san francisco birthday visit bento

 

Hi there! It has been a while since my last post, a busy time with work projects--so I really savored taking a couple of days off as a mini vacation that included my birthday last Thursday. We spent the day in San Francisco, starting with a visit to the serene Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and ending in Japantown. In Japantown we visited Nijiya Market where I picked up the rice-paper wrapped sushi and takoyaki featured in my bento. The postcard is "Sunny Moments in the Rainy Season" by Hoshun Yamaguchi, painted in 1966.

 

 The next day, we relaxed at the beach under cool and refreshing skies...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

july shōkadō bento

 

I enjoyed using elements of my Japanese ceramics collection in composing today's shōkadō style bento. A light meal for a breezy, bright Friday: soba noodles tossed with stir fried shishito peppers, snap peas and garlic chives, drizzled with a mirin-soy dressing. Garden picked and lightly minty shiso leaves wrap around salmon salad in the upper right quadrant. A tender, sweet mochi and juicy watermelon "flowers" were a refreshing finish.

 

Right now the tomatoes are growing larger and more colorful on the vine and I'm watching the vigorous coilings of three French melon varieties as they bound beyond the limits of their raised bed. Several dahlias are in bud and I cannot wait to see their colors...this is a flower variety I'll be collecting for sure. In fact, I just came home from a favorite vegetable stand/garden nursery with a huge-blooming orchid-pink-lavender specimen!

 

 

(Montana, it was great seeing you yesterday and it will be so fun to check out Japantown together soon!)

 



spanakopita bento

 

 

 

Spinach and feta spanakopita, lamb-chickpea-dill stew and honeyed green figs with pistachios are for lunch amid a very, very, very warm week here in Santa Rosa. The purple-blue butterfly bush is covered in blooms at the moment and attracting many hummingbirds and butterflies...

 

Happy cooking!