Month: March 2021

Yesterday, when my daughter and I were out, we saw a few cherry trees in bloom in our area, and we decided to make a memorable trip to see more of them today. After researching for places other than Washington, DC, I found a few locations about 30+ minutes away from where we live.  And so this morning, my daughter and I took a 40-minute ride to look at Cherry Blossoms in Ellicott City, MD. As we got closer, I told her we weren’t that far from DC, where they have a vast display of the blossoms. The blossoms located there are a huge attraction, and people worldwide have stopped by to visit the neighborhoods lined with cherry trees. The interest to see them was triggered when we were doing a few errands yesterday. However, when we reached our destination this morning, we noticed that most trees weren’t blooming yet. We weren’t disappointed; we enjoyed the car ride. We’ll try again next weekend, and this time we’ll visit Washington, DC.

Since we were in Ellicott City, I told her we could stop by H Mart. It’s a Korean grocery store. I’ve seen it from the highway for several years and have always “meant” top stop by. I just never got around to it until today. I’d told her we’d do the grocery shopping at this store to pick up the minimal ingredients needed to make Noodle Salad With Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette. Although I walked in with a shortlist, I left with three grocery bags full of items. Most of the items purchased were fresh vegetables, including a few Asian vegetables that I’ve only seen mentioned on Asian websites/blogs like Still Crazy After All These Years.

I was overwhelmed (in a good way) by the aisle dedicated to dried mushrooms and another designated for numerous varieties of seaweed. We love seaweed!

They have a seafood market in the back of the stores; several stalls of fresh and frozen seafood are available. Oh my! Wow, wow, wow… I must say that the vegetables at this market are much cheaper than at my local farm, and I will make a trip at least once monthly to purchase food items from there.

When we arrived home, my daughter helped put the groceries away. This is only a small amount of the groceries purchased.

While we were at HMart, she chose a variety of Asian snacks to try out. Some of them, she’d already had before. My daughter’s fascinated with East Asian culture and has learned a lot about some of them over the past few years. She’d been exposed to Japanese culture the most and started learning the language independently a few years ago. That’s a language that I’d also like to know.

Today’s lunch was the Noodle Salad With Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette dish that I mentioned yesterday. Instead of Chinese egg noodles, I used buckwheat noodles that I purchased from the Korean market. I added clams instead of pork.  My daughter saw the clams at HMart and wanted to try them. Initially, I was going to replace the pork with oyster mushrooms.

Even with the substitutions, this was a lovely salad. My daughter enjoyed it immensely, and I made enough for leftovers.

I added some of the salad that I made yesterday to my noodle bowl and was happy.

Although we didn’t get to see many of those lovely cherry blossoms today, my daughter and I still enjoyed our road trip, and we found an excellent Asian supermarket that we will frequent often.

 

 

 

For the past several days, when I’ve been at work, I’ve been eating salads. My salads are not elaborate, and that does not bother me one bit. They taste great, and I enjoy consuming them.

Take, for example, this simple green salad that I made earlier this evening. It has spinach, green onion, tomato, and bell peppers. I made the dressing with avocado, freshly squeezed lime, garlic powder, onion powder, ginger, nutritional yeast, hot chili flakes, a tiny amount of maple syrup, and a few more herbs and spices. The chili flakes gave it a bit of heat, and there’s a mild sweetness thanks to the maple syrup, and the nutritional yeast adds a cheesy flavor without the dairy.

However, earlier today, I decided that it might be good to purchase a book on salads.

After a bit of research, I settled upon buying the book Salads of the Day: 365 Recipes for Every Day of the Year by Georgeanne Brennan. I ordered it this morning from Amazon, and it arrived a little after 8:30 PM. Flipping through the book, I was impressed by the variety that of salads offered. My definition of a salad is an overabundance of produce and not much else, and this book definitely expands on that definition and includes much more. You won’t receive any complaints from me, and I’m willing to check out some of the “no-traditional” salads.

