If you don’t enjoy food and don’t get excited about learning new recipes, then you can skip this post.

I love Koto’s.  A lot.  For those of you poor and unfortunate souls that don’t know, Koto’s is a Japanese Steak House about a block from my office.  It is quite the favorite place to have lunch.  I love me some Hibachi Steak.  There’s really nothing special about the restaurant, but I love the food.  It just your standard “cook on the table” Japanese restaurant, but the food is great.  It’s also quite economical.  I can get salad, soup, fried rice (the best part), grilled vegetables, and the best mouth watering steak around for 8 bucks.  Where else can you get that?

It’s also a big favorite of my wife.  We used to go to Shogun’s every year on our anniversary.  But since we’ve found Koto’s, we prefer to go there.  And my wife could eat the fried rice alone and be happy.  And the mustard sauce.  She loves that.  So much so that I tried to recreate the whole hibachi experience at home on my little griddle.  Let’s just say, I need more practice.  The key ingredient is the mustard sauce.  I looked high and low for a recipe for mustard sauce.  You can’t just buy it in a store.  You have to make it.  And there are not many places out there that have a mustard sauce recipe.  Every recipe I found was drastically different than the other.  So when it came time to make it, it was like playing Russian Roulette with different ingredients.  It did not turn out very good.

All of that is about to change though.  While at Koto’s today, I asked the chef if they make the sauce or if they buy it.  And he said that he made it.  I asked if it was a secret recipe.  He said no and asked if I would like to know it.  I almost came out of my seat and jumped over the table.  After he finished cooking, he went in the back and actually wrote the recipe down for me.  Everybody at my table was asking for a copy.  That guy was awesome!  So, since I could never find a good recipe online, this is my contribution to the rest of the world that likes a really good Japanese Mustard Sauce.  Obviously, this makes a lot of sauce so feel free to cut it down to your own specifications.

Koto’s Mustard Sauce

3.5 oz Ground Mustard

2 Onions

2 Carrots

1/2 cup Garlic

1/2 cup Sesame Seeds

2 cups Mayonaise

1 cup Sugar

3 cups Soy Sauce

1 1/2 cups Vegetable Oil

1 tsp Pepper

1 tsp Salt

Finely chop onions, carrots, and garlic.

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until it has a creamy consistency.

There.  It’s done.  Granted, it’s not like I’m posting the cure for cancer for all the world to enjoy, but it is quite a delectable addition to a Japanese meal.  Enjoy.

Here’s an interesting article about how exercising for weight loss isn’t the best approach.  Exercising is great for the body and does well to hold of certain ailments such as heart disease or diabetes.  But, and it makes sense, it says that scientific studies have shown that most people exercise and then get hungry and consume the calories burned during the workout.  I can personally attest to this.  When I was training for my marathon, I would fantasize about going to Waffle House after a 12+ mile run.  Where I would promptly gain back the calories I killed myself trying to burn.  This just further emphasizes the fact that nutrition plays a vital role in any workout plan.
Scott Adams Blog: Exercise is Useless for Weight Loss 08/10/2009.

When I was younger, I loved playing video games. And when I say younger, I mean, like, 5:00 this afternoon. Anyway, there are certain games that I play that I feel like I have to start over every time I mess something up. So, I hit the reset button. In a way, it allows me to perfect my game, but it’s still wasting time trying to perfect a level on a video game. How OCD is that?

Starting over. At times in all of our lives we have to start over at something. Whether it’s a software project or as simple as cutting a board, (always measure twice and cut once) there are times when scrapping what you got is the only option. A lot of times you can take the leftovers and build off that.

But there are times when starting over just plain sucks and you can’t salvage any of your previous work. Like running. That’s something you never want to start over doing. You see, the last time I really trained for a race was about a year ago. I haven’t done a lot of running the past year. Yeah, I did the Little Rock Half Marathon, but it was pretty ugly. Doesn’t take a lot of training to do a bad half marathon. So, I’ve gained some weight since the last big training session. About 15 pounds. I started wondering why my pace was getting worse and worse. Turns out, that’s a lot of extra weight when you’re running 5 to 6 miles. So, I started thinking about how much starting over sucked.

Which got me thinking about what I did at the beginning. When I started training back in the day for my first (and so far, only) triathlon, I was afraid to run because I had a lot of weight on my frame and had never run more than 3 miles. So I started riding a bike to lose weight. And it worked. I lost about 10 to 15 pounds doing that. That made running quite a bit easier. So just like good ol’ Michael Finnegan, I’ve decided to begin again.

Introducing my new obsession (hopefully), Felty:

It’s a Felt F80. So, if you’re in Searcy and on the bike trail and a fat guy on a bike whizzes by, that’s me. So, here’s to me having to start over. Hopefully, I will have learned my lesson this time and I won’t have to start over again. But you know me, I’ll probably mess this up screw this up. Dang it, gotta start over….