Jump to content

torakris

eGullet Society staff emeritus
  • Posts

    11,029
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by torakris

  1. does anyone by chance know anything about the stew I made last night? I have been trying to look for it on google and am coming up blank. I have also started a thread about it here The main reason I am asking its that want to know a country of origin. A couple weeks ago my kids and I bought a large wall map and we put stickers on all of the countries that we eat foods from and I am not sure where to put the sticker from last night.
  2. I made a recipe from Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food and she called it Tbikhit Qra and says it is a type of dish referred as tbikhas in North Africa. Neither of these words are bringing up anything on google. Are there different spellings? What exactly are they?
  3. Sunday morning! I actually slept in to 6:00am today! Everyone else was awake and watching tv by the time I got out of bed...... This morning I am enjoying a (gasp! ) hot coffee! I finished up my Toddy yesterday and didn't realize I had no more coffee in the house until last night. so... I pulled out my individual filter packs, these are quite common here and actually very good. My husband's cup and my cup
  4. The kitchens ar so small because the houses/apartments are so small. My whole apartment is only 67 square meters (sorry I have no idea how to convert that). To give you an idea though, I can plug in the vacuum cleaner in my living room and vacuum the entire house without unplugging it. I can even hit the farthest corners of the bedrooms as well as the bathroom and the entrance hall..... take a look at some of these pictures, these are some typical Japanese kitchens. Many kitchens aren't even a separate room, it is just one wall of the main room that has a small counter, a sink and a place for your gas range. People can feed huge families from these tiny (and often very cluttered) kitchens. My kitchen is very small by American standards but quite large here in Japan....
  5. I love my Toddy! I sort of balked at buying it when I saw the size, but I only pull it out every 2 to 3 weeks, so I keep it a closet most of the time... the carafe stays in the refrigerator. I have already convinced half my family to try it and they all love it as well. It is so wonderful to have great tasting cold coffee anytime I want it,
  6. maybe the agar agar thread can be of some help
  7. The large bento was 390 yen (about $3.75) and had a tempura'd fake crab stick, two pieces of karaage (Jaapnese fried chicken and some panko'd thing on a stick (I didn't see what was inside). There were also a couple simmered foods, satoimo (taro--the round ball), carrots, green beans, and konnyaku. There was also some sweetened beans and a slice of omelet. The rice had a sheet of nori (laver seweed) on it. He ate everything except for the beans, green beans and carrot. The sandwiches were 241 yen a piece (about $2.30), the little sides were about 150 yen ($1.40) and my noodls with the discount cost about 240 yen ($2.30).
  8. I don't travel much into the areas were some of the more of the "interesting" vending machines are... We will be out today to a couple areas of Tokyo and I will take lots pictures including the vending machines!
  9. Favorite food? That probably changes daily! I have too many favorites and I love everything. If I had to pick one food for a last meal it would easily be yukhwe, the Korean dish of seasoned raw beef. Sometimes I think I was born on the wrong continent.... I just asked my husband and he says his favorite food is beef stew, maybe he was born on the wrong continent as well. My kids are pretty easy, typical kids food from both continents, curry rice, meat loaf and mashed potatoes, pizza, etc Mia actually asked me this morning if I could make mashed potatoes for breakfast.... I have studied Japanese, Chinese and Korean (as well as 8 years of French and 5 of Spanish..) and think Japanese is the easiest to pronounce of the Asian ones and Koerean is by far the easiest to read. In terms of grammar Japanese and Korean were pretty similar. Chinese was the hardest for me in reading, pronunciation and grammar.
  10. I am trying to use up what I have in the house since we are going to be out tomorrow. I wanted to use up the kabocha but wanted to try something new so I started scouring my cookbooks. In the freezer was tupperware with some leftover chickpeas that had already been soaked and simmered and I wanted to use that as well if possible. I hit the jackpot in Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food with a dish called Tbikhit Qra, a sort of stew with pumpkin and chickpeas. It also contained onions and tomatoes and an optional red bell pepper, all of which I had in the house. The recipe also called for harissa (optional) and I decided to leave it out as the kids might find in too spicy, instead I put the tube on the table to be added by those that wanted it. The recipe also called for some optional parsley to be added at the end but I wanted the fresher flavor of it sprinkled on top. I liked the taste of the stew but thought it needed a little oomph. I then decided to make a sort of gremolata with the parsley and some preserved lemons (that I preserved myself a couple months ago). This is what I was looking for, it was perfect! I served it over couscous. the harissa I also wanted to use the lettuce leftover from yesterday so i pulled a small bit of blue cheese from the freezer along with some smoked salmon and made a lovely salad. It doesn't exactly go with the north African stew but it was good nonetheless, and I have used up most of odds and ends in my freezer...
  11. Which is your favorite? I can send some to you. ← you are too kind! I actually limited myself to drinking it only once a week because of the price......
  12. I just looked at the prices on that website and I am definitely not going to buy those tea bags in Japan anymore. The website was selling them 25 bags for $1.95 and the store I bought them at here charged about $5 for 10 bags!!!
  13. while his sisters played outside Hide and I had a snack digestive biscuits with one side dipped in chcolate, this is one of my favorite snacks here I also had an iced tea made a with a lime ginger tea (tea bag) from Boh's Seri Songket teas, these teas are really good, though a bit pricier than average.
