While looking for dessert recipes that don't use any type of flour (including gluten-free flour), I ran across several black bean brownie recipes. As I read through people's comments, I noticed that many people were skeptical of using black beans as a primary dessert ingredient at first. For me, though, it wasn't weird at all. Growing up in Japan, I ate a lot of bean-based desserts. Many traditional sweets called "wagashi" are made of beans. Adzuki beans are probably the most popular beans used, but we also eat white kidney beans, black beans, soy beans, and green peas to name a few (ok, so peas are not technically beans).

Congratulations to Tonya, Linda, Colleen, Angela, Andrea, and Kimberly. They are the lucky winners of our Gluterra tote bag give away and should have already received them in the mail!

In case you missed it, we had a promotion last month to give away our tote bags. We plan to have this type of promotion once in a while, so make sure to keep an eye on the announcements!

When we lived in a small town next to a big college, we frequented a hip vegetarian restaurant in town called "The Grit." This was my first vegetarian restaurant experience, but it was one of those places that didn't seem to be vegetarian because the food tasted so good. They served (and still do) all sorts of dishes - Southern, Asian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Italian, sandwiches, salads, etc. — all for affordable prices. This is the place where I first met nutritional yeast flakes.

We drink green tea at home every morning. When I wake up, the first thing I do is to boil water and make green tea. That's how I grew up in Japan. It's an added bonus that researchers suggest that green tea is actually good for you too. You can easily find many articles about the health benefits of green tea on the Internet from fighting cancer to lowering heart disease risk. Here is one article from WebMD.

Growing up in Japan, I ate a lot of fried rice. Most Chinese restaurants in Japan serve great fried rice. It is usually seasoned with salt, pepper, Chinese bouillon (sometimes called weipar), and maybe just a tiny amount of soy sauce for a hint of flavor. I think Chinese bouillon is made of chicken and pork stock and vegetable extract. Here in the U.S., I see many Chinese restaurants season their fried rice with lots of soy sauce. So it is seasoned a little differently from what you find in Japan.

This may be dating myself a little, but I used to watch Popeye when I was a kid… in Japan (the shows were dubbed in Japanese of course!). You probably know how Popeye gets his ultra power — by eating spinach and then beating the bad guys in every episode. As a Japanese kid, it always puzzled me why spinach was in a CAN. I had never seen spinach that wasn't fresh from the garden back then. Maybe I should credit my Mom for cooking only fresh vegetables at home. Maybe it was just that there was no canned spinach available in Japan (or at least I had never seen any). Either way, it was not until I came to the U.S. before I saw canned and frozen spinach. Finally, Popeye's spinach made sense to me.

Heartland Gourmet, LLC is voluntarily recalling 3 of their products because they may contain undeclared milk. Read on if you are allergic to milk or know someone who is.

It's true - "You are what you eat".

I just found a program on the Cooking Channel called The Food Hospital. It's a documentary about a hospital in Britain which treats patients by modifying patients diet. They basically prescribe food and vitamins/supplements as medicine. While the treatment is not a traditional treatment, they are staff by trained medical professionals - a general practitioner, a gastrointestinal surgeon, and a dietitian.