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Totally in the Mood for Out-of-Season Food

4/8/2019

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It’s spring. I suppose we should be looking at lighter fare, but I have always loved Fall/Winter food. Maybe it has something to do with being a winter baby. Yes, even a winter Hawaii baby. So for the first recipes in a loooong while, I’m going with tried-and-true-love fall/winter dishes.

Both use perennial fall favorites, apples, and kuri, the Asian chestnuts that I get in packages. 

The fall-back from Spring recipes are:

Simplified Kuri Sausage Sourdough Stuffing
(New recipe!)

​The original is Bon Appetit and surprisingly simple. Even simpler after I got through it a few times :)

Easy Red Kuri/Kabocha Soup (Whoa! Another new recipe!!)
The original is from the WaPo, and a great dump and go soup. I like it with a variety of new mix-ins.

Leftovers roulette with these two is awesome. Soup is typically better the second day, and if you toast the stuffing a bit, it makes for a great crouton/soup or stuffing and gravy kind of meal. Pure home-cooked goodness.

It feels good finally, to write again. Thanks to you all who asked about cooking (and me). I'm still alive and cooking and so appreciate everyone reaching out!!

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What's Cooking This Week--Home food

4/21/2014

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Hello Spring! 

Taxes paid and Easter/Passover celebrated all in the same week. And based on a completely unscientific Facebook sampling, a lot of people are enjoying Maui, Grand and Bryce Canyons, and figuring out what kind of Beatle, dog, color or Disney Princess they are. People, we have to eat! 

Meatless Monday
4 Teenage Boys, 2 pounds of pasta, 2 loaves of garlic bread, a big box of salad greens, a pint of tomatoes, and one gigantic batch of Simple Tomato Spaghetti Sauce. They eat. A Lot. But we're always happy to have the boys over.

Nearly Meatless Tuesday
Kim Chee Pork. Because thin sliced kurobuta was on sale at Marukai. And because the pork is so rich, we don't need to use that much. Very manageable on a weekday.

PictureShabu Shabu--comfort food that's not heavy
Meatless Wednesday
Shabu shabu. We haven't had this in awhile and I've missed it.

Thursday
Mauna Lani Leftover Chicken Pasta Salad. My friend C threw this together from a bunch of leftovers we had when we vacationed in Kona. Making this always reminds me of that lovely time on the Big Island. It won't technically be leftover chicken as I'll probably buy a Costco chicken for it.

Aloha Friday
Portuguese sausage, eggs and rice. With the yolk of a sunny-side up egg mixed with a dash of shoyu in the rice. This is one of the very simple things I love best. 

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What's Cooking This Week--Home Sweet Home

3/9/2014

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PictureCalifornia fresh, I have missed you
After travelmania, I'm very happy to be back home. 

And so for Lent, I'm giving up eating like I'm traveling, and hopefully traveling too. This is not a sustainable pattern unless I'm planning on gaining a lot of weight or training to be some kind of Olympic athlete in a sport where middle-aged women can excel.

So here's what's cooking this week.

Meatless Monday
On the Fly Orzo Salad. With 70-degree weather and daylight savings kicking in, we may even eat outdoors.

Tuesday
Chicken apple sausage with red peppers, onions and zukes. I've noticed that Spaniards and Bostonians do not believe chicken sausages. No recipe required.


PictureLeftover curry + tonkatsu = Katsu curry!!
Wednesday
Katsu curry (Leftover Japanese curry stored from the freezer + Tonkatsu), namasu and salad.

Nearly Meatless Thursday
Okonomiyaki with kamaboko and a bit of char siu. Easy comfort food and minimal meat.

Fish on Friday
Simple Salmon baked with rock salt and fresh cracked pepper (no dill this time), rice, and roasted asparagus and tomatoes. I may add some tea rice at the end.

We had the fancy version of this at the Pineapple Room a couple of weeks ago, but it will be nice to have the home cooked simplicity.

Thank you all for keeping me honest with the weekly menu schedule. Your support is much appreciated!

Aloha to all. 

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Homage to Shoyu Hotdogs: Small-Kid Time Comfort Food

5/2/2013

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Humble food that makes you happy.
Shoyu hotdogs. My mouth is watering right now. 

Yes, I know hot dogs are not a healthy superfood.
Yes, I know shoyu on top of hotdogs really isn't nutritious.

But once in awhile, we need to have this kind of comfort food. Simply because it makes us happy. 

