New Food

Tonight's dinner contained an ingredient that was new to me: Swiss chard. My mom brought back some home-grown swiss chard from a dinner party and enlisted me to come up with a way to use it. A quick internet search (seriously, how did people--myself included--ever live without it?!) revealed a few promising recipes, including this one for Swiss Chard and Sausage Fritatta from Sunset Magazine.

The process:

I used 6 big leaves of Swiss chard, chopping off most of the red, woody part, and cutting them into smaller pieces.

Sausage, onion, bell pepper and mushrooms and a bit of olive oil went into the skillet first.

Next, I added the chard, stirring occasionally until it had wilted and there was room to pour in the egg mixture, which consisted of eggs, some grated cheddar cheese and a pinch of salt.

The recipe said to start the fritatta on the stove and transfer it to the boiler to set the top, but with a lid on it, mine was pretty much set after 15 minutes.

Served! Swiss chard has a bit stronger flavor than say, spinach, and I think using mildly spicy sausage helped make it extra tasty. Usually I feel like I need ketchup or Tabasco on my eggs, but neither made an appearance tonight ;-)

Mystery Food

One of my new year's resolutions for 2010 (yes, a whole year and a bit ago, not a typo) was to try and grow some of my own produce in the backyard. As far as resolutions go, it went extremely well! Last March, around the time most people's resolutions are but a distant memory, mine was just taking off.

After a slow start--it took two rounds of planting to get anything to grow, I ended up with one cucumber (there were others, but the whole vine succumbed to the scorching Arizona summer before they could be harvested,) several cherry tomato plants and a bunch of the following:

Can you tell what it is?

Nope, not beans or peas, although the next photo is terribly misleading.

Below are the roots. Not edible as far as I know. I find it really interesting that such a stalk-y plant has such fine, furry looking roots.

And for the final clue, I will admit to planting it way too early. I watched the first leaves slowly emerge from the ground and suffer through the summer, only to have them barely start producing anything edible just as I was leaving for Japan last November.

They did incredibly well during my absence (or was it the cooler weather?) and when I returned in February of this year, the plants and stalks were practically my height (granted, the bed they grow in is about knee high)

Know the answer?

It's broccoli!!

The bean-like things in the photo above are the seed pods that have emerged after the part we know as broccoli had sprouted and flowered. The plants hadn't produces any broccoli crowns for a few weeks, so today I started to rip them out to make room for this year's crops. I've planted tomatoes and cukes again, and added some "teeny zucchini" and "small" (10 lbs, not 20-25 lbs) watermelons. As I type this, the "garden" is completely indistinguishable from a swath of dirt, but I am really hoping that changes soon when tiny green leaves start peeking up from the soil.

Keeping up with Keizo

Given the title of this blog, I think it's kind of important to keep you all appraised of what Keizo has been cooking and eating too.

First, thank you for the kind notes and inqueries in light of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Thankfully, Fukuoka, where Keizo lives is located at the opposite end of the island chain from Sendai. His family lives on Shikoku, and they are also safe and sound. Still, the devastation to the north is a big shock to everyone and it will take a very long time before life returns to some semblance of normal for those in the affected area.

Now with the geography lesson out of the way, time for the food!

It seems my love of pasta had rubbed off quite a bit on Keizo:

Bow-tie pasta with sauteed onions, chicken and pesto sauce.

Yummy-san's 3 step minestrone soup with carrots, chicken meatballs and pasta.

But he's also been cooking up some more traditional recipes. He had some teammates over to help him eat the kimchi nabe below:

And this week he is visiting his parents at their traditional house way up in the mountains of Tokushima. I was lucky enough to visit at the end of the my first stint in Japan, and his parents are amazing cooks. Homemade okonomiyaki:

One day we will be back cooking and eating together, but for now, this will have to do.

What I love about Sunday

There are lots of things to love about Sundays. Sleeping in is one of my favorites.

This past Sunday also included a trip to Costco with my parents. In addition to sampling beef ravioli, sourdough toast, pomogranate juice and some chocolate covered cherries, Baba Foods was having a hummus extravaganza with all sorts of different flavors. The deal was pick 3 for $12, so we left with a spicy chipotle hummus, tabouleh salad and a pack of pita bread. Not having completely satisfied my hunger with all those samples, I dished up this delicious lunch when we got home:

Whoever thought to put olives in bread is a genius.

Pi Day!

Monday, 3/14 was Pi Day, and it also happened to be the day the whole family was around to celebrate Mom's birthday! We had dinner at a Thai restaurant and headed to the Mesa Art Center to experience Amococo, "the most labyrinthine luminarium." Click on the link for some great photos...it's kind of hard to explain.

