Home Eats

Lately I've had an obsession with cooking and/or just eating at home.  I didn't realize how much fun it would be until I stocked our refrigerator full of ready to cook ingredients!  On the more technical side, not only do we get to choose our own quality ingredients that go into our food, we can also control the cleanliness (or lack thereof) that we would have otherwise received at restaurants.  Win-win!

So... I realize while posting this, that this meal was made a couple of months ago when I had first started cooking at home.  Let's just consider this my first homemade meal ever--which is why it's quite rudimentary.  Don't worry it gets better progressively! This was our dinner of orange chicken, tuna salad with avocado, sesame noodles, and a side of garlic broccoli.  

Not homemade-- just a Trader Joe's snack of Brie on multigrain and Moscato.  A better alternative to our late night Cha for Tea runs!

Peppercorn pork tenderloin with garlic toast, garlic broccoli mash, guacamole and Trader Joe's green smoothie. 

Tomato basil spaghetti with a hard boiled egg. 

Pre-baked salmon filets with minced garlic and parsley on a bed of ... melted butter. Baby steps!

Finished product salmon with an avocado egg spinach salad & chipotle dressing.

Brought food from home to a Starbucks study sesh instead of their prepackaged foods.  Vanilla yogurt with granola and mixed berries, pesto chicken wrap from Trader Joe's, and iced coffee. 

This doesn't look too pretty but it's homemade so I'm posting it anyway!  This was a lunch I packed for Jeff of bulgogi, broccoli, and fried rice topped with egg. 

My homemade eggplant parmesan!  This took me almost 2 hours to make o__o  I had to sweat the eggplant with salt, clean it off and pat completely dry with a paper towel (the longest part), bread them, bake them, take them out, add sauce and cheese, then bake them again.  But it was all worth it in the end!

I then used the eggplant for my chicken eggplant parmesan sandwiches.  Sun dried tomato basil chicken and homemade garlic aioli between La Brea Bakery's garlic french bread.  

Which I then served for our couple's dinner night with Chloe's delicious homemade beef noodle soup. 

Our second-day dinner party with Luan and Yerin.  I used the leftover eggplant parmesan and chicken and served it with homemade garlic noodles.  With balsamic salad, blueberries, and grapefruit cocktails on the side. 

My very FIRST homemade Banzai Bowl! The first to come of many.  So many that I should have probably made a separate Banzai Bowl blog post but it's too late now.  We used Sambazon acai packets, milk, banana, strawberries and blueberries for the smoothie, and topped it with granola, coconut shavings, fresh fruits, and honey.

Luan's homemade spring rolls.  The.best.springrolls. ever. Needless to say, Luan is Vietnamese.  

My spin on fusion spring rolls to finish up our spring roll ingredients from the night before.  Hawaiian short rib & spinach spring rolls.

Slowly perfecting my Banzai bowl. 

Spinach salad with mushrooms, egg, blackberries and a balsamic dressing, with spicy farfalle pasta with meatballs.

Surprised Jeff with a lunch of Tri-tip and oven roasted Brussels sprouts.

Mini tri-tip sandwiches with egg, cheese, spinach, served on top of Whole Food's amazing French bread. 

My favorite homemade meal yet.  I tried recreating Cafe Hiro's uni spaghetti and without trying to sound too proud, IT WAS DELICIOUS! The uni was fresh, soft and flavorful and instead of pureeing it, I broke the uni into small chunks that were swimming throughout the pasta.  Yumm.  Topped with seaweed and served with moscato. 

And of course a close up. 

Boyfriend was missing Yoshinoya's beef bowl so I made him his very own at home.  I used marinated beef served over sauteed spinach.

Another banzai bowl served in our new Mason jars.

Homemade spicy salmon and crab mix bowls topped with seaweed + seafood pancakes. 

Belgian waffle from Paris Baguette to which I added fresh strawberries, banana and blueberries. 

Chef Chloe's amazing homemade poke bowls! Even better than our former-favorite at Tommy's Sushi. 

My most recent and also most successful Banzai Bowl.  I substituted Naked berry blend for milk and added frozen strawberries, blueberries and bananas that I froze myself (Can't trust the Hepatitis infected frozen fruits at Costco :( ) and it came out to be the best acai smoothie I have made thus far. Not to mention topped with bee pollen at last! Thanks to my younger sister for this special, long awaited ingredient for my birthday :D

And my last homemade meal of the bunch-- spaghetti and meatballs with my rendition of Mama D's famous pink sauce, topped with parsley flakes.