Dairy & Egg-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

My son and daughter made these cookies by themselves! They were so proud. :D

『かぞくのじかん』 vol. 03 pp. 48-49 のシンプルクッキーを少しアレンジして、「乳製品・卵なしチョコレートチップクッキー」を長男と長女が一生懸命作りました。二人とも大喜び！みんなでおやつに美味しくいただきました。


OXO Good Grips Silicone Cookie Spatula

Garlic-Mashed Cauliflower

Garlic-Mashed Cauliflower@Just Hungry & Hijiki Rice （ひじきの炊き込みごはん） Well, these two may not be a perfect match, but my son had requested the rice dish days before, and I decided to try the cauliflower recipe at the last minute... My family liked it. :)

OXO Good Grips Smooth Potato Masher

Fresh Peach for Baby

This tiny prep bowl by OXO is perfect for making baby food! I don't understand why these bowls weren't popular in the U.S. They're still a hit in Japan though. I should have bought like fifty of them when Amazon and Target had them on sale (I could tell they were going to be discontinued)!!! Now I can't even buy them here. :( This item is one of the few things that do show different custom/style between Japanese and American kitchens.

With its lid on, it can be stored in the fridge.

Mango Beauty

OXO SteeL Mango Splitter

BBQ Sweet Potatoes for Baby

OXO Good Grips Smooth Potato Masher

My baby loves Pingu's BBQ sweet potatoes, so I'm freezing some so that he can have it anytime he wants. :d

A surprise from OXO

OMG, I received these incredibly amazing gifts from OXO today! I almost cried!!! My baby started eating solid food very recently, so the timing couldn't be any better. Will take more pictures when he can feed himself.

THANK YOU! ありがとう！
Vielen Dank! 非常感謝, OXO!

Fork & Spoon Set

Training Plate

Small & Large Bowl Set with Lids

10 lb. of Organic Cherries

We picked close to 10 lb. of cherries from one of our trees in the backyard. There were so many that even OXO's biggest (5 qt.) mixing bowl couldn't hold all the cherries!

Roasted Tofu

This is very easy to make, and it turned out pretty close to 厚揚げ atsuage (deep-fried tofu)! I couldn't believe it.

How to roast tofu@CHOW

I didn't want to mix the greasy tofu with my hand, so I used Small Silicone Spatula. I love the raspberry color, and this tiny spatula is convenient for doing many little things.

Hiyashi Chuka

My lunch today: 冷やし中華 - Hiyashi Chuka (cold noodle with ham, eggs, cucumber, and ginger). This is something I wanted to eat every day when I was having morning sickness last spring/summer/fall!

This 6-Inch Double Rod Strainer is perfect for rinsing one serving of noodle.

Hiji Rice & Tofu Miso Soup

This is a meal my three-year-old daughter and I made today!

When I'm with a toddler and an infant all day long, it's very difficult to cook, so I figured the only way to get things done is to get my daughter who loves to help in the kitchen involved. Since we had to use small chunks of time between my baby's feedings, and any task takes extra long when a child "helps," we slowly started preparing dinner in the morning.

Grating carrots is so easy with this daikon grater.

I love the lid! Since we weren't going to cook the carrots until later in the afternoon, we stored it in the fridge.

These stainless steel 5 qt. mixing bowl and colander are perfect for soaking hijiki (small pieces of seaweed).

The miso strainer set is easy and fun to use even for a three-year-old Princess!

Spinach & Orange Salad

I've been wanting to try the new garlic press that OXO gave me recently and decided to make this spinach salad with mikan. It wasn't bad. Pingu was surprised that the salad dressing had no oil.

Dressing ingredients:
3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 garlic clove - pressed, of course
1/2 tsp. dry basil
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. country dijon mustard
black pepper
nutmeg

Old model (left) & new model (right)
Mr. Old wasn't so happy first and a bit jealous of the newcomer, but now they happily stay together in my kitchen drawer.

