We Are Not Free by Traci Chee | Book Review

New Books About the Japanese American Incarceration during World War II Illuminate History with Fresh Perspective from Yonsei Artists and Writers Traci Chee's We Are Not Free is powerful and personal. Immediate, visceral, and so dang good. The YA historical is easily one of the most accessible books I’ve read centered on what our…

ByMichelleSeptember 1, 20200Comments

Book Reviews

THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT by Misa Sugiura | 5-Star Review

ARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss I absolutely adored THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT , Misa Sugiura's new book out June 4. It’s the novel with a Japanese American main character that I wish existed when I was teen…. While first generation American stories are dominating shelves, Misa Sugiura breaks away from the…

ByMichelleMay 29, 20190Comments

Book Reviews

Hippie Food by Jonathan Kauffman

73 Years After Internment, Japanese-Americans Still Aren't Being Given Credit Where Credit is Due It's hard to imagine getting angry over tofu. But that’s where I found myself over the last week. The 76th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 fell on February 19. Each anniversary renews a complicated mix of anger, fear…

ByMichelleFebruary 27, 20180Comments

Book Reviews

WRONG TO NEED YOU by ALISHA RAI | 5-Star Review + Recipe

Alisha Rai’s Forbidden Hearts series is the contemporary romance we need in 2017 In WRONG TO NEED YOU (Forbidden Hearts #2), Sadia Ahmed is a widowed, single mother who runs into Jackson Kane, a man she hasn't seen or heard from in a decade. They were childhood friends, and he happens to be her…

ByMichelleNovember 28, 20170Comments

Book Reviews

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai | 5-Star Review

In Hate to Want You, Olivia Kane and Nicholas Chandler’s families have been intertwined for generations. Their grandfathers started a grocery store together and then a series of tragedies put the store solely in the hands of Chandlers. More importantly, it drove a wedge between sweethearts Olivia and Nicholas. But the spark, make that inferno,…

ByMichelleAugust 9, 20170Comments

Not About Food

Never Again

Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Descent, from the National Park Service's Collection of Historical Documents. In 1940, my grandma was a 21-year old maid in Los Angeles. She worked for a family the Jefferson Park neighborhood and her name is listed with theirs in the Census. By the time President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive…

ByMichelleFebruary 19, 20170Comments

Book Reviews Cooking Recipes Salads Side Dishes

The Easiest Zucchini Salad You Will Ever Make

Simplicity is a hallmark of Japanese home cooking. Sometimes, it's simplicity to the point where you actually have to ask yourself, how does this require a recipe? Often, it doesn't. Most of my grandma's "recipes" were like that. Take the scribbled list of ingredients and figure it out. This list is adapted from a recipe…

ByMichelleJuly 21, 20160Comments

Cooking Recipes

The Rule of Fried Rice

Grandmas are liars. There, I said it. Look inside their recipes boxes or the careful cursive recipes on scraps of paper stuck inside other cookbooks and you’ll know their dark hearts. Lists of ingredients, no amounts, sometimes no instructions. These lies aren’t intentionally meant to deceive. Or to maintain an illusion, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. These lies are lesser crimes, crimes of omission. But lies nevertheless. Like with my Grandma’s Fried Rice.

ByMichelleMarch 2, 20141Comment