Wa repeating itself

Thursday night dinner (the first real cooked meal in a while in the TJKR household, but still simple since trying to use up what I can in the house coming to the end of the month (=the end of the monthly money!),lol)

* 金目代の干物
* 牛蒡きんぴら
* ふわふわ egg roll
* salad (lettuce, sweet corn and tomato)
* natto


Friday night
* mandarin style marinated chicken drumsticks, with a bit of asparagus, eringi mushrooms and 長ネギ
* なめこ汁 (can of nameko, so really really slimey! lol)
* leftover fish
* かぼちゃのカレーミルク煮　(recipe from Kel's blog - this WAS yummy! thanks!!)
* カニクリームクロッケ with shredded cabbage

Saturday - out shopping in the morning (my suitcase wheels broke while J was using it on his business trip, so had to get a new suitcase) so stopped by the Ringer Hut for lunch ー　ちゃんぽん！

Dinner at PIL for ひなまつり - yummy!!

Sunday- lunch at Kura-sushi...I made the mistake of asking J what HE wants ;( Although the tempura whiting and squid they have there is quite tasty (I still would have preferred pizza, lol!!)

Sun Dinner - J rang up after the gym to ask if I needed anything from the supermarket, like milk, so I said, yeh grab some milk....he came home with 3 shopping bags. I couldn't control myself and blew up, saying that if he had bought another cabbage I WOULD shoot him. Low and behold, a friggin cabbage appears. (there is still half a regular cabage, and about 1/3 chinese cabbage in the fridge.) I was this close to shoving the cabbage where the sun don't shine....all this time I am trying to 節約 and be frugal using up food we have first....ok, so we just weren't on the same page, but I think after my ranting and raving last night, we are finally close to the same page at least, lol (and I doubt J will be buying any cabbage anytime soon).

Anyway, Sunday night dinner, courtesy of J was:

* 親子丼 (I used to eat this all the time at a Japanese take away in Bris, so to me it is actually 懐かしい - I never think to make it myself though)
* cabbage (lol) and potato miso soup
* natto and spinach
and strawberries, banana and apple for dessert.

うめ～梅！

since I knew J was gonna be late home today, and he usually rings to say he is on his way home just as K and I are in the bath*, I wanted to prepare stuff that could be easily heated up at the last minute, so this is what I did:

＊　chicken 梅シソ (only had chicken breast, as J bought it when shopping on the weekend, and when I said to buy chicken, he thought I meant for me only, so he bought breast.Haha, now he has to eat it too - he doesn't like it, reckons it is always ぱさぱさ). I have made this recipe before, with sasami, but this was just as good, I guess since it is steamed it keeps the breast meat moist. The 梅干 were big plump ones done in honey, and delish! I just love de-stoning them, coz I get to eat the flesh left around the stones. I still have a lot of shiso left over, as bought one of those trays for 99yen (must have about 8 bunches of 10leaves each.) so tomorrow I am shiso-ing again. But I really like shiso too, so this is good!

＊　brocolli with tuna/mayo/cheese/egg topping this was yummy, will bookmark this to use again.


＊　豆腐のねぎ炒め, since I had some tofu about to go out of date. This also was good, kinda like a poor man's (as in simple version)　マーボー豆腐

and rice (1/3 玄米 2/3 white rice, since I actually remembered to soak the brown rice from this morning!) and pickles, leftover squid marinated in mirin to round it off.


*of course, we could have an earlier bath, but this afternoon we went to the neighbours for a play in the afternoon, so there wasn't much time after, and K had to eat (brocolli, chicken 混ぜrice)

attempt at veges

Dinner tonight is chicken soup with carrots, long onions, and celery. Not much variety, but plenty of volume of veges in there. Will pump up the volume with left over rice, and also some yummy bread rolls from train station bakery before we got on train to come home after our big shopping/library/bank morning out.

