Su-Dam

Tonight ‘Adventures in Food’ took us to Su-Dam, one of the many asian restaurants in Palo Alto. On this particular Sunday night, we had a hard time choosing a place to eat. And since it’s called Adventures in Food, we decided to in fact be adventurous. We took a short walk from our hotel because we were heading to a place called Chef Chu’s – it looked promising, but for some reason we decided to check out the restaurants in the strip mall before we crossed the street over to Chef Chus. In the strip mall there was a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, and a Korean place as well as a couple of other restaurants. So many places to choose from, plus I think there were a couple more places around the corner that we noticed when we were leaving. 

We chose Su-Dam because of the chicken wing special they were running that evening. It just sounded really good, and they were delicious. They were covered with a sweet teriyaki sauce and sesame seeds. One order was enough for us to get started, but because they weren’t quite perfect, they brought us an extra order. We don’t turn down free food lol. 

It was a pretty cool little restaurant. They started us off with a very cool looking bottle of water and some complimentary appetizers – we didn’t know they would be serving these. Cool surprise. I had no idea what we were eating, but it was pretty tasty. I found our later what the appetizers actually were, and honestly, it’s a probably a good thing I didn’t know what we were eating because I wouldn’t have tried it with an open mind. I’m way too picky to have eaten those things had I known what it was. 

Our main course consisted of Bul Go Gi (Korean beef) with rice and coleslaw., and something called Glass noodles with shrimp (I had a hard time finding the shrimp, it was heavy on the noodles and light on the shrimp) I’ve never heard of glass noodles before, but I’m pretty brave when it comes to trying new things. I don’t think I’ll order them again though. Too many carbs. The beef was pretty delicious, and fortunately there was enough for sharing. 

We liked Su-Dam, it was a great low key place to eat on a Sunday night in Palo Alto. One more restaurant down…a thousand more to try. If you know of any great places we should try, we would love your suggestions for where to go next. 

Until next week….

The cancer update

This is week four of the food blog, week 63 of me having cancer. Sort of. I mean, for a while there between September and January, I thought I was in remission. It was like I had a short vacation from cancer. A vacation where I stayed home, rested, grew my hair back and worked like crazy get back in shape. I’m ashamed to say I never realized how blessed I was before. If I ever get to go back to work training people (I was a personal trainer in my previous life) I will be a much better trainer. I’ll have a better understanding of all levels of fitness and I will have more compassion. 

Let me tell you a little bit about my new treatment. It’s an immunotherapy drug. Immunotherapy targets the sick/cancer cells growing in my body, as opposed to chemotherapy which just kills all the cells (that’s why the hair falls out). Mine is a trial drug, and I’m patient #96. It has worked for most of the 95 people who have tried it before me, and the doctors were eager to have me try this drug because there is actually another person with my exact symptoms for whom it has been working wonders. When they introduced the idea to me I was very red and itchy. I was probably a little nervous because I get anxious when I meet new people anyway, and I was meeting about 7 or 8 of them at once, so I was definitely blushing. And that blushing would get taken over by the rash, my ears would turn bright red and be on fire, I could feel my cheeks burning, and there was nothing I could do about it. They were telling me about another patient who had the rash as well – it’s called Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma I believe – and the doctors said that the rash went away within two weeks of starting the trial drug. Sign me up! First and foremost I wanted to be free of the rash and the itching. It worked for me the first day, I was so happy! 

There is one tricky thing about the treatment: I have to take it on an empty stomach. So I have to fast for two hours before and 1 hour after I take the medicine. It’s not that hard, it’s just a little interesting with meals and such. I definitely lost weight the first week, not from being nauseous or anything, just from not eating for those periods of time. Overall it’s a pretty easy fix so far. I feel great, and I have a lot of energy so I am HAPPY. 

This month we start going to Stanford every other week. Thankfully. We’ve been going up there every single week for the past 10 weeks, a week off from the drive is pretty nice.

to be continued….