Anna N

Just like a child, I am always anxious to play with my new toys. I documented this Bento box on another thread. I think it’s possible to judge from the other items in the photograph just how small this box is. It actually has a 560 mL capacity. In keeping with the Japanese rule of thumb that 500 mL of a balanced meal will be in the range of 500 cal, this little box does just fine. I sliced up 2 pieces of the Korean pancakes from lunch at a restaurant yesterday and briefly reheated them. I made up a dipping sauce and tossed together a small salad. A very satisfactory lunch. It would’ve gone nicely with some sake but that slipped my mind until just now.

They do look damn good. But I am still resisting.

Phew! Hate to lose ya.

I have usually 2 to 3 types on hand. I am no expert on miso and I don’t pretend to be. At the moment in my refrigerator is awase, the one I use most frequently, hatcho (mame) and shiro.

Niratama donburi. Basically an omelet with garlic chives over rice. The eggs are cooked in an abundance of oil at a high temperature. This is almost the same as a Thai omelette.

I thought that’s what she said she had done.

Been there. Done that.

The coloured strips are velcro ties. The blue tubs are not really blue that is something to do with the lighting. They are rectangular stainless steel containers with plastic lids. This Is the post that put me into a mood to envy these! I waited a long time to get them! Unfortunately the link no longer works in that post. There is something very similar on Amazon.com that includes the small wire rack. I had them on my wish list for the longest time but they were about $30 for three of them. The tray is just that — a tray. I was hoping that it was a baking tray but it warns against using it in the oven. It will be a useful prep tray. Triangular thing is a rice mould for making onigiri. You can fill it with rice, freeze it and then nuke when you are ready to use it.

On a recent trip to the Burnhanthorpe (Asian) area of Mississauga, Kerry spotted this place. We were back in the same area today and as we were heading to our Ramen spot Kerry suggested we check out this Korean place instead. I’m so glad we did. Kerry had tea which was served in an insulated stainless steel cup (missed getting a photo but they were quite attractive). I had warm sake. Kimchi pancake with its accompanying harem of banchan. Seafood pancake. Close-ups of the banchan. A bowl of soup for each of us. Some wonderfully crispy shrimp and vegetable tempura. Throughout our lunch steaming bowls of this, that and the other passed our table. I am sure we will be in for a return visit. I was facing a very large TV which was playing some Korean program which I am sure brought a little too much colour to my cheeks! Sheesh. I say it all in good fun but it definitely was nothing I’ve seen on North American TV. But the nice thing about it was the lack of any loud background music or even anything from the TV. Just the sound of other peoples conversations surrounded us so that we were able to have an excellent conversation of our own. Just as an aside, as I flipped through the well-illustrated menu I was struck by how many Korean dishes might have been mistaken for Japanese dishes. The food cultures seem to have so many things in common. Will need to hit the history books over the next few weeks. Edited to fix Kerry “had to see” to Kerry “had tea”, even though everyone knows Kerry always has tea.

Although I normally see Kerry only once a week, I still do not like it when she travels even for a few days. But I always love it when she comes back!!! It’s déjà vu all over again! OK well it feels like Christmas all over again. Earlier in the thread I explained how I did some virtual shopping in San Francisco while I was making my dinner in Oakville. Some of these things I chose right off the shelf then. Some of these things were a complete surprise.

Normally I would say yes — throw it out. However, in this case I would wonder how long it had been cooking and had it possibly reached pasteurization temperature internally. I’ll leave it to others more expert than me to answer any further.

Thank you I actually have a number of these —one in every room and a couple of spares to boot. But they don’t really work that well when you are trying to unearth something that is buried under piles of other stuff. They are, however, quite useful for many things.

I reserved a few mushrooms from dinner last night with a view to having them for breakfast this morning. They were foil-roasted with miso, sake, soy and butter. I reheated them this morning and enjoyed them over some rice.

So last evening showed me that even though I had inventoried my freezer drawer it was still too challenging. I have no wish to bore anybody with my physical challenges but I needed a way to limit the time needed to be bent over digging around. I knew there were two packages of lamb loin chops. I found one but had to give up finding the second one. This morning, bit by bit, I collected like things together and stored them in large reclosable bags. There is a bag of duck and a bag of pork and a bag of beef etc. I think this should largely address the problem. Each bag is clearly labelled in very large letters. There are still a few things that I need to gather into their own bags but I have made a very good start on this. I think the inventory will still work without having to redo it. I know there are others on the board who are facing physical challenges so perhaps this might be helpful to someone.

Lamb loin chops excavated in my recent freezer dig (here). These were sv’d at 54.5°C x 45 mins and then seared in cast iron. Potato salad and foil-roasted mushrooms as sides. Wished I had some bread to soak up the juice from the mushrooms. It was made from miso, butter, soy sauce and sake. When nobody was looking, which was my whole dinner hour, I slurped some.

Shrimp, mushrooms and rice from freezer. Potato salad used up the last of the little potatoes in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.

And you could have a different can for every day. SPAM.

Me neither. Not a fan of either.

Yah missed my joke.

Perhaps they hide foie gras inside it.

Mushroom soup from the freezer and some toasted baguette slices.

I’m insulted. So do shepherdesses herd lentils?

I find it so much easier now with my iPhone and OneNote to dictate my inventory as I am going through my freezer. But what I really need is for each package in there to scream at me as I lift it out, “Update your damned inventory!” Of course it would be equally useful for the packages I put in there to scream at me in the same way.

Wondered how long it would take somebody to catch that one! But on the whole my labelling skills have improved remarkably.

Lunch was inspired by my freezer cleaned out this morning. Small lamb burgers with a Japanese inspired glaze over white rice with broccoli and carrots and tucked in the corner twp pickled tomatoes The lamb, the glaze, the broccoli, the carrots and the rice came from the freezer. (Somethings don’t show up on the inventory because they are in the shallow upper drawer which I have not yet dealt with.)