Cheesy Chicken & Rice Bake

Of course the day I choose to write about this dish, it’s like freaking 95 degrees outside and the last thing I want to think about is a baked comfort food dish. But once the sun goes down and the fog comes creeping in, I’ll remember why it was so good. Dustin created this for [...]

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Shredded Chicken Taco Salad with Sour Cream-Lime Dressing

It’s HOT. The cats are sprawled out underneath the ceiling fan (I may just join them), and I’m thinking about how growing up on the California central coast has really spoiled me when it comes to weather! But thanks to some leftover BBQ chicken breasts from the night before, we didn’t have to cook anything [...]

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Honey Mustard Pretzel Chicken with Sautéed Collard Greens

A restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz, Clouds, used to have a pretzel-encrusted chicken entrée that always intrigued me. I only ordered it once because I’m more of a small-plate kind of girl (I love to try little amounts of a lot of things) and I could never pass up their sushi offerings on the [...]

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Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce

We’ve been having unusually warm weather for January! Last Sunday we pretended it was summer (although it wasn’t that hard to pretend when it was 70 degrees at 5:00 in the evening), fired up the BBQ, and invited some good friends over for appetizers. They brought rounds of polenta (both regular, and sun-dried tomato) topped [...]

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Teriyaki Chicken & Miso Soup

It’s about time we made two of the most well known Japanese dishes. The chicken teriyaki is best made with chicken thighs, but we used these skinless chicken breast strips instead. We were really happy with how the teriyaki sauce turned out. It actually tasted like the “real thing,” with just a [...]

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Crispy Chicken Wontons with Sweet Chili-Lime Sauce

We present to you Irresistible crunchiness paired with an addicting sauce. Wontons are one of our favorite appetizers to order in a restaurant, so we decided to make them ourselves! The weather is starting to warm up, our colds are (almost) gone, cherry blossom season is right around the corner, and spring break [...]

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Wild Rice and Chicken-Stuffed Peppers

When I was home last August, I went shopping in my parents’ pantry – or rather, was looking for last minute food items to fill up the empty spaces in my suitcase. Among many things, I ended up with a bag of wild rice. We prepared it a few nights ago, and this [...]

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Something Like Tom Ka Gai

We definitely can’t claim that this is the traditional way to make the famous Thai soup, but we enjoyed the challenge of creating something that tastes pretty close, using the ingredients that were available to us in Japan. This recipe serves 2 with enough for seconds. On a side note, it’s been snowing all day [...]

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Bacon-Wrapped Chicken & Sage w/ Creamy Lemon Pan Sauce

We’ve entered the season of Christmas party-planning madness, so that’s why we haven’t been around for a week. And after I write this we’re off to eat Udon Nabe at my student Mieko’s house (thick noodles simmered in broth with tofu and veggies–hopefully that will manifest itself as a post sometime soon; realistically after [...]

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Italian Egg Drop Soup with Meatballs

The undeniable chill in the air today moved me to make garlicky meatballs swimming in a soothing broth with a touch of green and swirls of egg, reminiscent of our favorite Chinese soup –but Italian style, adapted from Rachael Ray’s recipe. Our version includes the addition of garlic (no surprise there), uses Japanese supermarket-friendly ingredients [...]

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Dustin’s Garlic-Basil Chicken & (my favorite) Spinach

I love it when we cook together, but I appreciate Thursdays because while I’m at school teaching a cute 6th grade girl, Dustin is at home making us dinner. When I get home and park my bike behind our apartment building, I smell something delicious coming from the floor above me. I climb [...]

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Parmesan Dijon Chicken, Mashed Satsumaimo & Balsamic Broccoli

Brianna, meet satsumaimo. Satsumaimo, meet Brianna.
It’s important to become acquainted with new vegetables in your produce section. I’d never cooked with a Japanese sweet potato before. Their skins are a beautiful light-purple color, and resemble a yam more than a sweet potato. When you bake them, their insides turn a beautiful [...]

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Chicken Meatball Subs

There’s a 1st time for everything, and this was my 1st time making meatballs. I thought that a meatball sub sounded like a comforting thing to eat after getting through the 2nd week of our new semester, and I know that Dustin misses the ones from our college days at Giovanni’s in Santa Barbara. [...]

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Lemon-Yogurt Chicken Salad Wraps

Maybe we should rename this blog “delicious” in Greek instead of Japanese, because lately we’ve been craving oregano, lemon, and feta in place of shoyu, dashi and daikon. Anyway, here we have another great hot-weather food. We had never made chicken salad with yogurt before, but I wasn’t feeling very mayonnaise-y at the [...]

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Weeknight Rosemary-Lemon Chicken Breasts with Baked Tomatoes

The rainy season has bombarded us in Osaka with humidity and 90 degree heat. It’s zapped the energy out of us, so our meals have been especially low maintenance lately. This dinner was really good, and we both made it up as we went along. We also made rice pilaf again with a [...]

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Asian Chicken Salad with Crunchy Ramen Noodles and Honey-Sesame Cashews

Today was one of the first hot days of summer in Osaka. We rushed home from our evening kids’ classes and felt like something that was fast and refreshing. After looking over a few recipes for Chinese Chicken Salad on allrecipes.com this is what we came up with. The addition of the [...]

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