Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. I wasn't planning a turkey, but I was thinking of making kind of a large meal. I ended up spending the day busy and out of my house, however, which meant I didn't spend a lot of time cooking. Then I got home and had to clean up a few things.
So the big dinner I'd been planning went out the window, and I just made a few recipes I've been wanting to try for awhile. We don't do a traditional Thanksgiving at all, in part because my husband is Japanese, and in part because he doesn't like turkey. Turkey once a year is good for me, and I eat it at Christmas, so I wasn't too disappointed without it.
First, we had the leftover soybean soup from yesterday, and our usual hakusai-plum pickles, and the pickled garlic. For our first dish, I sliced up some gobo and sauteed it with garlic, pork, and red peppers. The recipe called for kuwai (which, I learned upon googling, is arrowhead in English), but of course I didn't have any, so I left it out. It was fine without them, but a bit salty. I want to try arrowhead now, though, so if anyone sees any, let me know where to find them! They sound a bit like water chesnuts?

The second new dish I tried was broccoli. My husband isn't supposed to be eating fried foods because his cholesterol was high, but I figured since it's Thanksgiving we could have something a little special. So I made broccoli, topped with mashed potatoes and fried. It was quite easy. I added cheese and an egg to the mashed potatoes and they cooked right up.
Finally, we had a bird--chicken. I've already posted a picture of this chicken on the blog, but today I was given some dried red shiso that I wanted to try, so I made ume-shiso chicken again. It was quite yummy.
I also fried up some peas and some kabocha (pumpkin), mostly just to test the oil temperature before I did the broccoli. It's a good thing I did, too, because the oil was too hot and the peas burnt.
Not much, but that was our Thanksgiving! Happy Day to everyone.