Teriyaki Chicken

I wanted to make Teriyaki Chicken from scratch.

I love that stuff. But everytime I've ever made it, I've used bottled teriyaki sauce.

After making my own, I'll never use the bottled stuff again!



You'll need a batch of Teriyaki Sauce & Marinade
Chicken Breast Fillets

I always use my FoodSaver marinator for marinating! I LOVE it!


Marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes up to a couple of hours.

I cooked the chicken on a grill pan on the stove.


I really need a hood/vent for my stove. It gets wicked smokey in the house when I use the grill pan!

Brush with reserved marinade. (not marinade that had raw chicken in it)



I fillet the breasts so they're pretty thin and cook pretty quickly.



That's it!!


Serve it with some Fried Rice and steamed Sugar Snap Peas and it's dinner time!!

Teriyaki Sauce & Marinade

This teriyaki sauce is wicked easy and wicked good!!!

I'll never buy bottled teriyaki sauce again!!

This recipe is slightly adapted from allrecipes.com.



Teriyaki Sauce & Marinade
2/3 C mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
1 C soy sauce
4 1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1/3 C brown sugar
7 cloves garlic, grated
1 TBLS minced fresh ginger
1 dash cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste

Bring mirin to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour in soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and brown sugar. Add garlic, ginger, cayenne, and black pepper; simmer an additional 5 minutes. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

This is what you'll need...


Bring mirin to a boil...


Whisk in remaining ingredients...


Simmer 5 minutes.

Store in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container.



How easy is that??

This is wicked good and wicked easy!! I'll never use bottled teriyaki sauce again!!

Miso Soup

I LOVE Miso Soup! It's total comfort food for me. One sip and my eyes close, my lips curl into a smile, I say, "mmmmmmmm" and all the stress of the day melts away.

Miso Soup is also super insanely easy to make!!

This recipe is slightly adapted from Michelle Chen's recipe on allrecipes.com.



Miso Soup
2 tsp dashi granules
4 C water
3 TBLS miso paste
1 (8 ounce) package firm tofu, diced
1 sheet of nori (dried seaweed), cut into strips
2 green onions, sliced diagonally into 1/2 inch pieces
additional water to hydrate nori

In a small bowl combine nori strips with enough water to cover them. When they are re-hydrated, drain off excess water.
Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine dashi granules and water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, and whisk in the miso paste. Stir in tofu and dashi strips. Add green onions to the soup. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 minutes before serving.

This is what you need


I cut a sheet of nori into strips and just put it into some water to rehydrate it. I didn't want it to soak up all of the broth of that soup by placing it in still dry.


A quart of water & dashi granules


3 tablespoons of miso paste


You can get this in the refrigerator section in your Asian market. It keeps forever in the fridge!

Whisk the miso paste into the dashi broth and bring to a boil.


Add tofu, green onions and seaweed and simmer a few more minutes.

It's ready to enjoy!


This would have also been great with a very thinly sliced mushroom or two!

Comfort food that only takes a few minutes!

What are your favorite comfort foods?

Microwave Apple Crisp for One

Tawny went off to college a few months ago. One thing I've noticed, is that she hates to hear when I'm making her favorite foods when she's not home.

She is learning to use her little dorm-sized microwave for more than just heating stuff up. Which is pretty much all we use it for at the house. But she still misses some of her favorite foods.

I was recently making an Apple Crisp and thought that Tawny would be bummed she'd be missing out.

Then I wondered if it could be made in the microwave, so she wouldn't have to miss out!

So I consulted my friend the internet. There were a lot of recipes... I decided the closest recipe to what I was looking for was this one from food.com, formerly know as RecipeZaar. I did change it a little, because I can't imagine apple crisp that doesn't have spiced apples in it!



Microwave Apple Crisp for One
1 apple, peeled and thinly sliced
2 TBLS brown sugar
2 TBLS quick-cooking oats
1 TBLS flour
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 TBLS butter, melted
1 TBLS cinnamon/sugar mix (like you'd use for cinnamon toast)

Place thinly sliced apple in a 1.5 - 2 cup sized ramekin. Toss with cinnamon/sugar mix. My mix usually has a little nutmeg in it too. Combine remaining dry ingredients in a separate bowl, until well mix. Stir in melted butter and pour over spiced apples.
Cook in microwave on high 2 - 3 minutes, or until apples are tender. Let it rest for a few minutes and the topping will get crispy.

My pics have double apples, because I like a mix of apples in my baked apple desserts and I was also trying another microwave single serve apple crisp recipe at the same time. The other was a dismal failure that I won't waste your time with.

MacIntosh & JonaGold Apples
I think it's a JonaGold. I always use MacIntosh, but I always change up it's companion/s.


Peel, cut & toss with cinnamon/sugar


Mix remaining dry ingredients.


Stir melted butter into topping mix.




Pour over apples in ramekin.


Microwave on high for 2 - 3 minutes, or until apples are tender.




This was so good!!! Not quite as good as Mum's Apple Crisp, but definitely a worthy substitute.

You don't have to be a college student, longing for home cooking to enjoy this! It's perfect if you just want a little something. It's made from stuff I think most people would usually have on hand and it only takes about 5 minutes to make!

Want to make it a little extra special? Add some whipped cream or ice cream!

It's just not fall without Apple Crisp!