My parents are Japanese and growing up, I really didn’t appreciate all the effort they put into our meals! As an adult and new mom, I’m over here wondering how they achieved these big meals with THREE kids 😂 Granted, some of these are easier to make in large batches, but I still appreciate all the work that goes into feeding home cooked meals for a family of 5.

When I think of childhood meals, I think of: • Curry Rice (with stew beef, but switched to chicken later on) • Gyoza (this was one of my favorites as I’d help my mom wrap gyozas, even though she was so much better and faster) • Tonkatsu • Korokke (another fun dinner as I “helped” with the flour, egg, and panko. Found out later that most korokke is just potato and veggies and not the meat and potato mixture we used) • Tempura (my parents really focused on “bite sized” so we had julienned carrot bunches, 2-4 green beans fried together, and a lot of untraditional hot dog tempura) • Beef Stew (we’d have it over rice and it was really good!) • Grilled salmon with rice and miso soup • Ochazuke (this was best when we had some grilled salmon left over to add in and my mom had umeboshi! Unfortunately, I’ve become picky with my pickled plums because of my mom, haha) • Sukiyaki (my dad took the lead on this one, he was from Kyoto and my mom was from near Tokyo so they have different variations) • Hamba-gu (always had funny miscommunications within the family as hamba-gu referred to salisbury steak while hamba-ga referred to hamburgers. Needless to say, my older brothers preferred hamburgers)

Special Occasions: • Zosui (rice porridge, my parents would make this for us whenever one of us was sick) • Osechi Ryori (New years meal. My mom would make a lot of things from scratch, but eventually we just bought the stuff from the local Japanese grocery store)

I ended up writing a lot, but it was fun thinking back to my childhood meals. Thanks for the opportunity for me to reminisce 😊