Specializing in vegetarian dim sum and Buddhist cuisine, this vegetarian version of the popular Legend’s Restaurant was such a great find!

If you know where the regular Legend’s dim sum restaurant is, this location is situated just across the walkway. It’s much smaller than the original restaurant which makes it much easier to get a seat and take your pick of the dim sum offerings.

Here is what we had…

Vegetarian Look Fun (picture at the top)

Vegetarian Mochi Rice in Lotus Leaf

Vegetarian Char Siu Bao…well no char siu, just tofu…Tofu Bao?

Vegetarian Bean Curd Roll

Vegetarian Half Moon – I think this was my favorite…or the Look Fun.

And finally Custard Tarts. The one that is pale in color is made with just egg whites, much healthier!

Dim sum plates come in three different prices. These all happened to be Medium plates which run $2.50. Our total bill after a filling 8 plates was $20.00 + tax. This is definitely our new favorite weekend lunch spot!

Hours: 10:30 am – 2:00 pm (Closed Wednesdays)
Address: 100 N. Beretania St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96817
Inside the Chinese Cultural Plaza
Phone: (808) 532-8218

Lately we’ve been trying to exercise a lot more, mostly in the form of afternoon walks. This past Friday after an early dinner at Ward Centre, we took a brisk sunset walk around Ala Moana Park.

The route we took must have been about a mile and a half to two miles long, here’s a look at what we saw along the way…

Quick and simple pancakes, great if you run out of milk or have an extra container of yogurt to use up. In this case I had some extra haupia yogurt to use.

These pancakes use both whole wheat and all purpose flour, and have just a slight hint of haupia (coconut) flavor from the yogurt.

INGREDIENTS (Makes about 6 pancakes)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
6 oz cup of haupia yogurt
1/4 cup water

If you aren’t watching your sugar and want more of that tropical flavor, definitely have it with some coconut pancake syrup!

Similar Recipe: Guava Pancakes

Although our pattern is to frequent our favorite handful of Japanese restaurants, the other day we decided to try somewhere new. Utage is located in the Kapalama area, in the same shopping center as Young’s Fish Market.

We wanted to try the most variety since it was our first time, so our first choice was the Mixed Plate. Our choices in the photo above were the Mini Hamburger Steak and Chicken Katsu.

These were pretty standard, no complaints…and I liked that there were onions with the hamburger steak!

Our second choice was the Utage Special.

We chose Sashimi, Vegetable Tempura, and Tonkatsu for this plate.

I have to say it was a bit pricey here, especially the Utage Special. But if you look at the close up below you can see that it included ten pieces of sashimi!

Utage hasn’t quite made it onto my list of favorites yet, but the food was good and I wouldn’t mind coming back to try other things on the menu.

And for those who like Okinawan food there is a pretty good selection of dishes here. If you can’t make it to Off the Wall in Pearl Kai, this looks like a fine place to try in town to satisfy your Okinawan food cravings.

Utage
Phone: (808) 843-8109
Address: 1286 Kalani St., Honolulu, Hawaii
Hours: Mon – Sat 10:00am – 9:00pm

I love a good farmer’s market, don’t you? For me, it’s a fun mix of going grocery shopping and eating all kinds of local food at the same time! We don’t seem to go too often, but this past Saturday…by some miracle…I woke up early and made it over to the KCC Farmer’s Market. If you haven’t been there before, you must stop by!

We picked up some fruit, Kau coffee, and different kinds of bread to share. If you like fresh bread this is the place for you, there were so many vendors selling bread! My favorite was the blueberry cream cheese bread. It was so good that I ate it up before remembering to take a picture at home!

For our brunch/snack my mom and I both ordered mini kimchee fried rice with egg from this vendor below. My dad had a grilled kimchee portuguese sausage in bun from a different stall. Both were very tasty!

KCC Farmer’s Market
Kapiolani Community College
Saturdays, 7:30 – 11:00 am
Website: http://www.hfbf.org/FarmersMarketKCC.html

This weekend we were hanging out in a picture frame shop where we ran into one of my dad’s friends, a local photography teacher. We had a good time at the shop looking at oil paintings, watercolors, and some interesting chalk landscapes done by the owner of the frame shop.

After this my dad’s friend came with us to a nearby camera shop to pick up a few things. When we were done, we decided to all go out to lunch at Big City.

We ordered off of the Weekend Brunch menu and above you see my dad’s order, Roasted Macadamia Nut Pancakes with Haupia Creme Sauce. Mmmmm.

I had the Citrus Grilled Salmon Salad.

And my mom had the Smoked Turkey and Cranberry Sandwich.

I have to say, those pancakes at the top…so good! I kept stealing pieces off my dad’s plate!

