Grandma in the kitchen

I found this and thought of grandma – a reason to never be a vegetarian. Check my blog post on her at http://rubberslippercontessa.blogspot.com

How 2 Eat a Cupcake: Ken Style

Step 1: Start with a plain old frosted cupcake. If it’s got sprinkles, even    better.

1. Step 2: Peel off the cupcake paper and pull off the top of the cupcake.

Step 3: Flip the bottom onto the top and eat it like a sandwich.

Extreme cupcake eating courtesy of Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade fame.

Confessions of a Foodie’s Wife

Hot dog

Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda

Ken is a Food Network watching, me food hunter and gatherer kind of guy, so when we go traveling, I am usually in charge of finding accomodations (making house) and he is in charge of searching for food places. When he is quietly on the computer days before we leave, then I know he is plotting our food travels.

With that in mind, after getting into LAX at 9 pm, we headed out to La Brea (about 30 minutes away) and Ken stood in line for one hour for our hot dogs from Pink’s Famous Hot Dog stand. I kid you not, at 10 pm on a Tuesday night in LA, the line was still one hour long. There are so many choices that it’s rather overwhelming. We decided, in true foodie wannabe fashion, that we would try a different hot dog for every person present. We tried the chili cheese nacho dog; mushroom and swiss cheese dog; pastrami and saurkraut dog; and the Today Show dog which is a double hot dog with chili, onions and guacamole. It was an experience to stand in line, order and watch the guys make the hot dogs. It was even cool to avoid the well dressed guy that was actually trying to panhandle. Was it a great hot dog? No, not especially, but it doesn’t matter. The next time they talk about historic food landmarks on the Food Channel, we can say, “hey we went there – Pink’s.”

Channeling Emeril

In order to release his inner Emeril, Ken created a jambalaya (above). It was ONO!

Soup’s On

It’s been brrrr cold in Hilo which is a nice change. Usually by this time of the year we’re starting to get a little warm and stuffy, so we’ve been celebrating by making soup with dinner. Ken and I found ourselves stuck at home on Sunday, so Ken got on the computer to get a Portuguese bean soup recipe. ??? Recipe? From the internet? It’s not rocket science, it’s Portuguese bean soup, not hard. Throw stuff together. Anyway, Ken started the ham hocks, let it cook for 3 hours, and then he and Pono braved the rain and went paddle boarding while I took Ahi to baseball. After baseball, Ken picked up Ahi to go paddleboarding and guess who was left to make the Portuguese bean soup? The result: 5 stars from all members. Like I said, not rocket science.

cub scout mochi

shaping the mochi

 

At  the cub scout meeting last week, the boys made okinawan sweet potato mochi. the cooked sweet potato was mixed with water, sugar and mochiko (rice flour). You can see that they had fun shaping the balls by hand.

cooking the mochi

 Then the mochi balls were dropped into boiling water to cook. You could tell they were done when they floated up.

 

 

finished mochi

Here are a few of the finished mochi balls. They were cooled and rolled in mixture of kinako (potato starch) and sugar. Although they look a bit weird in the picture they actually tasted very good (sorry only had my cell phone camera again).

What you see…part 2

So this is cross posted in Meals under $5 and Onolicious, it is food, and it is under $5. removed from the meals under $5 section, I was chastised by the blog police for not reading the category descriptions…:(..This was a couple of weeks ago at Taco Bell. I took the picture from their website for the regular crunchy taco. the other is from my camera phone and is the taco I unwrapped…but hey, for what it was, it was ok…

New Year’s Food 101: Ikeda family traditions 2

Tempura

Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda

Our other new traditional new year food is tempura. I think it started when Ken bought his first tripod stand and large wok from a Gaspro tent sale. He hooks it up to his propane camping tank and it’s perfect to use when our small kitchen is occupied because he can cook in the garage. This year, we had shrimp tempura, and vegetable tempura (eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash). We had Ken’s sweeter tempura sauce and the regular black tempura sauce with daikon suri (grated daikon in its juice). It’s already January 4th and we’re still eating leftovers (with the new main dish, salads and soups I’ve been cooking). I’m afraid my boys are not really good at eating leftovers since I have the need to make at least one new dish. To my future daughter in laws: I’m sorry.

New Year’s Food 101: Ikeda family traditions

Sushi fixings

Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda

Ken and I always make the food for new years. Ken’s mom and my mom take turns on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we have been hosting New Year’s for a long time, probably because I am the bearer of pyromaniacs and I believe in buying fireworks.
Ken is famous for making way too much food. It’s just part of that local fear that we might actually run out of food, and how that would not only be shame on us, but shame on our whole family, even those that are already passed.
Over the years, we have created our own new year’s traditional food, so the first is the sushi bar. The sushi bar is great for us because if people want to bring something, it’s easy enough to ask them to bring something for the sushi bar. Sushi bars are self-serve, make your own sushi smorgasbords. Here’s some of the items, but basically, this year, eaters fill their temaki nori with sushi rice, masago (little orange fish eggs), takuan, daikon sprouts, hijiki, shoyu-sugar tuna, crab, shrimp, sashimi, poke, natto (eww – stinky), cucumber, special sauce (honey, mayo, sesame seeds), special tako (chopped tako tentacles with mayo and masago) and mizuna namasu (mizuna greens with a ponzu and sesame sauce). We forgot to cook the tamago (egg rolls), but we had so much food that no one noticed.

New Year’s Food 101: Morimono

photo.jpg

Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda

I’m not sure what the symbolism of this arrangement of items are or even if it’s from Japan. I know that this is a local Hawaii custom from plantation days so we do it too. The items, from left to right are yoken (sweet bean paste), kamaboko (it should be green, but this pink one had a matsu in it which was cool), and I have gobo (long llife) tempura. I’m also supposed to have tangerine slices (but people wanted to take the tangerines home) and kanten (red and green agar). KTA had the kanten, but I think it’s kind of gross, and after paying $10 for one block of yokan (!), I was not about to pay for the two blocks of kanten, especially since I’m not sure what this is for besides to make pretty. If somebody knows, please inform me.