Grilled Ribeye with Corn, Tomato and Fruit Salad

The title pretty much sums up what we had for dinner. After a luxuriously delightful Saturday morning where I woke up, turned over and slept until I felt fully rested, I made breakfast/brunch, and did a wee bit of gardening before we headed to Old Town Alexandria for the hubs' haircut appointment. We managed to renew our Costco membership and survive the crowds, and came home with our spoils. Buying in bulk is interesting, but we definitely have much more room and storage to accommodate all of extra units. 

The hubs grilled the ribeye on the charcoal grill, and I cooked the corn and sliced the fruits and vegetables.

With a mixture of grated fresh garlic and soy sauce to dip the steak into, it was delightful.

Chirashi at Home

The hubs complained that I don't cook enough Japanese food for dinner and had also had some painful dental work done, so I made chirashi for dinner. The night before I had roasted salmon heads with salt. With the chilled leftover salmon, and some snow crab leg meat that I picked out of the shells, I assembled my version of chirashi with sliced Persian cucumbers and thinly sliced fried egg.

Chirashi at Home

The rice was cooked in the rice cooker and mixed with a chirashi seasoning mix we received as omiyage from some friends. It was nice and light and refreshing on a sultry summer's evening. Even the cats were interested in dinner.

China Star in Fairfax

We have only had Sichuan food from China Star delivered to our new house (which is fantastic to find Sichuan so close by). To celebrate my husband's great score in the latest golf tournament, we went to the actual restaurant to enjoy some spicy Sichuan dishes. While the delivery is great, and everything is better when it's just made and we enjoyed it.

Spicy beef and tendon with cilantro.

 Sichuan cold noodles.

I prefer this dish over the version of Dan Dan Noodles that they offer. The noodles are nice and toothsome and the spices are great after all the flavors are tossed together.

 Spicy beef with vegetables

This is my favorite dish at all Sichuan restaurants we try, and this one is quite fiery with a nice topping of cilantro with bean sprouts, celery and cabbage. This version was very good.

Mapo Tofu

We had an unfortunately miscommunication the last few times we tried to order this dish for delivery. Instead they sent us some countrystyle tofu dish with carrots and peas. So not the same thing. This time we had the dish we wanted with leeks and sichuan peppercorns ground over top. So delicious.

Captain Pell's in Fairfax

I've passed by Captain Pells for years, but had never tried it. One Sunday I caught up with a lovely friend and we went to indulge in steamed crabs. While we had read online that the restaurant can get busy, it was not very crowded when we arrived. There's an all you can eat option, but that's really wasted on me. I eat slowly, but enjoy it. I also wanted to check out the restaurant before my in-laws arrive, to check if it would a good place to take them when they visit us.

 One dozen Large crabs

Hush puppies (small size), fried clams and 1/2 pound spiced shrimp

We wanted to try out a few of the sides, and the hush puppies were really lovely. The clams were good, although only while super hot, and the shrimp were nice and plump with good flavor.

***

We picked the crabs nice and slowly, while chatting and catching up, and still only managed to eat half of our dozen. Since we did not order the AYCE option, we were able to take home the remaining crabs. I knew exactly what I would do with them...pick the meat and make crabcakes.

 Crabcakes frying on the stove.

Crabcake with leftover sliced steak with corn and tomato salad.

4th of July Burgers

After over four hours of gardening (for me) and car washing and polishing (for him), we were extremely hungry. We had picked up groceries before the 4th of July long holiday weekend, so I threw together an ode to the holiday. 

Bacon Cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato om a potato bun with blue cheese and bacon potato salad. 

Old School Steak Dinner

 Continuing our experiments with grilling with charcoal, we decided to have an old school steakhouse dinner. With some lovely steaks from Whole Foods (yes pricey, but the aging and marbling is nice), the hubs was on grilling duty and I worked on the sides and salad.

 Steak with salt, black pepper and olive oil.

Wedge Salad with blue cheese dressing, tomato, bacon, lettuce and aged blue cheese.

Steak with baked potato with bacon, sour cream and scallions, plus creamed spinach.

BBQ at the Ngos

So I've been super busy this summer, between purchasing and assembling furniture, to painting and decorating our new home. It's been a steep learning curve, and I'm currently scoring a middling C on landscaping and garden maintenance. Oh well...what do you expect from a desk jockey who researches a wide variety of business topics and industries and gets poison ivy infections whenever she ventures outdoors? 

One of the really nice things has been the chance to invite people over for dinners or lunches, which we were reluctant to do when we lived in a small one-bedroom apartment. We had a fun evening with the Ngos a few weeks ago, and they returned the favor one Friday night. The husband is a lovely, genial fellow with a wonderful way around a charcoal grill. 

Full tray of grilled sausages, ribs and galbi. 

With rice, lettuce, kimchee and grilled meats plus plenty of wine, we had a lovely night.

Japanese Kit Kats

It's often been said that the Japanese excel at improving on the inventions of others.

Behold, macha (green tea) flavored and purin (pudding) flavored KitKats.

Pretty amazing.