One of my passions that I never speak of here is food. I LOVE food. I used to read cookbooks while eating my meals. I'm lucky enough to work as a personal chef at the present moment and subscribe to 4 cooking magazines.

I still miss living 2 blocks from Rainbow Grocery, a food coop that had the biggest bulk (over 800 products!) section that I have ever seen. You could find exotic bulk ingredients like pink Peruvian sea salt, umeboshi paste, and unfiltered olive oil. The great thing about bulk is that you could buy as little or as much of a product as you wanted. You could find any spice or herb there and just buy a spoonful instead of a big, expensive jar that you might never touch again.

I want to share a couple of food related sites that I like to visit. There is The Scent of Green Bananas, which is a food blog. The writer is from Guam and she posts wonderful recipes and musings about food along with great photos. My other favorite is Yasuko-san's Home Cooking. The site is chock full of Yasuko-san's recipes which have been transcribed by her daughter, the writer. The recipes were also handed down from Kimi-san, Yasuko-san's mother. You get a feel for what some real home-cooked Japanese meals are like which you never find in restaurants.

Enjoy!