Welcome to LA AND It's Sumo Orange Season. Score!

As a Welcome to LA gift, our friends, Joy and Bob, gave us two (TWO!) cases of sumo oranges. JoyBob, as Mr. Mari and I affectionately call them (since we have a SandyBob in New York), got us Size 5 sumo oranges. Most foods are based on a unit per pound grade (like shrimp) but in the case of sumos, it's based on how many oranges will fit in a case. Each case can hold up to ten sumos which means, JoyBob got the biggest sumos you can purchase. Sweet!

And yes they were. Each locule (pulp) membrane is so thin, they pop with just the slightest bit of pressure. What comes out is the sweetest orange juice you’ll ever taste. Seriously. It’s as if you just opened a can of mandarin oranges and picked the segments out of the syrup. Yeah, they're that sweet.

Mr. Mari and I moved at the beginning of sumo season, which means we’ve got a few more weeks to enjoy this amazing fruit. I’d say our stay here is off to a VERY good start.

Thank You, New York, Good Night! Hello and Good Morning, LA!

Well, this is it. This is my last weekend in New York as a resident. Am I sad to be leaving the city I’ve been living, loving and growing in for the past 23 years? You betcha. Sure, there are warts to NYC but like Mr. Mari and I have said long ago to one another, one of the things that makes someone a perfect mate is being able to handle their warts and to see them as "magic" instead. New York City, with its pothole-riddled streets; endless sirens; jam-packed subways and hand waving, clipboard-wielding fundraisers in the park; glows bright for me everyday.

Obviously, there are lots of things I’ll miss about New York but to keep growing and learning, I need to leave. It’s time for me to do this in another city. So with our laptops, cat and JetBlue boarding passes in hand, I deeply thank and bid New York adieu.

We are on a brilliant new adventure and I look forward to what LA has in store for me. So bring it, LA. Show me what you've got!

If anyone has suggestions for sights and foods to eat, please let me know - I need as many pointers as I can get! I'm taking a week to move cross-country, acquire some new and old furniture, unpack and do some eating research myself so I'll be back to regular posting on Monday, March 4th. So until then, have a marivelous weekend and week - see you back here on the 4th!

(Image: Grand Central Terminal, New York City)

Sqirl

Although we are very sad to be leaving some really good friends in NY, we are extremely fortunate that we aren’t moving 3,000 miles away without knowing anyone; Mr. Mari and I have a bunch of really good friends that already live in LA. You know what that means, right? That means for at least the first few months, I don’t have to find any restaurants - they’ve already gone and done the research for me!

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Mom aka "Toshiko's Kitchen" Serves a Kaiseki Dinner

It’s not like we won’t ever come back to the East Coast but going home to my parents’ home will be a much bigger ordeal after we head west. We won't be able just hop on the next express train to Stamford, which is kind of a bummer since with the exception of one or two Japanese restaurants in NYC, my mom’s food is the only Japanese food I eat.

This past weekend, Mr. Mari, my aunt Sako and I went to my parents’ home for our last hurrah together before Mr. Mari and I move. Mom made a meal we won’t soon forget; she spent Friday preparing our seven-course “Toshiko’s Kitchen” kaiseki meal. Fantastic. Everything was beautiful, delicious and I know made with love. Are you ready? Got your drool bib on? There’s a detailed menu of our meal following the jump...

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Cooking with Mom: Kuromame - Japanese Black Beans

My mom comes from Sasayama, a tiny country town within the Hyogo Prefecture, which is part of the Kansai region. Although the town is small, population +/- 44,000 persons, Sasayama is known throughout Japan for their kuromame (black beans), adzuki (red beans), wild boar, chestnuts, Matsutake mushrooms, and yams.

Similar to eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day and Rosh Hashanah, Japanese people eat kuromame as part of osechi ryori, an elaborate “bento box” meal specifically made just for New Year’s Day. The meal represents a wish for long life, health and energy during the upcoming year. So one might assume that if one had extra large black beans, one might have even more health and prosperity in the New Year, right? Well, the black beans from Sasayama are extra jumbo large, like an inch-long so they are extremely coveted for their part in osechi ryori. The black beans are considered to be the best in Japan, and not just by people from Tamba. Mom said a 200-gram bag (about two cups) might fetch $16. That’s a whole lotta beans for a handful of beans.

The trick to getting them ink black is to cook them in a cast iron pot. Since my mom didn’t bring an iron pot with her from Japan 40+ years ago when she moved to this country, she uses nails to get the same effect and she’s been using the same nails ever since. Whether you use nails or an iron pot, iron leaches into the water and a chemical reaction occurs, giving the beans their distinctive tar black color and very, very slight metallic taste.

The next time you plan on making black beans, take a trip to the hardware store first. Tell them you’re making beans - can they suggest a box of nails that would compliment the meal?

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IKEA Food Packaging

Since Mr. Mari and I are moving, I have IKEA on the brain. We're planning on getting a "few" items when we get to LA to furnish our new home. One of the things I love about IKEA, along with their prices and furniture design is how they've managed to familiarize so many people (300 stores and 41 countries) with Swedish foods just by having their cafeteria and mini mart. Brilliant! Okay, sure. There are chicken fingers and ribs in the US but there's also Swedish meatballs, salmon mousse, lingonberry juice, gravlax and mini Princess Cakes (they call them Cream Cakes - probably to not dissuade little boys and grown men from ordering them). 

On the tail end of your Swedish outing, well, isn’t that little shop next door to the café a mini mart? Hello, Little Scandinavia International Supermarket Aisle! The best part is, whether or not you like kippers or sausages, the packaging is fantastic. This rebranding job by Stockholm Design Lab is brilliantly IKEA. It's pared down to the basics without sacrificing style. Forget the fact that you probably don't know what skarpsill or ost lagrad mean but you understand the illustration. I can't bring my tube of pastej lax cross-country so, must replenish!

By the way, the last image, a tin of skarpsill (marinated sprat fillets), won an award for its brilliant design. Makes you almost want to try it, eh? 

(Images via Fast Company)

IKEA's "Homemade Is Best" Cookbook

A few years ago, I stumbled upon this image from IKEA’s cookbook, “Homemade is Best”. Love! The perfect way for IKEA to express ingredients - just like a parts page from one of their assembly instructions documents. Mr. Mari's most favorite cake in the world is a Princess Cake. No, it has nothing to do with Disney. It's a Swedish thing. Now that I know the book has a princess cake recipe (not very easy to find online, I have to say), I will be purchasing the book on our next IKEA trip. Yay for cookbook buying excuses!

("Lingonpeparkaka" by Carl Klein, styled by Evelina Kleiner)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mr. Mari and I stopped exchanging purchased gifts on Valentine’s Day after our first year together. We know how much we love each other every day; we don’t need one day out of an entire year to remind ourselves of that fact. That said Valentine's Day is a fabulous excuse for us to eat well. Scratch that, to dine well.

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