Anyway, back to Pi Day. I could hardly let it go by without a pie, and the following is probably the easiest pie ever. I don't even need the recipe anymore (although I have bought all the ingredients and then walked out of the store without the pre-made crust--kinda important)

Chocolate Pie: start with 1 1/2 to 2 cups of "rocks," which is basically any combination of your favorite chocolate candies, chopped into small pieces.

Oreos and Reese's are pretty much standard at this house. In a separate bowl, combine one 3 oz package of instant chocolate pudding mix with 1 cup of milk. Stir, then fold in small container of non-dairy whipped topping. Add the rocks and pour into prepared chocolate cookie crumb crust.

Since it was a special occasion, I got out the chocolate chips and attempted decorating. It was harder than I thought it would be.

Cover and put the pie in the freezer to harden; remove 5-10 minutes before serving to thaw enough to get a knife through it.

Eat! I may or may not have had some of the leftovers for breakfast one day this week...

Family Affair

Much to my mother's delight, both my brother Andrew and I have developed an affinity for experimenting in the kitchen. I tend to do more baking, but Andrew has really taken the metaphorical cake with some of the dinners he has prepared for us during his breaks from school.

Over the weekend we enjoyed turkey chorizo burgers and Baja inspired fish tacos, both of which were accompanied by Andrew's signature guacamole.

The fish tacos consisted of fresh baked tortillas topped with breaded tilapia fillets, "Baja" sauce (mayonaise, sirracha hot sauce, jalapenos, onion and cumin), cabbage and guacamole.

Andrew breaded the fish with a mixture of cornmeal, chili powder and salt and pepper for flavor, then pan-fried it. The preparations took a while, but the actual cooking time in this recipe was quite minimal, easily less than 15 minutes.

Delicioso! I wish he made it home more often.

Berry Good

There are times when I bake for no special reason, but it's always more fun to do it with something in mind.

Last weekend's event was a sort of "girl's retreat" with my uber-smart, med-student friend Amber, her sister Ash, and friend from med school, Sarah, at the cabin in the teeny town of Strawberry, AZ where Amber has been staying while finishing up a rotation in rural family medicine. Not wanting to show up empty handed, I spent the morning in the kitchen the day before whipping up some muffins.

I picked out the recipe before I knew exactly where the cabin was located...but it turned out to be quite fitting--Strawberry Cinnamon Muffins!

Start with 1 1/2 cups of fresh sliced strawberries.

Add to muffin batter made up from all of the usual suspects (flour, sugar, eggs, margarine, cinnamon, etc.)

Stir, and ladle carefully into paper lined muffin tins. Bake.

After baking, when the muffins are cool enough to touch, remove from tins and place on a cooling rack to avoid soggy bottoms.

Perfect for snacking or breakfast. Little known fact: strawberries are just as good in muffins as blueberries or cranberries.

Vegan Raspberry Blondies

While I love cheese too much to adopt the vegan lifestyle on a daily basis, I like to try vegan dessert recipes...pretending that the word "vegan" makes them better for you. The biggest difference between vegan baking and traditional baking is that you can't use eggs. There are a few things you can use as substitutes like tofu or ground flaxseeds, but I prefer using things that are easy to find and ready to use at the regular grocery store like almond milk and soy yogurt.

The following recipe comes from Vegan with a Vengance, which I borrowed from the library a while back and loved. I tried maybe half a dozen recipes from it, and while they were all good, this is the one I still think about on a regular basis.

Start by preparing the raspberry layer: frozen raspberries, a little cornstarch, water and sugar simmered down into a nice thick sauce.

Next prepare the blondie layer: flour, sugar, almond milk, soy yogurt, canola oil, vanilla and baking soda combined to make a thick dough. Bonus points for coordinating outfits with the dessert you are preparing :-)

Set aside 1 cup of the dough mixture, then spread the rest in the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 pan. Cover with raspberry sauce, then crumble reserved dough mixture and sprinkle chocolate chips on top. I used regular semi sweet chocolate chips, which I do not believe are vegan; but then again I also used regular yogurt in this batch as well (shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!)

Bake at 350 F for 35 minutes. The top becomes a nice golden brown.

Delicious! The preparation isn't much harder than a prepared brownie or cake mix, but the results are in a different league completely.

Lunching Alone

Keizo purchased a non-refundable ticket for his trip to the States, so we said goodbye for the time being on February 28th. Even if he had been able to change the date of his return, he had a work event on March 6th to get back to, which you can see some fun photos of here.

