A virgin cocktail made with lime, mint, elderflower syrup, and club soda. To make it non-virgin, add an ounce or two of white rum!

Mussels are cooked in a white wine cream sauce that is flavored with thyme, bay leaf, garlic, and shallots. And it only takes 20 minutes!

Three of my favourite variations for oatmeal: fruit and nuts, apple cinnamon, and chocolate banana.

These chewy vanilla cookies are stuffed with Nutella.

A quick and easy Caesar salad dressing that you can make in a food processor.

This is Italian or Japanese – either way, it’s a delicious chestnut cake with a hint of chocolate!

These buttery shortbread cookies are flavoured with floral lavender.

Oden is a dashi-based Japanese stew that features optional ingredients like carrot, daikon, potato, konnyaku, kamaboko, kombu and eggs.

Buttery sweet oyster mushrooms are stir fried with crunchy green beans in fish sauce, soy sauce, garlic, and pepper.

Fried tofu is topped with a chili-daikon mixture and drizzled with a dashi-based sauce.

This matcha ice cream has only 3 ingredients: heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and matcha.

This udon noodle soup is garnished with green beans, carrot, and fried tofu.

Tofu Dengaku is a tasty meatless dish where steaks of firm “cotton” tofu are topped with a flavoured miso paste and then grilled.

This refreshing Japanese cucumber salad is dressed with seasoned rice vinegar and sesame

Okonomiyaki, a Japanese cabbage pancake, is topped with Japanese mayonnaise and drizzled with okonomi sauce, a kind of salty BBQ sauce.

Chow mein is pure comfort food for us. There is always a platter piled high with these noodles at our annual family reunions.

Vegetables cooked ‘kimpira’ style are stir fried quickly over high heat to retain their crispness.

Sekihan is glutinous, or sweet, rice colored red with adzuki beans and is served on special occasions.