What do you do when you have the entire house all to yourself?
Photo Credit: MyModernMet.com
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Skip out on housework for a pool date with friends? (ps: An amazing set of photos of people barreling out of a water slide)
Eat cold cereal at 10:00 at night? (with half-and-half, because your wife isn't there to notice – ahem!)
Have a beer and watch scary movies on Netflix, with the surround sound as loud as it will go?
Find yourself in the middle of lengthy and mundane conversations with your cats?
Go to bed early (with the light on, of course!)
Make elaborate plans to get through the to-do-list, and eventually do nothing because you've gotten distracted by something shiny
(If you haven't watched this clip from the Atlantic, it's a must, trust me)
With my husband coming home today from his conference in Boise, life as we know it will return to normal, nothing to see here
Meals this week have included veggies from the CSA and made-ahead protein from the freezer. These chicken teriyaki bites are one of our favorites. The author describes them best when she says
“This version of country teriyaki is not at all syrupy and uses no sugar. A simple soy sauce-mirin marinade is all you need to infuse the chicken with that hauntingly dark and completely addicting teriyaki flavor. Although easily cooked on the stove, these are something special when barbecued.”
I love this cookbook (Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu), with more than 350 pages of recipes and stories. It celebrates food born of the “simple, warm, and welcoming life” of a rural Japanese farm. The author is a California native who traveled to Japan in 1988 with the sole intention of learning Japanese, before returning to the States for graduate school.
Instead
She fell in love with a tall, handsome Japanese farmer who shared her love of food. They married, and for more than twenty years have lived on their organic farm in northern Japan. Most of her recipes are straight-forward and simple, with a small number of ingredients to showcase the freshest food that can be found.
So many of the topics I've been studying are highlighted, the importance of eating whole foods that are seasonal, fresh, local, and organic. To quote the cookbook, “Cooking farm-to-table food, is easy if you source your ingredients thoughtfully and take care to understand the heart of food.”
I ate them this week as an evening meal, with brown rice and a side salad. The next day I added them to an omelet. They're also great in salads, added to soups, or any other place you need an extra boost of protein.
Enjoy!
xoxo
~ Adapted from Japanese Farm Food by Nancy Singleton Hachisu
Teriyaki Chicken Bites
Ingredients
- 2 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
- ½ cup mirin
- ½ cup soy sauce
- 1 2 by 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
- 2 Tbsp coconut oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F
- Put the chicken pieces in a heavy, resealable plastic bag.
- Mix the mirin, soy sauce, and grated ginger in a small bowl. Pour over the chicken pieces and massage gently to distribute the marinade.
- Squeeze out the excess air and seal the bag well. Let sit in the refrigerator overnight (or at least several hours)
- Heat the oil in a wok or large, nonstick frying pan over very high heat. When the oil is very hot, add the chicken. Stir-fry quickly until the pieces are lightly browned or have turned opaque on the outside
- Put the pieces in a baking dish, and cover loosely with lightly oiled wax paper (which should sit inside the dish and directly on top of the chicken pieces) and bake for 8 - 10 minutes or until the chicken pieces are just cooked through.
- (If not to be eaten immediately, remove the pieces from the hot baking dish to prevent them from drying out)
- Let rest for 5 minutes before serving
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