helenjp

Shiso - it really does have a mind of its own about germinating. As the thin leaves show, it's a tender plant, so don't sow until it's a reliable 25deg.C for outdoor direct sowing. Definitely not until all danger of frost is past. I see on one Swiss-resident Japanese woman's blog (in Japanese)blog that in Europe, she sows indoors in early May, transplanting in mid-May, and that she recalls sowing shiso in Japan in late March. Since there's no hurry to sow it, why not stick your seeds in the fridge until you are ready to sow? That should jolt them out of dormancy, if they are in there for at least a month. Because they stay dormant so long, if you have plenty of seed, you can sow some outdoors in a likely-looking spot, and you may find that they suddenly germinate next year...or even later. For that reason, it's hard to lose green shiso if you get it really established in a spot that it likes. Those thin leaves are prone to insect damage, but I usually find that bad damage means that they aren't in a sunny enough spot. Pea shoots - thank you for reminding me! Perfect for planters! I believe that soft-podded varieties of peas such as snow peas are most used for pea shoots, but don't really know. DRColby, I think you are going to need to show us some pictures!

I don't think there's any major benefit! It's just pretty. It has tiny amounts of other minerals in it...pink may be some form of potassium???

More beans! When it gets hotter, I like to plant yard-long beans (also known as snake beans, chinese long beans etc) They are very tender. Scarlet runner or other types of rough-skinned, wide, flat are not all as coarse as the green runner beans of our childhood, and they go wonderfully in summer stews. There are so many types of snaps and snow peas - but maybe they need to be planted in autumn in the UK? Local gardening friends tell me that brussels sprouts are easier to grow than cabbage, and more friendly to cut-and-come-again harvesting. Sprouting broccoli, or raab, or broccolini - all much the same thing - are all good eating. My favorite of the Chinese choy sum flowering cabbages, and particularly a Japanese cultivar known as Autumn Poem, are like a less cabbagey sprouting broccoli raab. Japanese mizuna is very versatile (and seed easy to buy in UK/US these days) - pull up whole when young to use in salads, or allow to form a really huge head, and cook slowly with fatty or preserved meats. Come to think of it, green shiso ought to grow well in the UK. It will self-seed shamelessly if you have open rough ground near fruit trees etc, as long as it gets a reasonable amount of sun.

OK...I went back to working from home full-time, so I added a few more planters to my balcony. Some rocket seeds are due to go in there this weekend (nothing like optimism...the plan is to plant a few more every week until some feel warm enough to sprout!). Recommendations needed please, for greens that don't mind a little wind. The balcony is not especially exposed, but after all, it's not ground level. Anything else people have enjoyed growing in planters, tubs, or hanging baskets? My in-ground garden is so very shady that only a few things do well there.

7th grader son2 was offered a home-made Valentine chocolate on the school bus, but maintains that it was offered with such contempt that he turned it down...and later heard the giver giggling with her friend that she had mixed a lot of WASABI in with the chocolate. Now he'll never know if it was true or not! 9th grader son1 was philosophical about his lack of popularity, and maintains that Valentine's Day is just a fiction: 2/14 is really Niboshi no Hi...(ni=2 bo=stick=1 shi=4). Niboshi are tiny dried sardines. I spotted some Wallace & Gromit chocolates and couldn't resist getting the boys a small pack each. Surprisingly, they didn't have a cheese filling . I notice that in recent years Valentine's Day chocolates are never discounted...last night they were being packed up carefully, so I assume they are recycled for White Day a month later?

Amazon.com has a few bento items too. mostly the insulated ones.

From Japanese recipes, 4g to 400 or 500ml soy milk or a mix of soy milk and water. Sugar was minimal, and you want a creamier feel anyway, so you would need to play with those proportions. I much prefer a product called Ina-agar, produced by Ina Shokuhin Kogyo (Ina Food Industry). It contains both agar and konnyaku (konjac, devil's tongue root) plus other starches, and makes a much creamier jelly - made soft, pure agar jelies tend to have a "crumbly" texture. Usually 10g powder to 500ml soy milk/water. Kanten-pappa website Ina-agar A (unsweetened) and Ina-agar L (lightly sweetened) are 3rd and 4th items down the page respectively. The Ina-agar A I have is sweetened, so older product may contain sugar.

