Japan

My post after the browser crash, appropriately for Japan.

March 11, 2011
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I was almost finished with writing this garden blog post last night. Then the swirling, Mac beach-ball-of-death aka “eternity ball”, appeared. I immediately knew this post was doomed.»

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Koyasan, Japan

January 2, 2011
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Retreats are often moments of personal time that we don’t often do enough for ourselves. When we planned our trip to Japan, a mountain retreat was instantly on our itinerary. On our memorable Japan trip, we took a few days to travel up to the secluded mountain of  Mt. Koya to stay at one of the Koyasans and the experience was amazing.

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Grilled Prawns with a Citrus Garlic Butter -Al fresco Inspiration

April 18, 2010
Grilled Prawns Garlic Butter

A rare day off, the sun was out, and the air springtime warm. A day peacefully spent meddling about in the garden, harvesting the last of the sugar snap peas and planting tomatoes and veggies in their stead, throwing in the occasional play session with the dogs. Video it and soundtrack in some music, and it becomes one of the moments to be shown at a birthday or funeral which evoke the crowd’s tears reminding how great life can be.

Extra crunchy charred prawn eyeballs. Oh yeah!

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Nikko Japan

January 7, 2010

Daily Crack Photo Blog- Tips and Tidbits from our Everyday Frenzy

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The quaint and picturesque mountain town of Nikko Japan captivated us from the very beginning. We’ll be sharing some pictures of our Nikko trip soon on our photography blog!

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Beef Sukiyaki Hot Pot – Warmth for the Soul

January 6, 2010
Japanese sukiyaki hot pot recipe

Japanese hot pot, or nabe, are the perfect dish this time of year.  Quick, easy, and warm one-pot meals. This beef sukiyaki hot pot is one of our favorites.

We’ve been trying to catch up on our unarchived photos and after going through our recent Japan trip photographs, we needed some Japanese deliciousness, and quick.  What better way, than with some warm, comforting Japanese home food, Nabe, or hot pot.

In restaurants here in the US, most people’s experience eating Japanese hot pots are at a Shabu-Shabu restaurant.  You might consider shabu-shabu one of the more refined versions of nabe, »

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Matsutake mushrooms

January 4, 2010

Daily Crack Photo Blog- Tips and Tidbits from our Everyday Frenzy

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The beauty of mushrooms in all it’s earthy glory can’t be beat. Photographing them is an even bigger treat.

These Matsutake mushrooms are from Tokyo’s Tsukiji outer market.

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Sidecar Fizz Cocktail – Time to Celebrate!

December 30, 2009
sidecar fizz cocktail recipe

Happy New Year to all and to all a great and safe night of drinking! We’ll be shaking it up on NYE with some great cocktails from our mixed drink archives, but the hardest part is deciding where to start. Celebrating with some fine cocktails from our garden citrus is what we really look forward to. During this time of year, the citrus are at their peak and the zest, oil, fragrance of the rinds are what make these cocktails so stellar.

This year, we’re making a new cocktail, at least new to us.  We have discovered the Fizz.»

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Somen noodles w/Sweet Soy-Ginger Sauce -Takashi’s Noodles

December 14, 2009
Somen Noodles

Since our remarkable trip to Japan in August, we’ve been craving Japanese noodles with a vengence. We ate all the udon, somen, soba and ramen our stomachs could handle in 9 days and it was an amazing experience and education in the history and culture of Japanese noodles. We never got tired of slurping our way through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Each region’s noodle specialties were all so different, delicate and highlighted some magnificent regional flair. Coming back home, we were looking for a cookbook that shared some techniques on making hand-cut noodles because of  one of the two precious Japanese »

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Oh pretty Japanese Maples

November 16, 2009

Daily Crack Photo Blog- Tips and tidbits from our everyday frenzy

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If we could, we’d grow Japanese maples. But our warm weather isn’t too kind to these delicate, lovely trees. We recently returned from a trip to Northern California and were lucky enough to be surrounded by plenty of maples.

Even one leaf sitting alone is beautiful.

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What is Yuzu? A Yuzu Cocktail Recipe

October 29, 2009
Yuzu Cocktail Recipe

For those of you who missed the Daily Crack photo or don’t follow Diane’s tweets, “Our Yuzu are ripe!”

“What is yuzu?” Don’t feel bad if you have never heard of this beautiful little citrus, since outside of a few Asian cuisines and particularly in Japanese cultural circles it is seldom grown or used, however we are hear to tell you that yuzu is pure culinary gold.

Yuzu is a sour, tart and very fragrant citrus, slightly smaller than a billiard ball. Yuzu is a citrus that isn’t eaten straight, but is used as a souring ingredient through the use »

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