And my tastebuds rejoiced!

There are a few food items that really are a bit tricky to get your hands on in Japan.  Things like tacos, cheese, and pepperoni. Because we have awesome friends and family who love us, we received many a delightful Christmas package bearing joyful tidings of taco kits, cheese, and pepperoni. And there was much rejoicing.

Tacos are absurdly easy to make...but oh! So satisfying. So very satisfying.  We enjoyed this simply delightful taco feast thanks to some dear friends back home.  It was marvelous. With the leftover meat, spanish rice, cheese and tomatoes, I threw together an incredibly tasty chip dip. One can never have too much chip dip in my book.

And then, there is pizza...gloriously dripping with grease.  Slathered with massive amounts of cheese. Oh cheese! How this girl misses you! (Thanks be to God we can actually find decent cheese here. We have to travel for it, but it is here.) This pizza was particularly delicious due to the ah-mazing pepperoni that some of our family sent us for Christmas. It was a pepperoni link that we had to slice ourselves. Such thick, juicy, scrumptious slices of pepperoni have never before been had!

I have said it before, and I will say it again. I love salmon. No, I mean I love salmon. I can't ever seem to get enough of this delicious fish. I took some salmon fillets for this dish and coated them with some flour and lemon pepper before dipping them in a simple batter made with egg yolks, flour, water, and some spices before slipping them smoothly into their bath of hot oil. They cooked like a dream. I finished them off with a lemon glaze. Really easy.  Basically just some ginger, fresh lemon juice, and some water thickened with cornstarch. Then garnished with lemon and scallions. Very tasty.

After all that delicious grease, I figured some healthier dishes was probably a wise idea. I had a huge bundle of leeks laying around, so I decided to put them to use in a potato leek soup. It was super healthy (It even had tofu!), but still managed to taste absolutely divine.  It didn't even need any salt and pepper at the table.

We did garnish it with some excellent Parmesan cheese (sent over by the family). We served it with this side dish I threw together.

Some people say I am crazy...but what can I say?! I adore brussel sprouts. I have, in fact, since I was a kid. Seriously. But really, anything is good when it is briefly steamed, spiced, and sauteed in butter. The sprouts went great with the leeks too.

A very healthy dinner...if you ignore that bit about the butter. But really, what's so bad about butter anyway?

Yum.