Depends a bit on where your rice cooker was manufactured! If you are using a Japanese one it will be designed for paddy-grown short-grain rice. If you are using it with field-grown rice of any type, you will need more water, and from about now until the new-harvested rice comes onto the market in fall, you will need a bit more water too. If your water is exceptionally hard, you may also find that the rice cooks hard. Try filtering the water or adding a lump of high-quality hard charcoal to the cooker. For every type of long-grain rice, you will have to experiment and see what you like..

Ｓｕｒｉ－ｍｉｓｏ The pix are all of the same miso, but if you scroll down to the one where the miso is all mounded up like an incecream cone, you can see the texture quite well. Suri-miso or ground miso is the Japanese term. To be honest, it's more common with the cheaper types of miso, but if you want it for sauces etc that may not be a problem.

What a sight! Mine is a similar layout, and I like the central vege drawer - easy to organize, easy to access. I have two separate freezer drawers rather than an internal drawer - and that's about as big as freezer compartments come in Japan! The adjustable door shelves are a godsend in a small fridge. Egg storage - I noticed that too. Mine has an egg tray, which handily takes about 1.5 packs of eggs, but I noticed big blurbs a few years back saying "no more useless egg compartments", so I think it must have been a trend of the times. I'll check next time I'm in a store, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that egg trays have quietly made a resurgence .

Most sauces are served on the side at restaurants. Ready to eat meals may have the sauce already prepared, but very often it's in a squeeze-cup or a sachet. Yakitori (chicken on a skewer) is often served either with sauce (tare) or salt (shio-yaki shio means salt) - the pale one is of course the salt-grilled type. It's easy to find yakitori take-out, it may be harder to find it in a sit-down restaurant. * Omerettsu (omelet) - is that a possibility? Omu-rice is a ketchup-flavored rice, often with chicken in it, served rolled up in an omelet. Set meals will often include a pale yellow rolled omelet called dashi-maki tamago. That is served cold, which your daughter may find surprising. In Kyoto, you might try to find a katsu-age shop - it has all sorts of stuff on skewers, and you can pick and choose. It is not like yaki-tori, but normally breaded with very fine breadcrumbs. Not unknown in Tokyo, but more common in Kansai. Chicken dishes you are likely to find: *Oyako-don - donburi of plain white rice with egg and herbs, lightly bound in an omelet and seasoned with soy sauce and sugar (basicallly!). *Chicken-katsu - chicken version of tonkatsu *Kara-age or tatsuta style deepfried chicken chunks. Kara-age is deepfried in an eggy batter, tatsuta is simply liberally dusted with cornflour before frying. * Nabe - hotpot dishes. Although cooked in a broth, you normally pull out what you want and dip it in sauce, so your daughter could pull out chunks of chicken and the vegetables she likes, and maybe noodles and tofu, and eat them plain if she wanted. Even a hot noodle shop (apart from ramen - Chinese noodles) will probably serve noodles cold on a tray, with a dipping sauce separate. That style is called "zaru" or bamboo tray, so you can ask for zaru-soba, zaru-udon etc. It may not be on the menu in winter, but you can almost certainly ask for it and get it year-round. Another thing to try would be korokke (croquettes - various types of meat either mixed with mashed potato, or with a very stiff white sauce (cream croquette) then breaded in fine breadcrumbs and deepfried. Normally served with a thickish worcestershire sauce - probably served separately, but if you are worried, ask for "sauce wa betsu ni shite, kakenai de kudasai" ( "sauce wa betsu-betsu" is broken Japanese, but easy to remember!) Not very much spicy food in Japan, especially in Kyoto. You may find "Italian" restaurants easily, and you may be able to ask for "spaghetti wo sono mama de, sauce nashi" (spaghetti just as it is, no sauce), though the staff may be very puzzled! If you are in Kyoto, try some Japanese sweets. The most famous ones are "yatsuhashi" which are tooth-breaking cinnamon flavored flat or rooftile shaped cookies, or "nama-yatsuhashi" which is the same cinnamon-flavored dough, uncooked. It will mostly come in triangles filled with anko (azuki bean jam) but you may find some unfilled. As it's coming up to Doll's Festival, there will be pretty candies around, and also neri-kiri The link shows them being made, and you can see the lump of white bean jam that goes inside (that's called shiro-an). "Anko" or red bean jam is more common, but you can always check what's inside by pointing and asking anko? shiro-an?. A less usual type is made from green peas, called "uguisu-an". They are so pretty it would be a pity not to try one or two! You can find them in department store basements, but there are also lots of stores which sell wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionery). Fruit in Japan is relatively expensive. In March, the apples will be cheap but also starting to get woolly. Japanese kiwifruit will be cheap, and also getting to the end of the season, so eat quickly. All kinds of citrus are around - the big ones are peeled, then the membrane is removed from each individual segment and the fruit eaten. Although sharp-tasting, they are usually eaten without sugar, and they are big enough to share. Apart from that, bananas from the Phillippines are cheap and those from Taiwan moderately priced.

