Things I recently made and cook books I recently borrowed

Summer is finally here and I am enjoying my first summer with a baby. Sometimes, it is too hot but I put him in a water bath outside my house and he loves it. We take him to the beach sometimes also. He doesn't really like the ocean water. I think it is too cold. Anyhow, my life is perfect with him!
He is already 5months and we just started to give him solid food. we started with rice porridge. (He is a half Japanese :-) It is interesting to see how he develop. He is growing up too fast!

Well, I have been cooking more lately but just didn't have time to update my blog. So I would like to upload some of the things I made recently.

First of all, I made biscuit. I had homemade biscuit the other day at a restaurant in Brooklyn and I wanted to try making it myself ever since. Here is how it came out.

Not bad, right? It tasted good also! I didn't know how easy to make biscuit at home. I love having it with butter and strawberry jam when it came right out from the oven. Yum!

I used the recipe in this book which I had for this biscuit.















Also, I made an indian dish. This is chicken with some indian spices with lots of cilantro and tomato. My husband and I love this dish. I didn't make it super spicy this time so we didn't need to be crying while we ate. For some reason, I love eating spicy food when it is hot.

Next, I made salmon and napa cabbage. Salmon is just with salt and pepper and sautéed in a pan. Napa cabbage is cooked with bacon and some vinegar. I love this cabbage dish. I can eat a bowl full of this cabbage.

And, this is a edamame salad. We love edamame and we eat them quite often but I never had it in this form. This is a warm salad with mushroom, roasted bell pepper, snap peas and so on. I found this recipe on Martha Stewart magazine. I bought frozen shelled edamame. For flavor, I used vinegar and chili paste and stuff so it is a bit spicy but very good. To my surprise, my husband liked this dish. It is very healthy but tasty dish.

Speaking of edamame, I bought edamame plant this year for my container garden. It is growing some edamae but it is just like 5 of them so I don't really know what to do with them.

I also got basil for my garden as I always do every year. This year, basil has been growing really well so I have already harvested them twice and made pesto pasta. This pesto was really good. I wrote it down the recipe so I would like to upload it some other time.

I went to the library the other day and borrowed some books again. One of the book I borrowed was for my husband. This is from my favorite Japanese author named "Kotaro Isaka". He is very popular in Japan and I found that one of his books is finally translated into English. I always wanted my husband read one of his book so I borrowed it for him.

This is the book.

I read many of his book but I actually haven't read this one yet. I thought about reading it in English but I decided to get it in Japanese and read it in Japanese.

My husband finished reading it and he liked it.

He said he didn't like the first half of it but then he got into it and really liked it when he finished reading.

I went to this Jpaaneses used book store called "Book Off" in Manhattan the other day and purchased the original version of it. I am excited to read it. My husband ask me every day if I read it already or not. But I still have other books to finish so I haven't really started yet. (Plus, with a baby, my reading time is quite limited right now)

Other than the above book, I borrowed lots of cook book again. I realized that there are many celebrates publishing cook book lately.





This is a cook book from an actress "Eva Longoria". Since her parents are Mexican, I thought I can get some good Mexican recipes from this book. I liked many of the stuff I saw. I am excited about trying it.










This is my favorite celebrity chef Jaime Oliver's cook book about food from American continent. There are many dished which looks really good from all different regions. Very interesting book.











This is a book from iron chef Cat Cora. I actually have never tried her recipe so I would like to try something from this.













This is a cook book from Trisha Yearwood. I think she is an country singer (I am sorry but I am not sure about who she is)

In this book, there are lots of American classic recipes and some of them looks really good. I would definitely try her chicken salad and chicken casserole.







When I borrow or buy cookbook, the most important feature is pictures of the dishes. I don't like cookbooks without any pictures of the dishes. All of these cookbook above had many pictures of the dishes. However I wish they have pictures for each and every one of the recipe they have in the book.

Anyway, I am excited about trying some of the dished from these book. The only problem is that it is too hot to cook lately!

Green Beans Casserole, Chicken and books

When I think about winter food, I think about casserole. I think many people make casserole for Thanksgiving and Christmas when you have people over for dinner or lunch. When I think about casserole, I think about warm family gathering with laughter. It is a happy dish for me.

Many people use Campbell's cream of mushroom soup to make green bean casserole. I think it is a great idea but this time I tried to make my own. It was not as difficult as I thought. I just used a recipe on Food Network. Click here for the green bean casserole recipe from Food Network website. 