For more info on their menu, locations, or hours – check out their website: http://bigcitydinerhawaii.com

Here’s a side dish I could seriously eat for dinner. One of those dishes where, if you don’t move the bowl away from me I’m going to keep eating…and eating…until the bowl is absolutely picked clean.

Directions:

1. Soak some dried sliced shiitake mushrooms in a bowl of water to rehydrate.

2. Slice a bunch of fresh green beans into 1.5 to 2 inch pieces.

3. Put a tablespoon of oil in a small pan along with 1 or 2 cloves of chopped garlic. Let this cook on low/medium for about a minute.

4. Turn the heat up and saute the drained mushrooms and green beans in the garlic oill.

5. Add a little sprinkle of salt to taste.

That’s it you’re done! Feel free to add any other veggies that you like. On this day I also added a little carrot to the mix.

That garlic oil that lightly covers everything is so addicting!

Here’s a tasty little salad that I learned how to make from our Tokyo friends!

It’s very simple here’s what you do:

1. Cut 1 small Japanese daikon into match stick sized pieces. Put this in a bowl with a little salt sprinkled on it and let it sit. After about 10 minutes, a little liquid should have come out. Rinse off this liquid and the salt.

2. To the bowl of daikon pieces, add one small can of scallops that has been broken up. (The can looks like a small tuna can, I’ve seen it at Marukai, Nijiya Market, and the Asian food aisle in other supermarkets.)

3. Add reduced fat Kewpie (or Best Foods) mayonnaise until it reaches the consistency of egg salad or tuna salad.

4. Add a little shoyu and salt to taste, some sliced green onions – then mix everything together. (The photo above was taken just prior to mixing.)

This salad is great, very cool and refreshing!

Do you love fresh blueberries?

Back in the day (well maybe just like a year ago) I used to use a lot of dried blueberries. It was basically because they were so convenient to keep around. But something has changed, I don’t think I could ever go back to buying those dried up things again.

Seeing something like the container below, nowdays I can’t resist!

So off they go into these moist oat muffins!

To get started I measured out 1 1/4 cup dry oatmeal into a bowl. I used half traditional and half quick cook, only because I was trying to use up the last of the traditional oats that I had. Normally I’d use all quick cook.

I added 1 cup of skim milk to that and let it soak while I prepared the dry ingredients.

In a bigger bowl I combined:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder

After that was all mixed up I added the wet ingredients:

1 1/4 cup oatmeal and 1 cup skim milk (from above)
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup blueberries

I put it in the oven at 400° F for 20 minutes and when it came out I had…

I was worried that the muffins would get stuck so I greased the pan really well with that Pam baking spray. It worked great and they pretty much just popped out of the pan!

These are currently my new favorite muffin! Super moist and a little creamy from the oatmeal – and just bursting with fresh blueberries!!

When you have a birthday coming up, how far ahead to you start thinking about where you want to have your birthday dinner? For me, I start thinking about it maybe 3 to 4 weeks prior to the day. And in the case of my younger brother, he also had his sights set for quite a while on somewhere in particular…India Cafe.

It’s nothing compared to a birthday dinner at let’s say Le Bistro, but he did choose wisely. His goal, to introduce the rest of us to one of his favorite lunch places.

You see, whenever he had suggested India Cafe for past dinners, everyone would basically shoot the idea down and we’d end up eating somewhere else. But he knew for his birthday, whatever he chose we pretty much had to agree with. Very smart. And I’m glad he chose this restaurant because for some reason, I guess fear of the unknown, I would’ve never gone there on my own.

Okay, on to the evening. We ordered a lot of food that night because we were there with a fairly large group. In addition to our family we also invited our Tokyo friends (the ones that made the shabu shabu the other night) and also two new friends from Tokyo, another couple visiting from Japan. So we had four Tokyoites, my parents, the two of us, and my younger brother.

And here again is what we ordered…

Going clockwise from the upper left we had Naan (North Indian flatbread), Chicken Curry (whole pieces of chicken thighs in a mild red curry sauce), Spinach Tofu Korma (tofu in a creamy spinach sauce), Jasmine Rice, Lamb Masala (slow cooked lamb in a mild South Indian curry sauce), and Potato Masala (slow cooked with cloves and cinnamon).

My brother’s favorites: Chicken Curry, Spinach Tofu Korma, and Potato Masala.
My favorites: Lamb Masala, Chicken Curry, Naan, Potato Masala

So now that the unknown is now known…what do I think? A little pricey but the food was tasty. I’m definitely glad we tried it out.

India Cafe
Address: 1016 Kapahulu Ave., Honolulu, Hawaii 96816
Located in Kilohana Square
Phone: (808) 737-4600