green onion

Sesame Soba Noodles

This Japanese Sesame Soba Noodles recipe makes a simple Asian side dish or easy main meal that can be served hot or cold, and is on the table in 20 minutes or less.

This recipe is brought to you by Kroger

When we talk about where to go if we’re eating out, 8 out 10 of our favorite spots are going to be Asian. Funny enough, Chinese is probably the lowest on the list, with Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, and of course Japanese all vying for our taste buds top spot.

When we go out to eat, we don’t even think about how complicated a dish might be. But when we cook at home, you can bet your chopstick that simplicity is a big part of our dinner-making decisions.

New Years Day is one day we won’t be heading out anywhere to eat. For us it’s all about taking it easy and cooking at home. Asian noodles are a traditional New Years Day dish, with signifying longevity, good luck, and starting the year with a clean slate. Plus, these soba noodles are light yet savory, and filling enough to cure any of the aftereffects of New Year’s Eve’s shenanigans.

This Sesame Soba Noodle recipe ticks all of our favorite recipe-making boxes. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s healthy. It’s totally flavorful. And it goes with so many of our favorite mains, and it even makes a main meal all in itself.

continue to the recipe… about Sesame Soba Noodles

Easy Broccoli with Feta Cheese

Everyone knows broccoli is healthy for your body and is a superfood powerhouse that’s high in fiber too. While it’s delicious served raw and steamed, my favorite way to eat it these days is roasted in the skillet.

Most often when I choose a recipe to feature here from a cookbook I love, I tend to skew toward the main dishes or maybe a dessert. But lately, I’ve been hearing my sister’s voice in my head, replaying her request to add more easy side dishes to my recipe list. Sides that aren’t complicated to make, or that call for too many unusual ingredients.

Just really good, simple food that compliments a variety of mains to pair it with.

So when I received the new cookbook A Couple Cooks Pretty Simple Cooking: 100 Delicious Vegetarian Recipes to Make You Fall in Love with Real Food from my friends Sonja and Alex Overhiser, I found myself totally torn between several of the recipes within, and even took to Instagram stories to ask which you’d like to see between a simple broccoli side dish or Turmeric Cauliflower tacos.continue to the recipe… about Easy Broccoli with Feta Cheese

Fresh and Easy Vietnamese Noodle Salad

This light and refreshing vermicelli noodle salad gets its inspiration from one of my favorite dishes of all time, Vietnamese bun salads, with fresh slivered veggies in a tangy Vietnamese rice vinegar dressing, making it a simple side dish to serve with grilled meats and chicken.

The first time I made a version of this salad was when my husband and I were newlyweds. One of our wedding gifts was a version of this countertop roaster/griller contraption. The first dish we made with the roaster was from the recipe book that came along with it, a version of Asian roasted chicken in a peanut sauce that was served with a simple vermicelli noodle salad very similar to this one I’m sharing today. Or at least that’s what I remember.

That chicken dish was pretty much the only thing we ever made in the roaster. It became yet another gadget to add to our assortment of kitchen appliances that begs one to question, “But do I really need it?” We admitted it just didn’t justify the room it took up in our cramped kitchen so we eventually parted ways.

But this noodle salad…it’s here to stay.continue to the recipe… about Fresh and Easy Vietnamese Noodle Salad

Puff Pastry Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Quiche

Thanks to a few staples you can keep in your fridge and freezer, this quick and simple quiche comes together fast thanks to a puff pastry crust filled with custard-ey eggs, smoked salmon, and crème fraîche or goat cheese.

This post has been updated with new photos and a few tweaks to the recipe. Enjoy!

Keeping long-lasting basic ingredients on hand in the fridge, freezer, and panty easily solves the “what’s for dinner” question. And with this super simple, quick quiche recipe, you won’t have to ponder that question for breakfast, brunch or lunch either.

We’ve definitely been on a breakfast kick and quiche has been top of mind. And I don’t mean breakfast for breakfast, but for dinner instead. One of my favorite things growing up is when my dad would break out the big electric frying pan in the evening and sauté mushrooms and bacon for Grandma’s Eggs. What kid doesn’t think breakfast for dinner is some sort of cosmically altered universe? And it’s an easy way for mom and dad to look like we’re ‘breaking the rules’ and going against society.

What rebels we are.
continue to the recipe… about Puff Pastry Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Quiche

Sheet Pan BBQ Blue Cheese Chicken Pizza

The key to this irresistible sheet pan pizza with three kinds of cheese is a second rise of the crust in the pan for an easy, fool-proof, crowd favorite.

I had forgotten all about it until I pulled it out for my Smudge and her cousins to bake frozen cookie dough cookies with their grandpa.

I didn’t remember until I saw the lines etched in the “non-stick” glaze of the nearly non-existent-lip-of-a-cookie-sheet posturing as a baking sheet.

That cookie sheet. It had memories. My memories.

