Working in Asian-Land

The other day an old friend called me asking for help with a new restaurant opening. The restaurant is a sushi place and because I have several years experience and they were opening the next day without a full wait staff, I decided to go help out...the restaurant is 37 miles from my house, that's 74 miles a day round trip....yeah.

After I get there, the owner asks me if I want to work a full schedule. A full schedule in Asian-Land is 7 days a week from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. HA! Well I agreed on 6 days because I was so enthusiastic about helping them out. It is now day 2 and I am completely regretting this decision. It is such a far drive! I think I may cut back once they hire some more people.

The restaurant is beautiful and has a great looking bar. Although currently it is not completed, it seems to have a lot of potential.


The picture below is of one of the sushi chefs. His name is David and he went to culinary school in China. He makes the most beautiful carvings out of vegetables. I am so amazed that people can do this!











As the day went on, I was wondering if he could only make certain animals, so I challenged him to make a peacock. He immediately got to work.



The detail is absolutely amazing!



I started looking over the menu and laughing to myself. Many Americans come to these restaurants for "authentic" food and experience. When I was working at my previous sushi job at RuSan's, customers asked all the time for a Bento Box. Now if I'm not mistaken, "Bento Box" means "boxed lunch" and at RuSan's we served a buffet at lunch so there were no Bento Boxes on the menu. After all, RuSan was from Japan and he wanted his place to be "authentic" with southern influence, which is why there are tons of fried rolls on the menu. At this new place there are "Bento Boxes" for dinner...now I know why people always tried to order them at the San's.

Ahh reminiscing about RuSan's brings me back! I was serving a table there one time and overheard this guy talking to his friend and say "This ain't no real sushi, they don't have no Japanese people making it" ....classic.

Broke and Hungry

It is the first of the month and all your money has gone to pay bills. You only have a few pennies and your hungry. Ahh all too familiar....

No Worries! There are a few ways to get fed. However, in this entry I will only discuss one way. Here is one journey I will take for food when I'm broke...

I have a little recycling center in my laundry room and the aluminum cans have their own bend for one reason...you can get money for recycling them!

This is about 2-3 months worth of cans...



Before you can take the cans to the recycling in exchange for money, they have to be crushed. It would be much easier to crush them as they are disposed of with a can crusher (and eventually I want one beside the aluminum can bend) but for now good ol' foot power will work.




I am lucky that the recycling place is within walking distance so I carried the cans over. You place them on a conveyor belt, they get weighed, and you get money!




I got $3.20! Is is possible to feed 4+ people dinner on $3.20???? ABSOLUTELY! (If you already have a few things in your pantry).

With my $3.20 and what I already have on hand (eggs, butter, onions, spices, french onion dip, and salted pork) I decided to make pinto beans and cornbread corn casserole.

I used my Betty Crocker Easy Everyday Vegetarian Cookbook. It has a yummy pinto bean recipe that I used as a reference for making the beans, although, I added a few more ingredients. I would love to share the exact Betty Crocker recipe with you, but I do not have permission, so I will share my modified version.

1 lb pinto beans
salted pork
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
6 1/2 cups of water
1 tbs chili powder*
1/2 ts salt*
1/2 ts pepper*
1/2 ts cayenne pepper*

*These are guesstimates, use as much/little spice to your preference.


I quick soaked the beans by bringing them to a boil, then covering them for an hour before I put everything in the slow cooker.

Once the beans are finished soaking, put everything in the slow cooker and cook on high for 7-9 hours.


About 30 minutes before the beans were finished I started the cornbread corn casserole. I stumbled upon this recipe a few months ago because I had made french onion dip from scratch (it did not turn out well) and I had about 6 cups of french onion dip that I didn't want to go to waste. So I started looking online for recipes that called for french onion dip (I had quite a lot of dip to use!) and compiled a few recipes to make my Cornbread Corn Casserole. Here is what you need:

1 Can Creamed Corn
1 Can Whole Corn
1/2 cup French Onion Dip*
4 0z Green Chilis or Green Salsa
Box of Corn Muffin Mix (or Cornbread from scratch)
1 Egg (omit if making cornbread from scratch)
2 TBS butter


*If you do not have french onion dip you can omit.



Preheat the oven to 375. Mix all the ingredients together.




Then pour into a greased pan or lined muffin pan.


Cover and cook 35-45 minutes or until the center is firm. Then uncover and cook until brown on top.

While cooking the Cornbread Corn Casserole take about 1/2 -3/4 cup of the beans and mash.



The return the mashed beans back into the slow cooker until the Cornbread Corn Casserole is finished (this will help thicken the beans).


Once everything is finished, invite the neighbors over and enjoy! This fed 5 people with plenty of leftovers! This is a very easy dinner to make, very filling, and great if your broke!