Okonomiyaki Recipe and Thoughts

On friday we ate Okonomiyaki, which you might remember as being the food that Ukyo-chan from Ranma 1/2 cooked with a giant spatula. The word "okonomiyaki" or "お好み焼き" basically means "anything-goes-grilled" and is essentially that--whatever you can imagine mixed with a pancake-like batter and fried on a skillet. The restaurant experience is killer but the concept is basic enough that one can pull it off in the comfort of their own home. I love making pancakes, so this recipe seemed right up my alley. There are infinite ways to make it, but here's what I did:

First mix about a cup of flour with 1/2 cup of water mixed with dashi soup base (seaweed-flavored broth) and salt (although I used miso soup base instead).

Finely chop 1 or 2 leaves of cabbage (stem cut out), along with some welsh onion and garlic, however much you want. Throw the chopped veggies in with the batter. Add corn, seaweed, assorted seafood, and noodles as you see fit. I used imitation crab and soba noodles. Crack an egg over the top, and stir everything up a bit (not too much). Oil and heat up your skillet or pan. Pour the mixture on, and let it cook like you would a pancake. Flip when one side becomes golden-brown (see picture), then cook until all the egg and batter are cooked. Serve with okonomiyaki sauce and bonito flakes (dried fish shavings). Apparently mayo is also a popular topping, but I just can't see that.

The result was both delicious and effectively balanced. Everything I could want in a meal in a convenient patty. My recipe made 2 servings (what you see in the photo is 1 serving)

On a side note, I use the Youtube cooking show "Cooking with Dog" for most of my Japanese recipes. They are very helpful and the recipes are super delish/easy. I'm going to miss the convenience of having an asian food store close by and very cheap, though.

And finally, this is the show Abby and I are watching. It's Wallflower, Christina! Remember reading that? It airs on Channel 6 on Fridays at 10 pm. This was the latest episode. Despite how it looks, these four hotties did not just have an orgy. Actually, maybe they did?

Surprise weather

Carnavale! Viareggio! Idiots! oh my.

So, do you know what you should never do? Never agree to go somewhere, on a trip, that involves some actual travel,like on a train, like to another town, without being the organizer of that trip. I bet you thought "Oh, that doesn't sound good." And you would be right. It is not good. Don't do it. You've been warned.

Our friend Anne invited us to Viareggio which is a nearby coastal town that was supposed to have really awesome Carnavale celebrations. That sounds great! we said, and it's Ricardo's birthday that weekend! said Ricardo. So we agreed. When we got to the train station to supposedly get on this 9:57 am train, not only was there no train at that time, but only half the people who were coming were actually on time so we wouldn't have made this fictitious train if it had been real anyway. No big though, we waited until 11:00 am and got on a train for an hour and a half which is not bad at all.


The train was a fun time even though Sarah (the girl in the mask) was still really drunk from the night before and so was REALLY loud (actually everyone was pretty loud) which is really embarrassing here because everyone is really quiet and only grossawfulstupid American touists are that loud.

When we got to Viareggio we happily rushed out onto the street, and dear readers, it looked like a movie about a third world country and it was really gray and raining even though it had been a beautiful day when we left Florence. Things were not looking up. After we walked around for a while we went into a shop to ask for directions and luckily they told us we were literally on the wrong side of the tracks, so we went back to the station and left through the other exit and it actually looked like a town. We found an old man on the street and Sarah asked him in no words of Italian what was happening with Carnavale. Some other people asked him with Italian words. His response was pretty great.

GET READY.

Carnavale only happens on Sundays.

This, dear readers, is on a Saturday. Kiss, kiss, bang, bang 30 euros to get Ricardo and I to Viareggio. This is Ricardo's effort to make me less angry:


It's wasn't a bad effort actually.

Luckily for you, because you're now feeling my very feelings, so deeply are we connected, and therefore are pretty depressed right now, things got better. We found an open air market and after Ricardo and I got separated from everyone (me getting more angry and depressed) and then found Anne who told us everyone had left us (me getting more angry and depressed) we stopped at a stall that had some vintage clothes and found spectacular things and bought them and I felt better because I love clothes. That was a surprise, right? After that it got even better because the sun came out! And when the sun came out the people came out and it no longer looked like a ghost town from the zombie apocalypse. After a while things finally started happening and even though nothing great happened for Carnavale on Saturday it was still a fair and I decided to have a good time even though it was a colossal waste of money.








This is what I got Ricardo at the vintage stall for his birthday! It's from the Italian military and fits really well and has great pins and Ricardo found a Lire in the pocket and was so excited. He wore on his birthday and everyone told him he looked awesome and great and other nice things so he was pretty happy about himself. Also, Anne decided to take this picture in fron tof this port a potty because it has hearts on it and Ricardo is born on Valentine's Day?


Anne poses with the lady on the ride. FIERCE.

Il Bargello

Art History is pretty fun right? Here's an overview of the Bargello, one of Florence's state museums where we had class last Wednesday. The Bargello is all sculpture and a very nice manageable size, so it's really great just to go for an hour or two.

This is the inner courtyard covered in coats of arms left by past governers who lived there when it was housing provided by the state for those in charge at the moment. Later it was converted into a prison and then a museum. Logical of course. (says Spock)




When you go into the room on the first floor it's kind of chock a block full of sculptures and all the Michelangelos are in there. Logical. This is Michelangelo's Bacchus, which is one of his earliest pieces, and it was highly prized because people felt he had captured the true essence of Bacchus. He's pretty drunk which Michelangelo caught in his off balance stance and dumb look, and he's got a little paunch from too much drinking. I agree with all these things, but I still don't think it's the greatest sculpture. We'll cut him some slack because we're nice like that.


