Thanks so much for everyone that had nice things to say about my new haircut. I didn’t mean to be negative, but sometimes it just feels so good to whine! I’m sure you know what i’m talking about. I’m glad that I let my emotions about it out so that now I can really move on. (BTW, I’ve had the chance to style it myself a few times now and while I still don’t love it, I can deal with it until it grows out.)

Yesterday I had a very green lunch. Another salad, this time with creamy avocado, and a side of yet more avocado smashed on sprouted toast with seaweed flake. It occurred to me recently that maybe not everyone is sprinkling seaweed flake on everything like I do, so I think soon I’ll need to do a post on this stuff to extol its virtues, cuz it really is a wonderful and delicious thang.

Last night’s dinner was incredible.

I made a spicy pineapple pork dish over jasmine rice. This was kind of half-way between sweet and sour pork and some sort of Hawaiian dish. Jeff and I both swoon for hot pineapple, so this was much enjoyed by both parties.

I made it by first adding some sesame oil and red pepper flakes to a wok (pan is fine) and then sauteing the red peppers in the spicy oil. When those were half-way cooked, I added the pork pieces and let them brown on both sides. Then, in went the pineapple cubes and chopped scallions. To make it a little bit saucy, I crushed some of the hot pineapple pieces with the back of a spoon, then added a swish or two of fish sauce and rice vinegar. The whole thing got a small sprinkle of salt and black pepper and was done!

It takes more time for the rice cooker to finish making fluffy rice than it does to make that dish. Super easy.

This morning, I thought that I would be really clever and make green tea and blueberry pancakes for breakfast…

I wanted so badly to draw a smiley face on this one, but I restrained…

As usual though, any time that I think I’m being really clever with a recipe it kind of fails. While these were totally delicious and filling, I couldn’t really taste the green tea at all. I’ll try ’em again sometime and up the matcha addition quite a bit.

This afternoon was gorgeous out. 85 degrees but breezy, can’t argue with that! We took the open morning to start house-hunting in the area. We are not on track to buy for at least another year, but we’d like for our next rental to either be a single-family home all to ourselves or a nice condo really close to or in downtown Decatur, so that we can enjoy this town to it’s fullest.

After an hour or so of driving around and writing down numbers to call for rentals, we parked the car at home and walked into town for a relaxing afternoon beer break.

(Love that thermos!) We parked ourselves at the bar in Leon’s and spent some time drinking good beer and talking about the next few things we need to do to make RipeTrack better. SO much work left to do, but all worth it.

This weekend has felt long, and for that I can’t complain.

This next week is going to be tremendously busy. My brother-in-law’s wedding is Saturday so I’ll be baking and decorating the wedding cake for he and his fiance from Tuesday on. Yeah, it takes several days to put a wedding cake together, yeesh. I cannot wait to show you guys my mad cake-baking skillz!

What do you have mad skillz at?

Pancake. Sandwich.

Just imagine that for a moment.

Here, lemme help you with that…

Mmmm…pancake sandwich. Actually, these little guys are delicious and fluffy dorayaki, a Japanese confection consisting of a layer of sweet azuki bean paste sandwiched between two sweet little pancakes.

I had my first dorayaki ever on the plane-ride back from our honeymoon in Japan. It was a sweet I bought specifically so that I could take a little of Japan home with me, and I savored every pillowy bite.

I thought it might be interesting to use this green tea I picked up at Tomato and make green tea flavored dorayaki.

Here’s what I used to make them:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tbsp. honey
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. green tea powder
• about 8oz. anko (sweetened red bean paste)

I started by whisking together the eggs and sugar…

Next I combined the baking soda with the water and then added that to my egg mixture…

I added half the flour and then whisked in the green tea and the rest of the flour, mixing well but not over-mixing…

The batter was super thick, I set it aside while I let my non-stick pan heat up…

I went ahead and sprayed the pan with non-stick spray, even though the pan is already non-stick, because there is a lot of sugar in the batter that could cause the dorayaki to burn.

In went three test dollops…

Just like regular pancakes, you know they’re ready to turn when bubbles start appearing on the surface of the batter. When flipped, they should be golden and crisp on the outside, like this…

I sat them aside on a tea towel to cool while I got my filling ready…

I used this brand of red bean filling, also from Tomato…

I love that stuff. I just spread a bit on one side of the pancake…

And topped it with another!

Pancake. Sandwich.

Good for breakfast or dessert.

Jeff and I both agreed that while absolutely delicious, the pancakes came out bigger than most dorayaki pancakes. Next time, I would definitely just use one pancake and cut it in half like an english muffin.

Soooooooo goooood though.

CHOMP!