It was fun to try using the brand-new garlic press. It looks like it can hold more than one clove of garlic and is easier to press. I also like the handle part since it doesn't hold water after washing unlike the old model.

Peasant Bread

We love the bread they serve at Romano's Macaroni Grill Italian Restaurant, and I've been wanting to try to bake something like that for a while. I finally searched for peasant bread recipes for bread machine and tried one of them with some adjustment. Since I didn't want to have to take out the dough, shape it, let it rise, AND bake it in the oven, I took out the bread pan right before the bread machine would go into the baking cycle, brushed the dough with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and put the pan right back into the machine.

The bread was fantastic and came pretty close to Macaroni Grill's bread! I was so proud of myself. :) Of course, everybody in my family loved it that we finished the whole loaf again. It made my day!

Ingredients:
bread flour (250g)
water (165g)
olive oil (38g)
salt (5g)
sugar (15g)
fresh rosemary (1 tbsp.)
yeast (1 tsp.)

This silicone pastry brush by OXO worked perfectly for brushing olive oil.

Creamy Chicken Curry

By using coconut milk, I was able to make this curry very creamy without milk, heavy cream, or yogurt for my daughter who's allergic to dairy.

I grated two BIG organic carrots that I bought at Nijiya with its skin on using OXO daikon grater.

At the kids' bedtime, I read this very short book called "carrot" (I wanted to read a longer story, but I had to feed my baby). It ends by saying, "Who likes carrots like rabbits?" My son and daughter both said, "Not me!" I then said, "Didn't you eat carrots in the curry tonight?" My daughter responded, "You didn't put any carrots in your curry, did you?" Ha! I won this time. :D

OXO Garlic Press

I won this beautiful garlic press by OXO last month at this "Closer Look at OXO... through 20 years!" web site. Can't wait to use it. OXO is such an awesome company!

Happy Girls' Day!

I learned earlier this week on Facebook that my favorite company, OXO celebrates Girls' Day or Hinamatsuri. What a nice surprise! I then decided to try to cook a Hinamatsuri dish with as many OXO items as I could. Although I couldn't spend so much time as I would have liked, I think I did a pretty good job for having a one-month old baby (I had to work small steps between feedings)!

I also had some other challenges:

1. I had to make sure the cake had no dairy or eggs for my daughter (the yellow color of eggs would have been perfect for decorating it though). I was going to use ham (cute pink color!), but it was raining this morning, and I didn't want to go to a grocery store with an infant in the rain, so I grabbed a can of SPAM from my little pantry and shredded it.

2. Last year, I made Hina Doll rice balls and used quail eggs for their faces (I didn't know that my daughter was allergic to eggs back then!). Since I really couldn't think of anything white and egg-shaped this year, however, I completely gave up on making the doll part edible and used paper dolls instead. Using mini magnetic clips for holding the Emperor and the Empress was a very last minute idea I got, and I hoped OXO people would notice it without me telling them when I posted a photo of this sushi cake on their Facebook Page.

3. I made flower-shaped carrots and daikon for miso soup, but you know what? They don't float!!! What was I thinking? I should have made osuimono (clear broth)! So I scooped some of the carrots out of the miso soup pot, rinsed them, and put them on top of the cake. Phew, it kind of worked, didn't it?

So, here's a list of OXO tools I used today:

Flexible Vegetable Brush
4-Inch Mini Santoku Knife
Swivel Peeler
Miso Strainer Set
Rice Scoop
Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl (as a mold)
Magnetic Mini Clips
Pie Server

Now OXO people, if you're reading this, please leave some comments, please!

Santoku Knife & Swivel Peeler

Rice Scoop

Miso Strainer Set

Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl (as a mold)

My sad miso soup. The carrot and daikon flowers are in there though!

Happy Hinamatsuri!!! My daughter loved this cake and ate so much! That made me really happy. :D