Sunday Lasagna

After brunch, and a wee rest, I prepped our dinner, a sausage and mushroom lasagna with a spinach bechamel sauce. Oftentimes, American recipes for lasagna include a ricotta, egg and cheese mixture. This time, I made a bechamel sauce and added chopped spinach.

Sauce, lasagna noodles, bechamel with spinach, pork sausage with fennel, noodles, repeat.

The husband was so excited, the smoothness of the bechamel sauce blew his mind.

Overwood Old Town Alexandria Brunch

We went out to brunch Sunday morning in Old Town before heading to the grocery store. The husband loves blueberry pancakes, and I love the Eggs Chesapeake at Overwood. We headed there this morning and I stepped outside the box. The husband always orders two brunch dishes, which generally surprises the server, but he always manages to eat both with ease.

 Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

Perfect, light and fluffy.

 Fried Chicken and Biscuit with Mushroom Gravy

Instead of poached eggs, I embraced my inner Southern child and went with the fried chicken. The biscuits are massive, as is the fried chicken breast, which was perfectly cooked. While I liked the mushroom gravy, I think it needed some sage or to be a little creamier. If you have a chance, you need to order this.

Overwood Breakfast with sunnyside up eggs and bacon.

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Any day I can start off with a delicious brunch with my husband is a fantastic day. Hope everyone had a delicious one! Post-grocery shopping, I prepped our Sunday night dinner and hit the gym for some quality NCIS viewing and treadmill time.

Saturday Breakfast

I love Saturdays. Especially Saturdays without plans until later in the day. I slept for nine hours and wow what a different being well-rested does for my attitude in the morning. The husband, however, is an early rise. I think he enjoys have a few hours of peace and quiet all to himself. After finally waking up, I made our breakfast. 

 Snowpea Tips

Using my newish wok, I sauteed garlic in hot oil and added the snowpea tips. After a brief saute in the hot wok, and I added some oyster sauce, tossed the tips and voila. Smoky flavor and still a nice crunch.

Kimchi Tofu Soup with zucchini, red pepper and scallions.

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I used up the last of the fresh kimchi we picked up from Super H Mart a few weeks ago. This is a great and versatile soup that you can add rice, ramen noodles or udon noodles. 

Axian Club A on Rye

I love my local sandwich/bibimbap shop Axian. Usually I'm a bit on the naughty side and order either a Reuben or an Asian-flavored steak and cheese, but I'm a super fan of the Club A sandwich on marbled rye. Toasted rye with turkey, ham and cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. A few crispy steak fries on the side and it's a winning lunch for those days when I'm working late into the evening.

Nabe Party

March will mark the ten year anniversary of my debut as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Cherry Blossom Festival. I helped promote US-Japan cultural relations, wore a pink sash and blazer and met some wonderful people, including two ladies from the GA program that I have kept in touch with and call friends. Last night the husband and I hosted a nabe party reunion with these two and two other friends. Years have gone by, but it's heartening that we can gather together and feel like we haven't missed a beat. 

We haven't hosted a party in a while, and I had forgotten how much time and effort it takes to pull off. I had intended to go to Super H last weekend and make the dumplings during the week. As it was, we didn't make it to the grocery store, the husband was out of town at a conference and I had  an extremely busy week at work. That said, I think we did an admirable job and managed to not set off the fire alarm. 

 Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts.

Baked at 375F for 40 minutes, these were lovely, savory bites.

 Pork Gyoza with Garlic Chives.

Panfried and then steamed.

 Ham and cheese puff pastry with dijon mustard.

 Vegetables for the nabe.

An assortment of mushrooms, daikon , carrots, negi (aka 'big onions'), snowpeas, onion and red pepper.

In another bowl were bok choy, napa cabbage, spinach and bean sprouts.

 Kimchi Nabe with Pork Meatballs

After wrapping the dumplings, I used the leftover gyoza gu (filling) to make pork and garlic chive meatballs.

Adding assorted vegetables to the nabe builds, changes and deepens in flavor over time.

 Chanko Nabe with chicken meatballs and pork meatballs.

 My husband's family tradition is to add instant ramen noodles to the nabe. 

 You could use rice or udon.

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Following dinner, we settled in to watch Lost in Translation. While parts of the film were highly relatable to the five of us who had spent time as expats living in Japan, other parts were gratuitous, such as the recurring shots of Charlotte walking around in her underwear. I still believe it was a grave injustice to award the best original screenplay to Sophia Coppola for her 70 page script. The ability for Bill Murray to improvise and ad-lib made this movie. 

Valentine's Day Dinner

Every day should be a day filled of sweet gestures and words of kindness and love. My husband is not a fan of the mass commercialized holidays. We had the worst commute home, boxed in by bad drivers and angry drivers all trying to head towards Route 50 and 66. Then we forged on through an impromptu stop at Whole Paycheck to pick up something nice for us to eat together as we non-celebrated Valentine's Day. Best part was cooking dinner together. The husband adeptly handled the steak cooking task while I prepared the cheese plate and vegetables.

