I'm Bringing Veggie Back

Last night I went over to the new Irvine Mitsuwa to check it out and also to have dinner at the Santouka located in the food court. Despite the small size of the food court, there were a couple of tasty food stalls including Misasa, Hamada-ya bakery and this fabulous Takoyaki and Taiyaki stall called Go Squared.

I am a fan of both Takoyaki and Taiyaki. Takoyaki is a snack made from a batter with small pieces of chopped octopus in a heated circular mode. The finished product is about the size of a golf ball. I'll highlight that another time. Today I am going to talk about Taiyaki.

Taiyaki is a sweet snack made from a batter in a heated fish shaped mode and can be filled with chocolate, custard or red bean. I am a huge Taiyaki fan. I like the red bean one. I'm almost certain that these little fishes will surely derail my dieting efforts. I introduced M to them today and he instantly fell in love with the custard and chocolate ones. They are best eaten warm and freshly made. They taste like waffles, except with chocolate or custard on the inside.

This one here is filled with red bean. I think I went overboard as I had two after dinner. I love the fish shape! The tail is my favorite part to eat. I save it for last. Just a weirdo Madison thing.

I walked around the Mitsuwa market after dinner and noticed how organized, bright and nicely packaged everything was. They had a prepared food section that looked pretty good.

If I hadn't just eaten dinner, I would have taken this one home. I didn't end up buying any groceries on this trip but you can trust that I will be back very soon. Maybe even make some nice Japanese inspired meals.

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Say hello to my little friends! Seriously I need to get to know these two guys again. I've really fallen off the healthy eating wagon the second half of this year and I want to make an effort to clean up my meals.

For sure that means no more of this stuff...

So one of my resolutions for 2012, which will be posted soon, is to eat more healthy. M wanted to go out to breakfast this morning so off we went. I wanted to practice getting back into eating more healthy by actually eating healthy meals today. So normally I would have an orange juice but I decided to order this tomato juice to switch things up.

Sister K recently taught me how to use some new settings on my camera and this photo is dedicated to her. :)

So normally when I am not really paying attention to what I am eating, I would order a muffin from here (Mimi's). They have some tasty muffins. Today I decided to order something from their Lite Fare section. This here is two eggs over medium with a side of fruit and rye toast. It wasn't half bad. It's no muffin but eating all those muffins was causing me to look like a muffin. 

For "linner" I had this Grilled Chicken Salad from Stonefire Grill without the cheese and with the dressing on the side. Haha, so this wasn't half bad either but it's hard to eat a salad when my dining companion is sitting right across from me having a pulled pork sandwich chased by an "everything" pizza. What a life!

I think today went well and the suffering was minimal. I'm such a food drama queen. It's going to take time for me to enjoy the taste of healthy food again after eating all that rich food and decadent desserts over the holidays but eating healthy has it's own rewards. I actually felt more energized today and this food didn't aggravate my colitis as much as the processed stuff I've been living off of recently. So look for more farmers market posts coming up in the near future when I get reacquainted with my long lost buddies the veggies!