To those who haven't decided what to prepare for Christmas Eve, here's my suggestion: make sinful foods a little healthy!

If you're like me who's a lover of creamy cheesy stuff, and has an inkling that special occasions should be white and cheesy, this is a good entry in your holiday menu! Instead of regular creamy sauces, mix in some roasted, baked or stir-fried cauliflower in them!
 

This dish can be a pasta sauce or pasta topping (instead of regular cheese) or pizza topping or appetizer or eve...

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Let me be honest with you-- I'm not a fan of asparagus.

​However, my husband has been mocking me for being a vegetarian and yet not loving so many vegetables (forgive me, spinach, okra and other slimy green vegetables). ​He, on the other hand,  a non-vegetarian, eats all kinds of vegetables. Well, at least vegetables in Japan.

​So one afternoon, when I saw that asparagus was cheap at the supermarket (ten sticks of thin asparagus for ￥88), I decided it's a good opportunity to sl...

​I'm almost sick of this dish now. I used to love eggplant in whatever dish and pasta in any sauce,  but I've cooked this one too many times in the past weeks. If my husband asks me ten more times to cook this pasta on the following ten weeks, that's it. I will cook it. And eat it with him like it's been a long time since I had this dish. Well, a week is long especially if work is on a rocky road. Mine is fun though. Heh-hey!

​As many of my dishes are, I learned this from my mother-in-law. I...

​Neither my husband nor I have ever tasted the original Mexican tacos. And I'm not sure if this is my second or third time to cook tacos, nevertheless, it's a recipe I am very proud to declare as a "must-try!"

​The first and only tacos I've ever eaten from the moment I was born until a week ago was that cooked by a vegetarian friend probably 8 years ago. But that moment of gastronomic experience lives in me until now. She used ground textured soy protein then, but I used frozen-and-thawed tofu--...

I think you caught me here. Yes, I was fantasizing about meatball spaghetti.

I was watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the sixth time since it was released (you can't blame me, I love seeing food) and I just couldn't help but wonder how it would feel like eating ****balls while eating pasta. I kept on thinking, wouldn't it be inconvenient to eat such food? Your spaghetti twirled on your fork, how the heck can you eat a chunk of meatball with it? Will you squish it with your fork so tha...

This is a recipe I would love to serve to my best friend, who's a big fan of both vegetarian fish and carbonara. Should I prepare this on your birthday this month? Yay!

In this recipe, I used frozen soy fish because the canned soy tuna I used to buy has been out of stock for several months now. Whenever I use the canned soy tuna, I usually make my own white sauce out of flour, butter and milk. I find it too rich when I use cream because the canned one is very flavorful.

 Ingredients

• soy fish

...

It has been a tradition in my family to have sopas every New Year. We usually sit on the couch doing movie marathon while sipping some sopas, sometimes after a clean game of cards, scrabble or word factory. That's how we usually pass the last few hours of the year.

Sopas, as in the title, is just macaroni (or any pasta) in milky soup. Although my lactose intolerant vegan mom would have ginger and/or celery in her soup instead of milk.

Ingredients

• macaroni

• cabbage

• carrot

• soy ham (...

​Well, the point of this recipe is definitely not to produce these left over ingredients so that you can have a recycled pasta. That is insane, I know. But don't you ever have that feeling of disappointment in yourself whenever you have to throw away food? And yet you cannot push yourself to eat those food even just one more time?

I love recycling left over food. And spaghetti is my first fairy godmother in mind.

This is not a recipe, but just to give you a delicious hope on saving your on-t...

Almost six weeks ago, I started studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (shortly known as JLPT). Last August, my husband sent an application form for me to take the JLPT-N3 level exam. However, in September, I got a part time job at a vegetarian restaurant 45 minutes away from home. I got too busy and couldn't study for the exam.

Oh, you got me. I was lying. Yeah, I took just a once-a-week shift at the restaurant and definitely had plenty of time for studying....

I'm not sure what a Mushroom Alfredo is, to be honest, but I tasted a mushroom Alfredo once when I was in the university.

​Soon outside the gate of my campus is a commercial building. It has McDonald's and computer shops and an office supply shop and a triangular café.

I don't know why buy I don't remember the name of the café. But I remember its smell very clearly: utter and sweetness.

I used to pass time with friends on one of its three corners. They have very delicious frappes and cookies and...