Spring Break Projects

It's Spring Break! I have planned for myself many projects during vacation. I want to paint little cute things on 5" x 7" canvases, cook meals using the grill, apply for teaching jobs, write letters and overdue packages to friends, and tidy up the apartment. I got the canvases on Saturday, and we also went to the Farmers' Market. The market had those plastic Easter eggs scattered about for the egg hunt for the kids. I thought that they were for decoration, but then later realized when a parent was helping her kid "find" the egg that it was the Easter egg hunt that my husband saw advertised. Anyways, we bought short ribs there. I've been wanting to try buying the meat there for a long time. I'm always disappointed by the beef I buy at the supermarket because when I bring them home, I find that there's a funky smelling, brownish-gray discoloring on other side of the meat. Good thing I don't really eat a lot of red meat. When we do, we now get them at the butcher at Whole Foods. We've had better luck with the meat there. I love that I can ask them to show it to me and have them re-cut it to our liking. I've even seen people ask to smell the fish or meat there. I'm too shy to do that. So, going back to the Farmers' Market... We also bought a red butter lettuce for $2. It was so pretty I had to get it. It's good, but it didn't have much of a thickness like the green variety. My parakeets enjoyed it, too. We also got oranges, and a bag of different colored potatoes.

I went grocery shopping today. Want to know what I've planned for this week's dinner menu? Well, today, I made Chicken with Soy and Balsamic Dressing on a bed of sauteed cabbage. It was so good. This recipe from Harumi Kurihara's Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking is definitely a keeper. Her Pari Pari-Style Chicken; not so much. I also plan to make her Japanese-style Squid Salad using the butter lettuce with Amy Kaneko's (of Let's Cook Japanese Food!) Eggplant with Gingery Chicken Sauce. For another night, I plan to make little bite-sized pork tonkatsu and Tokyo negi on skewers using Harumi's idea. I'll serve that with my mom's Japanese-style potato salad using those colorful potatoes. I wonder how it would look with those purple potatoes! And then another night, I'll use the grill to make Kaneko's Chicken Grilled with Miso Glaze and her Chicken Meatballs with Sweet Vinegar Glaze served with corn nibblets. For the chicken meatballs, I haven't decided if I should grill them on skewers and serve the sauce on the side, or to go ahead and pan-cook it with the glaze. It depends on how ambitious I'm feeling. The last dish I have planned is the salmon collar a la Mom. Last time I made this was on the stovetop grill. So I'm looking forward to making it on our little grill. And I'll serve that with sunomono. All Japanese food.

Happy projects for me! I'll keep you updated on what out of these things mentioned I would actually get done. :)