Creamless Creamy Tomato Soup and macaroni salad from America's test kitchen and Onigirazu

This tomato soup is from a special edition of America's Test Kitchen Magazine called "All time favorite recipes". I love this tomato soup and I made it a few times already. One time, I made it for a friend who just had a baby and she and her family loved it.

This tomato soup use canned tomato and does not have any cream but it is creamy and great.

In America, I think it is common to have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, however my son doesn't like cheese so we didn't make grilled cheese with it. But I am sure the grilled cheese will taste great with this tomato soup.

It is great with crouton and the recipe called for homemade crouton but I was too lazy to make it homemade so I just used store bought crouton.

My son love it. I am sure we are making this soup again and again especially during the winter season.

I love America's test kitchen or Cook's illustrated magazined because they try lots of different methods and come up with the ultimate one. They explain all the details and troubles they went through in the process and it is very interesting and educational, I think.

This book is a collection of their favorite recipes and it is a great one to own. I love it. I haven't made all of them yet but I sure would love to try all the recipes in there.



Well, another thing I made is "Onigirazu". This is a new version of rice ball and it seems like it is very popular in Japan at the moment. Regular rice ball is triangle or round but this one is square and you just place seaweed, then add some rice, then add some ingredients you like and add more rice on top and then wrap them with seaweed like a present. Here is how it looks.

I think the reason why it got popular is  because you can add more stuff in it and it is easier to eat than regular rice ball.

This was had Spam and lettuce in it. Spam Onigiri is very popular in Hawaii. Hawaii's spam onigiri looked like nigiri sushi. They put Spam on top and wrapped it with thin slice of seaweed.

Well, the spam was too salty but I like this shape of onigiri. I think you can come up with many different like of stuffing inside.

I also made some sushi roll since we had avocado and imitation crab. I don't know why but it was so difficult to roll these sushi. I guess I am out of practice. I got so frustrated rolling those sushi. I almost gave up but my husband calmed me down and I finished about 6 rolls. 3 of them came out OK but the other 3 were disaster. Oh well.

I also made macaroni salad from the same book which I introduced earlier.
This came out great. I Actually added more vegetables than the recipe called for.

I think this is great for potluck party or BBQ or something like that. It was really good but the portion I made was huge. We had to eat macaroni salad everyday.... Well, I am glad my husband loved it so he didn't mind eating them everyday :-)

2010 my container garden report

At the end of April, I went to the nursery and got some plants for this year (Click here for the past post for my container garden) . Today, I would like to report to you how they are doing.

It is getting warm here in NY (It was HOT yesterday like summer) and my plants are growing.

First, this is the tomatoes. You can see small yellow flowers coming out. After the flower, there will be some tomato coming out. I can not wait!

This is lavenders which my husband is growing. Actually, this one is from last year. It seemed like it died during the winter (We left it outside the whole winter) but the new leaves came out in spring and it is starting to blossom. How amazing the nature is!

Parsley is quite easy to grow, I think.

This is mint and garlic chives. Mint is growing rapidly and I need to use this soon. I am having a BBQ for memorial day weekend so I am thinking Mojito with these mint!
It is difficult to see garlic chives, you can see tiny thing coming out on the left side of mint. This was from seeds so it will take a while to grow bigger, I think.

Basil is also growing but the leaves are getting tougher. I don't know why. I used to be very green and soft but now it is getting little yellow and hard. Does anybody know why? Should I keep basil inside the house?

This is green chilies. You can see small white flower coming out, can't you? I love how chilies grow. It looks so cute when it comes out!

The most surprising one is green onion. This is something which I leanred from my mom and when I buy green onion from grocery store, I keep the roots and plant them. New ones come out pretty quickly and I don't have to buy green onion anymore. I always have green onion on hand. But I left these green onion for while without using them and look what came out! Big flowers!

I am going to use all the small ones before the flower comes out again :-)

It is great to see how the plants grow every day. It is quite amazing how sun and water affect their growth.

I would like to report again when I harvest all these vegetables next time!

My Container Garden 2010 started!

Every year, during spring season, I go to nursery and buy some plants for my front porch garden. The time has come this year also and I am excited to show you all my garden.

