SUNDAY EVENING

My sister and her boyfriend (hello and thanks to Molly and Erik!) did a lot of canning last fall. Some of the salsa ended up too hot for them. It turns out it is perfect for me and I now have TWO jars of this amazing and spicy spicy cilantro lime habañero salsa. I can't wait to make breakfast egg tacos with this stuff. Yum!

Tonight I hung out with my folks. Our dinner plan was to make some tempura.

Here are our veggies we used... green pepper, asparagus, parsley and mushrooms (oh! and onion).

Instead of making the batter from scratch we used a mix!

Make sure you use really cold water and keep your bowl of batter in a larger bowl of ice water.

The asparagus got fried in pairs connected by toothpicks.

(Make sure you dry the produce really well after washing it. You want as little water as possible going into the deep fryer.)

Here are the asparagus pairs fried and on a rack over a cookie sheet to be kept warm in the oven (set to 200º).

Here is the deep fryer. It is set to 375º. It is easy to forget how dang hot that oil is. Do not forget how dangerous this can be. Keep safety in the front of your mind.

Once the piece of food has dropped in the oil, then risen back to the top, drizzle more batter on top of it. There is a name for that (but I do not know what it is).

Everything stayed nice and crunchy (not soggy!) keeping warm in the oven.

While we were frying the things, the rice cooker was making some rice and there was some chicken stock, mirin and soy sauce (I don't remember if there were more ingredients...).

Here are our bowl-plates with rice and dipping sauce.

Here is a plate with the tempura on a tray just in case. We are dinner while we watched the end of a show on tv and then listened to traditional Japanese music in the living room.

It was a wonderful evening and delicious dinner.

There were a lot of dishes. I tried to do some, but mom told me to stop.