Recipe challenge against Gordon Ramsay's mum

It's not often you see a soft side to Gordon Ramsay, but when it shows, it's worth watching.

Burger King Windows 7 Whopper

Can someone tell me why on God's green earth is this not being sold here in North America? Why, oh why? Burger King and Microsoft execs are seriously messed up to only market this in Japan. Is it because we're too health conscious here in North America? That can't be it. If this burger went for $7.77, I'd defintely try it.....and probably more than once.

McDonald's is already on my $hitlist for bad decisions (regarding their "Orange Drink"), I hope Burger King gets their act together and put out the Whopper 7!

Parksville Seminar May, 2009

Ok, back to steak. Earlier this year, Peter Gunstone sensei from our Canadian Iaido Association hosted the annual national seminar in Parksville, BC. After the seminar, I accompanied my own sensei, Hironori Inoue to Peter Gunstone sensei's home for a general meeting (in effect, I was the sandal bearer/sword bearer/personal assistant). We were treated to some really fine dining and one of the best barbequed steaks I have ever had. Whenever I see a BBQ grill, I always have this urge to do all the cooking, and this time was no exception. While the sensei had their meeting, I entertained myself by making sure I didn't burn their steaks.





I'd love to take all of the credit for cooking some wicked steaks, but in truth, I didn't do very much at all. The steaks were marinated by Peter Gunstone sensei, and I think some of the ingredients were soy sauce, sugar, and some other stuff. The quality of the meat was top notch and all I know is they were purchased from Costco.

Dang Man Coul - order their kalbi

While digging through some old photos, I stumbled upon this little treasure that I had at a restaraunt called Ma Dang Coul located on Denman Street in Vancouver, BC. The dish is called Kalbi and it's basically beef short rib marinated in this magical sauce that tastes like.......happy. This little mom and pop style Korean restaraunt has some of the best kalbi I've ever had.

Of course, you get the usual assortment of side dishes like these sweet potatoes, kimchee, pickled radishes, pickled bean sprouts, seaweed etc.

Although I said September would be steak month, I'll throw in a little pork for variation. This is pork belly and essentially, you take it, throw it on a hot pan like so:

Then you take lettuce, throw in some kind of salty bean past, a clove of garlic (raw) and wrap that sucker up and eat it. It's simple, but tasty.

The Keg Size Omega

This has got to be the biggest hunk of dead cow I have ever tried to eat - the Keg Size Omega. My friends and I first heard of this oversize order of beef from a server we did not at first take very seriously. We thought he was joking when he told us we could acquire an order of prime rib that was double the size of a normal Keg Size prime rib. Some time had passed and the story of its existence developed myth-like qualities because some servers and certain Keg locations had never heard of this elusive monster. It almost seemed like some servers were trying to cover up or deny it's existence.

Anyway, sometime in November last year, my friends and I went on a mission to find proof of it's existence and so went to one particular Keg a few times and asked several servers if there was such thing as a super-size prime rib that was not listed on the menu. Our server had to go off to her manager to verify our claims and came back a few minutes later with a grin on her face. When our meals came a short time later, we were blown away. This thing was massive and the word massive doesn't really do it justice...and neither do the pictures. I could see our server straining under the sheer weight of our prime ribs. It literally dwarfed the plates they were served on. It was like the IJN Yamato sitting on top of a wood pallet. Isn't it glorious?

You can get an idea of how big this beast was by looking at a regular size prime rib in the background. The regular size looks like it wants to cry and run away.

Here's another shot from the side. More than triple a regular size.....I'd say it was easily double the size of a Keg-Size prime rib.

Beautiful cut of meat, and it tasted phenomenal, but I was not able to finish my meal.

Here's the aftermath of my attempt. A cross section with a fork standing on end will provide a bit more perspective on how big this thing really is. I don't think I could ever find a day in my lifetime where I would be able to finish a meal this big and enjoy it. I considered maybe next time I would skip the bread, but the bread at the Keg is really quite good. Maybe skip the sides and not eat any of the garlic mash potatos? Nope, I doubt I could resist eating any of that either. Skipping lunch would just shrink my stomach capacity. I guess this is a mission that isn't for everyone, but at least now, we know that it truly does exist.

Steak at Jay's

Alright readers (there are only two of you right?), it's really time to get off my lazy buttocks and get back to this blog and what it's really about....food. I have this buddy of mine who shares my passion for all things beef and dead cow. We love our steaks. Anyway, back in March he had me over for a couple of steaks and here are a couple of shots.

My pathetic contribution was bacon wrapped asparagus (did I spell that right?) and bacon wrapped enoki mushrooms, panfried.

Knifeboy cleaning the slab of meat that would be our dinner.Cooked to perfection....blue rare....not for everybody.

Look at the marbling on that home-cooked steak, gorgeous. Today is August 31, but I think I will dedicate September as "Steak Month" All my posts for September will be steak and all things beef. Look forward to more pictures of this assault on the vegetable kingdom

Long time no post.

Hi Eveyrone (ha ha - everyone....I think there are only two people in this whole world that know about my blog, thanks though for your support). It's bee a while since my last post, and now that I'm back, I'm not even posting about food. This post is going to give you a little peak into other aspects of my life, other than food.

I have other intestests believe it or not, and one of them is budo, but I'll leave that for another post. This post is about a small project I started when I used to work for Stilewood International MFG. Stilewood manufactures high-end custom wood doors and I worked there for just a few months. I started staying after hours to work on personal projects, and while everyone else made cabinets, tables, chairs....doors, I had limited skills and experience so I started with a sword stand. I had no idea how to make one, so I copied this cheap $10 POS that was made with MDF. It wasn't very strong and not long after I got it, fell apart. I made mine out of African Mahogany. I don't have an image of my first stand, but it looked terrible, much worse than the examples I made below:

Eventually, I decided to see what I could do and experimented a bit with various machines and equipment, different types of wood, and tried to make a bokken. People in class complained about my bokken because it was painted black (got it for 1,000 yen from a souvenir shop at a shrine in Matsushima, Japan) and left black marks on everyone elses' bokken. I needed something light, but strong enough to withstand tachiuchi excercises. I ended up making about half a dozen or so, all of varying sizes and shapes - no consistency whatsoever. I decided that these things were frackin hard to make and besides that, I stopped working at Stilewood.

My lame attempt to put my signature on my products....Ha ha, you know, just in case I become famous one day, this might make some of the bokken I made worth something?

The one on the left is strictly a show-piece made of African Mahogany, the dark one is made of Ipe, or Brazilian Ironwood, and so far, has not failed me yet.

So, a short while later, I found some really long strips of wood that had been binned and idea popped into my head. I remembered a few years ago, I went to a museum in Niigata, Japan, and saw the two longest katana ever made in Japan (or so the museum claimed).


It's hard to tell the scale in the picture below, but if you look carefully, you can see a couple of standard size swords to the left of this monster.So, I had to make one. I took those strips, cut them down to a uniform size and thickness, then lamenated them together on this really Micky Mouse rig I built. I let it cure over the weekend and began to shape this monster bokken. My coworkers thought I was nuts, and even I had to laugh when the thing started to take shape. It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself. The layers of lamenate almost give it a faux hamon line. Anyways, I ended up donating the thing to our dojo summer party, it was auctioned off to one my classmates and the funds were used for future dojo events. The scale is hard to see in this picture, but Richard here is the tallest member of our dojo....