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Thurs Jan 27th
* さわらの西京焼き　(from the shop)
* 中華丼風 vege stir fry (shiitake, chinese cabbage, carrots, green piman)
* green salad (like,really green!! lettuce, mizuna, avocado, cucumber)
* daikon miso soup
* rice

Fri Jan 28th
re-heated some curry (2 diff sorts, actually!!) from the freezer!

the rooster

Tues I bought a big chunk of pork, with the intentions of cooking up a roast, since I had a bag of new (baby) potatoes. Seems I am not that up with the cuts of meat, and I bought a block of pork belly!! After I got the thumbs down from both J and my folks, I decided NOT to "just try to roast it and see how it goes" and keep that pork belly for another day, so last night we had whatever I could scrimp together at 4:30pm -- which was pasta with bacon, brocolli, onion and tomato based sauce.

Wed morning I told K what we had to do for the day, which involved picking up J's work shirts from the dry cleaners, getting L's haircut (!!!) and buying some meat and pumpkin for the roast...By dinner time last night, K was so excited, and kept on asking where the rooster is ;)

Wed 26th - kinda Australia Day dinner - Roast pork (herbed up with thyme, pepper and cloves and roasted in roughly cut onion and apple juice) with roast veges (potato, pumkin and sweet potato), asparagus spears and honey-butter carrots.

OH YUM!

mid january

Mon 17th - chicken cream stew
got home at 5pm, so packet mix stuff.

Tues 18th - ブリ　照り焼き
j bought yellowtail at the lil grocery shop by his work -- it has a better fish selection that the big supermarket, would you believe!? , which always has only the same boring old fish. For a country that supposedly lives on fish, I wonder sometimes what everyone eats, as all I can ever find at the supermarkets are the same old salmon, a bit of overpriced cod and then some dried up crap, uh, himono.

Wed 19th - hmmm, cant quite remember, lol!

Thurs 20th - pad thai and gyoza

Fri 21st - salmon, rice, and a huge serve of vege stir fry

Weekend - stayed at in-laws and had yakisoba for lunch, and chinese for dinner on sat, then sushi-ro for lunch on Sunday and ramen for dinner.

Mon 24th - used the left over salmon from Fri night to make salmon fish cakes and my goodness they were delish!! the ENTIRE family loved them - L had 2, so I only got 1 myself, lol, but smothered half of it in sweet chili sauce and that was pretty damn nice too. Served with rice, yu-dofu (and ponzu sauce)

weekend at home

Sat lunch - sushi ro. a nice change from kura-sushi :)
Sat Dinner - pork nabe with goma dipping sauce

Sun lunch - onigiri at home, after a morning trip to the park
Sun dinner - bacon and mushroom tomato based spag with salad

A quiet weekend at home - only 1 meal at a restaurant!!!

just eating again.....

still trying to think of simple meals to cook during the "witching hours", lol

Tues: brown rice with oyakodon. My first attempt ever. It went very well if I do say so myself!!

Wed: Lasagna (after making it last Fri for friends who came over for lunch, I am a bit addicted again. And the fact that I only had one small piece then, and it was all gone so J didnt even get any meant that I could make it again in such a short turn around without feeling bad about cooking the same ol thing again ;)
And of course, L just LOVES his lasagna ;)

Thurs: Thai stir fry veges, and gyoza. Followed this recipe, however realised half way into it that we only had one tbs of nam pla left, so substitued with soy, AND we had NO garlic!! Arrgh. Still it worked out quite nice, so I must try it again with all ingredients accounted for, lol!

Fri: tonight is going to be "wa" our Friday night frugality. Rice with sanma (the lovely Pacific saury), still have plenty of chinese cabbage so something with that in it, and whatever I can scrape together at the 11th hour. My goal is to NOT give in and go shopping for "just that one extra ingredient" to make dinner.

八宝菜

Took R for a walk yesterday afternoon, past the chinese joint we went to 4 weeks in a row when we first moved in here, and havent been to since, and saw their sign for happosai so decided that was what I wanted for dinner. And since K and J were sick, our pre-decided dominos pizza night seemed like a waste (best saved for more genki times).

Didnt have any pork or squid, but in a pinch we made it with all the chinese cabbage, carrot, snow peas, kikurage (dried), prawns (frozen) and eringi mushrooms we had around. Oh an I keep a stock of quail eggs just for these occasions, so it was pretty yummy!

I miss getting chinese chuka-don from sukiya (in both our last 2 apartments we lived really close to sukuiya)but now that I have made it quite a few times myself, as long as we have the veges, it is super easy and just as yummy homemade too ;)