Dinner With Relatives And Yum Leftovers.

Last night we had some special guest visit us. Motozo's wonderful Cousin and her adorable family are visiting Japan along route to their holiday in Australia and we had to have them over since its only once a year we get to see them. The last time we saw them was at our wedding. They flew out all the way from Holland and spent a few days extra with us at the hotel.

I love this photo! It really shows the young boys personalities and everyone looks happy. Ah, sweet memories! I remember this photo was taken right as our 6 hour party was ending and I think Motozo and I were so happy it was almost over haha.

Alright, back to present day. I spent over a week thinking about the menu. Since I was told by Keiko (Motozo's cousin) that the boys like carbs, I decided to go for Italian. Motozo said we could order food, but I took this as a cooking challenge and it was quite a lot of fun looking at thousands of recipes and finally deciding on the menu. I kept it simple. I really am not a talented enough cook to do countless dishes so this is what I decided on.

Appetizers

Pomegranate Spinach Salad

Vegan Bruschetta

Store bought taco chips and pretzels

Main Course

Avocado Pesto Pasta  

I followed this recipe almost to a T Chef Chloe

Dessert

Vegan Oatmeal Banana Cookies

Non-vegan chocolate from a box 

(We have so much milk chocolate in the house that neither Motozo and I eat, so this was a great opportunity to get rid of some.)

Drinks

Assortment of Wines

Beer

Mango Juice

Apple Juice

Orange Juice

I didn't exactly plan things as well as I should have. I had the table ready, decorated to the best of my ability. Salad and Bruscetta made. But I wanted to wait for our guest to arrive before getting started on the pasta since Motozo likes warm pasta. Although, tecnically Pesto Pasta is a Summery dish, so serving it cold is more appropriate. I really should have prepared the pasta before hand, because it was really hard to prepare it while having conversations and serving everyone drinks etc. I have to mention that this pasta I found was extra special. First time for me to stumble upon gluten free pasta in Japan!  SCORE!

I'm not a huge pasta person, so when I make pasta I want it to be as healthy as possible. Kosher Certified as well! My Jewish relatives would be so proud of me! :)

Things got a little crazy in the kitchen. The pesto turned out WAY too thick even though I followed Chole's recipe exactly.  I had to keep added more and more stuff to make it a better texture. I got way too busy to even think about taking any photos, so unfortunately there are no photos of the end product as they were last night. The salad and bruschetta turned out well, but I still would have liked the pesto sauce to have been slightly thinner. It was made with avocado's, pine nuts, basil leaves, garlic, olive oil etc.
Luckily, the adults seem to like it and even went back for 2nds, but the young boys choose to munch on the bruschetta and chips. Ah, well. I can't please them all.

For lunch today I enjoyed the leftovers. Minus any bread. We managed to finish all the bread last night, but still had lots of tomato topping leftover.

YUM! The pasta tasted better today for someone reason. So creamy and full of healthy fats. The tomatoes were extra tasty too marinating overnight in their delicious basil leaves/garlic/balsamic vinegar/olive oil sauce. The pomegranate on the spinach really made this salad interesting. Who said salads are boring!

A close up. The pasta doesn't look that appealing, but you have to trust me that it was tasty. It takes a good pasta sauce to make me eat pasta. Mm....tomatoes and fresh basil leaves! Perfection!

 Why I took a photo of the bread before I topped it with the tomatoes last night I have no idea! But you can imagin how the bruschetta looked like last night with the tomatoes from the above photos :)

Another photo of the glorious salad! I told you I'd let you know when I eat that pomegranate from Mt. Takao. This was a nice way to use it!

Dessert: Banana Oatmeal Cookies. These are fat free but still soft and very moist. Not dry or bland at all! I added dates to sweeten it up and the fat free part balanced out the heavy avocado pesto pasta.  These are nutritious enough to be eaten as a breakfast cookie! mmm....cookies in the morning make me happy. If you care, I followed this recipe Banana Apricot Spelt Oatmeal Cookie The only adjustment I made was using dates over apricots. I have a feeling I'll be making these often :-) A guilt free cookie is always good to have around in the house.

  

And that concludes our dinner! Ignore Motozo's pissed off facial expression. I guess he's really disappointed that they had to leave when they did, ha. Come back soon Keiko and family! You're welcome anytime!