Ribeye for Two with arugula salad, roasted cherry tomatoes and sauteed eryingi mushrooms.

***

Glorious welcome back dinner with my sweet husband. Every day is a good day when I can spend time with my best friend. Hope everyone else had a wonderful day full of happiness, friendship and love.

Tokyo Choco Banana

Tokyo Banana is one of my favorite omiyage from Japan, after the ramen sets. I introduced Tokyo Banana to my MBA classmates five years ago and enjoyed seeing how much they liked these carefully prepared and delicious confections. Since I changed jobs, I haven't had as steady a stream of Tokyo Banana deliveries. Fortunately this week, the office visitor from Tokyo brought a new kind of Tokyo Banana for us to enjoy.

 Choco Banana with leopard print pattern. 

Banana-flavored sponge cake with chocolate.

Delicious chocolate cream filling.

Annual Chinese Bowling Adventure

For the past four years I have organized a group outing in February to go bowling and enjoy Chinese food. The inaugural event matched up with both Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year, and well, bowling is a fun group activity. This year we met up the day before Chinese New Year for bowling at the same dive joint in Northern Virginia. Service is a little surly, technology is vastly outdated, and the beer is overpriced, but the chance to cheer each other on as we brush off rusty or nonexistent bowling skills with friends for a few hours is priceless.

My husband brushing off his bowling skills from last year. 

This year a few new friends joined the gathering and added celebratory dancing after scoring strikes and spares.

***

Following the bowling, we headed over to Mark's Duck House for Chinese food. There were four vegetarians in the mix, and six omnivores who shared a number of dishes. The great thing about sharing dishes is you can enjoy a variety of dishes and flavors at a discount, with tax and tip included $23 per person. Since duck was in the restaurant's name, we ordered a full duck, but it took well over 45 minutes to arrive.

Singapore Noodles with meat.

Prawns with snow peas.

Moo Shu Pork

Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and extra Chinese Sausage.

Beef with Chinese Broccoli and wide noodles.

***

A great time all around, and a nice way to catch up with some former MBA classmates I haven't seen since last year's outing. Until next year...

Kaz Sushi Vegetarian Bento

Every month, one of the Japanese companies hosts an lunch at their office. Whichever company is hosting orders lunch bentos for the gathering. This month, it was our office's turn to host. Since we were ordering bentos anyways, I added a vegetarian one to the list.

Vegetable tempura with sauteed bean sprouts, japchae and hijiki. ($14)

***

I've had the chicken teriyaki bento, the sushi and sashimi bento, and the beef bento. This was my first time trying the vegetarian one. It was good, although it's hard to keep the crunch on tempura when it has to sit awhile. Kaz does a nice lunch bento, although it's way too boisterous if you eat at the restaurant. The other downside, the male manager could work on his sociability skills as he comes off a bit brusque at times. 

Super Bowl Weekend Cooking

Last weekend was full of cooking and in-house hibernation. Fitness February has been on hiatus for the first half of the month due to freezing temperatures. In preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, I prepared a number of different dishes after a big grocery shopping trip to Super H Mart. 

Oklahoma Omiyage from my coworker. 

This seasoning mix is supposed to be nice on beef and pork.

I rubbed the seasoning mix on baby back ribs and baked  covered in foil at 325F for an hour.

Ribs were covered with BBQ sauce and baked another 30 minutes.

I used the leftover buttermilk biscuits with slices of Virginia ham and mustard. 

Baked Buffalo chicken wings.

***

This parade of Americana foods went well with the weekend's main televised event. Unfortunately, the unexpected energy-related interlude following the halftime performance led me change the channel to watch Downton Abbey. The commercials were decent, and the halftime show had some fun dancing acts plus a Destiny's Child reunion. Unsurprisingly, the mikes on the other two ladies were set quieter than Queen B. Must be a little hard to stand in her shadow. However, I was able to watch the full DA episode and still return to the delayed football game and watch the final quarter.

Saturday Morning Baking

After sleeping in on Saturday (I love any day that starts by sleeping in past 6 am), I mulled what to do with the browning bananas and extra buttermilk we had. With the husband out running errands, it became baking time.

 Banana Bread topped with Almonds

First attempt at homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

Biscuits always struck me as a bit finicky, with recipes warning of not overworking the dough.

Buttermilk Biscuits.

Cutting the butter into cubes and putting it into the freezer before working it into the dry ingredients helped. The biscuits were lovely and light. I'm definitely going to make them again with sausage gravy and work on perfecting poached eggs.

Shrimp Green Curry at Home

We headed to Super H Mart Friday night after work to pick up groceries for the week. One of the benefits of a Friday night trip is avoiding the weekend throngs. We made sure to pick up a lot of great vegetables and also some things to prepare for Superbowl Sunday.

