Bagels make any sandwich a bit special.
Cheese, arugula, tomato, vegan steak, red onion.
Oh, and paprika mayo.
Bagel, cheese, steak, and mayo were homemade.
When we were in Osaka last winter, we found a bagel shop called Happy Camper Bagel.
It was a small shop where two were probably the maximum number of customers who can comfortably shop.
We would go for a long walk from our airbnb, and I don’t know how many times we stopped at this place for yummy bagels.
One of our favorites was their sweet Azuki bean stuffed bagel.
So this is what I created reminiscing it.
I made two versions this time.
One was stuffed with sweet Azuki beans, and the other with purple potato.
Both were covered with cinnamon sugar-butter mixture.
Azuki beans.
Purple potato.
Soba salad is one of my favorite kinds of salad.
I love noodles, but I make sure there are lots of veggies mixed with them.
You can really use any veggies you like, but this time I used green peppers, carrots, cauliflower, edamame, and radish.
Peanut dressing is so good.
It’s rich, creamy, and tangy.
Doesn’t this look good?
I initially thought I made too much, but it was gone in no time.
It makes a perfect lunch.
Here the salad was served with scrambled tofu and fresh arugula-spinach mix.
Sandwich time!
I’m a big believer that quality bread is a must to make a good sandwich.
I get so disappointed when sandwich which has good fillings but low-quality bread.
If you own a sandwich shop or a burger shop, you should definitely pay extra attention to what bread to use.
Luckily I had beautiful homemade sourdough bread.
This is the vegan smoked “salmon” sandwich.
Arugula, vegan smoked salmon, radish, and mayo.
Tempeh steak, spinach, vegan cheddar, red onion slices, and mayo.
They were both so good!
My title may confuse you.
But these are lemon-shaped strawberry cakes.
Strawberry flavored cake.
Two kinds of icing.
One is strawberry and the other is lemon
And a sprinkle of pistachio.
This is the plate I worked on the icing decoration.
Now it loos like work of art.
The cake was perfectly soft and moist.
I love how they look.
Lovely, aren’t they?
Napolitan Spaghetti is a popular spaghetti dish in Japan.
Because of the name, I believed it was an Italian dish for the longest time.
It’s basically spaghetti sauteed with veggies like onions, peppers, and sausage, and coated with ketchup.
But first I want to talk about the sausage.
This is vegan sausage, just in case you are wondering.
I found this at a co-op store.
We really like it.
Everything from taste to texture, to look.
I cooked them with a little oil, but the sausage gives out a lot of oil itself.
(I’ve since started cooking these with no oil, and it works out better.)
This was so tasty!
This is something I would like to order at a hotel.
It would be lovely, if it was brought to my bed!
Well, unfortunately I will have to wait for a while even to travel until this COVID19 situation calms down.
Ohagi is a type of Japanese traditional sweets.
Made with super sticky rice (sweet rice cooked and mashed into almost mochi) and sweet Adzuki beans.
Regular Japanese rice (used for Sushi) is often described as “sticky” in the U.S., but the rice we use to make Ohagi is an even stickier type of rice, sold as sweet rice in the U.S.
I got my Adzuki beans from a local co-op.
I often use pre-made sweetened Adzuki (simply because it’s easy), but this time I cooked the beans myself.
Traditionally, there are two versions that are very popular.
One is a ball of super sticky rice covered with sweet Adzuki beans.
The other is a ball of super sticky rice stuffed with sweet Adzuki beans (sometimes no filling inside) covered with sweetened Kinako (roasted soy bean powder).
This time I experimented with various ingredients, traditional and not so traditional.
In the picture above, you will find…
-Adzuki
-Coconut
-Cinnamon
-Matcha
The other four are…
-Purple Potato
-Black Sesame
-White Sesame
-Raspberry White Bean
They all turned out great, and I love how they look together with various colors and textures.
It makes a perfect snack.
If you are following my blog, you saw I already made my husband his birthday cak.
Well we finished eating it fast.
By the end of Sunday.
To tell the truth, his birthday is not until this week, and we realized that he wouldn’t have a cake on his actual birthday.
So I decided to make another one.
This time a mini one.
Luckily I had some leftover cake from his first cake (I froze it, but it didn’t stay long in the freezer!).
This is lemon cake and vanilla and raspberry butter cream frosting decorated with fresh blueberries and pistachio.
Isn’t it pretty?
Waffles for breakfast.
But not a typical one.
Sourdough waffles, served with vegan smoked salmon, vegan feta cheese, vegan caviar, arugula, red onion slices, and a drizzle of olive maple syrup oil.
So delicious!!
I absolutely loved it!