I handed my daughter the book and told her to choose a salad that she would like us to try, and she selected the recipe listed for January 3, Noodle Salad With Pork & Asian Lime Vinaigrette, located on page 15. For this recipe, we’ll swap out the pork and use oyster mushrooms instead. We’ll be making this tomorrow. We’re both looking forward to trying this dish. I’ll most likely flip through the book a bit more this evening and create one of the more traditional recipes in bulk, so I can take it to work a few days next week.

The main reason for purchasing the book is I’m going to consume nothing but salads for at least 30 days. I don’t see that being an issue since I ate only raw foods for well over a year.

This past Christmas, one of the little “gifts” I gave to my daughter was an Anime inspired cookbook called Cook Anime by Diana Ault. I bought it on Amazon. Since I know what she likes, I searched for an Anime inspire cookbook. I was thrilled that she genuinely loved the book and spent part of Christmas day flipping through the book and getting excited about the different recipes and the anime and manga that was the inspiration. Quite a few of the references she was already familiar with. She has already cooked a few recipes from the book, and so I consider this gift a win. I figured she’d like it since my daughter loves Anime, so I thought this cookbook would inspire her to cook a bit more. It has!

Yesterday, I told her to pick a recipe from the cookbook and create it today.

She looked through the Cook Anime cookbook and decided to prepare the recipe on page 33, Tea on Rice.  The above picture is from the book. Reading the summary, the inspiration for the recipe was the Manga/Anime Bungo Stray Dogs.

It does feel strange being on the sidelines while she does the majority of the cooking. This afternoon, I was her helper, and I enjoyed assisting immensely. I must say that she did an excellent job preparing the meal.

 

I enjoyed the ingredients used within the dish; brown rice, green onion, tofu, garlic powder, onion powder, Himalayan sea salt, black pepper, a bit of red chili pepper for colo, and gunpowder tea. She added Braggs liquid amino acid to flavor the tofu. She let that marinate for a while before adding it to the dish. She didn’t follow the recipe explicitly; she used tofu instead of green onion, and other ingredients were substituted, but this dish inspired her.

I’ve challenged her to make one recipe per week from the book. Later this week, she said she’ll be making Rice Chahan, located on page 55 of the cookbook. The inspiration for that dish is an animated film titled Weathering with You.

At the end of February, I received this email from Ooni…

Hi there,

I’m getting in touch to give you an update on when you can expect to receive your new Ooni Pro 16 Oven order. 

As you may be aware, there have been a number of issues impacting global shipping availability and logistics over the past few months. This unfortunately means that there has been a delay to the expected shipping date of your Ooni Pro 16 Oven. 

We always do our best to give an accurate estimate for shipping at the time of placing your order and I am sorry that this has changed- I know how patiently you’ve been waiting. 

Taking into account current shipping delays, we expect that orders like yours will begin shipping out to you in early May. 

We will all be working hard to get your order out as quickly as possible, and we will send you tracking information as soon as your order has left our warehouse.

Thank you again for your order and your patience- we really appreciate it.

Take care,
The Ooni Team 

 

It appears my pizza oven will be delayed a bit more. No! I’m not a bit surprised. I ordered the 16″ Ooni Pro Multi-Fuel pizza oven on December 3, 2o20. When I placed the order, all the ovens had delays. However, the oven I wanted to had the longest delay. At that time, they weren’t being shipped until mid-April. That’s a long wait, but I was fine with that. Over the past few years, I’ve done a lot of research on outdoor ovens, and after finally settling on buying a portable oven, the brand that impressed me the most was Ooni! It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I’ve easily watched over 50 videos on this oven, after deciding it was the right or for me.

So, what’s another month? I’ll wait. I do hope it’s not delayed anymore. However, I can understand that it’s not their fault. During the shutdown, I discovered some amazing content creators on YouTube, and my favorite pizza maker would have to be Vito Iacapelli. He owns a restaurant in Los Angeles, California. I’ve included one of his videos below.