torakris

we really have quite anumber of members coming to Japan soon!! Rememberto post something in the ISO thread if you are interested in getting together, I for one love to eat! I don't know too much about biking but am happy to help with guiding you to food... If you haven't already check out the pinned thread on Japan for visitors, there is a lot of great information there. As for traveling cheaply, when you feel you want to splurge for a nice meal do it at lunch, some places you can really get a good deal. Have you decided what areas you want to bike to yet? Hokkaido can be quite cold and snowy in November. The meibutsu thread (local dishes) can be quite helpful. Once you have decided where you are going you can figure out what foods to eat. It sounds like you will be able to hit many areas so the food possibilities are endless. Many smaller shops (like noodle shops, etc) don't have picture menus, so it might be a good idea to learn some of the popular kinds of noodles. Such as kitsune udon/soba has a sweetened piece of aburage on top, tanuki udon/soba has tenkasu (deep fried tempura bits), sansai udon/soba is topped with a mix of various mountain vegetables. I definitely recommend Robb Satterwhites book on eating in Japanese restaurants that Robyn mentioned. It will easily fit in your backpack and is a must if you will be eating in a place without a picture menu.

I forgot to add that my kids can't understand why I won't take them to the video store until Susan finishes her pasta... They want to know who the heck Susan is and why she is making pasta in the morning..

this was the cheapest one and cost me 134 yen (about $1.25) another reason to make my own... how is your pasta going ? I am eagerly awaiting the results!!

Today is 100 yen day ($.90) at the local video shop, so I plan on taking the kids there in another hour or so and rent some videos. At the convenience store this morning two new potato chip flavors caught me eye, so I picked them up for a movie time snack. left: jyako-mentaiko (baby sardines and spicy cod roe) flavor right: tomato and mozarella they also had a shrimp and mayo one that I passed on..

... last night after the kids went to bed my husband and I opened the durian. we took a couple bites and then my husband asked if we had any chocolate chip cookies left, we then wrapped the durian in many layers and put it in the trash and then proceeded to finish off the cookies. Unfortunately the smell was let loose, I didn't think it would be this bad. I have the windows open, all the ceiling fans going and have sprayed febreeze everywhere. When will the smell go away??

I was planning on making pancakes for breakfast today, we usually eat them on Saturday and this week because of the sports day we didn7t have a chance but Hide said he wanted bread to he could eat jam. Of course we have no bread in the house because I haven't made any and he ouldn't be talked into pancakes... Since I needed milk anyway I made a run to the convenience store for milk and bread. With the kids going on their 4th day off and still one more to go I need more coffee and if the weather keeps up so that they can't get outside I may need something a little stronger. I am now enjoying my second cup of coffee, I added a bit of cinnamon sugar (this is what Mia eats on toast) to the coffee as well, wonderful! Japanese bread most bread is of the soft white variety and comes in a square block in one of 3 sizes. I have the 6 slice one, there are also 8 slices and 4 slices. The blocks are all the same same size but the 8 slice one has thinner slices and the 4 slice one has really fat ones. I prefer the 8 slice one but they were out... Spiderman (aka Hide) made his own the girls won't enter the kitchen because of the smell.... speaking of which..

Dreary day #8, is this really possbible? Of course I forgot to buy ground coffee at the store yesterday....so no Toddy iced coffee again this morning. Instead I made up a regular drip pot with some (very nice) coffee I received as a gift last week, it was too small an amount to use in the Toddy. Remembering this thread on sweetening coffee (raw/brown sugar vs white) I decided to try some turbinado sugar in my coffee. I bought this last summer and have not used it yet, what do you do with this stuff?

← The above lunch, including the BUzz Lightyear box would be Dylan's dream lunch. I'm afraid to show her, for fear I'll need to recreate it! What are the rectangles? Tempeh or egg? ← it is the Japanese sweetened omelet

Most elementary school children do not eat bentos rather they eat the school lunch called kyushoku. Kyushoku is not just about getting food in the stomachs it is about teaching the children about food, about manners, about working together etc. The lunch "hour" at my children's school starts at 12:15 and ends at 1:40. according to Mia... 12:15 to 12:30 the buckets containing the lunches are carried to the classrooms by the students and then also dished out by the students 12:30 to 12:55 lunch is eaten in the classroom with the teacher (who also eats the school lunch) 12:55 to 1:00 the meal is cleaned up and empty buckets carried back downstairs to the kitchen 1:00 to 1:15 is recess or free time 1:15 to 1:40 is cleaning time, the children are responsible for keeping the school clean. They break into different groups every week and clean the classroom, hallways and even the grounds from 1:40 it is back to studying a year ago I posted a photo essay about the Japanese school lunch system, you can find it here

It was quite hard to get used to making bentos after coming from the US where most lunches consisted of as andwiche that has been smashed in the middle by some kind of fruit. This past one that I made was probably the fastest one I made to date and I was actually quite embarassed to post it as it was quite lacking in variety... After making bentos for 10 years now I have gotten quite used to the little tricks that make it look good like lettuce leaves used as cups, lemon slices for color, mini tomatoes also work nicely for color but the stores always jack up the prices the weekend of sports day (about $2.50 for 10) so I no longer buy them. ← This is fascinating. I can't believe that mothers in Japan face the additional pressure of clever presentation for their children's lunch boxes. I am really looking forward to reading the Bento Box thread. ← Unfortunately I am not one of those mothers who spends hours on my children's bentos. Actually I rarely make bentos for my children since they all eat the school lunch. Hide eats a bento every Friday but last week was a half day so I didn't make one. Here is the one I made 2 weeks ago, this is about as simple as they come and took 10 minutes. the bento thread has some links to some pretty fancy bentos....

