A New Salad Udon

Today we discovered how compatible black tea pork tenderloin and salad udon are. When I marinated the pork in the sauce, I put half of it in the fridge to eat right away, and the other half in the freezer. After sitting in the freezer for about a week, when I took it out today the flavor of the sauce had seeped into the pork so well that my mouth is still watering just thinking about it.

Chicken Salad / Anago Daikon Stew

For lunch I used the remains of our Costco chicken to make a chicken salad with lettuce, apples, celery, walnuts, and tomatoes. Eating this reminded me of how much I like this combination of sweetness, crunchiness, and protein. No wonder I love to order chicken salad sandwiches wherever I go!


Tonight's main dish, the anago daikon stew, was a first try at a recipe similar to the pork-daikon-greens stew. Anago (salt water eel) is the less rich and fatty cousin to unagi (freshwater eel). I usually only have it in sushi, so was curious how it would be as a part of a stewed dish. It came out ok. I think H and I both like the pork version of this dish better.

Thanksgiving Part 2

Maybe Costco Chicken is not exactly the symbol of Thanksgiving, but ever since an old coworker mentioned that her family had it instead of turkey for Thanksgiving, the two things have been somewhat linked in my mind. Besides, their chicken is so plump and juicy that it's hard not to get a craving for it every once in a while. So after a not-very-Thanksgiving-like-dinner last night, we enjoyed our simple pseudo Thanksgiving with chicken, mashed potatoes, bread, and soup. We were also tempted to get a pumpkin pie from Costco - they make H's favorite version of the dessert and it's only $6 for a giant pie - but the thought of the two of us eating that pie for days and days to come was just a little too overwhelming.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Our original plan for this year's Thanksgiving Dinner was to go stuff ourselves with food at some Thanksgiving buffet. We realized that we were a bit behind the game though when we started calling places this afternoon and were told a couple of times that they were already full with reservations. So we asked ourselves: where would people be less likely to go for Thanksgiving Dinner? A Japanese restaurant! We ended up having a very Japanese but very enjoyable meal at Tokyo Tokyo, the Japanese restaurant at the Kahala Hotel. Pretty appetizers, a satisfying meat dish (sukiyaki for me, shabu shabu for H), soft and fatty pieces of sushi, and a creamy dessert - what more could you ask for? Even H, who started out a little sad at the thought of no buffet, seemed to be won over by the end of dinner.

Minestrone Soup

Tonight's dinner wins the-most-veggies-ever-packed-into-a-single-meal-at-our-house award! I packed in onions, carrots, celery, bell peppers, corn, kidney beans, parsley, and tomatoes, and was pretty astounded by the growing mound of veggies piling up before me as I continued to cut up vegetable after vegetable. At Foodland I also picked up a small can of sausages as an afterthought, to add a tiny bit of meat to a veggie-ruled soup. Who knew that this tiny sausage can would turn into the hot topic of the night? First, H surprised me by correctly guessing the exact kind of sausage I had bought. We agreed that there was something not quite right with the sausage...and realized that the problem was that it just didn't really taste like sausage at all, and was nearly indistinguishable from the veggies. Our conclusion: next time we will try bacon instead. Or maybe I'll just add even more types of veggies =).

Black Tea Pork Tenderloin

Hello hello!! Our blog has been neglected for a while due to some traveling and my parents being in town, but here we are again, just in time to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. This is a dish that my mom showed me how to make during her recent visit, after we saw some nice-looking pieces of pork tenderloin at Nijiya (she usually uses the huge ones from Costco). I like how simple yet tasty this recipe is. You start out by just putting some black tea bags into a large pot of boiling water to make tea, and then stewing the pork tenderloin in the tea for 40-50 min. After stewing, slice the pork and marinate it in your typical Japanese sauce mixture (equal parts soy sauce, mirin, sake, and rice vinegar). We marinated/refrigerated it for a day before eating, then ate it with seaweed and tomatoes with the sauce poured over everything. Yum yum.