Mostly, I buy nursery plants which are already started to grow since it is much easier than starting from the seeds. I tried growing from the seeds but it is much more difficult, I think. This time, I bought mostly already growing plants and some seeds.

The weather was nice on Sat so it was great to feel the soil and re-plant all these vegetables and herbs. I carefully transfer those plants to my container and wait for them to grow.

This time, I had some mints. This is great when you cook middle eastern food or of course for Mojito!!

The one closer to you is Cayenne pepper and Jalapeno pepper. I love the way pepper plants look. I think they look adorable. I can use these when I cook Indian food.
The one behind them is Italian parsley. This is very useful for any kind of cooking.

Then, basil. This is also a must item since my husband and I love basil. We use them for tomato& mozzarella salad, pasta, or Thai curry. This must be a most used herb in my household. The best part is that basil is very easy to grow.

The one in front of the photo is tomato plants. We always buy tomato plants also since this is also pretty easy to grow. This time I bought a package of three different kind of tomatoes. Beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

From seeds, I will be growing Shiso (Japanese basil) and garlic chives. Those are good for some Japanese cooking. I grow shiso last year and it was a great success so I am hoping that I will be able to harvest a lot this year also. Garlic chives which I never tried growing before is very useful vegetable for making pot-sticker and so on. Normally, I would have to go to a Japanese super market in order to buy those vegetables so if I can grow them at home, this will be perfect!

My husband bought lavender and seeds of sunflower. I buy all the stuff that I can eat later and he buys flowers which smells good and look beautiful. We ran out of soil for the sunflower. We have to get more soil.

Every time I open the door, I see all those beautiful plants and this makes me feel happy. My husband loves them also and both of us were looking at the plants smirking. I am very happy to know what my husband and I have same value and we feel happiness about same things. We might be too simple to feel great happiness from those small things but I think it is great that we have hearts to find happiness in small things like this. It is important to recognize those small happiness in every day life.

Sometimes, we are too busy to see small miracles in life. I see small miracles in those plants. I highly recommend gardening for everybody. I hope your plants also makes you feel happy every day!

My Little container garden

Hello! I had to go to the city last night so I made "rice balls" and ate in the train. Therefore, no picture of dish for today. But I would like to share some pictures from my vegetable garden. (Well, not really a garden because they are all in containers and we don't have real garden at our house. Nevertheless, those are what I call "my little container garden" )

The first picture is lavender. I love the smell and I take the flower out and put them in a little cotton bag. If I remember correctly, lavender is effective to make you sleepy. So if you are having trouble falling a sleep, maybe you can put a bag of lavender right next to your bed or under your pillow or even inside your pillow. As for me, I normally do not have any problem sleeping so lavender is just for relaxing my mind. 

The next picture is cilantro. I love cilantro and used them for my cooking quite often. However, in my opinion, cilantro is not so easy to grow. But it is looking good this year. Actually, some of the seeds which fell last year to the pot started to grow this year. It is amazing how strong those seeds are. Because I left it outside during the cold winter!

The next one is tomatoes. Tomatoes are very easy to grow and yummy! 

This year, I bought "heirloom tomatoes". I am looking forward to see what kind of tomatoes are coming out this year!!

The next one is green chilies. I like spicy food and I used to live with an indian lady who cooked awesome indian food for me all the time. So I also cook indian food sometimes at home and this is when I need green chilies. I don't want to make it too spicy so I take seeds and ribs out before I cook with them. 

The indian lady I used to live with made food really really spicy. For her, if it is not spicy enough, it is not good. I love her food but sometimes, my nose start running and tears coming down while I eat. When she sees me like that, she used to say "Oh, I can see it is good!". We had great time living together. 

Basil is one of my favorite herbs. The smell of fresh basil just makes me feel so happy and alive. My favorite dish with basil is "Tomato and Mozzarella Salad". It is so simple yet perfect for hot summer day. 

The Snap pea is already growing and I have to decide how to use it soon. They have this cute little flowers and it just looks so cute. Every time when I look at those snap peas, it reminds me of a story "Jack and the beanstalk". 

The last picture I wanted to share with you is my favorite chocolate. I had been looking for this chocolate for a while and I finally found it yesterday! They have so many different kind under this brand but in my opinion, this cornflakes one is the best. If you find them, please try them. Which one is your favorite flavor?