Izakaya Night with Owen
When we were on vacation we were nosing around a bookstore and I told the boys they could each pick out a book. Leo didn't get any, he looked at the solar system books and felt they didn't have any new information, but Owen picked out, not one, but two. Any surprises with either of those? Uh, no.
Owen's books were a Japanese English dictionary and a Japanese cookbook called Izakaya: Japanese Bar Food. With vacation ending on a crazy note, me being sick, the boys starting school etc.....we hadn't had time to cook from it. We decided this would be the weekend so we headed to Green Onion with our shopping list in hand on Saturday morning. We had a delightful time. I gotta say Owen is awfully good company. Both my boys are...I really need to make an effort to do more one on one with them. I know I'm rather biased but I think they are delightful creatures (most of the time).
We had gone through the cookbook and highlighted a ton of recipes but we eventually narrowed it down to pork belly skewers, Japanese fried chicken, edamame with a miso/mustard dressing and green beans with a miso/sesame dressing. We were also supposed to have onigiri, or rice balls but I, typically, ran late with all the food so we just had rice. The cooking process was a bit chaotic but I must say it was a resounding success. I was muttering about how I always run late with my cooking and Ernie was trying to kindly say, "oh, noooo....that's not true." I stopped and looked at him and said, "Ernest, how many years has Thanksgiving dinner been a good two hours late?" He had no response. Oh well....we all have our strengths....AND our weak spots....