Tag: japanese

Tanya’s Asian Creation

Apparently I’ve been revisiting old favorites lately. The piles of Fall squash in the markets always make me think of this dish, Tanya’s Asian Creation from How It All Vegan. Another one that comes together quickly with ingredients that can hang out for a while without going bad. I love to have a few of those up my sleeve for weeks when you don’t really know what you’re doing one night to the next.

This time I used a cute little butternut I had hanging out. Even though it was small, I had extra that I put in the freezer already cubed for later use. Oh, and make the gomashio. It makes the dish and is quick and cheap to make.

A new year

I just finished up banana pecan waffles and apple sausages Kevin made me for breakfast. Yummy! It tasted even better because I got to sit here and look at the internets while waffles magically formed and landed on a plate next to me. How cool is that?

Last night we joined up with Taylor and Beth and headed to get sushi at Sushi house Hayakawa. The owner is a former MF Sushi Bar chef. While they ate fishy bits, we had a bunch of yummy vegan rolls, edamame and seaweed salad. Our favorite was the pumpkin tempura roll, on the ends in the pic. Oh, the chef also gave us these marinated shiitake mushrooms that were amazing. Taylor and Beth ordered roasted gingko nuts so we got to try those. They’re hard to describe, but I could see myself busting open piles of them and chewing on the soft centers. I bet they can be had on Buford Highway. I’ll have to look. 

New Year’s Eve Jill & Tony came over and played Wii while I kept falling asleep. I blame the sake and the beer. Yeah, all one of each. Pfft, lightweight. Anyway, it was a nice mellow end to the year. And somehow, despite having my house broken into and watching my 401k dwindle, it was a really, really good year. And 2009 will be even better. We have plans…big plans. Mwahahahahaha!

Oh yeah, and today is this blog’s 8th birthday. Awww!

Reconnecting…

One of the things I did this trip was reconnect with a couple of old friends. Friday, I spent half the day with Sheree. We met shortly after I moved to California in 1987 and were roommates from 89-92, I think. Oh the tales we have on each other. 10th Street Garage. Wild Irish Rose. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Anyway, Sheree and I lost touch around ’94. So we had a lot of catching up to do. Turns out we were living parallel lives in many ways including when and how our cats died and when we bought our first new car. I also got to hear about how some other old friends are doing.

Keeping stuff in order, I should post Cha-Ya now. Kevin and I headed there for dinner Friday night. Vegan Japanese.  Here’s the menu.

Edamame

edamame at cha-ya

Senroppon Salad (Shredded Salad) Shredded daikon, turnip, cucumber, and carrots with alsuage tofu, radishes, soybeans, kaiware, pine nuts, Soy-vinaigrette dressing.

senroppon salad at cha-ya

Cha-Ya Roll Tempura sushi filled with avocado, yam, and carrots. The entire roll is lightly battered and deep-fried. Served with a special house sauce. This was AMAZING.  But then you probably knew that once you read “battered and deep-fried.”

cha-ya roll

Soba noodle rolls. These were disappointing. The soba noodles weren’t really flavored at all. And neither were the veggies. Blah.

soba rolls

Taku – Sui (Gyoza and Veggies In Clay Pot) Pot stickers, tofu, zucchini, napa cabbage, snap peas, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, silver noodles, and mushrooms in a light broth and served with a ponzu citrus sauce. This had the most amazing veggie broth I’ve ever had. I could drink it by the gallon.

taku-sui at cha-ya

Meh, I’m running out of time. You’ll just have to wait for the Maggie Mudd post.

cha-ya outside

Tour of Buford Highway

Saturday I hit a couple of ethnic markets on Buford Highway in addition to my regular weekly visit to the DeKalb Farmers Market. A lot of this stuff you can get in the regular grocery store, but it’s much cheaper here. Plus there are random things that can be hard to find like a jar of mole with a screw top lid you can re-close. So here’s my haul from the Hispanic market: enchilada sauce, hominy, refried beans with chipotle, habeño sauce, ready to serve mole in a cool aseptic container, refried black beans, chipotle sauce, marinated cactus, mole with a screw top lid, a small jar of chipotle in adobo and a big stack of corn tortillas. Not pictured: butternut squash, shallots, onions, and a serrano. mexican groceries Next, Atlanta’s Farmers Market, which also has Hispanic goods, but I was headed there for the Asian stuff. Here I picked up a couple of different rice stick noodles and some bean threads, mock duck, coconut milk, rice seasoning, vegetarian steak, coconut cream, pepper corns (I’m pretty sure these are the things also known as Szechwan pepper corns) and fermented black beans. Not pictured: two different sizes/shapes of rice papers. asian groceries Seems like I’m missing some items. I’m not gonna post the rest as it’s just normal rice milk, soy milk, apples, coffee, etc. I’m not sure why I bought all this stuff. I don’t have room for it. 🙂