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The star of this meal is the dessert, an pan, sweet bread with anko (sweet red bean paste) in the middle. I've loved the stuff ever since I bought a roll a Japanese grocery, not knowing what it was. It took a long time to find a recipe for it, and when I finally did, I made it ASAP. And... well, I'm very inexperienced at baking. If you want to know just what happened, and share in my pain, here's the blow-by-blow of my first experience making an pan. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be amazed that the stuff actually turned out quite well.

Then we have breakfast sushi, one of my own inventions. I've seen tamago sushi - a rice block with egg on top - so why not take it a step further and use bacon and eggs in a roll? Sounds weird, but it's plenty tasty. Above that is edamame, aka boiled soybeans. Yes, those are soybeans, from which tofu, soy sauce, and just about everything else is made. And, finally, the everpresent, easy-to-make-in-large-batches steamed broccoli.