Some people like their miso milled very smooth; others like the grains in, but strain it out when making their soup; yet others like everything in! It really is a personal choice. Most Japanese people use a medium-brown miso. Restaurants tend to use a red miso in summer, and a paler miso in winter. It's not only the color...some sloppier, paler miso with more grains are "kouji miso" which means they are made mostly or entirely of cultured rice. "Kome miso" means rice miso. Most miso includes both rice and soybeans, and some long-matured dark misos such as red hatcho miso are almost entirely soybeans. Although not very popular in Japan (they have an aura of poverty about them) there are also barley misos (mugi-miso), which tend to be grainy and have an earthier taste.

Badly dried herbs have probably been left lying around in a heap before drying commences (i.e. they are beginning to ferment), and are then dried too fast, at too high a heat. However, even the constituents of good dried herbs are chemically different from fresh herbs, which is why they taste different (and as far as medicinal herbs go, they sometimes affect our bodies differently too). It should be possible to kiln-dry herbs effectively, but I have yet to encounter any. Some people believe that after drying in the shade, some herbs should then be further dried in the sun, to enhance those chemical changes. I haven't tried that yet! I'd try buying herbs from somewhere that also stocks medicinal herbs. I know people in Japan often order online from Penzey's - but I don't know anything about the quality of their herbs.

For small places, I definitely prefer a bottom freezer - but it needs to have at least 2 drawers, internal or external, and one drawer a little deeper than the other. A third "optional" drawer which can alternate between freezer/ partial freeze or heavy chill/fridge is extremely useful in small kitchens too - it can be switched to fridge setting for parties, Christmas etc., and used as a freezer or partially chilled meat/fish cabinet the rest of the time. My last fridge had one, my current one doesn't, and I miss it! Family members constantly after water and ice: I'd love a dispenser like Snowangel's but often wonder if they are hard to clean? Split doors on the fridge section would be good. I have an open-both-ways door, which is very useful in a small kitchen BUT the hinge design means that it's prone to not closing perfectly, and the heavy (because of items stored in the door shelves) door never stays open - and the bottom of the door is right at head height for small children...

I had a Bamix which died, but I'm more than pleased with my Braun Multimix - it's similar to the Braun Multiquick mentioned upthread, except that the Multimix has beaters and is not cordless - but I like the extra power. If you have other, more powerful mixers and blenders, then "small cordless" might be the right choice. I don't, so the slightly bulky Multimix is quite acceptable for me.

Thanks Seitch - after posting, I was actually thinking to myself "wait a minute, slef-lubing surely means that some stuff DOES come off the bearings..." but I wasn't sure if that were really so. It certainly is expected that nothing harder than a plastic or bamboo paddle will be used with modern rice cookers. There's been interest here in Korean stone cookware, and also in cooking rice in earthenware "nabe", so I'm sure that most of the manufacturers are playing around with various materials, even if they haven't put them in their product line-up.

Fuzzy logic is still used - if anything, it's become taken for granted. It became a buzzword for household appliances probably because it was the first big advance in computing that occurred after microcomputers started to become common in household appliances (i.e. after they became small enough). (Can you tell that my 14 year old has been studying microcomputer applications all year ? ). If it is not emphasized in IH technology, that may be because the IH cookers are all about high heat and attaining the desired temperature profile with maximum stability, rather than constantly whuppin' the temperature back into shape with minor adjustments. (The cookers do make minor adjustments, it's just no longer a sales point, because it's no longer quite so necessary or desirable).

