Innie or Outie

A tasty meal that can be cooked in minutes, Veggie & Pork Stir-Fry:

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Simply chop 1/2 carrot, 4 medium spicy pork sausages, 1/4 white onion, and 1 medium red bell pepper; saute in sesame oil adding frozen string beans, white pepper, minced garlic paste, minced ginger paste, soy sauce, and cracked black sesame seeds; and serve on a bed of reheated leftover rice.

A filling and tasty way to keep warm as we chowed down at a local outdoor eatery by Mihama Bowl. The ramen broth was absolutely delish…

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The meal had pork, bamboo shoot, ramen noodles, minced chicken, fish roe, and scallions in a miso shiro broth with a sheet of nori on the side. To accompany the dish, well what is ramen without gyōza?

With the weather on the chilly side, hubby thought he’d use a little chilli pepper sauce to warm us up, Papa’s Iceberg-Pepper Pork:

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For the dish, hubby used pork, iceberg lettuce, homegrown bell peppers, oyster sauce, toubyanjan sauce, minced garlic paste, white onion, and zasai; placed the mixture on a bed of rice and topped with cracked black sesame seeds.

This is another take-out meal from the new neighborhood Mom & Pop restaurant. Hubby ate it and used the phrase “chickendon” as a means to describe what he felt the main dish represented. The meal included rice, nori, chicken cutlet with sauce, pickled ginger, seaweed-carrot mix, mixed veggies, and hard boiled egg; accompanied by a soba-flavored broth.

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This version of local bento boxes came from a new neighborhood “Mom & Pop” restaurant. The bento was what I would call a kiddies-size, about half the regular portions. The meal consisted of rice, umeboshi, hotdog, deep-fried pork cutlet, deep-fried sardines, potato salad, beans, tofu, seaweed, and hard-boiled egg. Accompanying the bento box was a soup with the flavor of soba broth.

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This meal makes use of the last of the New Year leftovers, New-Years-Platter Pasta Dinner:

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For the dish, I chopped leftover New Year’s platter goodies into bite-size pieces; sautéed 10 bite-size beef chunks and 8 shrimp in olive oil and minced garlic paste; added the New Year goodies, 2 cups leftover pasta salad, a dash of white wine vinegar, and 1/2 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes; and sprinkled with a light layer of parmesan cheese.. As an accompaniment, reheated leftover deep-fried quails eggs on-a-stick with a soy sauce dipping sauce.

‘Tis the season for leftovers. This is an idea hubby came up with for extra New Year’s goodies, Papa’s New-Year-Platter Skillet Paella:

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The meal was quite simple, hubby lightly browned uncooked rice in butter; and added saffron, chicken broth, julienned homegrown bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and various remains from the New Year Platter. It was surpisingly tasty, but I think I would have crumbled the meatballs though.

This is one of our traditions, instead of cooking on New Year’s Day we pick-up a platter from one of the local grocery stores. This is one of the better platters we’ve had the pleasure to eat. It contained a little bit of everything, such as three types of chicken, three types of shrimp, shumai, scallops, ham, spring rolls, beef-wrapped green beans, meatballs, bamboo shoot-carrot-pork mix, harusame, edamame, sesame-covered mochi balls, etc.

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This version of local oba-style take-out meals is basicaly the same as Bento #53 except the deep-fried pork cutlet has tartar sauce instead of ketchup; and meatballs are replaced with pork luncheon meat.

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These are a little something hubby picked-up for the holidays. Since we enjoy vanilla-flavored coffee, I thought I’d give a try to doing the marshmallow thing. It didn’t work out too well though. Even though the item is basically meringue, the additional ingredients needed to produce the cookie version kept it from completely disentigrating in the steeping liquid.

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