Chicken week

Another chicken dish. We brined a whole chicken with this recipe and roasted with the recipe from the queen of California Cuisine, Alice Water's restaurant, Chez Panisse.

The chicken was in the water (with Coarse salt, sugar, Juniper berry, All spice, garlic, Thyme) for 24 hours in the fridge.
I know this photo is not appetizing...more like a dead body in the water....



Is it ready? Check the thermometer....Yeah, It is done!





Cutting the string and free the bird...Ohhhh, Oishiso...(looks delicious)Because of the brining, the meat was very moist and juicy.

Chicken Mole

We cooked GREAT chicken mole with this mole recipe.

After we made the mole sauce, browned the chicken with some oil in the frying pan for 15 minutes and transfered them in the deep oven proof dish. Covered them with the mple sauce(we used half of the recipe). Bake it in the oven with 400F for 20 minutes.

OH, it was sooooo good. We had it on corn tortilla and it tasted better on the sescond day. We used the half of the ancho chile sauce and froze the rest. Want to try with pork next time!

Easter Brunch

We went to our friend's house in San Francisco for Easter brunch.


Alison decroated the table very Easter. We ended up eating all the chocolates on the table...
Cooking in progress....


















Today's menu is....
1. Mikako's fruit basket. Notice the curving work on the basket :)
2.Barbara cooked sensational chocolate chips pancake.
3.Alison's tremendous colorado egg dish.
Let's dig in!!!

This is what I had....for the first round.... :):)

Possessed by BBQ Ribs

Steven and I went to Firehouse Grill & Brewery which is very close to our place to eat Ribs. We don't know why but we REALLY wanted to eat some ribs. We made sure they have it on their menu on the front door and took nice seats by the window. A waitress smiled and brought us a menu. "ribs, ribs, ribs...." I was repeating it in my head but looked at the menu anyway.............."what?.........where is the ribs?" We both went back to the top of the menu and looked at the menu one by one....but no, there are no ribs!!! Next thing we noticed was the title of the menu, "Bar menu". Yes, we were there at 2pm on Saturday. They serve only Bar menu at the time. Ohhhhhhh :( Steven had ordered a beer which he usualy doesn't drink but he did only because he likes the combination of beer and BBQ Ribs!! We were so diappointed and ordered some onion rings and pizza instead. Even after we left the restaurant, couldn't get the image of ribs out of our minds and.....



We went to a super market and cooked ribs at home for dinner! Mmmmmmmmm. It was soooo delicious!! Now we don't have to go to restaurants for ribs anymore. :)

Our cats, your cats

When Steven is away from home for his biz trip, our 2 cats and I fight a lot. I know it is weird that me, human fight with cats. But all of us miss him immensely and we just do or say bad things each other to forget the loneliness. They do some bad things like pooping on the sofa and constantly scratching the sofa, which they don't do when Steven is around. I yelled at them in both English and Japanese like " I am not a cat person, If you keep doing this, I am going to sell you guys to Shamisen store!!!!" When I talk to him, I say "YOUR CATS scratched our furniture and made a mess on the floor! " for their bad behavior. Or "OUR CATS are doing fine. They are sleeping by my side now." So Steven will know if the cats are doing fine or not by the subjects "Our cat" or "Your cat".





Lucy is on my CD player saying "What? If you don't like this, come and get me!!"

Kinoko Spaghetti

Enoki, Shitake, Button mushrooms, garlic, butter, garlic, sake, green onion and soy sauce. The secret is putting two ladels of pasta water (the water spaghetti is cooking in) When soy sauce and butter meet, it makes very rich and deep nice taste.

My herb garden

Since our new deck gets more sun, I am trying growing some herbs again. I am not good at growing plants....either too much care or forget watering.....But this time our deck is very visible from the living room so I won't forget taking care of them. Basil, Dill, Parsely, cherry tomatoes, algora, rosemary and Chilantro...I may have planted too close each other. Did I read the little tags came with the plants? ....k,k,kind of....oh, well, when they get crowded, I will transfer some of them to a new pot.