February 14, 2012 – Valentine’s Day
15 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Food, Personal Tags: 1986, 4080, air care, asparagus, blueberry, charity, coconut, cold cup, congee, duck, lobster, mail, mailing labels, muffins, PLU, rockstar, slim fast, starbucks, tercel, tongue, toyota, water
A decidedly unmushy day:
Feb 14, 2012 - Bound and Gagged - Bonus points if you know what PLU #4080 is
Feb 14, 2012 - Care package from Mom sent with Dad who flew in to YVR today
Feb 14, 2012 - Lobster Congee at Kalok Restaurant in Richmond
Feb 14, 2012 - Guess what these are? Duck Tongues.
Feb 14, 2012 - Dad with the 86 Tercel. He bought this car a few months before I was born.
Feb 14, 2012 - Air Care Fail - Emissions were fine but the gas cap failed
Feb 14, 2012 - Important Drinks To Keep in One's Locker: Hydration, Fuel, Emergency Fuel
Feb 14, 2012 - dear charities, please stop fucking wasting the money we give you. 1 week. 200 mailing labels
Ochazuke (Chazuke) Topped with Crispy Genmaicha
27 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Food, Recipes Tags: bubu arare, chazuke, food, furikake, genmaicha, ingredients, ochazuke, rice, tea
I don’t know about you, but Genmaicha (roasted rice Japanese tea) is a lot of fun to drink (easy drinking!) and a lot of fun to just nibble on, too, straight out of the bag (those crispy little rice bits are awesome). So while making ochazuke, I decided to try using the genmaicha in its crispy form as a topping, sort of like a caffeinated substitute for bubu arare (little rice crackers).
Okay.
Wow!
Good stuff!
So now my favourite version of Ochazuke is this (these ingredients just happened to be in my fridge this morning…they’re not authentically Japanese or anything like that…but it looks like people on the interwebs make Chazuke with pretty much any kind of topping – the common thing being that it’s tea poured over rice):
Steamed rice (can be leftover)
Brewed green tea (or oolong)
Diced cucumber
Bocconcini
Furikake
Genmaicha (dry)
Salt
1.) Steep tea.
2.) Heat up a bowl of leftover rice in microwave (and if you’re using cheese, add it to the rice so it gets all melty)
3.) Dice cucumber
4.) Add salt and cucmber to rice in bowl
5.) Pour tea over the rice
6.) Top the island of rice with furikake and genmaicha
7.) EAT!
If you manage to get the furikake and genmaicha to sit on top of the island of rice in the middle, they’ll stay nice and crispy until you decide to eat it. That genmaicha is really a nice addition! It’s got such a wonderful toasted rice flavour, and the tea leaves are crispy as well, so it makes a really nice topping.
This is actually so much better and cleaner tasting than the little packets of ochazuke topping that you just add to rice and pour boiling water over – those leave me all weird and MSG’d out.
No pictures with this post – you’ve got to make it yourself to try it out!
Vegan Coconut Tempeh Tomato Apple Pasta
02 Oct 2011 3 Comments
in Food, Recipes Tags: apple, cooking, pasta, recipe, tempeh, vegan, vegetarian
Okay. Hear me out. It sounds like a weird mix, but it’s actually really delicious! I love it when there are just tiny hints of sweetness to offset savoury flavours. My husband would beg to differ – he really doesn’t like apples and so pretty much refused to eat the dish. However, my tastebuds were pleasantly tickled!
Ingredients:
pasta (I used rigatoni)
sesame oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 package of Green Cuisine Tempeh Burgers, diced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 apple, diced (I used a Honeycrisp)
cumin powder
coriander powder
salt
sriracha hot sauce
1/2 can of coconut cream (or coconut milk)
Directions:
- Boil pasta
- Sauté onion and garlic in sesame oil
- Continue sauteing and at your leisure, add tempeh, tomato, apple, cumin, coriander, salt, sriracha (I quickly squirt one circle of the pan – not too spicy). I added one ingredient at a time, while chopping the next ingredient.
- Saute some more
- Add 1/2 can of coconut cream/milk (stir up the can first so the liquid mixes with the cream on top)
- Saute some more at slightly higher than medium heat until coconut milk reduces and you’re left with a sauce-like texture
- serve over pasta!
How much of things like coriander and cumin, you ask? Well, with the powdered stuff, it’s not very strong (it’s been sitting in my pantry for a couple of years) so like maybe a teaspoon of both (or more?)? I honestly just shake it out of the bag until it seems like enough. It’s hard to go overboard – the flavour ends up pretty mellow when it mixes in with the coconut milk.
Vegan Dinner: Tempeh Burger Stir Fry, Quinoa, and BEETS!!!
19 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Food, Health and Healthy Living, Recipes Tags: beets, food, health, quinoa, recipe, tempeh, vegan, vegetarian
How have I managed to go 25 years without eating a boiled beet? Please, someone explain to me why I tried plain beets in all their glory for the first time a few days ago?
They’re STUNNING! Sweet like a sweet potato. Soft yet not a mushy texture.
For dinner tonight, we had tempeh burger stir fry, with boiled beets and Quinoa.
Boiled Beets:
Boil for 30-45 mins. Drain. Scrub off skins with a paper towel (they come off pretty easily).
Quinoa:
Put quinoa with water in rice cooker. Crumble up an organic veggie buillion cube into water. Stir. Press “Cook”.
Stir Fry:
Dice onions and garlic. Sautee in pan with olive oil.
Dice tempeh burgers, zucchini and cut cauliflower into florets. Add to sautee pan.
Add ground cumin and coriander
Add chili powder
Add soy sauce
Excuse me while I OMNOMNOMNOMNOM 
Recipes for the Lazy Cook – #002 – Banana Rice
11 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books, Food, Recipes Tags: banana, books, cooking, food, Going Solo, laziness, recipe, rice, Roald Dahl, soy sauce
1.) Microwave a bowl of leftover rice
2.) Add some soy sauce
3.) Slice in a ripe banana
I discovered the deliciousness of this banana rice combination this hungry morning. I happened to have some leftover japanese rice in the fridge, and intended to quickly carb it up with some dark mushroom soy sauce and call it a breakfast. Then I looked at my fruit tray on top of the microwave and saw a couple of sad looking bananas that were going spotty. Then decided to slice one into my rice, just for kicks.
Actually pretty good. Nice balance of sweet and savoury.
In Roald Dahl’s autobiographical ‘Going Solo’, about his time in the RAF during WWII, he mentions one of the cooks making a rice dish with bananas (plantains), and this has always stuck in the back of my head as sounding fairly delicious, because Roald Dahl said it was delicious. I think I tried making it once as a kid, boiling the bananas with brown rice, and it turned out fairly miserable and I had to throw it away.
Simple, comforting, delicious. Good discovery.
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