As a Japanese-American child growing-up in Los Angeles, I was fortunate to be a part of a local Japanese community which provided the opportunity to experience a number of wonderful cultural traditions. My favorite summer-time tradition was, and still is, attending Obon. Long ago when I asked my mom about the meaning of Obon, she told me that it was a time during which we remembered and honored our family members that have passed on. In our...

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Lately, I’ve been making dishes at home that I’ve enjoyed at some of my favorite restaurants, and nasu miso is no different. One of my favorite dishes at Fukada, a Japanese restaurant near the Irvine Spectrum in Orange County, serves a delicious side dish, nasu miso. It’s pan-fried eggplant dressed with a savory-sweet miso glaze. Some of you might be familiar with this dish as it is commonly found on Japaneseizakaya restaurant...

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Did you know that in Japanese, ice cream is known as “ice cream” or more accurately, “aisukurimu”? It’s ice cream pronounced with a Japanese accent, “eye-sue-coo-reem-mu”. Does this mean that black sesame ice cream in Japanese could potentially be, “boo-lack-oo say-sah-me eye-sue-coo-reem-mu”? At this point, I’m fairly certain my bilingual English-Japanese friends who are reading this...

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I’m the only one at home that likes cauliflower.  Why is that?  Is cauliflower THAT unpopular? Growing up, I ate this regularly, probably as often as I ate broccoli, green beans, snow peas, eggplant, corn, asparagus, artichoke and all kinds of other vegetables.  My mom was great at making sure we had plenty of veggies at dinner. Maybe I was just a weird kid because I loved so many vegetables?   Bebe Dada and Big Onechan no longer...

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View from the top of the bluff  at Laguna Beach. It’s been a very looooong time since I’ve posted food that I made for Bebe E. One of the reasons why I rarely post my homemade baby food is because it’s basically pureed organic fruits or veggies and honestly, it’s pretty boring stuff. Over the past several months, however, I’ve been taking photos of the food I made for Bebe E, thinking that one day I would write...

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  Every so often I get a craving for tofu steak. Do you ever crave tofu steak?!? Well, I had a craving for this a while back and made what I believed to be a “hearty” vegetarian dinner. I used to order tofu steak quite often at a little hole-in-the-wall izakaya in West Los Angeles (WLA) on Santa Monica Boulevard called Terried Sake House. Have any of you ever tried this place? It’s been a very long time since I’ve...

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  Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful extended 4th of July weekend! We had a fun-filled weekend, but a busy one!  Bebe E’s friend celebrated her 1st birthday, we went to two BBQ’s on the 4th, we finally rented and watched The Blind Side, and I went out with a few girlfriends to see Eclipse on Saturday night (a rare night out past 9 PM without my family) and I’m still hurting from getting home much too late....

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  Dreary, cold, June Gloom isn’t so bad when I know we’re having shabu-shabu for dinner. I’m sure there are many of you reading this that are thinking, “What? Shabu-shabu in the summer?” Trust me, it worked really well for us in Southern California last week while my mom was visiting. I woke up one morning to very gray skies and cool weather. I decided right then that we would have shabu-shabu for dinner that...

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