  14. It has been a very long morning.... I had a meeting for the Kodomo kai (children's community group) and we had to decide everyones responsibilites for the upcoming year. There are about 25 of us and everyone needs to take part in at least two events. It took 2 1/2 hours to decide everything.... My kids were the only ones there and were bored out of their minds. My husband works every Saturday so he couldn't take of them like the other husbands (or in some cases grandparents) were doing. I will be helping out at the dontaku a sort of festival held at the end of summer and the keiroukai a special event held on the respect for the aged day (keirou no hi) where the children sing songs and play instruments for the elderly in the area. As I was looking for some information about dontaku in English, I learned the world is actually Dutch in origin.... In the Edo period (1603-1868), decorative floats and platforms showcasing dolls were added. The name of the festival was adopted around this time: it is believed to be derived from the Dutch word zondag (Sunday), which was taken to mean "holiday". from here So anyway, I was planning on eating lunch at home but I had to stop at the store and pick up laundry soap and the kids insisted on getting bentos. I was too tired and hungry to argue and we still had a 15 minute walk home.... Rain is forecast Monday thru Weds so I have to get the laundry done today and tomorrow.... Our lunch Hide had the big bento in the front but his sisters picked at what he didn't. Mia and Julia both got sandwiches and Mia picked up a burdock root (gobo) salad and Julia chose pasta. I have the noodles in the middle (with the 20% off sticker on the top) this is a better picture Julia gave me one of the sandwiches saying she didn't like it, I opened it up and it turns out it was corned beef (the canned stuff) with mayo and corn kernels.....
  15. I never did eat anything for breakast yesterday besides my iced coffee, so today i made sure I had a piece of toast (with butter). And an iced coffee of course. yesterday's Pocky I left by the computer while I was making dinner and I came back to find this My husband finally admitted to eating it.... It wasn't actually Pocky, but Pretz their savory counterpart. this was their ume flavor (pickled plum) and I didn't even get one..
  16. My oven like most ovens in Japan it is a combination microwave/convection oven this is one of the larger ones on the market at 30L, I have recently seen ones that are as big as 33L My place has hot running water in the kitchen and bath, but like most of the houses in Japan the washing machine is cold water only.
  17. the "what do you like to eat for hanami" thread Most people are too drunk to even think about the food though....
  18. Heh. A one-pound roast being the largest available in the market is speaking volumes to me about Japan's mindset towards animal protein--more often an accent to a meal than the main event, served in smaller portions than in the US even when it is the main event, etc. Wish I could get my brain re-programmed to think that way--I'd probably be a darn sight healthier. ← Packages of meat here are very small and instead of a price per pound the price is per 100 grams (a little less than 1/4 of a pound). I used to laugh when I first came here and saw these tiny packages of ground beef that weighed in at less than 1/4 lb, I mean you can't even make one hamburger with that! After 10 years though my cooking has changed and I cook more now with meat as an accent.
  19. I rarely use prepared foods, but in urban Japan they are becoming very popular. Many meats in the supermarkets are sold already seasoned and just the other day I noticed my local train station had 4 (yes 4!) sozai-ya-sans. the sozai thread Sozai are essentially the dishes served for a meal besides the rice and soup and can be anything from main meat dishes to small vegetable sides. A sozai-ya-san is a store that sells jsut these kinds of small dishes, usually at a set price per 100 grams (1/4 lb), so you can take as much as you need. Even a year ago I never saw these kind of shops, they were pretty much only in the department store basements (where all the food is). This is what a typical sozai-ya-san looks like It really depends on the person and how much they like to cook, My next door neighbor hates cooking andisn't very good at it. She grills fish about 5 times a week, makes rice and miso soup and a salad (usually iceberg with cucumber and tomatoes with dabs of mayo on top)....
  20. I'd almost forgetotten that a non-Diet version of this exists. I'm pretty sure the non-diet has been all but dropped from U.S. distribution. ← They must all be in Japan then. There is almost no diet here, I have seen diet occasioanlly in stores but almost never in vending machines.
  21. kabocha is a Japanese squash. This is all I have left The bread was really good as are most of the breads from Carrefour (French supermarket) unfortunately it has been bought by a Japanese company, the Jaapnese branches that is, and I am worried that we are going to lose the good breads. Foreign foods are definitely on the rise. Many supermarkets in my area now have ethnic sections with ingredients for Italian, Mexican, Thai, Korean, etc.... 10 years ago there was virtually nothing, except at very overpriced International markets that catered to ex-pats.
  22. All that for $12 for everyone or for each? ← for all of us together
  23. I am not a pet person.... My kids had a goldfish they won at a festival that lived for 3 years!! despite my many attempts to kill it. The Japanese love pets but because many people live in apartments they are unable to keep them so places like this are becoming popular thesea re little parks you can go to to watch animals in cages or possible sit in a pen and let them run around you, to take them for a walk usually costs more money. the price you see is just the admission cost to the park. To take my family there it would cost 4700 yen juust for admission, about $45! and parking would be an extra $15 to $20. Yet these places are packed on the weekends. My husband's dog, a Siberian husky, passed away 3 years ago but we used to walk him every weekend and I often did the weekday walking as well. He lived at my in-laws house just 10 seconds away. He was a great dog. My MIL now has two chihuahuas (sp?).........
  24. We were invited to one on this Sunday but we aren't going... I have no desire to sit in an overcrowded park with a bunch of drunk people and my husband doesn't do this kind of stuff either. He never goes to any of the drinking parties at work. His company does sponsor a couple BBQ's a year at the work sites and we normally go to those and have a lot of fun. I like these because it is more like a small party and not out in public. We have better plans for Sunday anyway!
×
×
  • Create New...