Archive | November 2025

Off to Japan…

Nov7

As you read this, I should be on my way to Japan. Another chance to make beautiful memories with Chan in one of our favorite places to travel. Our fear this trip is if the local Japanese people will hate us since we are foreigners and some foreigners are not doing us any favors with their bad behavior in Japan!

As always, feel free to follow me on instagram. I will be posting stories daily of our adventures! So excited for this trip, I am super burnt out from work and just life in general so I need this breather. Short blog vacay, see you folks soon!

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Restaurant i-naba – Honolulu, HI

Nov5

I had a rare chance this day to have a lunch with two of my brothers. I used to go out with all three of them all the time – nowadays, 2 would be a rare outing. Most of the time, I’m with only one of them. It’s a good and bad thing. I surely miss the old days and being around them, my wallet doesn’t miss those days (lol). But another good thing is, it means they are growing and becoming more independent. I think all three brothers are growing up well.

Anyway, I decided to give them a taste of good Japanese food by taking them to i-naba. It’s a double edged sword, I give them a taste of good food and they either don’t appreciate it fully or maybe acquire a taste for it. Ha! Anyway, I really enjoyed it even though my wallet didn’t. It’s okay, another memory to add to their banks.

Tempura Soba | $30.00
2 shrimps, 1 white fish, veggie tempura, and zaru soba

Bara Chirashi Bowl & Soba | $34.00
chopped some kinds of sashimi served over sushi rice. also comes with regular size zaru or kake soba (we chose zaru).

Hana Soba | $36.00
cold broth soba, topped with tororo (grated yam), uni, ikura (salmon roe), green onion, dried seaweed and tamagoyaki. also comes with tempura (shrimp, squid and veggies)

I don’t know if you remember my previous post but the last time I came, I really wanted to try this Hana Soba. They said they were out of uni and could give more ikura which I said no to. I finally got to try it this time!

Miso Soup and Takuan

Mixed Rice

Bleh, not great.

Tempura

Their tempura is always so good. Lightly battered and fried crispy. So so so good.

The star of the show. Did it live up to expectations? Well…I think I’ll go with less is more for soba from here on out. Sure it tasted good but once everything was mixed up together – I couldn’t really taste the different between the tororo and the uni. It just all melded into a cold soba dish with no distinct flavor. The tamagoyaki felt super out of place, it was certainly a choice to add that in. While I was glad to have tried this dish, I would just stick to the plain zaru soba tempura set next time. Less is more as I said.

Spam Musubi Rating:

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Recipe: Pork Tofu and Watercress Stir Fry

Nov3

I saw this old school recipe online the other day and decided to make it as meal prep for my weekly breakfast. How was it? Good! The only thing is, I make such a huge batch that I get tired of it pretty easily. That’s the thing about meal prepping, I save a lot of money and time but get so tired of the food by day 3 or so. Wish I had the mentality of eating to live rather than living to eat. Hard life (lol). Anyway, I’ll share the recipe below. I think I found this from the Electric Kitchen website. The only thing I changed was to add rehydrated bean thread noodles at the bottom of my container before pouring over the stir-fry to make it a heartier dish and because I’m carb crazy.

Pork Tofu and Watercress Stir Fry

Ingredients:

  • 1 teaspoon oil
  • 1 pound lean pork, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 cup shoyu
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 1 medium carrot, sliced
  • 1 (1-inch piece) ginger, crushed
  • 1 (20-ounce) block firm tofu, cubed
  • 1 bunch green onions, chopped into 1-inch lengths
  • 1 bunch watercress, chopped into 2-inch lengths

Directions:

  1. In a large pot, heat oil and brown pork.
  2. Add shoyu, water, sugar, onions, carrots and ginger.
  3. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
  4. Add tofu, green onions and watercress and simmer gently until watercress is wilted.
  5. Salt and pepper to taste.
  6. Serve immediately with rice.

Noods!!!!

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