About 3 years ago, at the recommendation of my wife’s sister who used to live in the Philadelphia area before moving to California, we stumb...

I got the idea for this salad of julienned vegetables from two separate sources. One was a segment on a food blog I follow about a tempura r...

This is a variation of “ Mackerel meat ball soup 鯖のつみれ汁”. When I made “ Mackerel simmered in miso sauce 鯖の味噌煮” from two fairly large Spani...

I realized I got a package of fresh “Hira-take 平茸” or oyster mushrooms from Weee a week ago and decided to use it up. I came across this rec...

This is another one of the “use-up the eggplant dishes”. I have posted a similar dish “ Mapo-eggplant 麻婆茄子” before. This is a variation. It...

Cold noodles especially cold ramen noodles or “ Hiyashi ramen 冷やしラーメン” and “Somen 素麺” are very popular summer lunches. Surprisingly I have ...

This is an eggplant dish I came up using what I had on hand (#1). I got some ideas from other recipes I saw but I did not base this dish on ...

This is my effort to use up whatever we had on hand. The first item was nappa cabbage or “hakusai 白菜” I got from Weee. It was fairly big and...

I saw this recipe of “Mock tofu” or “Gisei-dofu 擬制豆腐” on Youtube by Chef. Kasahara 笠原. It looked interesting and I happened to have extra t...

Among the items in the Sushi Taro osechi box, was a grilled small “Tai” perch 小鯛の姿焼き that looks very nice and makes the osechi box festive a...

When we got the Sushi Taro osechi box, we also got two orders of hand-made soba  or “teuchi-soba 手打ち蕎麦” (Chef Kitayama is into making soba—w...

It is getting cold. We decided to have a hot tofu dish called “Yu-dofu” 湯豆腐.  “Yu” means “hot water” and “dofu” is “tofu*. I am surprised to...

This is a slight variation from “  kinpira  daikon ” 金平大根 I posted before. I made this dish since I had  the tail end of a daikon from Weee ...

When we had “ Hiya-oroshi ” 冷やおろしsake this year, one of them was from Yamagata prefecture 山形県 and is called “ Shounai-bijin  庄内美人” or Shouna...

This is another dish made using enoki mushrooms. I have posted quite a few enoki dishes . Turns out this is one of our favorite enoki dishes...

We like mushrooms. Our favorite is shiitake. Maitake 舞茸 or hen-of-the-woods is also great. Although it may not be one of our absolute favori...

We like “hen of the woods” or maitake 舞茸 mushrooms. They have a nice firm meat-like texture and flavor. We cooked maitke  many different way...

This is another variation of stir-fried eggplant  to which this version is very similar but I skipped a few steps to make it easier and quic...

Cold vegetables soaked in broth is the perfect dish for summer. I have posted cold simmered tomat o and sugar snap soaked in salt broth bef...

This is one of the left-over control dishes. I had a package of “medium firm” tofu 豆腐 which just reached “BUB” (Best Used By) date, the last...