Shrimp Scampi and Homemade Bread

Large Shrimps were sale the other day in an Asian super market so I bought 1lb of those and made one of my favorite shrimp dish "Shrimp Scampi".

I learned this dish from an Indian lady I used to live with in California. She taught me so many great dishes and this is one of them.

This is super easy and quick dish but if you like shrimp like me, it is amazing dish to have.

First, you cook chopped garlic in butter and then add lemon juice, red chili flakes, white wine and cream. Add shrimp and when they are cooked through, sprinkle some parsley or cilantro and that's it!

Normally, I love eating this dish with pasta but I had some homemade bread leftover so I decided to have this dish with bread this time. I prefer pasta but since my husband loves bread, he didn't mind having it with this crusty bread.

For some strange reason, garlic turned blue today when I cooked. I check on the internet and seems like this happens sometimes when the garlic is young and when it mixed with some acidity, it turns blue. Well, I am not sure if it is true but we ate them and it was totally fine. It just looks creepy.

This really takes very short time to cook and perfect to busy night dinner!!

Homemade Salmon Nigiri and Negitoro Roll

The other day, we went to this big Japanese supermarket in NJ and had our favorite ramen noodle then bought some Japanese groceries. This time, we took our friends from Manhattan. One of them has been there but the other one hasn't so I was curious about how she would like it.

Well, seemed like both of them really enjoyed this visit to Japanese supermarket. I was very happy that they liked it!

Anyhow, we always buy negitoro when we go there and make sushi roll so I bought negitoro then I saw these beautiful salmon sashimi next to it. And it was on sale! I had to buy them. I bought two packages of salmon and two packages of negitoro.

Negitoro is always great but this salmon was also wonderful. They are beautiful and so fresh and very fatty! It said this salmon is from New Zealand.

Look at this salmon. Isn't it beautiful?

Negitoro is my favorite sushi of all. This time I made rolls with seaweed outside. I added more scallions and shiso leaves. They were delicious!

We used to have this wonderful sushi restaurant very close to our house so we used to eat sushi often but now we moved so we don't have any good sushi restaurant around. So I was really craving for good sushi!!!

My husband loved it also. We haven't given any raw fish to our son yet so I made vegetable miso soup and steamed sweet potato for him. It was difficult to make him try sweet potato in the beginning but once he tried it, he loved it. Lately, my son is refusing to eat vegetables. he used to love them. I don't know why all of a sudden he hates them. I asked other moms and read some stuff and seems like it is quite normal at this age and I am not supposed to force him to eat.

When I was kids, I couldn't eat a lot (now, I can not stop...) and there are many vegetables I didn't like. My mom never forced me to eat more or eat what I didn't like. Now, I love vegetables except green peas and some beans. So I guess you will grow out of it but it is difficult to see him refuse to eat something that I put a lot of effort to make. Well, I am trying to find a new way to eat vegetables. If you have any good suggestions, let me know!

He liked Okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) If you don't know what okonomiyaki is, here is ther link to my old post.  I add lots of vegetables in this pancakes and he eat them. Also, when I make fried rice with chopped vegetables, he eats them. Well, I guess I have to keep trying.

Now, I am thinking about ordering organic vegetables from local farms in a box. I think this is fun way to eat new vegetables. They will just mix different kind of vegetables which are in season and send them to you at your door. I am curious about trying this.

Also, I am excited to plant some vegetables with my son this spring. This way, maybe he will be excited about eating vegetables which he grow himself!

Homemade Pizza and my son with ipad

As I have said before, I don't care much for pizza. I like it but I almost never crave for it. However, once in a while there is a time I think about pizza and this was one of those time and instead of ordering or buying frozen one, I decided to make it from scratch this time.

The reason I decided to make pizza at home was because I borrowed this cook book from the library called "The Pioneer woman cooks". Actually, she has two cookbooks and i borrowed both of them. Since Hurricane Sandy hit our town and our library is still closed, I had these books with me for more than 2 months. So I had lots of time to check out this book. She makes her own pizza in this book and it looked super simple and yummy so that is why I decided to try it.

Anyways, you can also find her pizza recipe on line. Click here for Pioneer Woman's pizza recipe.

I made the dough a day before and let it rest and rise in the fridge. Then, I took the dough out, roll it out and add tomato sauce and toppings.

Half of them was tomato, mozzarella and basil pizza and the other half was picadillo pizza. (Yes, the leftover picadillo)

My son helped me with rolling out the dough and adding some toppings. He loves helping me lately. Whatever I am doing, he wants to do also. I know it takes longer and it's messier if I let him do it but I think these are great activities which I can do with my son.

The pizza was great! My husband loved it and my son liked it also. This is much much cheaper than ordering or frozen pizza.

One of my friends make pizza dough herself and roll out and bake it for a little bit and then freeze it. Whenever she feels like eating pizza, she takes it out from the freezer, add sauce and topping and bake. This is a great idea for busy night dinner. I think I should start doing this also. I need to learn her pizza dough recipe.

By the way, my son is turning two soon. Time flies and I am so amazed how much he has grown and learned over this two years. (Also how much I learned :-) He started to talk a lot. Most of the time, we don't really understand what he is saying but he also says some words and sentences which we can understand.

We try not to show much TV or not let him play with ipad. We normally hide ipad but sometimes we forget and if he finds it, then he gets so excited.

He comes over with a big smile and says "ipad? ipad? ipad? ipad?" then he put his hands next to his cheeks and says "Mickey? Minnie? Mickey? Minnie?"since we have this mickey mouse Apps on ipad.

Sometimes, we let him play but most of the time we say no. He cries but we can not give him everything he wants whenever he wants it.

However, one thing I realized by raising him is that if I try to explain why he can not do something, then often times he understands and repeat it by himself on his own words. If I just say no, he gets angry and cry but with a good explanation, often times it works. You would think that small children would not understand the reasoning but I guess they do. This is something I learned and was impressed.

Anyways, when I go to Japan next time, I would love to bring my son to Disneyland and Anpanman museum. (Anpanman is a Japanese superhero whose head was made of bread filled with sweet bean paste. I know. Strange, right?) Japanese kids love this character and my son also love him. he always ask me to draw this character for him.

Kids are fun to watch and they are so free. I have a lot to learn from them :-)