After making fried eggs and shrimp, I needed to do something with the extra tomatoes and red onion. I looked in the fridge and saw some tofu and fresh egg noodles that we often pick up at the local Asian supermarket. With a few other ingredients, I whipped up this super easy curry tofu noodle stir-fry.

We enjoyed the dish so much, I made it again a few days later. The first time, I added a little too much hot curry powder for Hungry Bear's taste. My heat tolerance is off the charts, so it was mild for me. The next time I made it, I threw in a little coconut cream to soothe the heat and sweet petite peas for some color.

After Hungry Bear made her Hawaiian marinated chicken last week, we still had three pounds of unused chicken thighs. I needed to figure out what to make with them before they went into the freezer, where they would be forgotten. We are really bad with frozen meat and don't plan ahead enough to thaw it out.

I had a craving for green chili chicken stew, but couldn't find a recipe to my liking. Hungry Bear loves sweet potatoes, so I made braised chicken curry with yams, which is based on a Ming Tsai recipe. I've been tweaking this curry over the years. The dish calls for orange-flesh sweet potatoes, a.k.a. garnet yams.

The biggest changes to the original recipe are the omission of the banana and adjustments to the curry powder. I think there is enough sweetness from the yams, so there's no need for the banana. I've also adjusted the amount of chicken stock and added peas for some color.

One of my favorite ingredients is hot Italian sausage. Hungry Bear loves sweet petite peas. Add some mushrooms, garlic, orecchiette, a sprinkle of Parmigiano Reggiano and you'll have a tasty pasta dish that can be prepared in 30 minutes.

Hungry Bear likes pasta dishes without tomato sauce because the individual flavors of the ingredients are not dominated by a tomato taste. Recently, we've made most of our pasta without tomato sauce. Our current favorite pasta is an orecchiette with hot Italian sausage.

I love cabbage! Stuffed cabbage, cole slaw, corned beef and cabbage, kimchi, cabbage soup... I love all things made with cabbage. If I'm at a restaurant and I see a dish made with cabbage on the menu, it's usually the one I order. I'm not sure how or when my admiration of cabbage developed, but it runs strong and deep.

Several years ago, I was enjoying some Thai larb and it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to create a dish with similar flavors. But, I wanted to add a vegetable to balance it out and also make it healthier. Naturally, I immediately thought of using cabbage.

So I turned it into a stir fry dish served on rice. I wanted something simple, healthy and easy to prepare. The outcome was stir fried cabbage, ground beef and mushrooms. The flavors that I borrowed from Thai larb are the saltiness from the fish sauce and the tanginess from the lime.