One of my favorite restaurants on the Westside of Los Angeles is the Urth Caffe. They serve a delicious chicken curry salad sandwich that I absolutely love. It’s fresh, flavorful, light and hearty, all in one delicious bite. I should also mention they have the BEST organic tea lattes EVER. Matcha tea latte and English Breakfast tea latte are my favorites! Because of geographical challenges, I don’t always have the opportunity to...

Not too long ago we had rainy weather in Southern California which is unusual, yet very much welcomed. Bebe E has really blossomed over the past three to six months and over the rainy weekend she and I were hanging out at home alone while nursing her little cold, when she came over to me, grabbed my hand and said, “come with me mommy” as she tried to pull me off the sofa, she repeated, “come mommy”. She walked with me...

  The other night I had leftovers from an okonomiyaki dinner we had with my brother (who was a bachelor for the weekend) and my “sista-from-another-mother” (a.k.a – Aya-chan) and her boyfriend, N. That night, I made my family’s Hiroshima – style okonomiyaki, but with the leftovers I made Kansai – style okonomiyaki. Several key ingredients had already been consumed, namely the soba noodles, moyashi (bean...

The week leading up to March 3rd, or Hinamatsuri (Japanese Girl’s Day), I was busy running errands to different Asian supermarkets. Bebe E was excited about her Hinamatsuri party and when I mentioned that I needed to cook or that I needed to run an errand, she started asking, “for my hina-ma-sri party?” :) Photo Credit: Hideki Ueha Many thanks to my bro-in-law for taking some amazing photos at our Hinamatsuri party! He has...

  As I was preparing to make chirashi for our Hinamatsuri (Japanese Girl’s Day is March 3rd) party over the weekend, I remembered that I liked the amazu renkon, or sweet pickled lotus root, as a topping for chirashi, but I couldn’t find it in my recipe index. Of course, it was logically embedded in last year’s 2011 Hinamatsuri chirashi post, but I decided amazu renkon needed a recipe post all on it’s own, and I...