We went to the other Jano's grill location (which I'd previously called Jonas, oops) because we've cleaned out the fridge in preparation for our week away from home. Shannon and I decided to split the special platter, since it is way too much meat for one person alone. There's a small sharing fee, but that means an additional salad and some bread, so it makes up for it. This made it one of the cheaper restaurant meals we've eaten this year!

I was really hoping for some grilled fish, but my only options were squid or sardines. We ended up going with the pork and rabbit for me and two orders of chorizo sausage for Shannon. I sorely miss my grill right now. The rabbit was definitely not as good as it was the last time we had it and I'm beginning to think the cooking of anything here is just hit or miss, depending on how freshly prepared the meat is at the time. The marinade was flavored with a bit too much paprika for my liking this time around, but Shannon totally loved it.

We were debating whether to have trout or sole for dinner tonight, since we rarely have fish and thought it'd be a treat. I decided on trout, so I could make Cornmeal Crusted Trout, which I so much enjoy. For an entire trout fillet, I shelled (is that a seafood pun?) out 20 dollars! I would surely find seafood recipes that I enjoy more than my pork chop classics, but since a pork chop costs roughly a dollar per serving, there's no way I'm going to get an opportunity any time soon for these prices. It's a shame, too.

If you've never crusted fish with cornmeal before, you really ought to. It's the perfect texture contrast to the flaky tenderness of something like trout and leaves much less room for gumminess that can happen if you're not good at pan-frying flour batter.

As a side I just sliced up some yellow zucchinis for Creole Zucchini, which are just simply flavored with basil, paprika and Worcestershire sauce. I don't know whether this has anything resembling authentic Creole cuisine or not, I just found the first zucchini recipe I hadn't already made and whipped it up.

1/4 cup cornmeal
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
4 six ounce trout fillets
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Combine cornmeal, flour, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper and lay out on a plate.
2. Press the flesh of the trout into the beaten egg and then into the cornmeal.
3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Melt butter in the olive oil, then cook the trout, cornmeal side down, until crisp. Flip and cook on the skin side until the center of the fillet is opaque.
4. Drizzle with lemon juice to serve.

Makes 4 servings

1 tablespoon butter
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 medium zucchini, seeded and sliced
1 teaspoon Worcestershire
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon paprika
salt and pepper

1. Melt butter with garlic in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the zucchini and sauté until tender.
2. Toss zucchini with Worcestershire sauce, basil and paprika, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

Makes 4 servings

Kalulu is a restaurant I've had my eye on for some time. It is one of the restaurants featured in our "Plateau Restaurant Guide" and it has a nice selection of Caribbean dishes that look really spicy, which is right up my alley. We were actually planning on going to this Brazilian restaurant I thought I knew the location of, but ended up going on a 45 minute walk through the city (this is now what I refer to as an "appetizer" since I hardly ever know exactly where I'm going) and ended up going here instead.

The stairs were incredibly icy and I was worried about the descent after dinner. Thankfully, they had salted them while we were dining. I liked the atmosphere of the place, it was quite cozy and had a nice, Caribbean sort of charm to it. I ordered the tasso, which is fried goat, and Shannon ordered the calypso, which is a mango and papaya glazed chicken breast. We also ordered some sweet potato fries.

I was really disappointed by the fries because they were soggy and greasy. They came with a really nice cayenne mayonnaise though. My fried goat was somewhat of a similar experience. Of course, it wasn't soggy, but it was greasy and I had expected a lot more flavor to be infused into the meat. Instead, it was more like a deep-fried lamb shank. The plantain chips were okay, but the rice and beans were extremely bland and there was really nothing to flavor them with. They came on a nice banana leaf, so at least they looked nice. The condiments that accompanied it came with a warning from our waitress, but I hardly found them spicy at all. The chipotle mashed potatoes that came with Shannon's chicken were far spicier.

The cumulative effect of all that spice eventually got to me though, as well as all the fried food. After dinner I had quite the stomach ache. I'm sure it wouldn't have helped, but it would have been nice if it were summer so I could have got some yummy gelato to cool off my palette.

Shannon suggested I take the day off of work and I wasn't about to argue with her. I feel bad because it's my last week there and it looks like I'm skipping out, but I am honestly sick! I can't help it. I have no appetite whatsoever and basically spent the day in bed, awake from the hours of 11am to 2pm and then again from 7pm to 10pm, sleeping for the rest. Since it's the end of the year and I'm sick (no pun intended) of making up for dinners where I was hungover or my oven exploded or I was just plain lazy, I'm simply going to document my cough syrup, which is all I "ate" besides juice and dry toast.

New Benylin Extra Strength DM-D-E-A-AH

1000 mg extra strength Acetaminophen
A pain killer (Tylenol) that relieves pain, fever, chills, headache, body aches and sore throat.

30 mg Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide
A cough suppressant that controls dry coughs for up to 8 hours.

60 mg Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride
A decongestant that relieves nasal congestion.

200mg Guaifenesin
An expectorant, which, besides being a cool word, loosens mucus and phlegm in the chest.

4mg Chlorpheniramine Maleate
An antihistamine that relieves runny nose, sneezing and itchy, watery eyes.

