creamy broccoli salad with almonds & raisins

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creamy broccoli salad with almonds & raisins

Last weekend we took our first big trip with B3 in tow, up to Berkeley for my brother’s graduation.  It wasn’t until we were on our way back, winding our way through the mountains on the last stretch of the I-5, that I realized how much Los Angeles has started to feel like home.  This little ham can probably take most of the credit for that (isn’t that how the saying goes?  “Home is where the diaper pail is”?) but whatever the reason, sometime over the past year this sprawling city has stopped feeling foreign and unusual, with its bleached asphalt and vast robin’s-egg skies, and started feeling familiar.  That said, after 5 ½ 7 hours of driving on the two lanes of the I-5 amidst weaving cars and semi-trucks that I swear are bigger here than elsewhere (and, by turn, feeding a 6-month-old in Jack-in-the-Box parking lots along the way), I suspect conquering that real-life edition of Toad’s Turnpike will make any destination feel a little more like home.  

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pear, parmesan, & balsamic salad

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pear, parmesan, & balsamic salad

Our Christmas tree is up!  It’s the first real, live, non-plastic tree to make an appearance in our household.  We chose it in about five seconds flat last Saturday with babe in tow, in the signature haste of panicky new parents who are still not very good at this “taking the baby out into the world” thing.  (Luke, meanwhile, was just passed out the whole time and didn’t wake up until thirty minutes after we got home.  But he could have.)  So it’s a fat little four-foot munchkin of a tree that is cheerfully lopsided and very strategically placed in the corner of our living room to display the side with the least lop.  But I think that’s what you call “character.”  

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thanksgiving leftover stuffing waffles!

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thanksgiving leftover stuffing waffles! | two red bowls

A few years ago I came across an Alton Brown diatribe against one-use kitchen gadgets (or “unitaskers,” I think he calls them) and thought it would be a good rule not to buy them for our New York kitchen.  This more or less worked (mostly thanks to B2 putting his foot down on random Amazon purchases and the fact that we just had no room, lest we start storing kitchen appliances in our bathroom) but I also pretty much immediately found ways to bend the rule, i.e. the SPAM slicer is okay because it can also slice tofu, and the potato ricer can also make excellent pumpkin puree — clearly bi-taskers!  

And then, in a fit of indulgence a few months ago, I bought our very first waffle iron.  This is arguably the largest unitasker to grace our kitchen.  But I calculate that a waffle iron is actually at least a penta-tasker (quintup … tasker?):  (1) waffle pizza! (2) waffle grilled cheese! (3) waffle-ninis! (4) all kinds of actual waffles!  And, now, (5) stuffing waffles!  

The thing is, if I used the waffle iron to make only stuffing waffles, I’m pretty sure it would still be worth it.  After seeing them crop up in all sorts of places online, I’ve been waiting to make these for all the years that our kitchen was too cramped to fit a waffle iron, and they lived up to every expectation:  All the intensely savory, buttery, carb-tastic goodness of my very favorite Thanksgiving side dish is stuffed into a sizzling iron and made delightfully crispy on the outside, but fluffy and almost creamy inside, ready to tuck all the other Thanksgiving leftovers, from mashed potatoes to turkey to cranberry sauce, into its perfectly square divots.  (And I added maple syrup, because why not.)  I can think of no better way to reheat stuffing the next day — and in fact, it’s good enough that I’d be happy to make stuffing just to waffle.

After a tumultuous couple of weeks, wishing you all a safe, happy Thanksgiving.  Thank you so much for being here, and for reading!

thanksgiving leftover stuffing waffles! | two red bowls

thanksgiving leftover stuffing waffles! | two red bowls

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korean potato salad (gamja salad)

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korean potato salad (gamja salad) | two red bowls

Two days after we moved to LA, we promptly left again on what would previously have been practically impossible (or at least, incredibly not enjoyable) from our former home, the quickest weekend trip back to B2’s home in Hawaii. We went for a wedding and for Halmunee-to-be’s first encounter with her grandbaby (whom she likes to call “her baby”).  In 48 hours there, we ate our weight in homemade Korean food, I was shut down on every attempt to help around the house (okay, so I didn’t try that hard), and we did a lot of marveling at how gleeful it is to fly to Hawaii from the West Coast and to say goodbye to red-eye flights of East Coasts past. And we saw boars at the wedding! (They were not part of the procession.)

In the week or so since then, most of my time in LA so far has been something like this: learning about this thing called June gloom, adjusting euphorically to having an office with an actual window and actual sunlight in the afternoons after said June gloom, trying to buy out every single supermarket’s abundance of produce even though our Airbnb has very little in the way of kitchens, spending much more time on Google looking at traffic, and, most of all, gaping at the open, open spaces, and the endless expanse of blue sky overhead, which is as bright and all-encompassing and wrapped around you like a sunny blanket as the one in New York felt narrow and distant and shielded from you by high buildings. Of course, there’s plenty to miss about the home we left behind in New York, but I think it’s safe to say we really like it here so far. I get the sense we’ll like it even more when we move into our actual apartment (we found one! yippee!) this Saturday. It’s a happy relief.

korean potato salad (gamja salad) | two red bowls

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potato, garlic, & leek soup

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potato, garlic, & leek soup | two red bowls

potato, garlic, & leek soup | two red bowls

Every once in a blue moon, usually when we’re just about to fall asleep, B2 likes to come up with ideas for things I should cook next.  I use “ideas” loosely, because it’s mostly a sleepy, intentionally goofy dialogue that consists of “what about …” followed by a long pause and things like “… homemade hot pockets!” (to be fair, that would be delicious) or “something with cheese” or “pumpkin toast.”  (When I asked what pumpkin toast would be, like toasted pumpkin bread or toast with pumpkin on it or toasted pumpkin or what, his answer was, “You know.  Pumpkin.  Toast.  Pumpkin toast.”  And then he fell asleep.  Two weeks later, I showed him this and he said, with glee, “See?  It was a good idea!”) 

