Monday, May 30, 2011

How does my garden grow?



I suppose we'll find out together.

I've planted alpine strawberries, aka shiso, kale, Chinese mustard greens, lavender, two kinds of cherry tomatoes, spinach and poppies (just for fun). Sky Nursery was a very fun place to shop for plants.

The Boyfriend suggests we get a little table to add height to the plants and get them more sun. I agree, but this is all right for right now.

This is my first garden (technically I had another one as a child, but I basically put seeds in the ground and forgot about them), so I'm excited to see how everything turns out.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

So...

I had to set up another entire blog just to be able to access this one. That was really a bother.

Monday, May 23, 2011

sakana nabe



I made nabe for dinner the other night. It was salmon, daikon, carrots, green onion, and beech mushrooms. The broth was a standard dashi. I cut the carrots and daikon into stars and maple leaves using tiny cookie cutters. The left over cut outs can be further cut up and used in stir fry.

I didn't really like the green onion this way. I guess it just isn't a vegetable to be boiled.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Another lunch



That was a lunch comprised of left over gyuudon (home made of course), edamame shumai (store bought of course) and rice balls. The two white ones were stuffed with more gyuudon and the colorful one was empty but rolled in a seasoning mix called furikake.

That gyuudon was made with onions, thinly sliced beef, soy sauce, mirin, sugar and vanilla rum. It was a very rich sauce.

I believe the monkey face is full of hot mustard.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The thing about hobbies

is that they take a back seat when your life gets busy.



This is a maguro-don that I made... two weeks ago?

You see, I've developed a weakness for raw fish. When cooking up some salmon for dinner I'll "trim" a small piece off, dip it in a little wasabi and eat it while I fry up the rest. I generally buy fish from the Korean market (because it's cheaper) and it's usually labeled "sushi/sashimi" grade.

"Maguro" means fatty tuna and "-don" means "on or in a bowl of hot rice" (roughly). So I cut up some raw tuna, added some shredded nori, some rice vinegar, some wasabi and some mentsuyu sauce. I gently mixed it up and then gobbled it down. It's for those of us who lack the knife skills of a sushi chef (which is most of us) and can't afford to get full at a sushi restaurant (which is most of us).

Two things.

One: sushi is generally supposed to be this "high", aesthetic experience where you eat one or two pieces and are very satisfied because they were so skillfully prepared. I have eaten that kind once (on my rich friend's dad's dime). Cheaper sushi is still delicious, but it's less of an experience and more of a "let's get an expensive dinner" kind of thing.

Two: Mentsuyu sauce is a soy, mirin, dashi mix that is generally used for eating somen. It is handy to keep around and add to savory things. I especially like it on pan fried broccoli.

In conclusion, raw fish is delicious and you shouldn't let your wallet or your knife skills prevent you from eating it.