Tag: recipes

Bowing Down to the Masters

42 Comments

I’ll spare you the Spice Girls tonight. 😉 That stinkin’ song was stuck in my head for at least 24 hours.

Tonight we’re on to something new; although something that is still often stuck in my head as well. Sushi. I love sushi. This is a relatively new realization for me. I only tried sushi for the first time five years ago. Now I’m officially hooked. Addicted. It’s a must-have at least twice a month for me. It would be more often if it wasn’t for budgets and watching the mercury intake.  After all I don’t want to end up like Jeremy Piven.

So when A_Boleyn suggested we cook recipes from Japan – I knew sushi was going to be on the menu. Mike and I have made sushi the last few years on New Year’s Eve (also Mike’s birthday). After we put the kids to bed, we get cooking and have really enjoyed experimenting with various options. We’re not experts by any means, but that’s part of what makes this so fun for us. We’ve enjoyed some successes and tossed others in the trash – it’s totally trial and error. So after a sushi cooking class this past month, I figured we were ready to give it a go again – with the kids this time. Continue reading →

What You Want

45 Comments

The literal translation of Okonomiyaki, a Japanese savory pancake is, “what you want” for Okono, and “grilled” or “cooked” for yaki. I wanted to title the post with a play on the Spice Girls song, but Mike’s not a fan. I don’t think I was ever a fan, but I have to admit I know all the words to that song – rightly or wrongly.

As we mentioned last week, the prize winner of Miss A’s giveaway was A_Boleyn with her selection of Japan.  Last week we made a variation of one of A_Boleyn’s recipes for a tonkatsu and donburi. This week, we’re taking a suggestion from Charles over at Five Euro Food. While he wasn’t the winner, he too suggested Japan and offered up his recipe forOkonomiyaki. Thank you Charles! I know many of you know Charles, but for those of you that don’t – make sure to check out his site. His humor, common sense/down-to-earthness (if that’s a word) and clever recipes make him one of my favorites.

We also mentioned last week that outside of sushi, we’d never eaten Japanese cuisine. So when we saw that the Okonomiyaki was a cabbage-based pancake, we weren’t sure what to expect. I have to admit, not being a fan of cabbage, I wasn’t hopeful. We started by slicing a quarter of a red cabbage and one whole onion horizontally and finely. Continue reading →

Grill Some Goodness This Weekend

45 Comments

Now that summer is winding down, we have but a short time to get outside and enjoy the pleasant (albeit buggy) evenings before it begins to get too cold, too dark and filled with homework. So before these golden days are past, we thought we’d share a great grilling recipe from our adventures in the good ol’ state of Maine – Grilled Lobsters with Herbed Butter.

We again adapted this recipe from Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie by Rebecca Charles and Deborah DiClementi. Can you tell that I couldn’t get enough of this book while we were at the cabin? I think it’s actually the first cookbook that I read cover to cover. It’s full of wonderful family stories about summers spent vacationing on the coast of Maine.

Cooking from this book with my family on vacation somehow made me feel part of something bigger – part of a tradition; and traditions from around the world are, after all, what this whole cooking adventure with the kids is all about. I hope that it’s a way for them to experience old traditions, enjoy new traditions and to learn about the many cultures around the world. After all, food is such a large part of many traditions, making cooking a wonderful way to teach them, learn with them and most importantly spend time with them. Continue reading →

The Kats’ Meow (Couldn’t Resist)

39 Comments

You may remember a few weeks ago, Miss A held her giveaway in which the winner got to pick our next international destination. Well, now that we’re back home and in the swing of things (until school starting next week throws us out of swing again), we began our Japanese cooking adventure.

I have to admit, outside of sushi, none of us knew much about Japanese cuisine. The only thing Mike remembered was tonkatsu which he used to order when he ate at sushi restaurants with his parents. Fortunately our prize winner, A_Boleyn,  sent us several suggestions. Thanks A_Boleyn! So for tonight’s menu we have Tonkatsu, EggplantKatsu and Katsudon.

But first, a few weeks ago we featured our go-to weeknight sandwich. When we did, the Food Doctor from Chef in Disguise aptly quipped about my super hero cape. Well, Mike’s mom didn’t miss a beat and when we returned home from vacation I was presented with this awesome cape!  Continue reading →

In Case You Weren’t Sold on the Blueberry Sauce

40 Comments

I had planned to save my favorite Maine recipe for last. You know that old save the best for last thing, but this dish is just too good to hold back, and more importantly it goes perfectly with the blueberry sauce.  I’m calling it a handmade shortbread, which I again adapted from the cabin’s cookbook Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie by Rebecca Charles and Deborah DiClementi.

This recipe comes from the author’s grandmother, so I didn’t change-up the ingredients too much. I mean who am I to mess with a grandma’s recipe. In my experience, they know their stuff. Really the biggest change I made was in the preparation. The book uses a mixer to create the shortbread, but given the ingredients’ similarity to a pie crust and my love for making them…I decided to make this one by hand.

I started by cutting up two sticks of unsalted butter and sifting together the dry ingredients. The key here is to use room temperature butter for the shortbread.  Continue reading →

Shhh! We’re Looking for Moose. (And Eating Blueberries.)

30 Comments

Shhh! No one make a sound!

Can something so good be so easy? Yes. So easy in fact, that every night we were in Maine, after the kids went to sleep — usually after a short drive to “look for moose” or “watch the sunset” since that was the only way we could get Miss A to fall asleep — I made dessert. As parents, when you’re on family vacations, you do what you need to in order to get your kids to sleep and enjoy a few hours of alone time; even if that means driving for an hour at dusk because otherwise you’ll be awake with a three-year old until midnight. After that night, we took no chances.

Prior to our visit to the Pine Tree State I could take or leave blueberries. I typically only eat them in yogurt parfait. The kids on the other hand, love blueberries. They’d eat them straight-up at every meal if they could. So since blueberries grow wild all over Down East Maine and the kids love them, I figured I’d feature them in a few desserts. The first one I tried was again inspired by the book, Lobster Rolls & Blueberry Pie by Rebecca Charles and Deborah Di Clementi – Blueberry Sauce. Continue reading →