Last week

was buys with all the build up to Xmas, so I can't really remember what we ate the other nights. It has been pretty simple stuff tho, and after Xmas has been an attempt to clean up the turkey!!

Mon 21st Dec: アジの干物 and some other 和 stuff.

Tues 22nd Dec: toasted cheese and ham sandwiches (trying to keep it light before our Xmas lunch on the 23rd)

Thurs 24th Dec: Turkey sandwiches

Fri 25th Dec: Turkey pasta soup

Sat 26th Dec: Lunch - くら寿司
Dinner at "Bois Bois", Shiodome. J had 打合せ for K and T's wedding (in March next year) and they shouted us all to dinner after. It was kinda izakaya or tapas style (so woulda been nicer if I could have enjoyed the Argentinian red everyone else had with dinner, lol).

Sun 27th Dec: lunch ramen down the road, dinner turkey pasta soup

Mon 28th Dec: turkey pasta soup (just k and me. J s "over" it already, lol

Xmas 2009

We bought a 5kg turkey at Costcos around Thanksgiving time, and it has been sitting in the freezer waiting for its turn to shine. And that it did on Xmas!!

Since 23rd was a public holiday, we invited PIL over for lunch (I realised a few days before that J and his parents had assumed we would be doing dinner, which is what they seem to do in Japan, but since it was a public holiday it made more sense to do lunch. And we have ALWAYS done Xmas lunch (in Aus), so even tho it was 2 days in advance, we were doing lunch this year too!! lol.

I had thought of a few different things for lunch, but since it was only the 4 of us, decided that we should try to keep it a bit simple - cooking the turkey, a first for us in the new steam oven was going to be enough of a challenge, I reckoned anyway!!

So:

roast turkey with roast potatoes, steamed beans and honey glazed carrots, gravy and apple sauce (since left it to late to find cranberry sauce)

pressed salmon sushi

tabara crab (for the IL's. personally crab doesnt do much for me, esp. tabara which I find a bit watery always.)

pumpkin salad

christmas pudding with custard and whipped cream


and individual strawberry shortcakes for dessert for usand xmas pudding (Japanese style) for K

the 5 S's

1. Strawberries - served on top of fluffy pancakes for breaky on Sat morn!


2. Soba - noodles for lunch with PIL before Xmas shopping for K
3. Sushi - after shopping, at Midori Sushi. Delish as always, but really, lining up in the cold for an hour at 4:30pm for dinner when we had to sit seperately anyway was a bit silly....
4. Sausage - hot dogs from Ikea for Sunday lunch. Another day of furniture shopping, and doing the rounds of furniture shops. At least this time we actually bought bunk beds (I caved, couldn't face ANOTHER day of shopping for beds).
5. Spaghetti - well, fettucine to be precise, but 4 S's and an F just didn't sound as cool a title. J threw this together when we got home, chicken, spinach and fresh tomato-cream sauce and we all ravished it.


Another big weekend of being out and about and shopping. And despite the tiredness that sweeps over me in the afternoon, I am finding myself having difficulties getting to sleep at night again. arrgh.

this little piggy....

Just a repeat of the pork dish that Nay shared a while back. We have heaps of tomatoes in the fridge, so made a fresh tomato and onion whiteish sauce to go with it. Served with mash potato, steamed carrots, cabbage and snow peas, and pumpkin/maitake left overs.

So simple yet so yummy - nice comfort food. No way I am gonna keep to a 2kg preg. weight gain for the next month either.....oh well!

nira-tama success!

salmon (grilled) and asparagas spears

pumpkin and maitake (recipe comes from the supermarket). It seemed to be a bit plain, needing more flavouring, hmm. bust still ok.

かぼちゃとまいたけのガーリック炒め

* まいたけ　100g
* かぼちゃ　1/4個
* ベーコン　2枚
* にんにく　１かけ
* オリーブオイル　大2
* 塩　少々
* こしょう　少々


1) cut maitake up
2) remove seeds of pumpkin, wrap in cling-wrap and microwave for 4mins. Slice into 1cm thickness
3) dice bacon (I used that roll ham-sausage meat stuff)
4) slice garlic
5) add olive oil to frypan and cook garlic and bacon. Add pumpkin, cooking on both sides.
6) Add maitake and cook through, add s + p to taste.

にら玉, using this recipe. turned out very very nice. my first ever time at にら玉...thanks for suggesting it for nira leftovers, kel.

湯豆腐

leftovers of milk soup from Tues night

and a few other leftovers like chili prawns and the rest of the 八宝菜

using up the prawns

Chinese tonight, finally.

海老チリ just using Cook-do. Again, it has been a while since I used this packet, and I must admit that the time I made it from scratch, it tasted a lot nicer, although a bit more time consuming (making the sauce).

