MAHALO to all who participated in the Feeding My Ohana Food Drive this past winter. This Silver Award belongs to all of you, who helped raise $1314.20. More than 2,500 meals for hungry families. 
Add Comment Here are two more ridiculously simple yet ono recipes with made with items that are always in your pantry.  Formerly known as "Costco (and Others) Pork Loin." This marinade is 5 ingredients and fool-proof. Garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil. Marinate for as little 15 minutes before grilling. 30 minutes on the grill and you are done. I made a double batch (4 pork loins) and I'm thinking I'll freeze an uncooked one for "one of those days." Click here for updated recipe.  With another nod to Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa. On Wednesday night, I had one potato, two potato, three potato, four. By Thursday afternoon, no more. Plain ole' brown potatoes with olive oil Hawaiian salt, pepper and garlic. 40 minutes or so in the oven, with a flip at 20. Crunchy outside, fluffy inside. Click here for the recipe. Have a great weekend! Eat Well. Be Well. 90 degrees one day and 55 degrees the next. Try cooking, let alone dressing for days like this.
But we are lucky to live in such a beautiful place. Transition seasons mean taking advantage of spring vegetables; think greens and asparagus, as well as the occasional kabocha when the weather gets cold. Monday Sunny and pleasant. One of those trademark Bay Area days. Misoyaki Butterfish, My Mom's Japanese Coleslaw and rice. Butterfish was fresh and on sale yesterday. Even better, we had it grilled instead of the usual bake. Great when grilled, and is updated as such on the recipe.  Homegrown arugula Tuesday Still pretty nice, but clouds are a-coming. Having Macadamia Arugula Pasta because the arugula in the garden is happy and waiting to be eaten. Wednesday is Rain Day Oven cooking. Mayonnaise Chicken, Roasted Asparagus and TBD cooked potatoes--likely also roasted somehow. Thursday is Grill Day Grilled Pork Loin panini with mushrooms and Jarlsberg cheese, or sriacha mayonnaise and leftover coleslaw. The husband made a great and very easy pork loin rub/marinade over the weekend. This means we bid adieu to the pre-seasoned pork tenderloins. The new method is just that easy, and no preservatives. As a bonus, we can make a lot and keep the rest for sandwiches during the week. Recipe posting later this week. Friday Daikon was also on sale and looking very fine. It's still too cold for Na-omi-take tofu, so I'm trying a modified agedashi tofu. Pan saute or grill tofu slices brushed with a little sesame oil. Grate the daikon, mix with ponzu and green onions. Slather over the tofu and eat. Braised kabocha to balance out the high-strung flavor of daikon/ponzu. Rice and kim chee. I do like the sound of this meal already. Adventures from Vancouver start this week too. Eat Well. Be Well. Yes, I know the week doesn't start on Tuesdays, but things sometimes take longer than you think. And Monday showed no signs of pausing just for me. So here's a quick re-cap on what's cooking this week. Monday This was a very long day. We did takeout Chinese. Hot garlic eggplant, Singapore-style noodles, sautéed pea shoots, braised spicy tofu and lemon chicken. I could have made all of these things at home, but we'd be eating them sometime Wednesday. Chinese takeout gives us variety, is pretty reasonable, and makes for great leftovers.  Tuesday Number One Udon, which complements leftover Chinese takeout quite nicely. Wednesday My Grandma's Meat and Macaroni. A little mid-week comfort food in the midst of a busy week.  Thursday This really needs to be the day the San Jose Sharks take one from the St. Louis Blues. All our collective mojo will be channeled to that effort--because we all like to believe that a good luck jersey and a teal and black manicure have the absolute and uncanny ability to cause positive outcomes for hockey games. So it'll be Crock Pot BBQ Pork Sliders as the TV dinner. Start it in the morning and have dinner right in time for the puck drop. Friday Something nice and soothing for whatever happens on Thursday. Shabu-shabu will be a restful way to end the week. All I need to do is boil water. Eat Well. Be Well. -->GO SHARKS! A good week of leftovers means no wasted food. While my children don't hear the "starving babies in third-world countries" saga that my mother always told me, they know better than to argue when leftovers are the meal du jour or in this case, de la semaine.  