Have you ever gone grocery shopping and lost a bag of groceries? If not, welcome to my world! I can laugh about it now, but there was a moment of confusion (sadly this confusion struck three hours after I returned from the market and not as I was putting groceries away) when I couldn’t find the cantaloupe that Bebe picked out for us. I thought that it might have rolled out of the bag in the trunk of our car… but alas that...

    One of the things about Mondays that I just can’t seem to shake is that I often feel as though I’m recovering from the weekend. While that statement might have had a different meaning in my twenties where I was often recovering from late nights dancing and clubbing with my besties, today, it means something entirely different. It means that we spent some time on Saturday in the hot sun at Nene’s (Bebe’s big sis)...

  At times I get homesick for my Mom’s cooking. Despite our recent warmer weather, we had a slight cooling trend with a touch of June gloom which prompted a craving for tonjiru, or traditional Japanese pork soup. It’s a miso based soup and the ingredients might vary just slightly from one family to the next, but ours consistently includes carrots, onions, gobo (burdock root), konyaku (devil’s tongue root), and pork. Usually,...

I have a black thumb. Unfortunately, I didn’t inherit my paternal grandfather’s amazing green thumb and ability to grow gorgeous rose gardens, tall beautiful sunflowers, wisteria nor every vegetable imaginable. My grandparents grew everything from fig trees, strawberries, avocado, lettuce, edamame, corn, potatoes, brown onions, green onions, peas, and of course Japanese cucumbers, to name a few. Me? An occasional container of basil,...

Pre-school is winding down for us this week, although we still have a little time before Nene’s high school lets out. Our plans for the summer are still up in the air and aside from swimming and play dates I’m not quite sure what activities Bebe will be involved with during the warmer months. The last month or so she’s been quick to let me know that she wasn’t interested in going to school although she always comes home...

Seriously, how could you NOT want to read more about a post entitled “Smelt Fish with Many Eggs”? It’s the perfect “come back” post after a long absence don’t you think? :) [Ok, yes, I am indeed being a little sarcastic.] I considered, the post title “Pregnant Smelt” since that’s almost the literal Japanese to English translation of “Komochi” which means, “fish bearing...

You can’t have a blog post without photos. But I finally realized this morning that I can continue to blog, despite the fact that my iPhoto application on my laptop has been completely out-of-commission for about a week now. I can’t upload any photos from my camera to my laptop, and I can’t access any photos that were previously uploaded prior to my tech-mess. Apparently, my iPhoto application is busy updating my library of...

It’s been SO cold here in Southern California and honestly, I haven’t wanted to leave the house much. Perhaps a daytime high temperature of 55 F degrees is “mild” by Midwest and East Coast standards, but for us Los Angeleno natives, that’s downright close to freezing. Call me a baby for whining about our “cold” SoCal weather, but aside from soup, chili, oven roasted foods and hot comfort dishes, I...