I'm not suggesting shoyu hotdogs be a once-a-week kind of dinner. Save it for a special occasion or when you really need it. Click here for the 'recipe.'

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What's Cooking This Week--Leftovers & Favorites

11/26/2012

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It's Monday and none of this is left
I thought I would not be cooking much this week when I looked over the fully stocked fridge on Black Friday.

Silly me. The teenagers were in the house all weekend. It's more like Mother Hubbard Monday in the fridge now. A half-bowl of cranberry sauce, a bit of turkey and mostly skin, roasted vegetables, three mouthfuls of stuffing and a bit of CoolWhip and apple pie are all that's left.

Monday and Tuesday should finish off the rest of the leftovers, and off to the grocery store I go tomorrow. Here's what's cooking this week.

Meatless Monday
Japanese Curry with leftover vegetables. I used the last shallots and half-onion, plus all the leftover parsnips, carrots and even Brussels sprouts for this curry. With the last of the Okinawan sweet potatoes and kabocha on the side. Curry makes everything taste good.

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Chinese "Turkey" Salad
Tuesday
Chinese Chicken (Turkey) Salad. This is the perfect use for the "kuzu" (i.e., leftover small bits) of turkey are always at the end of turkey leftovers.

Wednesday
Spaghetti and Meatballs, with Simple Spaghetti Sauce, as requested by the husband. And a simple salad with romaine hearts. A good break from all the heaviness of Thanksgiving food.

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Thursday
My Mom's Chicken Katsu, Co-Worker Kale Salad and rice. November is now too cold for my Mom to make the trip for Thanksgiving, so we'll make Mom-food this week instead.

Possibly-Meatless-Friday
Yakisoba. Meatless, or perhaps with just a little bit of pork. This is one of my son's favorite meals.

Eat Well. Be Well.

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What's Cooking This Week--The End of Summer

8/13/2012

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As much I as love summer vacation, I believe that the world ultimately works by the academic calendar. Full-time onsite employees with kids typically takes weeks of summer off, and in Europe and parts of Asia, companies definitely slow down in August. And while I almost look forward to the faster M-F cadence that the household shifts to once, school starts, it's always important to keep your inner aloha. With that, we end summer with "eat outside" food.
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Teriyaki Chicken--our go-to comfort dinner.
Monday
Teriyaki Chicken and Quinoa Salad, using dressing from Spinach Salad, but using honey instead of sugar. This worked really well as a change-up. I was out of Newman's Balsamic Vinaigrette and the Caesar or the Miso-Goma dressing in-house just wouldn't do.

Tuesday
Simple summer panini with fresh heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella and choice of pesto or tapenade. No roasted tomatoes needed in the summer! Plus fresh cantaloupe and watermelon.

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Kalua pig, we have missed you!
Wednesday
Crock Pot Kalua Pig. Everyone seems to like this and here is the most recent no-joke request for it. When I was in New England, someone left a sort-of-frantic-and-quasi-anonymous voice mail asking for the recipe. I had to figure out who it was by their voice and area code. This week, I'm serving it in a very down-home "Hawaii" way with cabbage, a fried egg and rice.

Thursday
Sweet and Sour Chicken. This now takes more than an hour since the kids eat so many, so I'm making it while I still have time in the afternoon.

Friday
Kalua pig taco cups with Li-hing pineapple. Since we missed going home to Hawaii this summer, I'm going back to some Hawaii cookbooks. This sounds like a good way to use those orphaned gyoza sheets one inevitably ends up with.

Enjoy every last bit of summer. 

Eat Well. Be Well.

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What's Cooking This Week--Proper Homecooked Meals

7/30/2012

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This is "staycation" week, full of Olympics watching and a lot of plain ole' nothing going on. It's essential for our summer vacation to go beyond relaxed and well into good and bored so that when the school schedule comes bustling in, we are all prepared and looking forward to it.

I've already stocked up on kim chee, sesame oil and a few other staples from the Korean grocery store and made the weekly Safeway run. Just don't expect to find me in the kitchen all day. It still all about manageable cooking and in the case of wonton, conscripting the children.
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Korean Mushroom Tofu
Meatless Monday
Korean Mushroom Tofu, bean sprouts and purple rice. I finally used the Korean cookbook from the library that was renewed TWICE before I even opened it. The tofu is a winner and the recipe will post later this week.

