Big Flan

The other day, I made Flan for the first time. My mom used to make these when I was little but I never tried it myself since it seemed difficult. I was reading a Flan recipe from a magazine and it didn't sound too difficult so I decided to make it.

Mixing ingredients were not difficult but the difficult part for me was the baking part. In the recipe, it says bake for about an hour in 300F oven and I did. But it was no way near setting. It was still just liquid. Maybe our oven is not as strong as the regular oven out there. So I had bring up the heat to 350F and bake it for about another one hour. Finally, I got want I wanted.

After cooling down and resting in the fridge for 2 hours, I flipped it over and here it is, beautiful big Flan. It tasted really good. I think this might be a good dessert when we have some people over because this is too big for just two people :-)

You can also make those in a small individual container which my mom used to do but I think it is fun to have this one big flan also!

Things I ate this past few days

This past few days, I ate some things which I bought from Trader Joe's.

One of the things which I always buy when I go to Trader Joe's is Edamame. It is soy bean and very popular item in Japan. I grew up eating this so it is very familiar to me but it seems like Edamame is getting quite popular here in the U.S. also.

I love the fact that it is getting popular here and I can find this in many of the regular supermarket now a days. My husband loves it also and it is very healthy snack/appetizer. And most of the people I know love this. I buy a few bags at a time and keep in the freezer so we can have healthy snack any time.

I also gave it a try for Trader Joe's Pizza. I am not crazy about pizza but I like BBQ flavor pizza. It has some chicken and red onions on top and tasted really good. It was smaller than I thought but I think it might be perfect size for two if you have a side dish like Edamame.

Also, some other night, I made Kakiage Soba. Kakiage is vegetable tempura made with yellow onions and carrots. Soba is buckwheat noodle. This is also a popular dish in Japan. This Kakiage is frozen kakiage which I found at Trader Joe's. They call this "Vegtable Bird's Nest". This is great because I often want just one of these to add on top of my soba noodle and I don't want to fry tempura just to make one thing. This time, I added some green onion and spinach in the soup.

Speaking of Tempura, I want to eat Shrimp Tempura. I love big shrimp tempura. Maybe I should make it sometime soon.

Omelet Rice

This is another popular dish in Japan. It has fried rice with some vegetable which is flavored with ketchup and covered with omelet. I wanted to use the frozen mixed vegetables which I had in my freezer so I made this with lots of vegetables in it.

First, I sauteed some sausage and onion in a pan.

Then, added frozen mixed vegetables. I also added some asparagus which I had in my fridge.

Then, add cooked rice and saute. 

Add some ketchup. If you would like you can also add salt and peppers.

Shape the rice on a plate.

Then, cover it with eggs which I made separately. (I just cooked the eggs very thinly on a frying pan.)

Tuck the side in and decorate with Ketchup. I tried to make a heart shape with Ketchup but I couldn't. Oh well. 

This is easy and good. Even though I don't like green peas, I was able to eat them in these. But I think it would have been better without green peas.....