Quiche is long gone, Costco chicken picked to the bone, hard-boiled eggs made into sandwiches and after-schools snacks, and the last of the ham and Greek salad are getting eaten today. Plus, a long-forgotten recipe for salmon cakes was revived. Here was the highlight leftovers meal. Salmon cakes. New recipe in the Greenhouse, working out measurements. Leftover Greek Salad The lemon juice makes this salad keep well. Just keep the feta cheese on the side and add it at the time of serving. Purple rice from last week's purchase at Hankook. The rice doesn't taste that much different, but it looks pretty.  Easy roasted asparagus is a new addition that is pretty well based on the Barefoot Contessa, who I adore. We've made it twice, and it was a hit at Easter brunch. Click here for the recipe. Good food makes good leftovers. Eat Well. Be Well.  There were no leftover cookies. Or Robin's eggs. Easter was a great time with the ohana. It is duly noted that cold hard cash ($3), Avengers squinkies and robins' eggs made for a very entertaining yet moderately priced Easter egg hunt for the teenagers. While there were no leftover Easter cookies, there are leftovers that are nearly complete meals. I love a good game of Leftovers Roulette. I'm aiming to go the whole week on our leftovers. Especially since the huge batch of Greek Salad I made for Easter did not make it to the serving area...there's always one that gets forgotten. Here's what's being "re-purposed" this week. Leftovers include a Costco chicken, Honey Baked Ham, grilled salmon and LOTS of Greek Salad. Monday Chicken Divan, using part of a Costco Chicken and the leftover broccoli from late last week.  My Daddy's Killer Fried Rice Tuesday Salmon burgers with some cucumber yogurt sauce and Greek Salad. Time to find that salmon cakes recipe. Wednesday Leftover quiche and creating a chicken with pasta Greek Salad. Thursday Fried rice, with Honey Baked Ham, and what should be the last of Greek Salad Friday The rest of the Costco Rotisserie Chicken. Using Portuguese Sausage Stuffing recipe but swapping the leftover Honey Baked Ham for sausage.  One of the side bonuses of Easter And of course, egg-salad sandwiches on toasted wheat bread every day this week. Perfectly Hard Boiled Eggs works well in batches, as long as the eggs have a little space around them. No changes to the sitting or boiling time. Lastly, I apologize for the temporary downtime on the site today, and thank the hardworking people at Weebly for getting everything back and running so quickly. Eat Well. Be Well. Even though all the kids are teenagers and college-aged, they still like the tradition of an Easter egg hunt and coloring eggs. This year's filling was more traditional--robin's eggs, gummy lifesavers in assorted Easter shapes and Avengers squinkies. However, the big winner is Cheezits scrabble letters. We'll see whether we get SAT or NC-17 words.  20 people cannot survive on Cheezits and candy alone, particularly teenagers. Our Easter brunch is a potluck for at least twice as many people that attend. Everyone gets leftovers. While we always look to try new recipes, there are also specific items that are required. For Easter, it's sushi, dim sum, quiches, hot cross buns and hard boiled eggs. Like the Easter egg hunt for teenagers, this is what makes the holidays so comforting. Mostly tried and true with a few changes thrown in over the years. With that, here's what we're eating for brunch tomorrow.
 Enjoy a fine Easter Sunday. May you have good weather and no rotten eggs. Eat Well. Be Well.  Korean food trucks are everywhere--Kogi, Korilla, Mama Kim's, and MoGo BBQ. It was time to see I could do something similar but without the FedEx-like truck. Mission accomplished. Even though our dining room has absolutely zero hipness factor compared to the food trucks. No wonder these trucks are so popular. Even better, it's pretty easy to do at home. Last night was Make-Your-Own-Bulgogi-Chicken-Wraps. Sides were purple rice (more on this later), gochu-jang sesame mayo, bean sprouts, lettuce and sliced cucumbers. Kim chee on the side, of course. I started at 5:30. We were eating at 6:30. In between, I was able to Facebook and send a few emails for work. There is a about 10 minutes of prep the night before, and I also made a trip to the Korean grocery store, also *before* I started this meal (See "Look Before You Cook"). The nice ladies at Hankook Korean Market were happy to recommend the appropriate spice level of gochu-jang and give explicit instructions for purple/black rice. First, purple rice is brown or white rice with a bit of Korean black rice. Black rice costs about $4 and one package will last a long time. Buying it came with two very stern warnings. 