Readers of this site, and my Twitter friends, know that I like food and cooking….but don’t call me a Foodie. Much of what I cook tends to be seasonal, and I find myself preparing Southeast Asian dishes in the fall and winter, and Mexican meals in the summer, but I’ll swap over from time to time. In the summertime, when we have an abundance of cherry tomatoes from garden, we love preparing these TLTs: Tempeh, Lettuce, Tomato Sandwiches. Now, these flavorful beauties aren’t Asian, but the tempeh is.

Tempeh by Sakurai Midori (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Tempeh (or often tempe) is a traditional Indonesian food made by culturing and fermenting soybeans into a firm cake. It is much, much denser than tofu, and has an earthy, nutty flavor. Because it is nutrient dense, and a good source of protein, it has been adopted by vegetarians in the western world and used as a…

Man with Pufferfish by State Library Victoria (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Take a look at this photo. Who couldn’t love this face? Really, who? Such a cute little fella. And I’m talking about the pufferfish, not the dude with the pipe. But I am thinking about taking up pipe smoking,  solely because of this photo. Relax, I won’t, that nicotine will kill you. But I’ll definitely pick up one of those sweet ass hats.

The first place I would wear said hat would be some swank Tokyo sushi bar where I could get my fill of fugu. What the f*** is fugu, you ask? That cute little fella in the photo. The fish, people, the fish. Stay focused. Fugu, the Japanese word for pufferfish, is the paper-thin sliced flesh of pufferfish primarily from the Takifugu genus. Raw fish usually isn’t all that exciting (unless you’re my kids who can’t get enough) but some people get a…