Shrimp Green Curry

Peeling and deveining the shrimp was the longest part of the prep work. Saute green curry paste, garlic cloves, fresh ginger, jalapeno and onion, then add coconut milk and bring to a simmer. When the rice is nearly finished cooking, add the sliced yellow bell peppers, enoki mushrooms, snow peas and shrimp to the green curry mixture. Top with scallions and cilantro before serving on rice with lime wedges.

Il Porto in Old Town Alexandria

After returning home from the conference in Baltimore, the husband and I went out to an early dinner at Il Porto. I love the back of the menu which describes the history of the building. A truly historic place, it's been everything from a brothel to a front for a Nazi family. We ordered calamari and two pasta dishes. The waiter forget or did not hear the calamari order, which ended up to be fine since small salads are served along with the pastas.

Linguine with Mussels, Calamari and Shrimp in a light tomato sauce.

Linguine with White Clam Sauce.

The pasta had a nice toothsome quality to it. 

After a nice meal together, we headed home where I promptly fell asleep for hours.

Baltimore Restaurant Week at Mo's Crab and Pasta Factory in Little Italy

This week I joined colleagues from Toronto and New York at a two day conference in Baltimore. On the last day, we had a nice lunch before we headed back to our respective offices. At the recommendation of the hotel's concierge, we called for the free shuttle van from Mo's Seafood to try some famous Baltimore crab dishes. Unexpectedly, this restaurant was participating in Baltimore's Restaurant Week and had a two course menu for $15.95. 

Cream of Crab Soup

This was so thick, my colleagues joked that this was not a soup.

Lumps of crab meat were mixed in the super rich and thick cream concoction.

Broiled Crabcake with Vegetables.

The crabcake was huge, and absolutely delicious.

***

Mo's Seafood has a number of restaurant locations in Baltimore. The van dropped us off at the location in Little Italy. The dining area is on the small side, and the two waitresses seemed a little overwhelmed at times. I definitely recommend the crabcake, although maybe skip the cream of crab for something a little lighter.

Pork with Spanish Rice

I really like to use the electric nabe pot for a variety of dishes, not just stews. This is a one pot meal my mom used to make, although she used bone-in pork chops, while all I had was boneless pork loin.

Rice simmered with pork loin, onion, garlic, mushroom, jalapeno, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, tomato paste, chili flakes and peas.

Whole Foods Pizza

Last weekend we were debating what to eat for dinner. We felt like pizza, but didn't want to make one from scratch. We headed over to Whole Foods to pick up a bake at home pizza and Three Wishes white wine. 

The sausage pizza had a thin crust. We added salami and red bell pepper slices, and baked for 16 minutes. The pizza tasted pretty good, better then Domino's, and was the perfect food to eat while watching a Flashpoint marathon.

Sichuan Hot Pot at Home

Super H had a new product, a spicy Sichuan hot pot soup mix. Combine with water, add vegetables and meat, tofu or fish, and enjoy with a bowl of rice on the side.

Bok choy, fish balls, shrimp balls, sliced pork belly, button mushroom, bean sprouts, onion, enoki mushrooms, scallions, ginger. 

Chicken Pho for the Soul

With the changing temperatures, I managed to pick up a head cold that took over a week to recover from. One of the best things, other than rest and lots of water, is a hot brothy soup. We stopped by our local pho joint and I ordered the #17 with white meat chicken.

There's a lot of sliced chicken and scallions included with hot broth.

Topped with Thai basil, culantro, bean sprouts and a splash of lime, this is a fantastic bowl of soup to eat when you're feeling under the weather. 

Kimchi Nabe at Home

The temperatures have dropped down to 20F at night. A perfect dinner on cold nights is nabe made in an electric tabletop nabe pot. We had picked up a large bag of kimchi from Super H, plus a kimchi container for the refrigerator. This container is a must if you're going to buy kimchi in bulk. You can include many different vegetables and proteins in kimchi nabe, depending on what you have on hand. I used zucchini, maitake mushrooms, onion, red bell pepper, kimchi and soft tofu. With some Japanese rice, this is a fantastic meal. 

A little kochujang helps add a bit of robust flavor to the nabe. I put the electric nabe on the table with bowls, rice and a large ladle. Ready to enjoy.

Katsu Curry at Home

We don't have a deep fryer, so when we make fried Japanese and Korean dishes, it makes a mess. However, some times it's necessary when you're craving a Japanese classic, tonkatsu curry.

Dip pork cutlets in flour, egg wash and panko (bread crumbs).

Deep fry the breaded pork cutlets until golden brown.

Drain the deep fried pork cutlets on paper towel to remove some of the excess oil.

Place sliced tonkatsu on a bed of sliced cabbage next to rice. 

Served with a bowl of spicy vegetable curry with onion, red pepper and mushroom.

You can either dip the pork into the curry, or pour the curry over the rice and enjoy.