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kabocha & caramelized onion galette

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kabocha, goat cheese, & caramelized onion galette | two red bowls

kabocha, goat cheese, & caramelized onion galette | two red bowls

As much as I dread fall (mostly because of the season that-shall-not-be-named that comes after it), I have to admit that I secretly enjoy more things about it than any cold-weather hater should have the right to.  There’s the undeniable coziness of multiple layers and fuzzy slippers, the soothing weight of a heavy comforter at night, the crisp in-between weather that’s cool enough for classy wool coats but not so cold that I’m resigned to rustly Michelin-Man puffer jackets; there’s the never-ending cornucopia of magical fall baking, from warm, spicy poached pears tucked into baked oatmeal and scones brushed with maple syrup to a surplus of pillowy baked bread and my very first challah.  And, maybe best of all, there are magical things like virtual pumpkin parties, thanks to Sara of Cake Over Steak!

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udon noodles with sesame dipping sauce

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udon noodles with sesame dipping sauce | two red bowls

udon noodles with sesame dipping sauce | two red bowls

When we came back from Japan, I didn’t think I’d try to recreate any of the magical, thoughtfully, wonderfully-made food we had while we were there.  It all seemed way beyond my ken — a just-so balance of kombu and bonito, a dollop of miso and things I couldn’t even guess at, hand-pulled and long-simmered and much-perfected.  That was true most of all for the multi-course kaiseki meal we had in Kyoto.  We weren’t even sure if our uncultured palettes could even properly appreciate everything we were served — delicate, softly-cooked beef wrapped in thin slices of eggplant, vegetables cloaked in water jellies, cold soups with scallops and deliberately arranged tiger prawns — and I’m pretty sure a lot of it did go right over our heads.

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spicy ahi poke, avocado & rice “parfaitinis”

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spicy ahi poke, avocado & rice "parfaitinis" | two red bowls
spicy ahi poke, avocado & rice "parfaitinis" | two red bowls
spicy ahi poke, avocado & rice "parfaitinis" | two red bowls

It’s our wedding menu!  Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing homemade versions of some of our reception eats, our cake, and our wedding favors.   You can see the recipe for one of our cocktail hour appetizers here!

As much as I care about food, choosing our wedding caterer was kind of a black box for us.  We wanted the food to be, you know, good, but other than that, all we really knew was that we really, really wanted poke.  Spicy ahi poke (preferably from Foodland) is one of B2’s favorite foods, and even though we figured we’d be going with the standard beef-or-fish-or-vegetarian choices for our entrees, we were really hoping it could make an appearance elsewhere.  I’d be lying if I said we didn’t briefly consider asking whoever would be the ones making our food to please just buy out an entire Foodland stash and serve it up as our second course, plating optional.

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boursin & caramelized onion tartlets

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caramelized onion & boursin tartlets | two red bowls
caramelized onion & boursin tartlets | two red bowls
caramelized onion & boursin tartlets | two red bowls

This is part of a little series on our wedding eats!  I’ll be sharing homemade versions of some of our reception eats, our cake, and our wedding favors in the next few weeks.   You can see the first part of this series — a few of B2’s favorite Hawaii foods for his birthday — here!

Guys, I really love wedding appetizers. Something about endless varieties of enticingly arranged small bites speaks straight to my miniature-loving, perpetually indecisive soul.  Teeny spring rolls! Mini burritos!  Dainty things in spoons! I’m still dreaming about these chicken quesadilla cones we had at a friend’s wedding in April.  At all the weddings you’ve been to, I’m that person in the corner accosting servers, balancing a canapé and three vol au vents on one cocktail napkin and trying to figure out how to get enough of that dipping sauce on one piece before it’s awkward and the server has to walk away.

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chicken katsu, mac salad & rice // a birthday hawaii plate lunch!

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chicken katsu, mac salad & rice // a birthday hawaii plate lunch!
chicken katsu, mac salad & rice // a birthday hawaii plate lunch!

“Chicken katsu, katsu sauce, one scoop of mac salad, and two scoops of rice!”

These are the precise (and enthusiastically recited) makings of Bowl #2’s dream plate lunch-slash-birthday-request — shatteringly crisp Panko-crusted chicken thighs, juicy inside and deftly sliced, zealously dunked in a smoky-sweet-tart katsu sauce (mysteriously made, contrary to its Japanese moniker, from almost no Asian ingredients) and served with exactly one scoop of the efficiently-dubbed mac(aroni) salad and exactly two scoops of fluffy, snow-white rice.  And, according to B2 (though not according to the environment), best eaten out of a Styrofoam clamshell.

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