drinking my coffee and staring out at the snow that fell during the night. First real storm hit this past weekend, but the tail end of it kept dusting powder. Thick, thick, thick.
I’d never lived anywhere where the snow came to visit me.
Joe’s truck and mine looked like bears huddled under two-inch thick white blankets. The only signs of life were the tracks of a coyote running across the drive. Everything just felt really quiet, like the wind held its breath. That muffled stillness wrapped me up in a sense of the world being kind of okay.
I kinda turned around, looked over my shoulder at Joe. He sat in the kitchen having breakfast, all decked out in his uniform: Garfield County Sheriff…yum. Uniform shirt with the two chevrons on the sleeve–and a few little threads where he’d had to take off that third stripe when he lost his rank because of fucking around with me. But black turtleneck, utility pants, and black boots just looked hot on him. Can you say winter SWAT-team woof?
Uniforms and I, well it’s not usually my fetish because it brings up two years worth of crap I’d just rather forget. Still, Joe in his, I don’t know, it just fits him. Strong, stern, and protective; the kind of guy who looked like he could comfort a little kid while still keeping his knee dug into the back of some deadbeat.
Shivering a little–fuck, even inside it’s cold–I swung my coffee cup across the expanse of the front window. “A tree would look great right here.”
That drawled out cowboy twang rolled like surf over my senses. “What do I need a tree for, Kabe?” Joe mumbled over his oatmeal as he glared at me across the room. “I ain’t got nothing to put under it.”
Holy shit, no fucking presents? I didn’t say that out loud, ’cause then he’d have gotten pissed. “Doesn’t your family exchange gifts?” Getting him pissed would just leave us both frustrated, since he had to call himself on shift in another fifteen minutes and I had to head out to hit the lifts in an hour. If you’re going to provoke your Dom, you have to do it when everyone has time to deal with the scene.
“Naw,” he snorted up a laugh, “most cain’t hardly afford to.” Then Joe shrugged like it didn’t mean anything. “They got kids and grandkids, they rightly spend the money on them.” I got one of his smiles on top of it all…like the perfect wave you weren’t expecting: big, almost embarrassed that you caught him smiling and a wilder ride than fucking hell. So goddamn sexy.
“You don’t do anything with your family?” I probably should have dropped it, but I didn’t.
“Cards.” Joe pushed back from the table and crossed his arms over that broad chest of his. “If my folks were ’round, if I weren’t working, I’d go over there on Christmas Day.”
“Go to church with them, huh?” I kinda winced as I said it, ’cause I realized as the words left my mouth that they’d remind Joe that the Mormons had kicked him to the curb. First thought in my head and all, what could I say? But, Christmas equaled the only time my Grams and I, ever, set foot in a church and most times not even then…so open mouth, insert foot.
Some of the fun floats. We didn’t stay for the whole parade (it’s close to 70 and standing in the sun and crowd was getting to be a little too much), but since we can just walk over from where we live and find a spot it’s no big deal if we bail before most of the crowd.
Jan 012012
Dec 292011
Via many AP stories
UTAH– New laws make any daily drink specials illegal, essentially banning happy hour.
Not surprising since in Utah is now the driest state in the union and in many bars you can only buy “set ups” but all booze must be bought at the State Run Alcoholic Beverage Control Centers and carried in. Some restaurants allow for full liquor service from (effectively) noon ’till midnight with 3.2 beer sales allowed an hour longer. And the service must be “metered” with no more than 1.5 oz hard booze or 50z of wine for any drink.
just Google it
Dec 252011
How we decorate around here:
The Girl Scouts of Colorado subsequently released a statement through the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation GLAAD in support of Archuleta and her excluded daughter, noting, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”
Honestly, the Girl Scouts were all about inclusiveness when I was a kid in the 70′s and 80′s (and yes I went from Brownie through Senior). Every troop I was part of had brothers who were members to a point…it was the 70′s folks, boys didn’t want to be part of the GS after a certain age. This local troop’s decision is so against the GS handbook: Pride, Self Reliance, Inclusiveness, and World View — I have my vintage copy from the 60s which has girls of all colors (some even, gasp, in pants) participating in activities — when that was still against the law in many states…including the pants.
They were one of the avenues that taught me it was okay to be the person I am.
Which is why I’m proud to stand up and say, “I was a Girl Scout.”
via Girl Scouts’ Inclusion Of Bobby Montoya, 7-Year-Old Transgender Child, Prompts Troops To Disband.
Being the holidays, I took the spawn over to the grandfolks place and all the cousins showed up for the annual Christmas Cookie Bake (debacle, WWF match, frosting fight — although they’re finally growing out of that stage). I brought the take out and I let my sisters and mom handle the cookies and the spawn. Afterwards, with the two of them coated in frosting and flour, and non of us feeling like heading directly home, we took detour to see the lights on Christmas Tree Lane. I apologize for the quality of the photo. It was taken on my phone which doesn’t do night photos very well.