八宝菜 this recipe, with whatever veges I had, plus pork, prawns and some squid J had bought, and prepared for me (in the freezer!!) was good.

fried rice

filling and yum. K had about 2 refills of fried rice, lol.
Always forget how last minute time consuming making Chinese is - everything has to be done at the last minute, so no photo tonight.

J got off work early, so bought Mr Donuts home for desert for us. Spoilt, aren't we.

forgot to push the publish button...Tues night dinner

vege milk soup . I have never tried a milk soup per say before, but it was pretty good -K had 2 bowls of it, and I really enjoyed it. J, of course, thought it could do with more flavour...

sweet potato in mayo and wasabi. Nice idea, but I only had half a サツマイモ、as I realised half way through that the others were 紫芋, lol. Heating the julienned sweet potato in the microwave left it sticky together, and chewy, I think it would be better if the sweet potato was cooked up in a fry pan.

にんにくの芽と肉 from the supermarket. Maybe it was my preggo tastebuds, but it didn't taste all that fab, ok, but I don't think I would bother buying it again, even though it was supposed to be an easy meal, maybe not worth it

もやし from the shop, I like these namul type flavoured ones, and ate almost the whole lot myself!

egg and spinach ほうれん草の卵とじ . K lapped this one up. She has been eating egg and spinach combinations well - maybe it hides the spinach taste??

and some edamame to round it off.

cottage pie

Recipe here.
well, the title and the photo basically say it all.
except for the fact that the brocolli was crap - and it was one we got from the 道の駅 and the bread in the background was our home baked rye french bread. yum.

not chinese

When J rang at lunch time he was on his way to the Chinese restaurant.....so I had to quickly re-think my dinner plans (which *were* えびチリand八宝菜 - as it turns out, it was a good thing, because although I *thought* we had bought a 白菜 at the 道の駅 on the way home from Gunma, turns out we didn't so, it would have been freak out stations at 6pm when I realised there was no cabbage!)

In keeping with frugal friday (only because I couldn't be bothered going out in the rain) our menu was with stuff in fridge/freezer:

大根と牛筋の煮込み

　焼き長ネギ with 梅肉　sauce

spinach and egg drop soup

salad with 大根, red and yellow capscium　and 和風 dressing.

salmon roe on rice for K - at 2 years old, I know!!

The negi was yummy - like something from an izakaya. Soup - really good too! And daikon and meat was good, but could have used more タレ and time 煮込んで-ring. Still, tender and good.

pasta bake

I nearly had a fit when J rang to say he WOULD be home for dinner... thought he had to go out with customers but it wasn't necessary at the last minute, but luckily I had enough of the pasta bake to go around - whether he would enjoy it or not, so not my problem as I was cooking for MY tastebuds tonight, lol.

I realised as I was melting the butter for the white sauce that I only had about half a cup of milk left in the house, but I battled on, upping the amount of chicken stock, and it came out fine, thank you very much.

I have never really made a pasta bake before, and so simply followed the recipe, but it sorta turned out like a mac'n'cheese. Now, I like my cheese, but have to admit that just this as the main dish was bit too much. Maybe would cut down on cheese next time, or really need to have something on the side to counteract it. Gee, I feel old saying that, lol. That being said, I had another serving of it when J got home, so that there is hardly any leftovers.


It was different to last night's alfredo, but I was really looking for a different recipe for the chicken and mushrooms, more like a dark casserole, will have to find a good one to try next time I come across button/field mushrooms cheap again.

chicken and mushroom pasta

Chicken and mushroom alfredo sauce spaghetti.

I had to stop myself after a few minutes when I realised that me, the 33 year old Australian (not the 2 year old Japanese) was SLURPING her spaghetti. My, my how things change...when I first came to Japan I physically couldn't make the slurp sound while eating noodles, let alone pasta. lol.

I was gonna make a pasta bake, but as always, couldn't be bothered waiting for the thing to bake, so just made pasta instead. Tomorrow I will use the left overs to make this.

Tuesday 和食 and fish

　金目鯛の干物

nameko miso soup - we bought a big bag of nameko at a 道の駅 on the way home from Gunma on Sunday

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cabbage, carrot and tuna. This was quite nice, the honey was a surprise, but I did eat a bit of this.

spinach, with 昆布つゆ would have like to sprinkled かつお節 on the top, but can't find it/may have run out of it

　brocolli and tomato salad, with seasame dressing

サツマイモと人参のきんぴら. I enjoyed this again

pickles

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　カリカリ大根. Not impressed at all, it lacking something, and overpowering with garlic and ゴマ油 flavours. 残念

rice

I felt good about tonights dinner, using up stuff in the fridge, trying a few new side dishes, even if the daikon one didn't work. But I personally didnt eat that much of it - got full on less than half a bowl of rice, a few bites of fish, but did eat a fair amount of the cabbage/tuna dish.

weekend in gunma and monday girls at home

Saturday lunch - くら寿司 (25 plates!!! K had 5 for herself, plus a 茶碗蒸し.... We are gonna hit the 3000yen mark for kaiten sushi soon the way we are going!)
night - hotel dinner (away for weekend for 忘年会 with friends) I can't remember what it all was, but it involved individual nabe and konyaku sashimi. K shared mine, which worked out the right amount for me. I also had 2 bowls of rice with it!!!

