Sylvia's Scenario

This week I've been preparing for Nick and Sachiyo's return from Japan and decided to make Japanese Milk Bread.  This is the kind of bread they eat in Japan and it's very different from American bread.  Nick sent me some lists to help get his house ready for them; one list was for groceries.  He didn't have bread on his grocery list, but I decided to make some bread for them anyway - Japanese style, just to surprise them. I first heard about Japanese Milk Bread here in Seattle when it started showing up at Farmer's Markets in 2017.  Locally, it's made by  Ayako & Family  who sell over a dozen varieties of wild, heritage and heirloom plum jam and then they started selling the bread to go with their jam.  People flocked to it!  Nick and Sachiyo don't really eat that much bread but when we're in Japan, we do eat their bread which is a white, puffy-kind of bread.  I never thought much of it but it's the only kind of bread you see in J...

Tonight, we had one of our favorite salads for dinner and I realized I've never put it on the blog. So, here it is. It is a French salad that originated in the city of Nice and it has such a great combination of flavors; Bruce says he could eat it every week. Why I've never posted it here on my blog, I really don't know because we eat it often. I even made it for dinner one night during our trip to Japan last year in 2017. Nick and Sachiyo LOVED it.    Of course, this was the Japanese version with lots of fish in it, including the Japanese favorite of shirasu which are those little white fish that the Japanese sprinkle on a lot of dishes. I don't remember what the big fish were, something common that they eat a lot but I do remember we also bought some tuna to crumble in it that was delicious. It was really dense fish with a big bone in it, like a pork chop only fish. The Japanese eat all the parts of fish so this must have been a part that we don...

There are no Mexican restaurants in Japan so when Nick needs a Mexican food fix, he'll have one of his favorites:  Taco Rice.  They offer this dish at some restaurants in Japan and Nick ordered it for lunch when we went to one his favorite places he likes to go to during work, called One Shot.    It's a lot like a taco salad only there is a layer of rice on top of the salad greens, then the taco meat and then cheese. (Notice that it's mostly salad) I like that the rice adds another dimension to the otherwise typical taco salad.   At home, Nick layered it differently with the rice on the bottom, then the meat mixture and cheese  and then we added our salad fixings.  Nick's version of Taco Rice is more the Western style - lots of meat and carbs and less salad. LOL   We did find some salsa in the grocery store in a little jar, similar to a small mustard jar.  Then we added some tomatoes and avocado.  (We loo...