(Original Post Date:  May 23, 2010) My friend Connie and her husband Toan have a peach tree in their backyard – a tree which produces tons and tons of peaches each spring and summer – all of which end up falling to the ground and rotting into a huge sticky mess (for Toan to clean [...]

(Original Post Date:  May 17, 2010) Do you ever feel like eating chocolate cake for breakfast?  I do.  One of the things I have always noticed – in an assortment of breakfast muffins, the chocolate ones always disappear first. So I decided to try to make chocolate muffins - but not with too much sugar, to avoid this [...]

(Original Post Date:  May 12, 2010) I still have several bottles of beer leftover from the time I made Beer Bread that are taking up valuable pantry real estate.  What do I do with all this extra beer?  (There are only so many times I can make beer bread without my husband complaining he’s eaten it [...]

(Original Post Date:  April 27, 2010) One of my most favorite lemon recipes (besides the Extra Tart Lemon Bar Recipe I posted previously), is this Rustic Lemon Cake made with cornmeal.  The cornmeal gives the cake a slightly “rougher” texture, which goes nicely with the tart sugary glaze.  The combination of the lemon sugar glaze (which [...]

(Original Post Date:  April 22, 2010) A few days ago, my friend Christina introduced me to the Cheesecake Factory’s Pasta Da Vinci.  I can’t believe I’ve never tried it before!  If you’ve been to the Cheesecake Factory, you know how long and overwhelming their menu is – so I guess that explains why I’ve always overlooked [...]

(Original Post Date:  April 17, 2010) What is Harumaki?  It’s a Japanese Spring Roll.  And what would a Mika recipe be without the use of Spam?  Haha!  Now that I’m on a Spam kick, I seem to be finding myself using it in everything pork-related these days… Spam Harumaki: 1 can Spam Lite 9 oz [...]

(Original Post Date:  April 10, 2010) On Easter Sunday, we decided to take a day trip out to the historic mountain town of Julian, about 1.5 hours East of San Diego and just West of the Anza Borrego Desert.  If you haven’t heard of Julian – well, they are pretty famous for their apple pie. The [...]

(Original Post Date:  April 2, 2010) A few days ago, I went to lunch at my friend Maria’s house to meet up with some old friends that I hadn’t seen for a long time… it was a blast!  When you combine great food with good friends, time just flies by, and before we knew it… [...]

(Original Post Date:  March 31, 2010) Whether we are talking about American Southern fried chicken, Japanese Chicken Katsu, Austrian Chicken Schnitzel, Italian Chicken Milanese (to name a few)… pretty much every country has a national recipe for “fried chicken”.  Taiwanese style fried chicken may not be as familiar to most people as Schnitzel or Katsu – but it is [...]

(Original Post Date:  March 23, 2010) There are several food blogs that I love to read.  On one site, I found an interesting looking recipe for Chocolate Matcha Bundt Cake. What is Matcha?  Well, it’s a very strong powdered form of green tea, traditionally used in Japanese tea ceremonies.  Prepared in that manner, it is rather bitter, [...]