1. Carbon is not charcoal - not every form of charcoal is soft. Also, the carbon pot is 7.5mm thick - very solid. 2. Why use a rice-cooker? is up there with Why don't you cook everything on open fires in the back yard? I have only two burners, and I don't want to "waste" one on cooking rice when preparing a meal, quite apart from ease of use and the TIMER!!! mode. A saucepan on a gas or electric cooker was never the traditional way to cook rice in Japan, but I only knew one family with a dirt-floored kitchen with a "kamado" style drop-in pots and earthenware fireplace that they actually used. But they moved to New Zealand long ago, taking care to buy an electric rice cooker at the airport on their way! 3. IH has seen a return to heavy rice pots, from the easily-dented aluminum pots of yesteryear. Mitsubishi's carbon pot, and Toshiba's "kamado" pot (currently the most expensive rice cooker listed on kakaku.com) are both examples of this, but all the major manufacturers make heavier pots than they used to. Each manufacturer touts a slightly different type of teflon coating - Mitsubishi says theirs includes diamond, which I suppose goes nicely with the carbon theme. I have to say that I won't be buying Toshiba teflon-coated products again in a hurry - my current rice cooker and previous hot-plate both blistered and peeled in a very short time. 4. Technologies currently in the hot seat: a) Pressure cooking, especially with the latest Zojirushi rice cookers. These are designed to mimic the effects of the very heavy wooden lids of yesteryear. The argument is that pressure evens out temperature distribution, and builds higher temperatures = more water absorbed = cold rice for bentos stays softer, "hard" grains like brown rice or other non-rice grains cook softer. You can pick from 7 levels of pressure, for purposes from sushi rice to brown rice. Different models of these cookers are top sellers on the Japanese consumer price comparison site, kakaku.com. Price is good too. b) Steam. National has some kind of steam gadget in the lid, and other manufacturers make various claims for "steaming" rice. On the expensive side. I suspect that steam was "last year's trend" and I am curious to see whether it will remain a must-have technology or not. c) Ease of use. Sanyo for example puts a lot of effort into making menus easy to see and operate.

Mizuame does work, but I think you could reduce the amount to about half - it's so stiff! I think the syrup is there for texture (keeps the cookie moist longer), so you could leave it out entirely, especially if you think that the cookies aren't going to be around long enough for storage properties to be a problem!

At local supermarkets, western button mushrooms are probably the most expensive to buy - about 200 yen for a very small square pack. Shiitake for some reason have become expensive, except for the CHinese produced ones, which I find don't keep well.

The ebi katsu sandwich is pretty good too, but I agree that the katsu-sando may be the best! Did you notice that the first photo showed a "special edition" for exam candidates?! Potato salad sandwiches came as a surprise to me when I came to Japan. Good with a crisp slice of bacon added to the sandwich.

That looks good! Was the salmon fresh, and seasoned with shoyu/mirin, do you think, or did they use lightly salted salmon?

I have just the tiniest supermarket fetish. I get really worked up figuring out which regions certain supermarkets are active in, and what characterizes each one . Daiei...not the cheapest, and reputedly the Titanic rather than the titan of the supermarket world, but surprisingly strong on "western" foods for a regional supermarket. I mean, we're talking grated cheese rather than whole edams, but every little helps. Recently a Tsurukame-Land started up near me - a good move, as they are pretty cheap, but their vegetables and fish/meat are reasonable in quality. I was surprised to see Tesco-brand cookies there, but apparently Tesco owns Tsurukame... Neither of these supermarkets (in my area) are really big on take-outs, although Daiei has a lot of sushi, and Tsurukame has about as many bento as you would expect for a station-front location, but very little in the way of "souzai" or individual deli dishes. A friend of mine worked in an upmarket supermarket, and told me that they are very finicky about how long take-out food has been on display. When it is whisked off display however, it isn't always disposed of. Sometimes it's sold on to less finicky supermarkets .

If you keep your spices in clear containers on the kitchen counter, probably 2 years would be the limit even for whole spices. For spices that you normally don't use more of an ounce per year, but want to have on hand, why not keep them whole brown glass or tin, in a cool, dark pantry? I think you'll find well-stored 3 year old whole nutmeg preferable to year-old ground nutmeg that has been exposed to heat and light.