Thanks to mothninja I have some wonderful basil growing on my balcony – yum! I love adding fresh basil to pasta dishes.

In my area you can only get pizza or sushi delivered – although i did cheat here by using a premade sauce.

Served with a sesame sauce. Veggie gyoza on the side.

Salads on the side.

Chicken wings poached and crisped, potatoes boiled up in the garlic/chicken water, and a simple but colourful salad.

Anago (sea water eel) tenpura! Totally unhealthy and indulgent but yum! Served with rice and tsuyu (sauce). On the side pickled ginger and takuan, and a salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumber and sprouts.

YUM!

Well, I was trying to make some room in the freezer, and I found some bratwurst I’d gotten a few months ago from my farmer meat guy. Stuck that in a pot with what was left of the Napa cabbage from last week’s dumplings, and half an onion. Poured over a bottle of hard cider and a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Salt and vinegar were added later and a little bit of butter at the very end… It took almost an hour to cook it down and get the water to evaporate, but ’twas worth it. The bratwurst (pork) was so flavorful!

and leftovers!

This turned out much yummier than I imagined it would.

RECIPE

Didn’t quite get the tastes right this time around and it ended up a bit salty. Even though I didn’t add in any salt.

I made a leg of lamb for Sunday dinner about a week ago and saved the rest of it in one of these wonderful vacuum bags I have- I just take the leftovers and any associated sauce, make a bag, and seal it tight, without any air in it and pop it into the freezer to enjoy again later, just by boiling to reheat. Easy enough, huh? Once again, it seemed that sweet potato fries were the right match to go with the lamb, and I flavored them with just a little bit of curry powder. Beets are in season, and we both seem to like them best freshly boiled, then chilled and served plain, although tonight I put them over some tabouleh to go with the lamb. And tonight’s salad was a mixture of greens, cress and endives, with radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and green onions, and a vinaigrette I made using some juice from the freshly crushed first black raspberries of the season from my own personal bramble in the back yard.

Soooo, another post by me.

I got some ahi tuna steaks from the freezer section at Trader Joes. They had some sort of marinade on em, garlic, pepper, vinegar or lemon or something acidic, and a bunch of olive oil, among other stuff… Anyway, cooked them up in a pan and they were pretty good.

I also had some rice and broccoli with minimal seasonings. Eh, not too bad. I’d buy the fish again and remember to NOT put the leftover marinade in the pan while the fish is cooking, as it is mostly oil.

…Or else they just changed their phone number.

Anyway, the most they were good for was their steamed dumplings. So, being adventurous I decided to make some of my own. I found a recipe that sounded about like theirs were – cabbage, pork, green onions, spices, etc – and tried my hand at it. Apparently the secret for making the dough is to use boiling water. Not such a secret, but I digress.

I whipped up a sauce using soy sauce, sesame oil, green onion, gochugaru (Korean hot pepper powder), black pepper, and sesame seeds. Pretty good! This was using my powers of observations to realize that most of the Asian restaurants in the immediate area – Chinese, Korean, and Japanese – are all owned by Korean folks. So the red pepper powder was A+.

But the best part was the dumplings. (Oh, and using the recipe above, I doubled the size of the dumplings to try to make ‘em more like the restaurant’s, and I just steamed them, no frying. YUM!)