This is a much much later Michelangelo and now he's got it more together. Scholars argue about whether this is Apollo or David but basically they're not really sure who this is or whether there was a commission or not. There's a lot of reasons why they think it might be one of these two but basically, he's standing on a lump that hasn't been carved which some argue could be Goliath's head and others say could be the sun, as Apollo was the sun god, and he could be reaching for a sling or a bow (with arrows).


This is a terrible picture of an awesome clay sketch of a personification of a cave by Giambologna. I really really love how crazy and bedraggled and swamp monster he looks.


Here's Donatello's original St.George from the facade of Orsanmichele. Charming as usual.


and Donatello's David! which was so so so so fabulous as always.


Verochio's David is all right too. We'll give him some credit.


I love Renaissance busts, so here's one of Battista Sforza, who was married to Federico da Montefeltro who was the duke of Urbino and Piero della Francesca painted their portraits together. even though she was already dead.



and so concludes my deep and intellectual sum up of Il Bargello skipping over most of the pieces and not really giving anyone a comprehensive analysis of the works. Excellence, no?

Vinci and two Medici Villas

We're playing catch again, so here's a trip that we went on on January 30th! Kind of a long time ago and we forgot to mention it on this here blog. Unfortunately this trip kind of turned out to be a bit of a let down. Not only was the weather really terrible and gray, but I was genuinely super excited to see some rad Medici villas because everything affiliated with the Medici in the city is SO spectacular and golden and shimmering and amazing. These villas must have been their attemps at a simple country life, because they were pretty bare and also not super well taken care of. The first one we visited was right outside the city and was Villa di Castello and it was the best. The gardens were not especially amazing but they were nice.





There were these amazing fake caves filled with beautiful fountains full of animals and crazy cool fountain sculptures, like this giant man who looks so cold!






This indoor courtyard was definitely the highlight. Unfortunately a lot of the interiors were remodeled during the 1900's by the last heir of the Medici family, so he put down these really ugly linoleum looking fake marble floors to cover the original terracotta tiles and a lot of the rooms were really stuffy and Victorian. This was luckily never remodeled.



The last heir, Emiliano's, study. The red is in velvet!


Then we drove to Villa Petraia, which was similar except that the custodians followed us like white on rice and pictures weren't allowed so we just have the outside and...


Ricardo and this cat. They made friends and then argued. And...


Two Chinese newly weds having their pictures taken! This is just one of the couples.


After the villas we went to a small village called Carmignano to stop at S. Michele to see Pontormo's Visitation. Super excited Christina is super excited. And a little smug looking for some reason?


The second to last stop was at the village of Anchiano to visit the house they think Leondardo da Vinci was born in. It was an adorable house with cheesy display of facsimiles of his drawings. The house and the landscape were beautiful though. Again, it's a state museums, so no pictures, and it was so small there was no escaping the single custodian.


Finally we got to Vinci which was so beautiful! Even if there wasn't really anything to see it was so god damn cute!





The only thing we did there was go into this RETARDED museum that had reconstructions of Leonardo's machines. It was pretty cool but really cheesy and not super informative. The cool part was that outside they had these awesome mirrored tile drawings in the floor and a cool fountain.



We wandered around some and Ricardo found some chickens and an olive grove!


and lastly Helen bought us all wine, cheese and salami and we went up on hill overlooking a small valley and drank and ate and then went home! It was a nice day over all.

Random Tidbits

Here's just some things that have been left out here and there. Ricardo and I are doing super just to update. We did actually remedy that situation where we were not making any art and our present projects are coming along very nicely! Ricardo's in particular I think is real innovative and cool. Mine's just pretty. updates on that soon.

here's the dump of leftovers:

There was a chocolate festival for Carnavale! We went three days in a row and in the end didn't buy any gifts because I was too overwhelmed by the selection. Sorry guys. But look! Chocolate Gyros! We had one and it was pretty mind blowing.




Then my cousin came to visit one of her friends who is also studying abroad in Florence so we met up! Ben (her friend and all the way to the right in this photo) Ricardo and I took her around Florence the whole weekend and it was awesome! Ricardo and I gave them the art history heavy tour of the Uffizi and the Accademia, we climbed up to Piazzale Michelangelo (just a platform above the city with a nice view and a bronze copy of the David and where we are in this picture) and we went out to apertivo. Apertivo is this awesome thing that some Italian thought up and now all Italian bars do it. Basically between about 7 pm and 10 pm, you pay a little extra for one drink and then you can eat from the buffet as much as you want! so one drink...all you can eat buffet, for about 7 euro (like 9$). It's pretty great.



a shot from the top of the Duomo.



Lastly, here are some pictures of our Sunday night potlucks! The bottom picture is of our two room mates Anne (left) and Steph (right) who are super duper nice and fun. Our other room mate Hayden is not really around much, hence we have no photos. Anyway! These are from Ricardo's birthday/Valentine's Day which was super fun because a bunch of people brought chocolate and I baked Ricardo a cake and everyone drank more than Ricardo because they kept using his birthday as an excuse to toast! It was pretty funny. We even got candles and sang Happy Birthday and everyone was calling him birthday boy all night, it was nice.