Well, the recipe asked to make your own fried onion but I cheated on this one and bought canned fried onion from Trader Joe's.

I sauteed mushroom and onion and add flour and milk then pour them over the frozen green beans.

Then, sprinkle with fried green onion and put them in the oven, That's It!

I also made chicken with a simple marinade and baked in the oven. Easy dinner with lots of flavors.

We had them with some rice. (Well, I am Japanese. I need rice)

This kind of food are very comforting. We eat these hot casserole with smiles on our faces. I felt so happy to have wonderful dinner with my husband in a warm safe house. We are so lucky.



I went to the library again to borrow some books. One of them is the cookie book from Martha Stewart.
I think everybody feels like baking cookies when it get closer to Christmas. It is a great project to do with my husband. I love making Christmas cookies with my husband. He is also excited about it.
Anyway, this book has so many variety of cookies with wonderful photos. All of them looks great and you just want to bake all of them. I think this is a great book to have especially when you love cookies.











The next book is Indian/Pakistani cooking book. Ever since I had Pakistani food at the restaurant few week ago and also homemade Indian food at my friend's place. I have been wanting to make Pakistani or Indian dish at home. Many of dishes from this book seems easy enough for me to make so I would love to give it a try one of these days.










This book is not a cook book but I was interesting in so I borrowed it. It is about a woman who died from cancer in 1950's and her cell was removed and used for research. Since then, her cells helped to find cures for so many diseases. This book is about the woman and her family and their struggle. I didn't know anything about this story and it is very interesting story.







It is nice and warm today in NY. It makes me happy to feel nice warm air. I hope the Thanksgiving day will be nice like this also! Speaking of thanksgiving, I think I should start preparing for Thanksgiving. I am so excited about it!

Salmon Dinner & Sad news about J.D. Saliger

As I always do, every time when I go to Costco I buy roasted chicken and make homemade chicken stock and also I buy salmon and make this salmon dish. I just use half of the salmon I bought and froze the other half. This is just boiled in a oven and sprinkle with scallions and sesames and soy sauce based sauce was poured over. My husband does not love fish but he really like this salmon dish. This is so easy to make and it makes me happy to see his happy face :-)

I wrote this many times and you might be sick of hearing this but Costco's salmon is pretty good in quality and very reasonable price. It is pretty big so I use half of them at one time.

Look at this beautiful salmon!

Just broiled in the oven and pour over some soy sauce based sauce.

Since I am Japanese, I have to eat salmon with rice :-)

Today, I would like to show my husband's favorite kitchen tool. It is a lemon squeezer. We have seen this on some cooking shows and he always said "Oh, we should buy this lemon squeezer!". Last December, we went to a Cuban cooking class together, (Click here for that post) he used this lemon squeezer in order to squeeze 40 limes for mojitos. He loved it and he has been talking about it since then. We found it at the store the other day so decided to purchase it. This is it. Ta-da~.

You might have one of these already. I always squeezed lemon with my hands so I did not even think about getting this tool for it. To be honest, I had not used yet. My husband tried it yesterday and he was pretty happy with the result. Even requested me to take a photo and share it with the world. He was really happy about it but after everything was done he said "Well, if there is one weakness for this lemon squeezer, it must be that you don't get the lemon smell on your hand after squeezing the lemon"

So if you don't mind not having a wonderful lemon smell on your hand after squeezing lemon, my husband highly recommend this tool.


Anyway, I read on twitter today that J.D. Salinger passed away at the age of 91. He is famous for his books such as "Catcher in the Rye" or "Nine stories". I am sure that many people read his book in school. He is one of my favorite writer. A few years ago, Japanese famous writer Haruki Murakami did a new translation for this book in Japan. I read the original translation but I was juts thinking about reading Haruki Murakami's translated version.

One things which is interesting about reading books or watching movies are that depends on when you read or watch the story, your reaction is quite different. The book you read in junior high and did not like might give you a different impression when you read it 10 years later. It makes a big difference depends on where you are in your life and what you are feeling at that specific moment.

 I remember when I watched a movie (well, it was originally a novel but) "Stand by me"for the first time, I did not understand why it was so popular. I thought maybe it is because River Phoenix is in it. However, I watched the same movie after a few years and I totally loved it. I was so surprised with my reaction.

Same thing can be said to Saliger's book. When I first read "Nine Stories". I did not understand it and did not know if I like it or not but when I read it again 5~6 years later, I found it very interesting and clever and loved it. When I read about his news today, it made me want to read "The Nine Stories" again.