The thick chewy Udon noodles go so well with sticky Natto beans.
Typically I will just drizzle soy sauce over this, but this time I decided to try something new.
I drizzled olive oil as well as slightly sweetened soy sauce and then sprinkled my vegan nutty Parm generously.
This was a beautiful kind of “West meets East” dish.
Also adding Japanese Shiso basil leaves makes this dish super tasty!
I love variety of vegetables, but I do have favorites.
Eggplant is one of the vegetables that I really enjoy, and whenever I see a dish made with eggplant on a restaurant menu, I almost always order it.
(Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often. Apparently not many restaurants serve eggplant dishes…)
I was lucky to be able to find beautiful fresh eggplant and zucchini at the local farmers market to make this Mapo dish.
The “meat” part of Mapo was made with tempeh and walnuts.
My initial plan was to use only tempeh, but I didn’t have enough, so at the last minute I added walnuts.
This decision was a great one!
I really loved the result.
The texture and the nutty flavor from the walnuts were wonderful.
I don’t always have time, but when I do, I try make my noodles myself.
For this dish I wanted flat and wide noodles, so I kind of needed to make them myself, too.
Absolutely delicious!!
Served with Japanese Shiso basil leaves and chili pepper threads.
My husband is not a huge noodle eater, but recently I discovered that he does like “rice” noodles vs. wheat ones.
Since I’m a huge noodle fan, now I make sure we have rice noodles in our house so that we can share noodle meals together.
This is my recent favorite from Trader joe’s
It’s crunchy and spicy, and it adds a great flavor to various dishes.
Doesn’t this look good?!
It was such a satisfying meal!
Summer is coming to the end, and many dishes will start to have more brown and less green colors on the plate.
I had a lot of beautiful broccoli and wanted to make vibrant colored and flavored dish with them.
I really like homemade pasta, and it’s absolutely worth the time.
I have started having some fun by making different shaped ones.
Aren’t these adorable?
Homemade pasta, olive oil, garlic, broccoli, peas, lemon zest, mint.
It was one of those “lucky” dishes that I didn’t plan to make but ended up super tasty.
I had leftover homemade pasta.
I had these beautiful vined tomatoes and nectarines (not in the pic).
(This time of the year I almost always have nectarines in the house.)
Homemade bow tie pasta, mini tomatoes, nectarine, herbs (Shiso basil, mint, parsley), lemon zest, apricot white balsamic vinaigrette.
It was super refreshing and such a great way to enjoy the seasonal produce.
There are various vendors at the local farmers market.
I’ve been interested in this particular vendor, R & R Cultivation, who sells locally grown mushrooms.
Today I decided to finally try some.
Chestnut.
Blue Oyster.
Lion’s Mane.
They are all so fresh and beautiful!
I also came home with these mini tomatoes on vine.
These are so sweet, and each one is small but packed with a big flavor.
I wanted to make lunch that would really showcase the beautiful mushrooms, and I decided to make a pasta dish.
So why not making home-made pasta to make it even more special, right?
Homemade pasta, olive oil, garlic, sautéed mushrooms, crunchy garlic-panko mixture, parsley, red pepper flakes, and lemon zest.
This turned out delicious!!
I love it when all the local foods come together and result in a flavorful dish like this.
One of my favorite summer dishes.
Cold Chinese noodles with sweet “eggs” and various veggies.
Served with sweet and sour sauce.
So refreshing and super tasty!
What’s your go-to meal on a hot and humid summer day?
Mine is cold noodles.
Soba noodles were served with homemade almond tofu, Wakame seaweed, and summer veggies.
So refreshing and tasty!!
Going back to basics.
Who doesn’t like pasta with red sauce and meatballs?!
When the meatballs are plant-based, it’s even better in my opinion!
Homemade vegan meatballs.
Don’t they look delicious?!
I know it’s carb-overload, but I really enjoyed the garlic bread my husband made to complement the dish.
By the way, the pasta was homemade too, and it made this dish a bit special.
A bowl of soba noodle soup always makes me smile.
First soba noodles.
And then soup.
But after that you can just add whatever you like.
Lucky me, I had some homemade sunflower seed tofu.
I hope everyone had a good start of the week.
