Turkey Day

Turkey meal from Chinese restaurant downtown.

Turkey

Well cooked, moist and tender.

Green Beans

Sauteed, no cassarole. Nice.

Ham and Roast Pork

Very nice, The Mouse can make ham sandwiches. The Cat appreciated the roast pork (she’s okay with turkey, but roast pork is better).

Mochi Rice

No mashed potatoes, that’s okay, doctor told The Cat to avoid mashed potatoes.

Stuffing

Traditional. 🙂

Pumpkin Custard Tarts

Pumpkin pie, Chinese version. Hee hee.

All in all, a good meal. 🙂

Leftovers for a couple of days. 🙂 🙂

Stay safe and well.

The Mouse

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Thanksgiving Dinner

Here’s the Thanksgiving dinner as mentioned in the prior post. Our friends and mentors invited us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Sign

They wish to remain anonymous, anonymous they will remain. It’s an old and prestigious club. For Thanksgiving, it was tents, and buffet tables.

The Buffet Area

An impressive spread. Didn’t want to offend anyone by taking pictures of  the buffet lines, we were guests after all. So, pictures of food on my plates, and even then I was a little wary.

Mouse's Buffet Plate

Ginger Kabocha Soup

There was turkey (of course), prime rib, ham, oysters, fish, and salads galore, oh my.

Raw Oyster

Since the first pass was with our hosts, they made sure that we got traditional pieces of turkey, ham and prime rib. On the second trip, I was on my own. I politely asked the carvers for the bits and pieces (I think that’s where all the flavor is).

Prime Rib "Bits"

Turkey "Bits"

Parts of the crispy skin and “crusts” that fall off during slicing, yum.

Dessert was also pretty amazing.

Dessert Plate

The bottom left is a apple pie, I scraped from the plate the remnants from other guests (to make the buffet line neater, goes down  the same way).

Hope your Thanksgiving was full of thanksgiving and food.

Enjoy.

The Mouse

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A Cat and Mouse Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving dinner was here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Cat didn’t grow up with the Thanksgiving tradition. I’m pretty flexible when it comes to turkey. Eat or don’t, it doesn’t really matter. I seem to be more excited about the stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie than the turkey. I think it’s because most of the time, the turkey is on the dry side. In fact, I get really excited about the zhou or jook made from the turkey carcass than the actual turkey.

Anyway, here’s a sample of the offerings from Hakone for Thanksgiving.

Roasted Crab Legs

Prime Rib of Beef

Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura

Roast Lamb and Pork Kakuni

The pork kakuni is similar to hong shao rou (shoyu pork). Here’s how The Cat ate the pork kakuni. A little rice, a slice of pork, and a little vegetables.

Pork Kakuni Bowl, A Slice of Heaven

When The Cat was a kitten, this was their treat only on special occasions. The Cat still prefers her shoyu pork, but she said this was a very good substitute.

For Thanksgiving, the Hakone chef also prepared on of The Cat’s favorite foods.

Oysters!

The ones on the left were baked with some kind of topping (sorry, didn’t take notes). The oysters on the right were with ponzu sauce. The Cat thoroughly enjoyed the ones with the ponzu sauce.

The Cat Says Yum!

Okay, the two main reasons that this place is one of our favorite eating places in Honolulu.

Sashimi!

The above picture was my first plate (just kidding, I wish). My plates were a little more humble.

One of The Mouse's Plates of Sashimi

I won’t tell you how many plate I had, but The Cat has said that when it comes to sashimi, I can be a camel (I’ll let you figure that one out).

The other reason why this place rocks.

Hakone Sushi Bar

The sushi bar is in the back. The sushi bar at Hakone offers several items not normally seen on buffets.

Sample of Sushi Bar Selection

Do you see it? It’s at the top right of the plate, uni! Uni is a regular selection at Hakone’s sushi bar. On this night, they also had chutoro (on the bottom left of the plate). Chutoro is the fatty, marbled, underbelly portion of the tuna, yum again.

For me, if Hakone only offered sushi and sashimi, I would be a happy camper.

Because it was Thanksgiving, I did have a bit of the obligatory turkey (along with pork kakuni, oysters, and deep fried shrimp heads).

A Bit of Turkey

One of the things that the chef carving the prime rib of beef did which I thought was a nice touch was, because the utensils were chopsticks, the chef would cut the beef into bite sized pieces after carving the prime rib to order.

Prime Rib of Beef

The round discs on the bottom right of the plate are turnip slices from the oden dish with hot mustard. The turnips complemented the beef nicely.

I ended the dinner portion of the meal with one ikura (salmon roe) sushi, one tobiko (flying fish roe), and one tamago (egg omelet) sushi. I just realized the sushi were all different kinds of eggs.

Ikura, Tobiko, and Tamago Sushi

For some reason, my last sushi, if possible, is always tamago sushi. I guess because it’s on the sweet side.

And we always have a little bit of room for Hakone’s bread pudding,

Bread Pudding

and their other desserts.

Assorted Desserts

I couldn’t take pictures of all the foods that were offered (I wouldn’t have any time to eat), but there were much more to eat.

We were invited to two dinners after we made our reservations, but we had our hearts set on the sashimi and uni (thank you Aunt M, M & J).

M & J also gave us a home-made pumpkin pie.

Home-Made Pumpkin Pie

I had some pie today. It was good! To me, the crust has the texture of a shortbread cookie. Yum.

So, instead of turkey day, we had sashimi/sushi/oyster day! Hopefully we started our own tradition.

Hope you had a good turkey (or whatever) day.

BTW, we hope to be eating more oysters in the near future. Tell you about it later.

Enjoy.

The Mouse

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