These are the lines of my youth that were made with a pizza cutter, or possibly a very sharp knife some 35+ years ago, separating pizza slices for this toe-headed blonde and my pig-tailed little sister. Back when my mom was a hard-working, self-employed teacher who had to get dinner on the table and knew what kids would actually eat.

Those lines are testament that homemade pizza then is not like homemade pizza today.

Then, there were no baking peels.

No ceramic pizza stones to preheat in the oven.

No fancy displays of perfectly round perfection, or shaggy, “rustic”-labeled looking pizzas meant to make misshapen pizza pies look perfectly acceptable because, hey! They’re real.

Instead, we had baking sheet pans (more likely called cookie sheets because what else did you use them for??) to make large, square pizzas for the whole family to devour.

That’s how you knew it was homemade.

Back when pizza was hip to be square.

continue to the recipe… about Sheet Pan BBQ Blue Cheese Chicken Pizza

How to Make the Best Creamy Coleslaw

My favorite creamy coleslaw stays crunchy, not soupy, and gets a bit of bite in this slightly sweetened, vinegar spiked mayonnaise dressing.

Potato Salad. Baked Peans. My favorite Burrata and Heirloom Tomato Caprese Salad. Those recipes have always made up my barbecue buffet table daydreams. But coleslaw? It was always on the bottom rung of my side dish desires. Show me the shredded cabbage bowl and watch me skip right on by.

But my husband? He’s a coleslaw connoisseur. It’s usually the first thing he goes for. But that doesn’t mean the bites he gets are always good and that puts our home’s king of slaw down in the dumps.

But this creamy coleslaw recipe always gets not just one, but two big, Big, BIG thumbs up from my man. And now me, too.

It isn’t goopy. Nor is it soupy. And it’s far from overpowered by the bite of raw onion.

This here coleslaw, folks, this is the best I’ve ever eaten. And the man agrees.

Here’s why, and how to…

continue to the recipe… about How to Make the Best Creamy Coleslaw

Light and Easy Cheese Ball Recipe

This 5-ingredient cheese ball is lightened up with a combination of Neufchâtel light cream cheese and Greek yogurt cream cheese for nearly guilt free snacking, and it’s guaranteed to be a major crowd-pleaser at any shindig!

The day has come and gone and perhaps your resolve to paint 2015 with a rosier, healthier, more prosperous and organized glow has too.

This past weekend—January 17 to be exact—marked the day most people fall off the resolution band wagon. It even has an official nomiker, Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day.

Really? Only 17 days in and we’re already doomed?

Hardly.

I’m keeping my (re)Solutions going strong—or at least still breathing—by keeping up with my Little Victories tour. Small changes that make it easier for bigger evolutions to come.continue to the recipe… about Light and Easy Cheese Ball Recipe

7 Spice Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowls

Homemade Japanese 7 Spice (Shichimi Togarashi) infuses homemade teriyaki sauce to boost the flavors of this healthy chicken teriyaki and fresh vegetable rice bowl, featuring chicken thighs, edamame, and sushi rice.

There’s a trend afoot. A food trend you’re seeing right, left and center, and it starts with a capital F.

I first talked about it last week when I shared this recipe. No, we’re not talking french fries, fondue or finger food. While I dig all of those and am especially partial to another F-word, I mean my my mom’s Fudge, they’re not on the scale for making major inroads into every cook’s kitchen.

So what F word is trending? It’s simple, really. The big F starts with flavor. Cooking these days is all about flavor. Trés trendy? Or just good, old fashioned recipe making? I’m betting it’s both.continue to the recipe… about 7 Spice Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowls

Stuffed Artichokes with Thai Shrimp Salad

Eat seasonal! Eat fresh! Eat good food! In my world that’s the mantra to live by.

While I crave ultimate comfort foods like blackened seafood pastas, the perfectly cooked steak and grilled cheese sandwiches, you’ll never find me shying away from super fresh, in-season fare that’s light on the palate but heavy on flavor.

I’ve always been a big artichoke fan. Heck, it was my second post ever on this little bloggity blog. And now…my how things have changed. I didn’t even realize I needed to post my own recipes back then, and just look at how Smudge was just a smudge!

When it comes to the green leafy orb, you could eat it the traditional route. Melted butter for tender leaf dipping. Another swath of mayo (nay to the Miracle Whip on my side of the table) and into the mouth. That’s the way most artichoke dipping begins and ends.

But we’re going lighter this time around with a rice wine vinegar seasoned Thai flavored shrimp salad to top every tender tooth-scraping artichoke leaf. We’re just going with the seasonal flow.

continue to the recipe… about Stuffed Artichokes with Thai Shrimp Salad

Crab Cake Poppers

These past few weeks I’ve spent an absurd amount of time with some amazing food bloggers. Absurd to me only because I’m not sure I could have ever imagined the reality of my journey from an office stiff to a travel-when-the-opportunity-strikes online content creator.

