Hot Sesame Chicken and Avocado Salad

Cut two skinless, boneless chicken breasts into small finger-sized pieces.



Combine lemon juice, dijon mustard, and honey in bowl and mix well.



Add chicken pieces to the lemon / mustard / honey mixture.



In a wok or skillet, cook chicken pieces until done.



Meanwhile, cut avocado and remove pit.



Slice avocado halves into smaller, thin pieces.



Just before chicken is done, add sesame seeds and cook for 2 - 3 minutes, or until you can smell a "roasted" smell from the seeds.



Toss the avocado slices with fresh lettuce or spinach leaves. Add the chicken to the salad mixture.

Spiced Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup

Peanut Chicken and Oriental Green Beans

Summer Tomato Pasta

Mary says: I've been eating this pasta salad a lot this summer. It's very easy to make, and it works well as leftovers to take for lunch at work.

Above: four roma (plum) tomatoes roughly chopped, cubed mozarella cheese, tossed with 1 part lemon juice, 2 parts olive oil, and 2 parts balsamic vinegar.

Add cooked pasta (whole wheat rotini in this case), shredded basil leaves, and voila.

Fried Noodles, Bean Sprouts, and Asparagus

w/ Sweet Potato, Zucchini, and Mushroom Tempura

Chopped onion, two cloves of crushed garlic, 1" peice of ginger root grated

Cooked egg noodles, tossed with 2 tbsp vegetable oil

fresh asparagus

Stirfry the onions, garlic, and ginger in 2 tbsp vegetable oil for 2 or 3 minutes, then add asparagus and stirfry for a few minutes more

Add noodles and beansprouts, followed by 3-4 tbsp soy sauce and black pepper to taste

Mary says: A few weeks ago, Trip bought a large hardcover vegetarian cookbook from HomeSense in Moncton and we've been trying out a lot of the recipes. This noodle stirfry is by far my favourite of the ones we've made so far. It could easily be made vegan if you substituted rice noodles for the egg noodles.

Also the tempura thing is getting out of hand. I had it for breakfast this morning.

Sushi

So, based on a suggestion by Mary earlier this week, we made sushi today. It was my first sushi-making experience (okay, well more like helping as she did most of the work).


Mary says: Trip is a very good helper, though.

We were supposed to go to Halifax last weekend and eat here, but stuff happened and we couldn't go at the last minute, so making sushi at home seemed like a reasonable alternative.

Pictured above is the makings of a make roll with sweet potato tempura, lettuce, and a little mayo. We made this in attempt to recreate the sweet potato roll they serve at the sushi place on Main Street in Moncton... name escapes me... Google Local is no help... will check later...


Left to right: toro (fatty tuna) nigiri, uncut toro make, and uncut sake (salmon) make x2. This was my first time making nigiri because I usually can't find/afford the cuts of fish needed. It turns out I should have made the rice balls smaller. The final product was pretty good, but the fish to rice ratio was definitely off.


This is all the vegetarian make we made. There was the roll with sweet potato, lettuce and mayo shown above, as well as a roll with just sweet potato tempura, just zucchini tempura, and one with both. Tempura is greasy deliciousness, and also fairly easy to make. The batter consists of one egg, one cup of flour, and one cup of water. The trick is to use ice or fridge water, otherwise the batter gets too sticky.

This is the final spread. You can see some toro and sake sashimi on the left, more tempura veggies, and Pump House Blueberry Ale.