MomOfLittleFoodies

Why, thank you! Do you mean you used sugar instead of mirin? ← Yeah, I just added sugar. Mom told me to just add some sugar along with the sake the recipe called for. Mirin is expensive here.. almost $6 for a 10 fl oz bottle.

I tried Hiroyuki's gyudon recipe tonight, with some alterations because I didn't have any mirin and didn't want to break open the mindo sized bottle of sake that has been residing in my liquor cabinet since time began. It was a hit with my husband, my 7 year old son, and my 1 year old. My one year old was clammoring for the onions and meat more than the rice or benishoga.

Wow... my kids would love those. The shaved ice/snow cones we get here are puny in comparison. Your kids are very cute.

I think the closest thing to the Mega Mac here would be the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I've accidentally ended up with the DQPC a couple of times when they changed the numbering on the value meals here. The only difference I can see between the US McGriddles and the ones in Japan is that here in the US, they use scrambled eggs rather than those fried egg hockey puck looking things.

I keeping bisquick around solely for making waffles. It's the only fast way to fix waffles without using eggs (egg allergic kiddo) short of frozen waffles.

My dad is turning 58 this year, and yeah, he cooks. Nothing gourmet, but he makes a mean tuna casserole from scratch, interesting versions of meatloaf, etc. He's not Jewish though, and probably not of the generation of which you speak.

senbei saladitos (salted dried plums) chex mix and similar mixes dill pickles umeboshi vinegar sprinkled on slices of fresh cucumbers

I've got a couple of really "out there" food allergy cookbooks.

Don't laugh. Jason (my 9 year old son) will eat miso soup with anything. Although this is the same kid who can sit and eat a glazed donut, sushi and a chocolate bar at one sitting. It's his afternoon snack of choice.

There's a running joke in my family about beni-shoga... when we go to Yoshinoya, Mom pretty much blankets her meal with it, so we call it beni shoga don, as in "Mom, would you like some meat with that rice and beni shoga?" Now I'm feeling homesick.

It's important to point out that it was not the prep at the restaurants that tainted the green onions, they were already tainted coming in the door. Green onions are notorious for being carriers of pathogens. A few years back there was an issue with batches from Mexico being tainted with Hep A, which cannot be washed off.

In CA, tipped employees make the same minimum wage that everyone else does.

The kappa maki I got from the grocery store today. Normally it's decent sushi that this grocery store makes... they make it fresh daily, and I got mine about 30 minutes after it was made. They put wasabi in with the cucumber! Yuck!

For non-buffet restaurants, my minimum tip is double the sales tax, rounded up to the nearest 50 cents. Works out to about 17-18% depending on what county I'm in. For crappy service, no more than 15%. I have small kids, so we don't go to fine dining restaurants... mostly ethnic places or family style restaurants. What hacks me off are the buffet restaurants that expect a 15%-20% tip. If I'm getting up to get my own food, you're not getting a 15-20% tip.

Ketchup on eggs is a favorite among most of the kids I knew growing up... when you had scrambled eggs, you put ketchup on them. This was in the middle of the LA area, not Japan. As an adult, I can't stand the combination of those too. Heck, I won't even put ketchup on hash browns either.

I really do have a kid who likes vegetables, but until fairly recently he was on very limited diet due to multiple food allergies, so stuff like fish sticks and canned spaghetti were a no go.

Are you talking about in Japan proper, or here in the States?

Have you tried the Cadbury UK Curly Wurly bars? I'm told they are similar.

Okay, here's where my bias as a 3rd/4th generation Japanese-American comes out. Japanese food in America had to adapt to having different ingredients. There are many areas in the US that lack a reliable source for some of the most basic of authentic ingredients for Japanese cooking. It's sometimes easier or less expensive for me to subsitute a similar ingredient (say a Western sweet potato vs an imported satsuma-imo) than to go to a market 25 miles away to get the authentic ingredients... and I live in a metro area with a large population of Asians. The one local market that specializes in Japanese products is the size of a gas station mini-mart. I'm from California though... it's more practical for me to use locally produced items than to use import products.

fish eggs of any kind herring in a jar balut organ meats brazil nuts red cabbage shark fin or birds nest (not into that boogery texture) crayfish any meat you could buy in a pet store (cat, dog, rodents, turtle, frog) with the exception of rabbit natto

Those Fujis are beautiful... the ones in the grocery stores here aren't quite as red. The Ourins look a lot like the Golden Delicious I get in the grocery stores here.

Eggnog... I buy egg nog the first time I see it in the stores, and keep buying it until I can't find it anymore. Not the canned nastiness either.

Here in the US, the doctors give you a hard time if your child gets a baby bottle much past 1 year old. Giving a very small child caffiene is discouraged here too. My older boys don't much care for tea. My almost 4 year old daughter loves the stuff though... her favorite is jasmine tea. When we go out for Vietnamese food, she insists on having some, with a couple of ice cubes tossed in to cool it. My youngest is 10 months old now and he'll eat anything that doesn't crawl off his high chair tray. (although he's not had soy products, egg or fish yet). He adores spicy food and cheese.

This product is actually quite popular with people with wheat allergies or celiac disease here in the US. It's a completely different creature from the Japanese mochi I'm accustomed to. You have to bake or grill the Grainaissance stuff for it to be edible. It's closer to the shelf stable mochi that you buy in blocks... definitely not fresh. I tried it once, and didn't much care for the texture.

If you live near a Trader Joes, I'm pretty sure I saw some chestnuts there the last time I went. If you'd like, I'll check again the next time I go. I'm pretty sure they're an Italian variety. I think they were either frozen or vaccuum packed, don't remember which. My grandparents used to receive chestnuts as gifts from their clients around CHristmas time... I remember what a pain in the butt they were to peel.