We all know fried food is bad for us, but how can you resist crispy, crunchy, tasty tempura?  Forget about your cholesterol level, forget about those jeans you’ve been wanting to get back into, forget about your New Year’s resolution to eat healthier. Throw all of that out the door and simply, LOVE tempura with me, just for a little while.  :) I don’t eat tempura often (only when dining at a good Japanese restaurant), but...

  Sauteed Chinese baby bok choy is another quick and easy veggie that I make regularly for dinner.  It goes really well with the ready-made char siu that I buy at the 99 Ranch Market deli, and makes for a REALLY quick dinner on days when there’s too much going on and I don’t have a lot of time. Until I met bebe dada, I only bought baby bok choy when I made chow mein (a recipe for a future post).  He taught me how to prepare this...

Karashi Mentaiko is one of those foods that I refused to eat as a child.  Why?  You guessed it – It’s because of the way it looks.  It’s not pretty. It wasn’t until some time post-college when my Auntie Tree Village (our closest family friends) went back to her hometown in Kyushu, Japan and brought back fresh frozen mentaiko for our family. After some encouragement from my mom, I tried a bite, and it was so...

Strawberry season is here!  We always know when the season is in high gear because Marie Calendar’s starts selling their fresh strawberry pies and our local organic farmer, Tanaka Farms, starts their strawberry picking tours. If you’ve never been strawberry picking, it’s definitely worth the trip!  The whole family can take a bumpy wagon ride through the farm grounds with a tasty treat at the end… all you can eat...

I love zucchini, but pureed zucchini is something I never would have thought to make for bebe E. According to “The Baby & Toddler Cookbook“, zucchini is a natural first food for babies because of it’s tender texture and very mild flavor.  In addition, it’s thin skin makes it easy to prepare and easy for baby to digest. Because bebe E will eat the skin of the zucchini, I felt it was important to buy organic. So...

  Last night was one of those night’s where Bebe E and I were home alone for dinner.  It was quiet and lonely…   :( For the past several years bebe dada’s been involved in a fundraising committee for a large charity in our county, and last night was the kick-off planning meeting for their annual winter gala. I slightly dread these evenings when he’ll be home late (or if he’s traveling) because it means the...

Wakame and Katsuo-bushi are the basic ingredients for homemade katsuo dashi. I’m so lucky my BFF lives practically across the street from us.  As little girls, we often said how wonderful it would be if our houses were right next door to one another when we grew up.  Well, across the street is pretty excellent in my book.  :) Since I started my blog, I’ve called on BFF to take extra food off my hands, such as sakura mochi....

For the last 2 months I’ve been buying sweet potatoes with red skin, hoping to find vibrant, orange flesh on the inside.  The past 3 times I purchased sweet potatoes for bebe E, I’ve been disappointed to find whitish yellowy-green flesh. There’s been some confusion in our family about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams.  We always believed yams were different from sweet potatoes and had red skin and orange flesh,...