Chicken, potatoes, and sprouts

Yay!!! DB is finally off of his high-protein-barely-any-carbs eating regimen so fun cooking can resume once again! I spent a couple hours late last night looking through two food blogs, Just Hungry and Just Bento, both written by a Japanese woman named Maki. I got sucked into both of her blogs and bookmarked a bunch of recipes, created my shopping list, and went grocery shopping today for the ingredients.

Tonight I made chicken tsukune dumplings with carrots, potatoes with sweet-spicy miso, and bean sprout namul. I originally planned to make bok choy namul, too, but I got lazy and didn't feel like washing every individual leaf with all those crevices that trap dirt - too bad because it would've livened up the plate with the green color. I followed the chicken recipe as written, using ground chicken, but changed the other two a little. I didn't use kochujang (Korean spicy bean paste) in the potato recipe because it contains wheat so I used 3 TB of miso then drizzled just a little garlic chili sauce on top (the Vietnamese chili sauce w/ a pic of a rooster on the container). I used 2 TB of agave nectar and about 1/2 tsp of molasses to give it that brown sugar taste. I steamed the potatoes instead of boiling and used red because the store didn't have new potatoes as called for in the recipe. For the bean sprouts, I stir-fried it in a little sesame oil and salt then after a couple minutes threw it in the collander to drain, tossed in some toasted sesame seeds, and about 1/8 tsp of sesame seed oil.

DB and I loved everything while Boo ate one piece of chicken and a couple carrots. She didn't like the sprouts nor the potatoes this time. I read that kids need to be introduced to new food at least 10 times so I'm not giving up. It's been true with Boo thus far so I'm a believer of this statement.

All three recipes were very straightforward, easy, and tasty. It took about an hour to make everything but I was also stopping here and there to attend to Boo. I will definitely make all three again and highly recommend them. We have enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow for all three of us - is it lunch yet???