Not having any real job prospects and fearing that Japanese Immigration might not want to let me into the country on my 4th tourist visa since leaving in 2009, I am in Arizona for a bit, trying to figure out what to do next. There are some big decisions to make, and it's overwhelming to say the least. I even turned down my mom's offer to take me out for gelato. Something is not quite right...

But life goes on; there's food to be made and eaten and this blog has been a good outlet since its inception so it will continue. Think of it as "Two betsu betsu baras" or "two very very separate stomachs."

On to the food--today's topic is lunch, which I have been enjoying on the patio lately. It's been almost in the 80's here, which is lovely taken by itself, but a bit scary when you think about how it will only get hotter for the next 5 months.

Lunch 1: Leftovers! Homemade soup, salad from the Cheesecake Factory with some bread on the side. I ate this two days in a row.

Lunch 2: Wrap with turkey, provolone, spinach and roasted red peppers with a side of pear. The pears have been pretty good lately. I generally prefer Asian pears (a.k.a. nashi) because they are crunchier and less sweet than the American varieties, but this one held up pretty well and still had a bit of crunch to it without being under ripe.

IN-n-OUT

For those not fortunate enough to live in CA, NV or AZ, IN-n-OUT is a hamburger chain that prides itself on using only the freshest ingredients and being family owned. And while the food doesn't look that different from the offerings at McDonald's/Burger King etc, it does taste much better in my humble opinion.

Keizo agrees. Here he is February 2010 with his very first double-double.

Total game changer. Plus while we were waiting for our food, we got to watch the cooks shred whole potatoes (!) into fries and put them in the fryer. A bit more appetizing than those bags of frozen ones at other places...

His second trip to AZ in February 2011 would hardly be complete without a meal from IN-n-OUT, so we grabbed lunch there one day.

He enjoyed another double double and I ordered my usual grilled cheese...all the fixings of a cheeseburger, minus the patty (on the right in the photo above) Keizo was nice enough to share some of his fries with me, and I let him have some of my chocolate shake. It was plenty of food for both of us, and I probably shouldn't go back until he comes to visit again.

On a Roll

Being at home means having a spacious, well-stocked kitchen to work with. While I don't think that Keizo's apartment is lacking anything essential, we certainly don't have one of these:

Neither of us had actually used a slow cooker before, but it seemed like a fun thing to experiment with. We looked through an ancient cookbook of my mom's and settled on a recipe for cabbage rolls to serve to my friend Teri and my parents.

We got started assembling the rolls right after our late breakfast, since the recipe said they needed 7-9 hours to cook. While Keizo prepared the filling; ground beef, cooked rice, onion etc, I did my best to remove the outer leaves from a head of cabbage without shredding them into pieces. Some came out better than others, but we were able to use all of them without much difficulty. Next, the cabbage leaves got a nice hot bath in boiling water for 3 minutes.

Each of the 12 leaves got a 1/4 cup of filling and then I rolled them up and stacked them inside the crock pot.

Then I covered them with a mixture of tomato juice seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper etc, put the lid on and turned it on low heat and let it sit.

As the dinner hour approached, I made a green salad and garlic toast (a dinner staple.)

Our meal:

The rolls were tasty, although next time I think I would add some more seasonings and maybe some garlic to the mix/sauce. I think it would also be interesting to try making them with tofu and maybe some minced roasted vegetables. Oddly the leftovers we ate for lunch the next day tasted even better, as if 8 hours stewing in a pot wasn't long enough for all the flavors to meld. A delicious culinary mystery.

Pizza Party!

Two's company, but three is a party!! And what do you serve at a party? Why, pizza of course!

One Saturday, Keizo and I made a quick trip to Costco, which is barely 10 minutes from my parents' house. As I pulled into the parking lot, he uttered an amazed "We're here already?" The Costco in Japan is about 30 minutes from his apartment, making it a rather inconvenient place to pick up just one or two things.

We stocked up on some household staples and grabbed a plain cheese take and bake pizza. When we got home, we got started assembling the toppings bar; we had spinach, sausage, bell peppers, sun dried tomatoes, olives, onions and mushrooms!

We also picked up some wine, and since we were at my parents' house, there were actual wine glasses to drink from!

One of my best friends from high school joined us for dinner and we got started decorating our own pieces of pizza. Then we popped the whole tray in the oven at 400 F for about 10 minutes and we were ready to eat.

Jenny and I showing off our mad pizza decorating skills on round 2.

After dinner, we were joined by Jenny's husband and we brought out the board games. First we played Jenga, then moved onto Pictionary, which provided us with hours of entertainment. I don't think they left until after 12. I really hope we'll all get a chance to do it again...just not quite sure when that will be.