Home Cooked Meals

The other night my mom invited Mike and me over for dinner.  It was an assortment of home-cooked Japanese food. This is the kind of food that we missed when we were living in Texas.  Mike and I never had time to cook these time-consuming dishes that my mom cooked.  We usually ate one dish meals and occasionally had a side dish if we had the time to spare.  

Deep-fried hasu (lotus root). My mom had extra lotus root and wanted to make an appetizer that she heard was at some restaurant (that's really descriptive, huh?) Anyways, I thought that it was pretty tasty.

Namasu (Pickled Veggies)-Lotus root, carrots, cucumber and daikon.  She even cut the carrots into cute flower shapes.

Tempura!!! Sweet potato, Vegetable, Kabocha (pumpkin), and panko-crusted shrimp.  Mike loved all of this! We haven't had homemade tempura in a long time.   His favorite was the shrimp and the vegetable tempura.  My mom's vegetable tempura recipe contains: green beans, gobo (burdock root), onions, carrot, and kamaboko(fishcake).

Nishime!!! I have never made nishime before, so Mike and I have not eaten it for over the past three years. This is one of the most time-consuming Japanese foods to make.  My mom's version tastes just like my grandma's.  My mom's nishime contains: lotus root, araimo (Chinese taro), green beans, carrots, bamboo shoots, fried tofu, chicken, konnyaku, water chestnut, daikon, shitake mushrooms,

Japanese Style Potato Salad.  Potatoes, onions, cucumbers, kamaboko, carrots, mayonnaise. I'm sure that there are other ingredients, but that is what I could taste in her salad.