Today: chicken pot pie and apple-cabbage salad. Chicken pot pie is easy but a little time-consuming. Also, my crust skills need work. It tasted good, but it really looks ugly.

Tonight! Breaded, pan-fried garlic pork steaks with broccoli, corn on the cob, and another tomato salad. I also served a little bit of chagara furikake, or a tea leaf I cooked to serve over rice. I do this a lot with our leftover leaves after we drink tea.
The pan-fried pork was actually quite good. I marinated it with A LOT of garlic, salt, pepper, soy sauce, sake, and mirin. It was great, the garlic really made it pop.

The whole meal.


I used a regular tomato and an heirloom tomato for the salad this time. The heirloom tomato was really good; they're wonderful and in season now.

For dessert: slightly sloppy matcha-chocolate cookies. So ugly! But it doesn't matter what they look like: they tasted delicious. The recipe said they would make 22, but there were at least twice that. So many!

Tonight: salmon steak, garlic quinoa, okra, and kale chips. I've been super-addicted to kale chips lately. They are so simple and delicious.
I made mustard-oil-vinegar dressing for the tomatoes.
The kale chips!! Simply kale tossed with olive oil and salted, then cooked at a really low temperature until they're crispy. Delicious and addictive. Also, I think they're pretty healthy.

Tonight I forgot to take out a protein before I went to the library. So... some renkon, some pumpkin, and a daikon salad for the main dish. I added avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers and corn as usual to the salad, but because I wanted a protein I also added red beans. It was good.


I am pretty good at making muffins. I love muffins. I am trying to stop making muffins because they're bad for me, but every once in awhile I really want to eat a certain kind of muffin. Today, it was pineapple. I get cravings for pineapple muffins fairly often, and at this point I have my recipe perfected. Oftentimes I drizzle the top with some Okinawan brown sugar mix, but today I just wanted pineapple. So... pineapple muffins. Made a bit smaller than usual to get a few more out of the recipe and keep the serving size small.

I've been sticking with quick, simple and tasty, with the additional caveat of the food I prepare for dinner being easy to pack in my obento for the next day. Tonight, then, I made artichoke-chicken breast, the broccoli and red grape salad, and a simmered kabocha. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated, and nothing very pretty--but easy and filling.

Quick and simple tonight: a tomato and broccoli salad, mashed kabocha, and a broiled fish. Easy, delicious, and fresh. The tomatoes are so good right now!

Gumbo.

I've noticed that when I'm in a bit of a funk, I don't get excited about cooking, and I don't post pictures. I've been a bit down lately, but today I'm feeling more upbeat. So... I made a quick and simple gumbo for dinner. We learned the recipe in our cooking class in New Orleans, and it turned out OK. It was slightly insane to be cooking gumbo in the heat, but we had some leftover sausage from a BBQ that I wanted to use.
I made a cabbage-carrot-peanut salad with a ginger vinaigrette, and a corn and black bean salad. I'm trying to make side dishes that I can conveniently pack into my lunch box, because I'm spending more time at the library. Beans are a good way to give me energy to keep me going in the afternoon without dragging me down.