Last Weeks Meals

I am so proud to say that I was able to stick with my weekly goal of cooking 2 meals last week.  This time I also used an issue of Cooking Light magazine.  There were so many good recipes over the past few months, but I was away and the issues just piled up.  So I am making it a point to go through them and pick recipes to cook.

First up was a grilled vegetable and hummus wrap.  The recipe called for flatbread to use as a wrap, but we only had naan in the commissary that was sold as the closest thing to flatbread.

I had some left over peppers and onions, so I made sure to use those.  The recipe called for red onion, but I already had some white onions cut from our last grilling adventure, so I used them instead.

The main ingredient was eggplant.  We get all kinds of eggplants here in Japan, and this happened to be the only kind they had at the commissary that day, so I ended up with this cute, round eggplant.

Mmmm, I love eggplant!

I grilled my veggies in a grill pan instead of our new grill because it saved on time and cleaning.

Here you can see all of our nice, grilled veggie ready to go into our wraps.

I spread the tortilla with spicy hummus and then topped the veggies with feta cheese.  It was delicious!

That was a success, so it goes on the list of "make again" recipes.

Next up was also from the same issue of Cooking Light.  Funny thing about Cooking Light.  One day when we still lived at Lajes, I opened the mailbox and found a copy of Cooking Light addressed to me.  I hadn't ordered it, so it was interesting.  My mom said she didn't order it and Ryan couldn't remember ordering it.  It just appeared.  I quickly learned that was a good thing.  So a big thank you to who ever decided to start a subscription for me.  Since then I have been renewing my subscription and I am really glad because I enjoy getting it delivered each month.

So next up is a dish with some Japanese influence, so I thought it was fitting.  I decided to make soba with edamame and tuna.

Soba is very easy to come by here.  Soba is a traditional Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour and served either hot in a broth (like soup) or cold with a dipping sauce on the side.  I should also mention that soba, although made from buckwheat which is gluten free, is not a gluten free food.  At least in Japan.  Buckwheat flour is mixed with wheat flour to make soba.  I believe in the US now there are soba noodles made that are gluten free, but if you are buying a product in an international market that is soba from Japan and you can't read the label, it is safer to assume that it is not gluten free since most made in Japan contain wheat.

The soba noodles in this recipe were served hot, tossed with edamame in a sauce made with low sodium soy sauce, lime juice, sweet chili sauce and sesame oil.  Some of those were products that I don't own, so I had fun picking out new products and deciding which brand I thought I would like better.  Believe it or not, I had plenty of choices in our commissary.  We have a lot of selection of Asian foods.  Some regular American products (regular because our commissary is American) are limited, but Asian options seem to be abundant.  Now of course I say that, but I bet the people here that are Asian would disagree and think that they were limited.  Isn't that how it always goes?!?!  I also picked up some sesame seeds for the tuna.

Now, here is what this should look like:

Let's see how I did:

The soba and edamame were really easy to cook.  I did the noodles first and then at the very end, for the last few minutes, I added in some frozen edamame.

Looks good to me!  I love the bright green in the brown noodles.

Then I tossed it in the sauce and it was ready to go.

Of course I still had to do the tuna.  Let me confess, I have never made seared tuna before.

I used frozen tuna, although my original plan was to buy some fresh off base.  My schedule didn't really allow me to get off base during the day, so I stuck with frozen.

I followed the directions because I figured I would get much better success that way.  I coated them in sesame seeds.  One of my pieces of fish didn't want to play so nicely, but that's ok, I made it work.

Here is the tuna cooking in the pan.  I was nervous that I wouldn't cook it properly, but I think I did alright.

Well, here you have it.  The finished dish.  I think it came out pretty nicely.  What do you think?

Oh, and this was a hit too, so I will be making this again in the future.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever had soba noodles?  What is your favorite way to eat tuna?  What veggies would you put in a veggie wrap?