I actually have some semolina in the house and was thinking of using it. IF I ever do this again what is a good proportion?

Obviously I am not the one to offer advice. It looks good though. I can't figure out why I have had to use so much flour, the dough really just sticks to everything...

the really embarassing thing is that I do have pasta drying racks, came free with the machine... the thought of using them never even occured to me

well dinner is over... It didn't get off to a very good start, the dough was stuck to the wrap and took a bit of struggling to free Hide was helping me and I was keeping it well floured but it really wasn't going very well, it didn't help that Hide kept cranking it backwards. My husband came home just as I startingt he second batch and it starting to go a little smoother. on the left is the batch with Hide, on the right is the one with my husband Then I made my second mistake, I was worried about the pasta drying out so I covered it with a slightly damp towel. It wasn't until my 4th batch that I realized that this was why it was sticking together and that I actually wanted it to dry a bit....oops By the time we finished (I was using the kid's craft table) there was flour everywhere including myself The mushroom ragu from Mario's latest book was wonderful! The finished dish It was good but the pasta was too thin for my liking, I guess I like my pasta with more of a bite. Is it supposed to be this thin? It was served with the olive bread and brie

The mushroom ragu calls for a basic tomato sauce (with onions, garlic, carrots and thyme), I have simmered this and it tastes great, all I have to do is sautee eh mushrooms and another onion while the water comes to a boil. After I make the pasta... When I went out to get some thyme I thought I would take a picture of my garden. I didn't do anything this summer since I spent 6 weeks in the US but winters here are quite mild so I am trying vegetables that are pretty hardy. (blurry) picture of broccoli rabe (left) and turnip greens (right) seedlings,these need to be thinned once it stops raining (another blurry) picture in the brown container on the left is Italian parsley, the big bushlike thing in the middle is raspberries and the brown container on the right is a fig tree--this was ignored all summer I am surprised it is still alive, I should bring it inside soon my table where I like to enjoy food when it isn't raining... a sudachi (Japanese citrus) tree with 4 heads of purple cabbage and two plants of stick broccoli I discovered a friend living in my sudachi tree Int he back is my bay leaf tree, in the (hard to see) brown container in the front is rosemary and thyme, the tree in the right of the picture is a kumquat tree

so far so good with the pasta I went with Edsel's advise in the pasta thread and made it in a bowl Hide helped the girls were busy painting their toe nails... it is now resting (wrapped in saran wrap)

For anyone who missed my first attempt at fresh pasta, he is what I wrote about it: Things honestly clould not have been worse in my kitchen yesterday. It started off with two, not one, but two trips to the grocery store to buy eggs and flour. I actually wrote a note with just eggs and flour on it and took it with me. Then I came home with eggs and a of other things. So back to the store for flour. I then started off by sauteeing the zucchini mixture, which went well. Then on to the cheese. I was making a very simple ricotta (from scratch) but I could not get the curds and whey to separate, I tried adding double the amount of citric acid, then I said what the heck and decided to squeeze lemon juice into it. The lemon half popped out of my hand and landed in the pot of very hot milk splashing all over me, and it still didn't curdle! Then I pulled out my rice vinegar and added a splash of that and I still never got what I was hoping for but I did get a cheese like product that was not bad but quite acidic. Time to turn to the pasta, I have never made pasta by hand before. I created a large pile of flour made a well and added the eggs, it was beautiful at this point. I took a fork and gently stirred the eggs and started to slowly incorporate the flour. All good so far, then the dam broke! the eggs escaped out a hole they dug in the back of the pile and took off. If it wasn't for the warped cutting board I was using I would have lost them all over the counter. (I warped my nice wooden cutting board a couple months ago when I decided to use it as a lid on a pan I was simmering. ) I finally got the dough together and kneaded it for the full 10 minutes, I then set it aside (wrapped) to rest. In the meantime I pulled out the pasta machine to read the directions since I have never used it before. It is a handcranked Imperia brand that I bought through Amazon last year. To start with there were no directions on how to set it up, go ahead and laugh but it actually took 30 minutes to figure out how to do it... It can't clamp on to either my kitchen counter nor my dining room table because of their sizes. So I tried clamping it on to my sons chair but that was an awkward position to work in and the pasta had no where to go but the floor. I did finally manage to get it clamped onto my table but not really securely... When I unwrapped the dough, it was quite sticky. Mario says to go very easy on the flour so that is what I did, but it stuck to everything, the cutting board, the table, the machine, my hands, itself, etc. I tried using more flour but it still stuck and then the book said that when the dough comes out (on the largest settings) to fold it in half and feed it through again but for some reason the piece would end up being wider than the machine. Suddenly I noticed little silver specks inside my dough, upon closing inspection it turns out my machine is peeling! and it was flaking into my dough!! I trudge on and it seems to be be coming together for two feeds or so then it gets messed up. Now I am noticing little red smears on my dough, it took a couple minutes of inspecting the table and everything in the vicinity before I realize at some point I sliced my thumb and was actually bleeding quite a bit.... oh, well it will just be colorful pasta. I get two semi decent sheets out of the fist batch and the door bell rings. It is some woman selling wind chimes!! She goes on into a 10 minute speech about the significance of each of the animals on them and the special materials they are made of, then the next 5 minutes in commenting on how cute the kids are and asking various questions about life in Japan. I finally said no thank you and she left.. back to the pasta my two strips are slightly dried out now but I decided to run them through one last time.Tthen I cried for the first time: I went back to the books and started reading to see what was going on. It was then that I noticed in the recipe he has for the pansotti is a little different then the general fresh pasta rolling and cutting explanation he has. It says to just put it through the second to last setting once and then cut it into 3 inch circles. Well this sounds much easier! It is much harder to crank now and the hand crank piece is now falling out of the machine every three cranks instead of every five... but I get a nice long piece that I probably floured more than I should have and set about cutting circles. I think the pasta was too thin though because as I would pick up the shape it would stretch into a long oval and if any part touched another part they would be instantly stuck together. After 5 tries I said screw it and decided to just turn it into tagliatelle with the attachment. It would take another 10 paragraphs to describe that disaster so I am going to stop now. Thank god for instant pasta!! I took the zucchini filling and the oil and walnut sauce and combined it all togther. the whole process took over three hours and it left a good sized chip in my dining room table....