Left home a bit later than usual this morning when going for a walk down to the station, so "Forest" was open - stopped in to get some bread for the walk, but there was not that much there even when the shop had just opened. Strange bakery. Ended up getting the same mini-sauasage in a roll for K, and a chicken teriyaki pizza slice for me (which was yummy). Lunch was maki-sushi for K, but she dropped all of them, so went lunch-less. I had 2 oinari-san. Why do they get a -san on them, hmmm? I think our bread was filling enough that we didn't need much for lunch.

thursday and friday on review

J wrote an email to say that he had to go out with clients for dinner on Thursday night, so we just had the left-overs of the chicken soup, K also had some しらす with rice, her fav at the moment.

After a big day of Halloween party at playgroup, and a night before where I had about 2-3 hours sleep max, topped off with a massive headache, I was wasted and went to be wih K at 9pm before J even got home.

Felt a bit better today after taking it easy. Went to go buy bread for lunch, only to realise that the carseat was still out of the car, after a toilet accident a few days ago (it had been washed, but not put back) so we flagged the fresh bread and had spag on toast for lunch.

Dinner tonight was a success:

potato bake, with a delish white sauce touched up with some maggi stock cubes, oh,, the flavour!! and bacon, onion and carrot hidden in amongst the potato, you know, for nutritional value (and a frugal friday-ing type empty the fridge move)

steak

yellow and orange capsicum and eringi mushrooms, stir fried in butter and seasalt

salad - sunny lettuce, tomato and avocado

and the best part - J brought home a French stick!! so we devoured that with the French butter! yum.

bread and butter!!!!!

So, as it turns out, the biggest eel is not always the nicest. Actually, it is usual the toughest. Doh! So there goes my theory of bigger is better, lol. So last night's dinner was a bit of a fizzer.

But yesterday, I found a supermarket down at T-station that has the bestest chicken carcasses ever. At 190yen, the carcass had heaps of meat on it, and made a really nice stock - much better than the 130yen crap from Itoyokado. I threw in some carrot, long onions, zucchini (was a bit unsure about how this would go in the soup, but it did come out very nice), potato and quinoa and served it with a YUMMY batard from Kobeya. Unfortunately, there is no Kobeya bread shop close by, and I got it while out on a play date at a train station about 15mins away, but it has fulfilled the yummy french bread craving for the meantime, so all is good. I reckon we (I) ate half a...half a....half a what of French butter? Half a pound? Half a block? whatever it was, it is now half gone. And so is the batard, which is a shame, as I could go another piece of bread and butter about now.....

"doing" lunch

Had a friend over for lunch, and since
1) the oven is still in the lounge room
and
2) I don't even know how to use it
I decided to branch out, be brave, expand my repartee and step away from my standard quiche or lasagna and try a new kind of entertaining. I am not sure if it succeded or not, though!?? I was sort of aiming for something else (better) but this is what happened:

chicken and vegetable noodle soup (carrot, long onion, chinese cabbage, celery)

croissants and cheese and sesame seed bread rolls (toasted under the grill)

salad (baby leaf lettuce, yellow and red capsicum, three beans mix, cucumber)

tomatoes in sea salt and virgin olive oil

and yakitori

And for dessert, cuppa tea/coffee with matcha castella, to remind us of our time in Nagasaki together on exchange.

I wanted to have foccacia with the soup, but trying to find some nice bread in this area just about did my head in yesterday - one bread shop I wanted to try was closed (I can never catch them open!!), the bread shop at Daiei was crap, as was the one in Sotetsu Rosen. Ended up buying at Itoyakado (yes - three supermarkets and a bread shop later I finally bought bread, although it was still not what I was after). I really hope I can find a better bakery around here soon. Of course, once I get my little bread maker, it will be so much fun making our own BROWN bread - ahhhh, drooling at the thought of it.

early menu planning

wow, not even 10am and I have tonight's dinner on my mind!


* Eggplant with mince and cheese a.k.a. "stuffed eggplant"
* Potato something (bought a 2.5kg box from Itoyokado last night for 398yen....instead of the 6 for 158yen. So plenty of potato cooking coming up!)
* Chicken soup (made from chicken carcass) with carrots, onions, celery, what else can I put in it?? oh yeah, some quinoa, and probably potatoes, haha
* Salad - still miles of lettuce and tomato around.