Eggplants in the mail box

We received an unexpected box from Kamloops a few days ago. It was a full of eggplants and peaches!

I have Japanese 'Parents' in Canada living in Kamloops. I met them in 1995, so we have known each other for...17 yrs! They were such a great help when I first came to Canada to study English, and we have been keeping in touch since then.

Their house in Kamloops has a huge back yard with several rows of vegetable gardens. They also have fruit trees, including peaches, apples, plums and apricots. The Mrs. is a great cook and she cans all her fruits and veggies to preserve them. If something happens to the world and you need food, this is the house to go to! I know what their basement storage room looks like. Lots of  home made goodies...

 Anyway, I was very happy to receive a box of Japanese eggplants as my own experiment with them was a failure. The ICHIBAN eggplant I planted late May didn't grow at all and I can't buy any decent eggplants around here!

Japanese eggplants are much smaller, seedless, and their skin is so soft, not like American eggplants.

I made pickles with them and added our own  home grown cucumbers. I also cooked some with chicken in chili sauce over rice. Yum :) I have several more eggplants left... what to eat tomorrow?

Onion Rings

After a rainy & cold long weekend, today turned out nice and sunny.

I had a craving for onion rings... but didn't want to drive to A&W, so we did a home made version of onion rings for dinner along with a veggie burger! I don't usually deep fry anything as it is a pain in the butt to clean and the smell of the oil also stinks up the house. But the BBQ which our in-laws bought us has a side burner so I can do the deep frying outside.

We enjoyed another dinner on our patio :)

Flavour of Hawaii?

I was invited to visit my Japanese friend's place for dinner last night as my husband was away for an overnight trip to North West Coast of Vancouver Island. She said she will have "Nabe" for dinner. It's a Japanese hot pot which has a mixture of meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles cooked in the broth. I decided to bring some Salad rolls that have Miso flavoured meat and assorted vegetables wrapped in rice paper and served with spicy peanut sauce to dip.

When I opened the pantry, I saw a blue tin sitting in the very back of the cabinet. It was my father's in law's SPAM...! 

Long story short, we gave him a tin of SPAM in his Christmas stocking for a joke when he, Mrs. and my sister-in-law were here for the Christmas. He 'unfortunately' had to leave the SPAM behind as they 'worried about the weight of Christmas luggage' back home.

What to do with this... I searched on the internet and found, "Ah, flavours of Hawaii!" It's called SPAM Musubi, and surprisingly there is a Wikipedia page for this, click HERE. When we were in Hawaii five years ago, we saw this in every convenience store and gift shop. It's a combination of Teriyaki flavoured SPAM with rice wrapped in Nori, seaweed, a very Japanese dish!

I made these for a joke and bought them over to my friend's place and... They liked the SPAM Musubi, specially their teen aged high school boy!

   

Turkey leftovers

The turkey dinner was on Saturday night. Since then we have been trying to finish a 14lbs bird with only two people. We thought we would share some with our spoiled son, Snoop, but his belly didn't like the idea. Poor guy...

Left overs became a huge pot of Turkey Soup and we froze two containers of it, of course there were some hot turkey sandwiches and some cold turkey sandwiches to take to work... 

The last portion of turkey leftovers became an easy turkey pot pie last night. After the Birthday turkey dinner and lunch, then another dinner and lunch we had it again, I think we are turkeyed out for a while!

Happy Birthday

March 16 was my husband's birthday.  On the actual day we were both busy, so we decided to do a nice meal at home on the weekend.

There was a 14lbs turkey sitting in the deep freeze since Christmas and we decided to cook that big bird! Didn't we eat Turkey on Christmas? Yes, we did have an 18lbs turkey with my in-laws, sister in-law and us.... I bought the 14 lbs turkey first, but didn't think it was big enough, so I bought another one ... Silly me... Anyway, everyone enjoyed the biggest bird at Christmas, and we ended up with the other turkey, so we are all happy :)

Forgot to take a picture of the birthday dinner as we were too busy eating, so I thought I should share the shocking moment of Snoop's encounter with the Big Bird at Christmas. My dog is 18 lbs too!

Thai Dinner Helper

We love Thai food and we often went out to different Thai restaurants in Vancouver. When we moved here to this small town, we were a little disappointed about how few restaurants choices there are. I like to cook so I enjoy trying out many different recipes, but Thai food is a hard one to spice right.

So, I found this little dinner helper! A can of "Aroy-D Curry sauce". If you have never tried this, you must. It's really good. Tastes like a real Thai restaurant curry. They have this green curry or red curry at the store near our place. We have only found this at the London Drugs, but I'm sure you will find them easier in bigger cities. You just need to cook protein, meat or tofu, add the sauce and simmer...(we always add more veggies...)         

Voila - Authentic Thai Green Curry Dinner!  Enjoy :)

 

Salmon Capital of the World

My town on Vancouver Island is also known as the "Salmon Capital of the World". In the summer time, I see many people go down to the river in their shorts and sandals with fishing gear. They stand in the river and fish... and catch salmon, that easy! Young kids stand by their parents with a stick on their hands...and wait for the fish to come on the shore... and then smack, smack, smack them with a stick! Tough kids!

We have some fisherman friends and they sometime share their catch with us. We are so lucky to know them! One of our friends works as a fishing guide. When he returns from the fishing trips, not everyone takes their catch, so he keeps the salmon. We have several cans of salmon sitting in the pantry, so I decided to use them for dinner tonight, making fish cakes.

We also have about 3 dozen freshly canned cans of salmon from another friend. Didn't know but found out we have to wait at least one year before we eat these as the bones are still hard. So, anyone who wants a nice salmon sandwich has to wait for a while.

UDON

We had another stormy night and we, all three of us, didn't get much sleep. I heard it was snowing 30 min south of where we are, but it didn't reach our city.It stopped raining in the late afternoon, but Snoop missed another good & satisfying walk today. The weather is supposed to be great tomorrow, Snoop :)

I made an UDON dish for dinner tonight. UDON is a type of Japanese noodle, made from wheat flour. Recently I started to notice Japanese foods in regular grocery stores. When I first came to Canada in 1995, I remember asking my family to send me a box full of Japanese goodies. Now I can buy most of things at the closest grocery store or on the internet. Living overseas is much easier than it used to be.

Jamie's 30-Minute Meals

Every Sunday morning, our day starts with watching our favourite cooking show with a cup of coffee at 8am. How can you watch a cooking show after getting out from the bed first thing in the morning? We know it's not a good idea as we get hungry even though we have not taken shower yet.

The show is "Jamie's 30 Minute Meals" on food network. It's Jamie Oliver's new show and we really like it. He has had many TV shows and books in the past 15 years, but I think this is his best. Easy recipes which we can cook within 30 minutes (I will say it will be probably more like 45 - 60 min for regular folks). No difficult techniques are needed. Most of his recipes are familiar flavours with a twist.

This morning was "Steak Indian-Style". We are not big meat eaters, but we LOVE Indian food! This looked sooooo good, so we went out to pick up a nice piece of steak for dinner.

Yes, Dad, we BBQ'd today :)

All his recipes in this new show are easy to follow, so you should check this out too. Click on the link here to go to "Jamie's 30-Minute Meals".