Then, either for fun or for delicious cough syrup flavor, they've also added alcohol, artificial sweetness enhancer (aspartame?), benzyl alcohol, citric acid (fruity goodness!), D & C Red no 33, flavor (?), glycerin, menthol (minty goodness!), monoammonium glycyrrhizinate, polyethylene (isn't that the compound in chocolate that triggers that same thing in your brain that lights up when you're in love?) glycol, saccharin sodium (a sweetened salt?), sodium benzoate, sodium carboxymethylcellulose, sodium citrate, sodium cyclamate, sorbitol (guess that wasn't the artificial sweetness enhancer) and water.

I don't think there's a single cold and flu symptom this stuff doesn't cover. I don't really take a lot of medicine for anything, but this seems like a ridiculous amount. Isn't that like taking 2 extra strength Tylenols every 4 hours? Yikes. I take one normal strength one when I rarely have a headache and that's more than enough. I'm not sure if it's just the dextromethorphan that makes me sleepy, but this totally knocks me out. It certainly helped me catch up on my rest and I'm feeling much better now, a day later, at the time of writing this. I'm not even going to bother spell checking this entry because it's going to give me another headache. Let's just assume everything was typed correctly.

I left work on my lunch break today because I could barely keep my eyes open, I felt achy and just generally unwell. It's finally evident to me that the reason I haven't had much of an appetite and have been sleeping like an old man lately is because I have been getting sick. This seems kind of strange to me since I must have been fighting it for over a week now. As soon as I admitted this to myself, I was basically washed over with a myriad of flu symptoms. I got home and slept and didn't really do much else, including making or eating dinner. I didn't really plan to be sick this year, but since I didn't really eat much of anything, this seems like a good place to plug some Cinnamon Buns I made last week!

The dough in this recipe is perfect. The only thing I would do differently next time is put a bit more cinnamon sugar filling and make sure to make some cream cheese icing to go on top. Perhaps this is when I started to get sick, as I ate maybe four of these in one sitting and didn't feel so good afterwards. That's my main reason for not doing very much baking, I have no self control.

I gave away some to our landlords and their dog and split the rest with Shannon. They were all gone by the end of the next day. I actually don't think I'd have a cinnamon bun since… well, I don't even remember the last time I had a cinnamon bun before that, to tell you the truth. I do remember baking them with my grandma as a kid though and truth be told, I don't remember them being as good as this. When we rolled them up it certainly looked prettier than my half-assed job, though they still baked up beautifully both ways.

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/2 warm water
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup warm milk
1/3 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
3-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins

1. Combine yeast, warm water and 1 teaspoon of the sugar in a bowl and set aside until foamy.
2. In a separate bowl, combine remaining sugar, milk, butter, salt and eggs, then add the yeast mixture.
3. Gradually incorporate all of the flour until you have a smooth, slightly sticky dough. Add more flour if necessary.
4. Knead dough on a floured surface for several minutes, then transfer to a greased bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about an hour.
5. Punch dough down and roll out into an even rectangle about 1/4" thick.
6. Brush the dough with half the melted butter. Combine cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle a generous layer over the buttered dough, then arrange raisins over top.
7. Carefully roll up the dough tightly like a jelly roll and slice into 12 equal portions.
8. Coat the bottom of 2 baking dishes with remaining butter and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon sugar.
9. Place cinnamon rolls closely together in the pans. Let rise again in a warm place for another hour.
10. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
11. Bake cinnamon buns until they are golden brown. Serve drizzled with icing, if desired.

Makes 12 servings

I was starting to feel congested and really wanted something to clear my sinuses. We went back to Just Noodles and I ordered my favorite, Tom Yum Soup with Coconut Milk, and "whatever the spiciness dish you have with lots of vegetables". I'm not really sure what I got, but the noodles and sauce were not very pleasant, especially so because I wasn't feeling well. They were the thick-type rice noodles and the sauce was almost gelatinous with corn starch. It packed a little bit of heat, but I guess it didn't really matter such I just smothered it with rooster sauce. It definitely helped to clear my sinuses, which is really all I was going for because I wasn't particularly hungry.

Shannon ordered the hot and sour soup, picking out large chunks of both firm and soft tofu and setting them on her napkin, as well as general tao chicken. It took me some convincing to get her to go to the noodle place again because we had a bad experience with her parents, but once she received this she was happy. I'd never heard of general tao before moving here, but it's basically like pineapple chicken without the pineapple, just a sweet sauce on battered chicken pieces.

I've had a thing for flank steak lately. It's now on my list along with rib-end pork chops as greatest bargain meat ever at like a buck a serving. I picked up another one without being really sure of what to do with it. I thought maybe I'd do a Southwestern kind of meal since I had a recipe for Corn Fritters kicking around. I made the corn fritters and thought they were missing something. I omitted the fresh herbs and chilies in the recipe because I was out of both, which may have added just enough pizazz to give it that bit of oomph. That and some flavored sour cream!

Anyhow, back to the steak. I settled on a simple recipe I'll just call Marinated Flank Steak. The flavor of Worcestershire sauce completely dominated the palette. Shannon really liked it. I'm not really sure what I expected, but the flavor was too intense for me, and not in a good way. Perhaps this would have been less noticeable if it weren't sort of cooking in its own juices in a frying pan. If it were grilled, that might have done wonders for this dish.

To skip back to the fritters, I'd just like to say that paprika is a cool thing. When I mixed it into the flour, it quickly disappeared into a sea of white. As soon as I added the milk (note: also white!) the whole thing turned a deep red color (from the paprika!) This is the kind of thing I think I would totally get a kick out of as a kid. Why isn't paprika incorporated into baking, I wonder?