Sunday breakfast - the full monty at the hotel. K had my natto with rice for breaky. I enjoyed the pickles, and a bowl of rice, followed by some onigiri!
lunch - てんぷらそば
night - I wasn't feeling so well (perhaps from the oily tempura and long car ride?) and K had eaten in the car all the way, so K had onigiri, and J had ほっともっと from around the corner when we got home.

Monday lunch - baked beans on toast for K and me (yum)
dinner - K had tricky pasta leftovers from the other night as again not feeling hungry. Might have some snacky stuff later on, or another piece of toast.... J is at a work dinner/drinks.

fabulous frugal friday

J has his work Xmas party (end of the year party) tonight, so it was just us gals.
I think I may have whipped up the most delish pasta dish - so simple and tasty (although if J was here, he would probably have said it was not a strong enough taste..)

And it was a veritable rainbow of colours, all cooked in one pan to boot with:

green beans

red capscium

yellow capsicum

eringi mushrooms

spinach

and macaroni pasta
I simple fried a bit in olive oil, then added the spinach and water it had been soaking in, then added the pasta and a stock cube and voila it was simple dinner tonight.

For K's I actually did it seperately, chopped up all the ingredients really teeny-tiny (added some carrot too) and then added a hamburg we had in the frezer. Squirted in a bit of tomato sauce and simmered it down to make her dinner, and enough for 2 more meals (emergency freezer food!)
She made me take a photo of hers too, so here it is:


She didn't even know she was eating healthy veges, and had 3 (THREE!!) serves of pasta. I think the fact that she likes to add the parmesan cheese on it helped her appetite along too, but man, it looked like she hadn't been fed in days.



All in all, a fulfilling meal, and got to use up a lot of veges before we go away for the weekend.

nice rice

J had a 研修会 followed by a 懇談会 with 立食. K and I (well, probably just me) were buggered from a bug day at playgroup Xmas party, so I heated up some チンrice (packs in the microwave) and K had natto rice. I had left over 雑炊 which J also had a bowl of when he got home too.

failed thai

I thought I would try out a new recipe to go with our Pad Thai, but searching the net for Thai recipes, they all needed lots of ingredients that we DON'T have. So I figured if I bought some fish sauce, which is pretty easy to get here, and some fish (got たら）then I could attempt some Thai Fish Cakes.

My gosh, what a disaster. I was gonna follow this recipe, (it has cornstarch as an ingredient) but it didnt have any comments about mashed potato, so I went with this recipe instead. I also wanted to crumb them, but couldn't find the bread crumbs....

Anyway, they didn't hold together or form well. And that is after I added mashed potato to them. Before they were a liquid in a bowl!! And I *may* have mistaken my salt for my sugar and overloaded them with　しおっぱさ Oops. Overall a disaster. I didn't have the kaffir limes or chili paste to add to them, but I don't think it would have amde any difference, not with that amount of salt, yuech!

The Pad Thai was as normal. Althought I couldn't finish my serve, I think my tummy is getting fuller faster, which is good as I need to slow down on the weight-gain.

Tuesday night nabe

J forgot his mobile at home this morning. I did a mad dash (well, as much of a dash as an unfit pregnant woman can do) up the road to try catch him, but he was already well out of sight. The thing is, he usually rings when he is about to hop on the train to come home, so I know that he will walk through the door about 25mins later. Although he is usually home about 7-ish, it can be earlier or later, and having a hot meal ready and waiting for 30mins, OR having to rush around putting it together when he walks through the door is not my idea of fun.

So today I decided we should have nabe, which can be cooked right then and there. It also helps me use up：

leftover rice from last night (as 雑炊)

長ネギ that through another one of those crazy mixups, both J and I bought on the same day at different times, AND he bought 2, so we had a total of something like 9 stalks of 長ネギ！

なべの元, the miso flavoured one

that bloody head of cabbage that is still floating around the bottom of the fridge. Even after cutting it up, I still have about 1/8th left...

carrots, again, both J and I bought packs. It was all because the new supermarket opened up down the road, and i went out in the morning to the shops, but J wanted to check it out after he got home from work, and so he went down just before it closed and bought up all the really cheap veges!

So nabe again tonight it is.