Anna N

Not quite sure what you are saying. So far my reading suggests it is a dessert. So I can’t quite make the connection with a meatless meal. Is there a savoury version?

And that’s a bad thing? I can’t think of anything that might limit consumption better than that for children or adults.

Had to look it up. Looks intriguing.

Eggs with wasabi and soy sauce. Yep, I know those eggs are overcooked but who else makes three attempts at perfecting breakfast?😱

I should hope so. What were they thinking?

Scattered sushi based on a recipe from Japanese Homestyle Cooking. Seasoned vegetables, shredded omelet and shrimp.

I shall feel perfectly comfortable from now on referring to grapes as fresh raisins. It will not be true of course because not all grapes make raisins. But all raisins are grapes. Similarly all prunes are plums but not all plums make prunes. That’s my last word.

A simple salad of romaine, cucumber and tomato with a miso dressing and beef tataki done in the style of my favourite author, Tokiko Suzuki, who wrote Japanese Homestyle Cooking. The beef is seared and then briefly cooked, covered, in a mixture of sake and soy sauce before being cubed and served with grated fresh ginger and garlic. I gilded the lily somewhat with a smidgen of wasabi paste.

If you have experienced fresh prunes then your experience is quite obviously much, much wider than mine. Hard to argue with that. There is a move afoot by marketeers to remove prunes from the market and replace them with dried plums. Of course that is a change in name only. Should I ever run across a fresh prune I shall be delighted to taste it.

Uh? What is the botanical name of fresh prunes? They are certainly nothing I’ve ever heard of. But there are stranger things in this universe than I have imagined.

When dried they become prunes.

Plums?

Now that was just plain mean. 😂😂😂

Dieting or starving? That’s some will power or is it won’t power?

Congee with eggs and spinach. Made as part of a project I am working on.

A traditional household in Japan would have four sets of dishes one for each season of the year. These dishes are usually small and organic in either shape, colour or material. The typical Japanese meal consists of soup and three dishes along with rice. As you can see this requires five different pieces of dinnerware for each person x 4 seasons. That is a lot of dishes to store! That’s for a single person. In a formal setting the food is arranged on the selected piece of dinnerware to represent something in nature. Check this for a brief discussion: “Each food is served in a separate dish. Japanese dinner presentation can be very pretty with many dishes having different sizes, shapes, and materials (ceramics, wood, bamboo, iron, etc). A drawback is, however, you end up with a lot of small dishes to wash after dinner. You’d better have a nice American size dishwasher or husband to put to work.”

No photo. Two toasted heels of bread with ketchup and this time I went a bit up market and added some HP sauce.

How do you use these dried fruit?

But they certainly beat a bowl of cereal or a bran muffin.

I can plan meals for a full seven days from Sunday to Sunday. It’s a piece of cake. The problem is by noon on Monday my interest has been caught by some recipe or Idea I’ve seen on the web or elsewhere and there goes my careful plan. And so it goes and I can’t change.

Best lunch I can remember in forever. Well almost forever. @Kerry Beal And I found ourselves in Milton today to take care of an errand. We took the opportunity to return to The Grand Chalet also apparently known as Tony Spiducci’s. I had a glass of a very nice Merlot. Kerry (the DD) stuck with water as usual. The antipasto platter. Delicious. Out of camera range was a basket of fresh bread and a saucer of oil and balsamic for dipping. The lamb spiducci combination platter which we shared. An additional 10 spiducci also shared. They know how to do these little skewers to perfection.

Today I found this in a thrift shop in Milton, Ontario. Having done a fair bit of research on Japanese customs and cuisine I understand that matching tableware is most untraditional. Dishes are chosen very carefully keeping in mind not only the food but also the season. There are even guidelines as to how food should be placed on the plate if the plate is square or oblong or rectangular or whatever. But I also know that the Japanese are very open to new ideas. The colour and the shapes of this tableware called out to me and for less than $10 (with the seniors discount) I couldn’t resist. Perhaps I will use it as a set but more than likely I will mix and match it with other pieces that I have. It Is very hard to accumulate enough dishes to cover all four seasons! It is even harder to figure out a way to store them all. Also in the same thrift store @Kerry Bealspotted this mug: I could not resist.

It intrigues me. And at some point I might even feel a need to experiment.

Here.

Fried potatoes (I had part of a russet potato left over from an earlier project today), celery pickled in fish sauce, spinach ohitashi and beef tataki with ponzu sauce.