1) It will stain absolutely everything and 2) Add only a little bit to brown or white rice. I used 2 cups of brown rice and half a handful of black rice in the rice cooker. It makes it a pretty color and gives it a little flavor and more texture. All good things. Second, gochu-jang sauce is Korean chili sauce. It's the consistency of miso paste and has a very slightly sweet undertone. There are levels of gochu-jang hotness, and I was instructed to get the medium hot version. I'm planning on using more of it for spicy tofu and another Korean chicken experiment later this week. Household was very happy and requested leftovers for lunch. Click here for the complete recipe. Eat Well. Be Well. This week, I bought a bottle of gochu-jang sauce (Korean chili sauce) for various dishes of what I hope will be spicy goodness. Very thankful for the Korean grocery store! Simultaneously, I'm plowing my way through various cookbooks I've borrowed (See Saturday Night Cookbooks from a couple of weeks ago). So far, The Big Book of Potluck and Brunch! have been the best. PDQ Vegetarian Cookbook, In a Small Kitchen, and Make This, Not That will be going back to the library early. This week, along with gochu-jang, the Barefoot Contessa is up. Here's what's cooking this week.  Meatloaf, roasted asparagus, salad & rice Monday Myles Last Resort Meatloaf, roasted asparagus with parmesan (Barefoot Contessa), homegrown salad and rice. One barely needs a recipe for the asparagus, it's olive oil, salt, pepper and parmesan at the end. The husband also just finished the marinade for bulgogi using chicken for Tuesday's dinner. Tuesday Make your own Bulgogi chicken wraps with sesame (gochu-jang?) mayo. Inspired by the Korean food trucks, I'm using tortillas, baked bulgogi chicken and perhaps adding a layer of sesame-kochu-jang-flavored mayo. For veggies, I have bean sprouts from the Korean grocery store, kim chee, shredded lettuce and cukes. There's a good mix of hot/cold, cool/crunchy/spicy/creamy that should work well. Wednesday Cold rainy weather returns. Perfect for spicy tofu soup using gochu-jang, enoki mushrooms, onions, and won bok. There are about 5 recipes I'm comparing for this right now. Thursday Back to the Barefoot Contessa with parmesan chicken salad. This is basically chicken katsu with parmesan cheese added into the panko. The Contessa has a lemon vinaigrette I'm trying out. Friday Korean stewed chicken with spinach, or spicy chicken with broccoli. Both use gochu-jang. By week's end, our taste buds should be spiced out and well prepared for a robins' eggs and marshmallow peeps break. Just in time for our annual Easter Brunch. Eat well. Be Well. This week's dinners started out smoothly. I was very excited to have a local source for eggs, so it was ham and egg cups with fresh farm eggs on Monday and a new salad on Tuesday.
In particular, fruit and vegetable salad salad was a hit. The combination of nashi/oranges and a lime dressing make for a very clean and zippy salad. Click here for the recipe.  After that, not so much. Wednesday's Chicken curry should have been a no-brainer. Chicken, vegetables and either an S&B or Vermont brand curry block. However, sometime before 6:00 pm, definitely before the chicken and vegetables are already cooking in the pot, one should make sure that there is a block of curry in one's house. I missed that step. At 6:15 pm, ad-hoc chicken soup developed after adding a container each of vegetable and chicken broth, some spices and orzo. By 6:45 pm, it became orzo-risotto. By the end of the night, it would go into a pyrex dish, destined to become a chicken/orzo bake. Lessons Learned: 1) A block of Japanese curry really is essential for making Japanese curry. 2) Make sure you have it before you start cooking. 3) If you need something to absorb A LOT of liquid, orzo is a very good option. Guy Fieri made Thursday's turkey/brie puff pastry tarts sound so deceptively simple. I added a few more items and the flavors are definitely all there--turkey, apples, cranberries, a dollop of mustard and brie--in a puff pastry. However, a few construction and quantity issues need to be worked out. They weren't bad and there were no leftovers but that's because teeny-tiny tarts are a a tad insubstantial for two teenagers and two hungry adults. Lessons Learned: 1) TV is not real life, especially Food Network TV and Hawaii 5-0. 2) Some brie does not melt, even after 30 minutes at 400 degrees. At all. Best to find a soft version. 3) "Tart" no matter how much the yield, shouldn't be the main course of dinner. Friday's dinner was postponed so we can eat the orzo before it threatens further expansion. Eat Well. Be Well. | aboutI love to eat, so I had to learn to cook. This is my personal reference and I use it daily. Looking forward, when I turn a profit, 95% of net profit will go to programs to feed the hungry.  
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