daily slice-of-life blog of a 52-year-old // not necessarily written for today's readers
I’ve been enjoying my daily tea for the past couple of months now. It’s especially nice to drink out of the ceramic cup. It has a great feel to it. 🍵
The only problem is that our cat, Yuzu, also like to drink from it, and when I leave the room I have to put the cup on a shelf, otherwise I return to see her face inside it! 🐱
This evening we ordered take-out from one of our favorite “fast-casual” Indian restaurants, Tarka Indian Kitchen. Koa was out with friends for dinner, so it was just for Mariko and I eating at home. Before we started eating, I sent the photo above to him to gloat a bit, and he replied with an unhappy emoji. Later that evening, he said the food looked so good that he and his friends ended up getting food from Tarka later! 😁
I was reorganizing my browser’s bookmarks and came across this recipe for Salvadorian Chicken which I hadn’t made in a few years so I decided to make it for dinner. It’s a braised chicken in wine dish, and very easy to make.
I don’t really know how authentic it is, but it’s pretty tasty! I usually like very flavorful and spicy dishes, and this dish would be considered quite tame. Probably perfect for those with less-adventurous palettes.
It’s weird to think that one would have to learn how to use a home oven, but here we are. Welcome to the 2020s! I touched on it briefly in another post, but we have a fancy Anova Precision Oven which has a sous vide mode. It basically uses a water reservoir to regulate the moisture level in the oven as you cook food. This cooks the food evenly and also keeps it from drying out. The addition of a food probe ensures even more precision as the food reaches and is held at the proper temperature depending on the recipe.
It’s a fancy bit of technology for sure, but is it too much? Mariko tasked me to try some recipes for the oven, so I’ll have a better answer in the coming weeks but what I do know is that it’s actually fun to use because you can control the oven with an app on your phone. If you use one of the recipes from the Anova website, the oven changes modes automatically (varying moisture level, temperature, heat source direction, and probe control) during the cooking process. It’s very satisfying to glance at your phone and see the status of the oven.
So far I have prepared a pork tenderloin, which came out pretty good, and today I tried the “Reheat Pizza” recipe, which also was a success. I admit that this oven is overkill for two slices of pizza, but I had to test it out! 😂
Tonight Mariko had a couple of friends over for dinner and of course there was some delicious food. My favorite was the chanpurū, which is an Okinawan dish of gōyā (bitter melon), tofu, and veggies. So yummy!