(Kristin takes a beep breathe....) It is time to get started on the pasta, wish me luck.

I ran across some new products I had never seen before but since they were sort of keeping in touch with our South East Asian theme I decided to get them. the top three snacks are all from Frito Lay and it is a series called Gourmet Tour Vietnam, from the left: a corn snack that is flavored like fresh spring rolls, a tortilla snack flavored like a beef and red chile stirfry, and popcorn that is flavored like pho These were all sale priced at 88 yen (about $.75) we are eating the beef and chile stirfry flavored tortilla chips and they aren't half bad. On the bottom wrapped in 3 protective layers is a chunk of durian, had durian at a Thai festival here in Tokyo 2 years ago and really enjoyed it. Carrefour has often sold a whole durian but this was the first time I saw a cut one so I decided to get it. Has anyone else ever eaten a durian in one of the food blogs before?

and some miscellaneous items.... two snack foods: Mcvities mango pudding flavored cookies and some chesnut flavored cookies couscous, half a Chinese cabbage, chocolate mints (for a chocolate mint mouse), instant miso soup (for my husband's lunches), fresh panko bread brumbs and Chinese fermented black beans (so I can make hzrt8w's black bean and lemon grass chicken )

and back at the store... I picked up some stuff for dinner 3 kinds of mushrooms (I am making a mushroom ragu from Mario's newest book), a loaf of olive bread and a wedge of brie and of course eggs for the pasta.

The first floor of the Carrefour supermarket has a food court, the kids begged to stop there for lunch. They choose KFC. Hide had a nugget set, Julia had a drunstick set, Mia had a fish burger set and I picked the BBQ twister. The place was packed so the kids suggested eating in the car. My lunch (with fries and an iced tea) You can't see it in the picture, but inside was he sandwich was a slice of bacon and a couple green beans, I am not sure why the green beans were there, it was an odd addition but the bacon was great! The kids

for those wanting to learn more the onigiri thread the mochi thread

onigiri are gently shaped balls of rice either salted or with some type of savory addition.They ar e not made with glutinous rice. mochi are pounded rice cakes (almost smooth) can be be eaten either as a sweet dish or as a savory one. These are often made with glutinous rice.

Why does she do that? (I am imagining that it's her job, for restaurant displays or something...?) One more question for now: Is it a custom in Japan for people to separate like you did when families have dinner get-togethers -- a table for kids, a table for men, and a table for women? That would be unusual for us. When our kids were young and we got together with friends who had kids, we used to sometimes seat them together at a separate table or feed them first, but the men and the women never split up like that. ← the fake foods she makes is actually just a hobby. As to the separating of the guests... Growing up with 7 brothers and sisters we always had a separate table for kids at parties. Japanese houses are just too small to have everyone at one table, I know very few people who have a table who can seat more than four. The initial separation wasn't on purpose the women were int he kitchen getting stuff ready for the kids and the men took some of the food and went by the tv to see a tape of a show that one of the sons of our host was on. As soon as the women started to eat the men joined us, by then the kids were done and playing upstairs. When the boring sports talk started, the women started to clean up and the men decided to go outside to smoke, they didn't come back in for 4 hours... well only to get more wine. They did join us again inside for the last 2 hours. I don't think anyone thought anything about it. We often get to together with just the hosts and our family and at those times we have never separated like that, but I have hosted or been to parties with larger groups and there is often some type of separation at some time.