By Erin Gleeson for Forest Feast.

Last week I attended a birthday party at a friend’s house. He rarely cooks but when he does, he is highly experimental and innovative.

I had a drink and was busy chatting with fabulous guests, discussing the recent catastrophic Christian Dior Fall 2011 couture collection. All while inspecting the food table
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It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I don’t like eggs. But it’s not as debilitating as many people think. I can always get a waffle or bagel with a side for breakfast and choose to ask for no egg with my ramen. Luckily I am okay with foodstuffs
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I used to be amused by the number of Kewpie mayonnaise tubes my 85 year-old grandma had stashed in her packed fridge in Tokyo. I would visit her house every few months to clean out her fridge. She would forget that she already had certain condiments and kept buying them because they would get
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One thing California and Japan have in common is the abundance of bright orange Fuyu persimmons when November hits. Persimmon or kaki, in Japanese, are best eaten uncooked and must be peeled. The
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Is it really the last day of Sloth Season? Say it ain’t so! Sigh. Totally not fair considering the Bay Area has been a shroud of fog, gloom and sweater-weather all “summer”. In Dante’s Inferno, San Francisco is not unlike the third circle of hell, where the gluttonous are punished in
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This was originally supposed to read “Octopus, Shrimp Avocado Salad with Kewpie-Wasabi Dressing,” but the octopus part did not happen. After reading a recent string of octopus posts on Umamimart including Tokyo JUNKtion: Corpse Candy, ¡Viva España!, Umamiventure #26: San Pedro Fish Market
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I was always baffled by tamari. I had never used it until one of my friends and faithful readers of UM suggested that I should write about tamari vs. shoyu (soy sauce) on Japanify.

So this week, I purchased San-J brand’s Tamari (I chose that brand because I happened to
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