Saturday, February 2, 2008

japanese translation help

kristin & i frequent firebowl at least once a week & i usually go there once a week with co-workers or friends if i’m eating out for lunch during the work week. my normal dish is salmon soba noodle with broccoli. i ask them to hold the teriyaki sauce but to include the sesame seeds.

we’ve come to know both the store manager & her daughter (who works behind the counter) well enough to engage in small talk. during the football & basketball season we get along really well with one of the shift managers who is from cleveland – first cleveland browns fan i’ve ever known.

the salmon soba noodle is actually a pretty special dish. after eating at firebowl for the first time many years ago i wasn’t very impressed. i order some type of stir fry it your way & it didn’t come out very well. my boss & good friend trevor told me i should try the place again, but order the salmon soba noodle with broccoli. he knows how clean i like to eat & this meal is perfect – good carbs from the soba noodle, protein & omega-3 fats from the salmon, & good nutrients, fiber, & protein (didn’t know that broccoli had protein did you?) in the broccoli. after getting this dish a few times i dropped the teriyaki sauce because of all the sugars & from that point forward outside of adding edamame every so often that’s become my dish. kristin orders the vermicelli singapore & really does a number on it: tofu, no onions, add mushrooms, & replace the vermicelli noodles with soba noodles.

about 6-months ago firebowl took the salmon soba noodle of the menu. i talked to the manager & read some information about this change on firebowl’s website & they said it just wasn’t cost effective & not enough folks ordered it. lucky for me firebowl continued to stock the ingredients you just had to know to order it & they started charging an extra $1 due to their costs on the soba noodles. after 3-months of taking salmon soba noodle of their menu, firebowl was supposed to stop serving the dish altogether. the manager would kid with me every time i came in by counting down the days. i told her if they pulled it i’d stop coming in.

when the 3-months came up i noticed they hadn’t pulled it & in fact they had added it back to their menu. i talked with store manager & she said that there were a lot austinites like me & that firebowl gave them & only them the go ahead to keep the salmon soba noodle dish. go to any other firebowl not in austin & you won’t find the salmon soba noodle. check their website menu - it isn't even listed. good ole austinites & their healthy diets!

so about this translation… the other night kristin & i stopped at firebowl for dinner. i had a good idea of how much protein i was getting from the salmon & the nutrients i was getting from the broccoli, however, i’ve seen that soba noodles range in value of amount of carbs & fiber from one brand to the next. i was talking to the manager’s daughter about this (i need to remember her name) & she said she’d go pull a package of the noodles from the back & we could see. to our surprise, the ingredients were all in japanese. so, if you know japanese or know someone that does, could you have them translate the ingredients depicted in the picture please?

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