Turkey Noodle Soup

Oma's famous noodle soup (vegetarian topping)

Oma's famous noodle soup (seafood topping)

Oma makes the BEST noodle soup!

Red Bean Rice

お赤飯

I made this rice dish in a dutch oven pot for the first time, and it turned out to be the best I've ever made!

Creamy Turkey Pasta

Mini Farfalle with Creamy Turkey Sauce

My daughter's preschool had a Thanksgiving potluck lunch today. Since one of her teachers don't eat red meat, I made this pasta dish with sliced turkey and red bean rice (お赤飯).

Stove Top Chicken Bake

Adding some whipped cream cheese made this dish nice and creamy. Pingu and I thought it was pretty tasty, but the kids didn't care at all as usual.

Ingredients:
1 pkg. Stove Top stuffing mix for chicken
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bit sizes
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
cream cheese
frozen green beans

Four Bean Chili

Four Bean Chili with kidney beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, and black beans.

I ended up using eight cans of beans and tomatoes for this chili, and it was a perfect opportunity to try my brand-new can opener for the first time.



This can opener is _FANTASTIC_! It had been on my wish list for quite some time, and now I almost feel stupid about not owning this sooner and never thought I'd ever enjoy opening cans this much. I love OXO!

OXO Smooth Edge Can Opener

Harusame Pork

ひき肉と春雨の炒めもの

Lotus Root Soup

蓮藕湯

Our number one favorite Chinese restaurant, Won Kee serves this soup often. It took me about ten years to get used to Chinese home-style soup, but now I love it. Especially now, my body (or shall I say baby?) truly does appreciate the soup. Ingredients: lotus root, pork/chicken bones, dried fig, Job's Tear barley, red beans, ginger and salt.

Double Sesame Bread

練りごまブレッド
Baked with roasted white sesame and white sesame paste

Miso Kenchin Jiru

味噌風味けんちん汁
I added miso to the Kenchin Jiru I made yesterday.

Tomato Egg

トマト卵炒め

Kenchin Jiru

Kenchin Jiru typically has satoimo and konnyaku, but since I didn't have any, I threw in regular potatoes and shirataki instead. I didn't even put any tofu either because the pot got pretty full with just vegetables (I just really felt like eating lots of vegetables today. My body is very good at telling me what I should be eating recently). This soup is very VERY bland (and boring, in a way), so I really wasn't expecting the kids to eat much tonight. In fact, I was so ready to serve their favorite Korean seaweed to eat with steamed rice in case they wouldn't touch the soup at all. To my surprise though, they loved it! WOW! They ARE Japanese, I guess!

Anelletti with Chicken Meatballs

I happened to find Spaghetti-O's with Turkey Meatballs (For the love of cooking) the other day and had been wanting to try making it. I just cannot, however, get used to the taste of turkey even after living in the U.S. for over 15 years, so I decided to use ground chicken instead. For my daughter who is allergic to eggs, I used Egg Replacer.


Other minor changes include using panko (in place of Italian style bread crumbs), dried onion (in place of fresh sweet yellow onion), etc. The pasta dish was very tasty, and everyone in my family ate a lot!

OXO's Small Cookie Scoop made it so easy to make tiny meatballs!

Anelletti is little O-shapged pasta sold at Trader Joe's. I usually prefer long pasta, but the kids LOVE Anelletti.

Costco Chicken Pasta Soup
The kids love eating the O's in soup too.

Balsamic Vinegar Bread

Goes well with pasta and salad.

Kinako Dango

I brought about 100 of these little dango with kinako (soybean flour) coating to my son's class this morning. There were forty kids, so each got to eat two. Some kids were too afraid of trying the dango, but most of them loved it.

Since I didn't take a picture of the dango right after I coated them with kinako mixture (soybean flour, sugar, and salt), they don't quite look right, unfortunately. These dango I made last week look more like it.

「ころころ、もちもち。おだんごのおやつ　～　アレンジいろいろ」　
『かぞくのじかん』 vol.08, pp.56-59

Grilled Chicken Takikomi Gohan

焼きチキンのコクウマ炊きこみご飯 (Quality of Life by JUNA)

I don't know what I was thinking, but I put the green onions in the pot too soon (I was supposed to do that after the rice got cooked!), so they aren't bright green. :( Oh well... at least everybody liked it.

Caffè Limone Bread

Mitarashi Dango

みたらしだんご

I made over 150 of these little dango with shiratama flour (白玉粉) and tofu this afternoon and plan to bring 100 to my son's class tomorrow morning.



The syrup is made with soy sauce, sugar, water, and potato starch.

「ころころ、もちもち。おだんごのおやつ　～　アレンジいろいろ」　
『かぞくのじかん』 vol.08, pp.56-59

Vegetarian Okonomiyaki

Egg-Free Vegetarian Okonomiyaki

I used to always use regular flour for making okonomiyaki before, but this time I tried okonomiyaki mix. It wasn't bad!

Ingredients (for about four okonomiyaki):
Otafuku okonomiyaki flour (200g)
water (320 cc)
silken tofu (140g)
cabbage (300g)
---
green onions
tenkasu
katsuobushi (bonito flakes)
beni shōga (pickled red ginger)
Otafuku okonomi sauce

Pumpkin Bake #2

かぼちゃのアーモンドがけオーブン焼き (Quality of Life by JUNA)
Pumpkin Bake ~ egg-free version

Since we started eating wheat again, I added some panko to the Parmesan cheese/parsley mixture in the recipe I tried the other day.

A very useful tool for serving this dish:
OXO SteeL Lasagna Turner (in the second photo)

Blueberry & Cream Cheese Bread

Ingredients:
bread flour (250g)
water (175g)
salt (3g)
sugar (13g)
cream cheese (40g)
dried blueberries (70g)
yeast (3g)

Chocorooms

きのこの山！
About a month ago or so, I found these at Costco. I instantly liked the new English name! How perfect for the tiny, yummy mushrooms! I used to buy the smaller Japanese version of this at Asian stores every once in a while. They usually charge close to $2 a box, but this ten-pack doesn't even cost $10. What a deal! I hope Costco will have them after the holiday season too.I like the original package better though. It reminds me of my childhood in Japan...

Potato Chicken

とりとポテトの香草焼き

Chicken, thinly sliced potatoes, and asparagus cooked in consommé soup with fresh rosemary from the backyard, garlic and parsley. It doesn't look so pretty but tasted good. Great with steamed rice!

Veggie soup & bread

Veggie Soup with tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions and lots of O-shaped pasta called Anelletti by Trader Joe's & Veggie SHOT Bread

I really didn't expect the kids to eat much today, but they actually ate a lot! They even ate some "visible" pieces of vegetables in the soup and liked the bread too. I was so happy!

Veggie SHOT Bread

充実野菜パン

This is one of the best bread I baked so far! Believe it or not, it was baked with juice that has 20 kinds of VEGETABLES like carrot, spinach, sweet potato, red bell pepper, green beans, celery, lettuce, broccoli, kale, pumpkin, green bell pepper, asparagus, Napa cabbage, cabbage, radish, etc.!!! It tasted so good that the kids ate a lot too! The juice is called 充実野菜 or Veggie SHOT and is made by a Japanese tea company.