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...

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...

  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...

  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....

  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...

  Oh well, the Lakers lost 96 – 89 and the series against the Celtics is now tied 2-2.  :( For Game 4 of the Lakers vs. Celtics NBA Finals, I decided to do a little Googling regarding the rivalry between these two teams since I wasn’t familiar with the historical details.  Apparently, this rivalry goes back many years, ever since the NBA was founded in 1946.  (That’s a long time!)  Since then, the Lakers and Celtics have...

  Edamame gohan (brown rice with soybeans) is a simple mixed rice dish of edamame, nametake (Japanese mushrooms) and seaweed. This combination of ingredients really brings plain ol’ rice to life. It’s the perfect alternative for folks such as myself who don’t really like rice. (Photo Credit: Hideki Ueha) As a child, my parents made me sit at the dinner table until I finished my rice, but I was a stubborn child. I would just...

  This weekend I overindulged in food, some of it was really bad for me – like the Hamburger Doritos and fried wontons. Saturday night we celebrated three of my best girlfriends’ birthdays and we ate crab and temaki sushi.  I love these girls – they REALLY know how to eat.  :)  I forgot to take pictures of the crab but here’s our temaki spread.   Sunday night we watched the Lakers game with Yin-yin and Pa-paw (Bebe...