While the time I spend ensconced in my home office or toiling away at the library allows me plenty of alone time, these blogging trips and the relationships I’ve created with my fellow bloggers are the glue that binds my love for what I do.

I love creating ebooks, magazines and photography, but creating recipes is the part of the job that truly, mainly because it’s part of my life, it’s what I do to survive. To make food and eat it.

continue to the recipe… about Crab Cake Poppers

Tabasco Brined Spicy Drumsticks

This post is sponsored by Tabasco. Thanks for supporting companies I believe in, which allows me to create more unique content and recipes for you.

Sometimes when choices are limited, it’s amazingly freeing. It allows us to zero in on the basics. And when your job is to create recipes nearly every day, it gives some oomph to create something you’d never dreamed of, like these Tabasco Brined Spicy Drumsticks.

Most of the time when I’m working on coming up with new recipes I’ll work within a theme, or a seasonal idea, but I always have full reign of what to toss into a recipe to please the palate. This time around, Tabasco set my limits like a Las Vegas pit boss when the gambling just gets too good.

I’m a seriously spice loving girl, and so’s my man. There isn’t much we don’t eat without dousing some sort of heat on it. Okay, blueberry muffins might get a pass.

When the tastemakers at Tabasco invited me to participate in their food blogger 10-ingredient challenge, I asked my man if he’d be up to helping me because this time around, the ingredient list was serious. Seriously challenging.

continue to the recipe… about Tabasco Brined Spicy Drumsticks

Game Day Chicken Nachos with Avocado

Back in high school I considered myself a pretty good cook. Or at least better than most of my friends who subsisted on string cheese and instant cup o’ noodles. I’ve never been one who was too lazy to cook when I’m hungry and if the pangs struck I would come up with some pretty satiating recipes. And anything with melted cheese was my favorite snack of all. Slices of cheese, tomato soup and of course tortilla chips.

In our house my dad was the nacho maker, and I’ll share that recipe and his tenacity with you sometime soon, but today I have another nacho recipe for you, something hearty and spicy and cheesy.continue to the recipe… about Game Day Chicken Nachos with Avocado

Garlic Soba Noodles with Grilled Shrimp

Wow, what a week its been. And before I can even think of digging into one of my favorite recipes, I have to say thanks. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This week Maria and I launched Cookie Cravings, Two Peas and Their Pod’s first foray into the cookbook arena and another publishing adventure for me. We both agree its been such a rewarding project to create and finally share with our readers.

So again, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of you for your amazing feedback and support; I can finally uncross my fingers and toes thanks to the digital delivery process going off without a hitch. If you haven’t already, visit my cookbook page for all of the cookie details.

continue to the recipe… about Garlic Soba Noodles with Grilled Shrimp

Miso Ramen Noodles

Today we’re announcing the winner of the Peko Peko, Family Friendly Japanese Cuisine cookbook giveaway. But first, a big round of thanks to the hard working and philanthropic foodies who put together Peko Peko including our friend Rachael of La Fuji Mama. If you haven’t purchased a cookbook to help Japanese relief efforts, please consider doing so.

And now, drumroll please…

photo > foodiecrush

Congratulations to…Lynx! You’re the winner of the Peko Peko cookbook thanks to your comment, ” my favorite Japanese dish is ramen with ‘soft’ boiled egg. Nothing beats perfectly cooked noodles topped with a glossy soft boiled egg.” Oh be still my ramen loving heart.

And now for the story of why you’re the chosen one. See for me, it started like this…

Mitsuwa Marketplace on Centinela and Venice Blvd was my first. It’s where I fell in love. Hard. With ramen.

Our torrid affair began in the grocery store’s food court. I was a bit shy, unsure of which food court stand would become my favorite suitor. I stood to the side, watching patron after patron quietly take their place at the head of the line and place their order.With a nod of the head, and a quick slight of hand, they were bestowed a golden ticket then deftly made their way to a sea of food court tables.

I gained courage. I made my move and I placed my order. And I waited.

And just when I thought the moment would never come, the man behind the counter sternly and succinctly called my number on the muffled loudspeaker. Heads turned, others glanced at their own tickets in hopes they were the chosen one. I rose to accept his gift with open chopsticks.

And there it was. Miso ramen. Adorned with tofu, fresh veggies, a slice of fish cake, half an egg and a tender slices of chasu. I twirled the noodles, I slurped the soft tofu, I dribbled the broth–that heavenly broth that I ate with abandon, not caring who saw us tangle our freshly made, perfectly cooked noodles.

And then, in a blink of an eye, it was gone.

Our affair lasted for several years, but oh too soon we were torn apart. We’re now separated by hundreds of miles of mountain ranges and mini malls but our memories will always remain.

And with each and every search for a new ramen to take his place, I always remember Santouka and Mitsuwa Marketplace—my first true noodle love.

For delicious ramen noodles to try at home, check out this Miso Ramen recipe from Peko Peko contributor Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen.

Or if you just need a quick fix, here’s my version.

5 from 2 votes

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:164]

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