Tofu Gyoza

I tried making some gyoza with tofu instead of ground pork. Taste-wise it was pretty good but the texture was a little on the soft side. I made some extra and froze them. It'll be interesting to see if deep frying will make it harder to distinguish from the meat kind.

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Into this batch went into some cabbage, firm tofu (drained all day), nira (garlic chives), bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, salt and pepper, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Matcha Green Tea Syrup

It's snow cone season! One of my favorite flavors is sweet green tea with condensed milk. I haven't had this treat for at least a couple years since sweet green tea costs so much. Thanks to the internet, I found a recipe and made my own. ^_^

In small pan, put in 1/2 c water with 1/2 c sugar. Heat till sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and add 1 1/2 t matcha powder. Do not stir, let sit 10 minutes. Then stir. Strain, if desired. If you like this stuff, double the recipe like I did. There's got to be more uses than just snow cones. Maybe on yogurt??? That, actually might be quite good.

Mmmmm. It was soooo good.

Pressure Cooker Split Pea Soup

Lately I've been really bad with meal preparations. The kids don't mind eating whatever and making it themselves so meal planning has not been priority. Life's been pretty hectic, maybe that's why. (not that I'm looking for an excuse...) The other day David pulls out a bag of split peas from the pantry and says, you need to make some soup with these. Of course, I don't get on it first thing in the morning and start my crock pot, rather I waited around till 3pm or so when I realize I need to cook these babies. Hmmm, I wonder how they'd turn out in the pressure cooker... guess I'll find out. One hour later, whola, split pea soup! At first they seemed a little runny but after they sat a couple hrs they thickened up just nicely. Recipe from Food.com. The only change made was that I omitted the ham and used some ham stock.