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This Tuesday was Joe's birthday. Since it's also his youngest brother Mark's birthday 17 years apart, we celebrated at his mom's house.
Our little tradition has been a Japanese meal at home, and I finally got to make Joe's favorite tonkatsu dinner tonight. To make it a bit more special, we had savory egg custard (chawan-mushi) and a Chinese chili shrimp dish on the side. Joe made us sake-martini, too.
It's the Easter weekend, and I actually have the whole weekend off like normal people. Although it's rainy, mixed with some snow, plus we are expecting another cold week ahead, we try our best thinking of spring. Just no Easter egg hunt outside around here.
Happy Easter to everyone!!
I've been going in early to work on Friday to take a framing conference call. Sounds pretty important, but not really. I get to work at 8, instead of 11. I'm actually liking this new change because I get off work at 4:30, instead of 7:30. This last Friday Joe called me at work to inform that our grocery store was having a special seafood sale. So I stopped and picked up some Ahi tuna, perfect for a fish Friday during lent. I just simply marinaded it in soy sauce/ sugar/ sake with a dash of sesame oil. Then before serving I added chopped avocado to top the white rice. Yum!! It was a very luxurious fish Friday, that deserved some sake!
And I think the below photo was taken Saturday morning to show how tall our snow banks were still. This was past the first day of spring on the calendar. A little bit of snow yet, and rain, mixed with ice, maybe some more snow, and then rain.... Slowly spring should arrive in this northern part. Not sure when. We just know it's not this week!
I actually looked forward all year to corned beef and cabbage like last year for this St. Patrick's Day, but Joe missed the last piece of corned beef available at the meat shop. We had just talked we had craving for Joe's BBQ ribs. So why not BBQ ribs for St. Pat's Day? Goes really good with black-and-tan. All I had to make was mushed rutabaga-potato and coleslaw. Oh so good! So good.
During lent this year we've been having okonomiyaki (Japanese cabbage pancakes) with squid and shrimp. At least Joe happily devours it, unlike plain ol' fish on Friday.
Joe is better at frying okonomiyaki, crispy outside and soft and moist inside.
We usually go out to our favorite restaurant at the beginning of each month to celebrate the 5th. But yesterday I had a day off, and we just had a weekend getaway, I decided to cook at home for the 5th. I knew I wanted to make egg rolls, then my meal planning process happened and evolved as I did my shopping. As Joe knows too well, I have to have a theme. Last night, everything was rolled and wrapped, Asian style.
Spring rolls as salad.
Egg rolls with veggies and ground pork.
Sushi rolls with surprise fillings. They were green eggs and Spam rolls. I saw a recipe for "green eggs and ham" sushi rolls and thought why not use Spam instead of ham. They were really good. I'd definitely make them again!
So that's how we celebrated this particular 5th at home. The only down side to eating in Asian style was that we had to do lots of dishes, many little bowls and such.
On Saturday night we went to a rockin' concert for George Thorogood and the Destroyers. It was quite entertaining. It was our first concert at this particular casino, and just as rated, its sound and seating was one of the best. Even better, we are only an hour and half away from it. All the songs I've become familiar over Joe's car radios jolted through our entire bodies live. Lots of fun.
We might have lost part of our hearing momentarily. After the concert we burned our free credits on slot machines at casino. We neither gained or lost. A good thing. A very good mini getaway.
Every once in a great while I make spaghetti with tomato sauce. I've come to learn the way I like for my spaghetti sauce. That is to bake the tomato sauce with meatballs in the oven. I find the baking process intensifies the flavor of the sauce, therefore only a small scoop of the sauce over noodles is needed.
This was our combined late lunch/ early dinner this Saturday before going off to a concert and an overnight stay at the casino hotel. Our mini vacation. The best part was that I made enough meatballs to have a few leftovers when we got back!