Tuesday
"Fixed" Lemon Chicken, Japanese Potato Salad and Cherry Salad. I have LOTS of lemons, cherries and fresh corn.

Wednesday
Wonton, using half of a freshly ground pork butt, and My Daddy's Killer Fried Rice, with kim chee. 

Thursday
Co-worker Kale Salad, My Mom's Chicken Katsu and Yaki Musubi

Fish on Friday
Baked Baby Scallops, theoretically the way I had them in Rhode Island, Greek Salad, and fresh corn on the cob.

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Homemade Pork Sausage. The all-day food.
Extras for the children and their compadres
Spinach veggie dip using a Knorr's pack and lots of cut carrots, peppers and green beans
Steve's Hummus
Loads of yogurt, nuts and berries, aka Squirrel Food.
Crackers, bagels, cheese, turkey and salami
Pints Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream: Phish Food, Chunky Monkey, Creme Brulee and Fresh Peach seem to be the preferred flavors, and they are on sale too. They're teenagers, they can eat like this!

Pickle Mango. This for me, and it wouldn't be summer without a batch of it. 
Homemade Pork Sausage, using the other half of the pork butt. Teenagers sometimes like to have a hearty breakfast. At 11:00 am on a Wednesday. Just because they can.

We are all looking forward to a stretch of homecooked meals together instead of the pseudo-foraging and travel of the last few weeks. 

Eat Well. Be Well. 

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More on Feeding a Cold

2/18/2012

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Life marches on--beautifully
Apologies for the absence. The entire household was slammed by a nasty respiratory virus. The kitchen was more like a medicine cabinet. The well-planned sick menu from 2/7 did not happen past last Tuesday. 

I'm on the mend, but still not quite genki (元気), already having gone through 2 boxes of tea, 6 lemons, a bottle of honey, at least 4 bottles of Odwalla Strawberry C Monster, grapefruits, tangerines, a package of li-hing mui, and various OTC meds for stuffy, achy, runny, congested and generally feeling-like-you-know-where.

How on earth do you feed your ohana when you're in a sick bed 15 hours a day? Be realistic. Wash your hands. Frozen meals, takeout, and whatever you can manage. And remembering that even 2 sick weeks out of my life is very short, and will pass. So here's how we managed. 

 With thanks to all who gave me your "Feed a Cold" suggestions, especially the ones for the hot toddies.

Bought. 
Citrus products. Grapefruits, lemons, tangerines. It's a little too convenient and just plain weird that these are in peak season at the same time as colds.

Boxed salad greens. There were a few days when salad just did not sound good, but this is one of those "You know it's good for you" foods. 

Made. Minimal cooking. Maybe 10 minutes of standing up at a time.

Breadmaker bread.I ran out of bread and was in no condition to go to the store. Bread is water, butter, flour, salt, sugar and yeast into the bread machine. Then go take a nap.

Teddy Bear Chicken Soup--Chicken soup has been sometimes dubbed "Grandma's Penicillin." Perhaps not my Japanese grandma, but there is something comforting about a hot bowl of soup when breathing through the nose is an impossibility. Made awhile ago, and frozen for just such days as these.

Miso soup with tofu. This is "My Mom's Pencillin." As a child, I had this whenever I was sick. So much so that for awhile, I didn't like tofu because I associated with being sick. Boil about 8 cups of water. Add about 1/4 cup miso and a few teaspoons of dashi. Cut up a block tofu, dump it in and you're done. Mom said it has everything that's good for you and no fat or oil so it's easy to digest.

Simple Spaghetti. Extra heavy on the garlic and red peppers and boiling water for pasta is good for your sinuses.

Takeout. Takeout is a fabulous option when you are sick, as long as you choose carefully. Light soups or stews or anything that's not too heavy or greasy. A little spicy is good when I'm congested.

Pho. Pronounced "Fuh," this is the generic name for all kinds of Vietnamese noodle dishes. Like miso soup, this is light warm broth. I had it with noodles, won ton, lime, bok choy, bean sprouts and jalapeno. Plus a drizzling of sriracha to help clear out my sinuses. Light, spicy and nutritious.

Tandoori chicken. Husband brought a big pan of this the night before he went down for the count. Spit-roasted spicy chicken with lime, roasted tomatoes and basmati rice. After all that soup, it's good to use your teeth.

Even when you fell icky, you can still Eat Well. Soon enough we will all Be Well. Stay healthy everyone!
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    I 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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