Category Archives: I, Me, and Myself

Welcome To My Kitchen

As you’ve probably seen on my Facebook posts, I am now a proud mom of four adorable puppies. For the longest time, we always maintained two. But as I unwittingly followed Facebook feeds of Pomeranian breeders, I instantly gained access to adorable puppies looking for a forever home. Truffle is a puppy Pom that I got from North Carolina and Tofu is a year old Pom from Russia. He was imported by a breeder here and was meant to be a show dog until his teeth started overcrowding, which, I was informed was a big no-no in AKC standards.

Isn’t Tofu the fluffiest thing in four legs???

Anyhooo…How do these furry babies equate into my present kitchen?  The first two pups, Cookie and Mochi, always hang around in the kitchen. They know very well that when I cook, scraps of food fall to the floor, so they’re always on a look-out. Naturally, when the two newer ones joined us, they caught on to that as well. So I now have four dogs, yipping at my heels every time I cook. Oh joy!

I once saw a video of a Pom breeder and it was a scene in her kitchen where she had almost a dozen fluff balls running around. I thought that was the coolest thing! I only have eight more to go to have my dream kitchen. Ha!!!

These are my kitchen buddies. Three smiling Poms and one Yorkie wishing he was an only puppy.

Enough of my puppy insanity…. Let’s get cooking! I am on week 3 of my low-carb cooking. I’ve been having lettuce/cabbage, fruits and sashimi. Surprisingly, it’s almost painless. I have discovered a slew of flavored vinegars and spices which jazz up the dish without bringing on the calories. I am, however, close to being sick of raw salmon and tuna (let’s not even go on how expensive those are ).

Innovation is the mother of necessity — said by some philosopher who was tired of paying $29/pound of sashimi-grade tuna.  So I will whip up the next best thing — lean turkey. Here is my Cilantro-Lime Turkey Wrap.

Get a pound of the leanest ground turkey you can find. Saute lightly. It will look like it’s one huge stretchy piece, but be patient, it will break apart as it starts to cook. As it breaks apart, add salt and pepper.
Add Lime Ponzu sauce, about 3 tablespoons.

It will look soup-y and you will feel like you’re doing it all wrong. Don’t despair, it WILL dry up. As it dries, it will concentrate the flavor of lime. This is really needed because when you work with super-lean meats, the low amount of fat makes it difficult to hold flavor. Hence, you need to cook in the flavor.

When dry and broken-up add freshly cut cilantro, about 2 teaspoons.
Wrap in cabbage and lunch is ready!!!

Check-out my folded plate. Got it for $12 at Home Goods. So pretty! It makes up for the atrocity of my wrap. I still haven’t figured out how to separate cabbage leaves without tearing, so I always end up with odd pieces that make it difficult to wrap well.

If you can stand to lose a pound or two, this is a good dish. Very flavorful, calorie-friendly, cooks fast and uses only one pan! In my book, it can’t get any better than that.

 

Healthy Eats

As I promised in my latest Facebook post, I was going to make poke at home. Poke (pronounced as po-kay)is a raw fish salad in Hawaiian cuisine. I remember having this  10plus years ago in Honolulu. I was not a big fan of raw fish then. I was also 20 pounds lighter and can don a swimsuit without fear, so safe to say, a lot of things  have changed since then. I love sashimi, so the thought of mixing it with great fruits and veggies plus a savory sauce makes it very enticing.

We went to North Shore Poke Company. This is a restaurant which started at Huntington Beach and they now have branches in Cerritos, Costa Mesa, and most recently, H-town!

An order of poke would first have a base of rice or veggies. You will then pick a choice of raw fish  (salmon or ahi tuna) or octopus. Extras would comprise of mango, avocado, masago, crab, crispy garlic, ginger ,sweet onion. This would all be topped by a savory sauce. There’s a variety of sauces to choose from, depending on the restaurant.

My bowl – brown rice, salmon,mango, masago, blue crab, sweet onion and Ponzu sauce
D’s bowl- brown rice, ahi tuna, pickled ginger, masago, Wasabi Shoyu Sauce

I knew I had to have more of this so I vowed to make some at home for dinner. And also for Beans who was still asleep when we left. We stopped by at Nippon Daido grocery to pick up some sashimi grade salmon and pink snapper. This is my version:

Base is wild rice and some lettuce. Fish is a mix of salmon and pink snapper. I added mangoes and avocado. For the sauce i mixed ponzu and sesame oil. Ah-mazing!

This has really been a wonderful day, food-wise and weather-wise. We ate this outdoors where we recently just cut the grass. I love the smell of freshly-cut grass. It smells so clean. For dessert, we had the cream puff pastry I picked up from the Japanese grocery store. Since the North Shore didn’t serve alcohol, we thought we’d just drink at home. It’s a weekend and it’s past 5 and the weather is awesome, it would be a crime not to…