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 ;)

long live the packet mixes!!!

Saturday - lunch at sushi-ro with the PIL. My first sushi in over a month (bar the "attempted" sushi roll I made at home for AFL grand final day, that when I said to J I was making roll sushi he LAUGHED at me - I realised while making it why he had laughed, lol!!)
- dinner was okonomiyaki (the only other Japanese meal I made at home, since my family always seem to like it. Next time I must remember to take the okonomiyaki mix from Japan tho, as it was a bit tasteless making it from scratch, even following the recipe...)

Sunday - ブリの照り焼き　（thanks J)

Monday - (start of inernational week part 2)
- Pad Thai, an old favourite ;) Had been to costco during the day to pick up the packet, and some frozen prawns

Tuesday - Indian Hyberdad chicken curry (packet from home) and ready-to-eat paneer curry from a packet, served with naan bread (packet mix that had been sitting in the cupboard for years), and rice, and rati(is that what it is called, the yoghurt and cucumber side dish that I had to pour into the curries to "cool" them down!!)

Wednesday - Ni hau! Chinese cream of corn soup and 中華丼; maybe some (frozen) gyoza since J is always partial to them.

Thursday and Friday - I have miles of fresh and frozen ingredients that really need to be thoughtfully used, so I am gonna have to think about those dinners. Also we will be camping over the weekend so I want to use up as much as possible to avoid a "mottainai" moment. All I know is I have half a bunch of nira and about 2 doz eggs so I can see a nira-tama comin' on. ;)

The week in meals

Mon 12th night - chinese chicken & cashew nuts and mabo nasu, egg roll at mum's request :-)
Tues 13th night - mum's famous hot pasta salad with sausages. very nice.
Wed 14th night - curry; leftovers frozen for post-baby quick meals
Thurs 15th night - made my folks suffer through 和食 with salmon, rice, pickles, egg roll with nira, mushrooms and spinach in butter/garlic/めんつゆ sauce, side salad and dad's soup! (they thought it was a veritable feast with so many different dishes, lol)
Fri 16th night - quiche and mashed potato
Sat 17th night - since I have so much pie crust left (why this time I have enough for three, when I usually only have enough for 2, I donU't know, but it is a VERY GOOD pie crust - I may almost be tempted to say I have found my pie-crust groove!!) am going to make a shepherds pie for dinner. yum!
Wow - never done so much cooking while J is away, lol. And making bread most days - breadmaker working hard!

cooking for 4

Apr 1st: (first night my parents are here, and I am hit with a mix of allergies and fever and headaches....) Dinner: chicken, 青梗菜 and mushroom alfredo sauce spaghetti

Apr 2nd (Fri): K's 3rd birthday party at home. Lunch was yakiniku (we remembered as the meat came out that it was Good Friday, oops). Redeemed ourselves (?) at dinner time with 手巻き寿司

Apr 3rd (Sat): Flounder ムニエル with baby potatoes and エリンギmushrooms, salad for mum and me. Wa-style sea mackeral 煮物 for dad and J. (J's idea to cook it like that ;-))

Apr 4th (Sun): Chinese at home, thanks to J. Fried rice, ふかひれsoup, 青梗菜 in oyster sauce, mabo nasu

Apr 5th (Mon): Asparagus, bacon, onion and spinach quiche (pie crust was one of the best I have ever made, yay! may have gotten my pie-crust "mojo"?? FMIO: 5eggs used with about 1 cup milk and it made a nice consistency, cooed at 180deg for 25mins, then another 10mins before serving), salad and pumpkin soup (with some onion/carrots/potato/garlic thrown in too - this was yum!)

Apr 6th (Tues): planning to have mash potato, pumpkin, zucchini, corn on the cob, and steak. Just like being at "home"

I am not used to making meals for 4, so this is an interesting challenge - to have enough for everyone to eat!! And to be able to make enough without being stuck in the kitchen all night. Getting lots of help from J over the weekend, and Mum too so am grateful for that :-)

Chinese night (big rant included)

I decided to make 八宝菜 to use up the cabbage (I am gonna get a dig in at J every time I use the word cabbage in a post, lol) and make a chinese night of it. Of course it is a night when J is gonna be late home. Not sure what time yet, but K has already eaten anyway now. oh and now my feet are aching from standing in the kitchen for so long doing all the prep , again, I repeat "CHINESE TAKES SO MUCH TIME" I don't think I am gonna make it again anytime soon......

Anyway,waiting to be finished off when J rings to say he is on his way is:
* chicken and cashew nuts with celery (can't find my usual recipe, oh no! so borrowing from the internet, hope it comes out ok)
* broccoli in a garlic-oyster-y sauce thing (just regular as no chinese broccolli, and J bought 2 heads of broccoli on the weekend too, dig, dig!)
* fried rice (although I am tempted to just wait until J gets home as I made it for K, and it was average - J def. makes a better fried rice....
* spinach egg drop soup
* and of course the happosai

and tapioca in coconut milk for desert - if we ever get to eat dinner, that is.

***edit****
Again, why the hell do I try to make Chinese, and so many different dishes at that, with only 3 hotplates to balance the pots and pans on. As it turns out, J came home as K was on the loo, then nutted out because that is what she does lately when J gets home (as in tanty time erupts), then J found the moulding ponkan and started to get into me about how did that happen (maybe if he didn't buy double of everything they would get eaten before going off,..although they were only there for 4 days, so it was a bit wierd ttytt) and then got into me about why I "let" K play with r's water dispenser. Because of course standing in the kitchen for over an hour and a half preparing chinese, getting K's dinner ready first, then going back to cook up the rest for J so he has a freshly made hot meal on the table when he gets home means that I "let" her do these things, as oppsed to maybe I can't SEE her when I have my head over the IH!! END RANT

So we flagged the fried rice and just had regular rice with it, eating in around a very tense table until I cooled off. But I swear I must remember not to make Chinese again until the kids are at least in college and I can concentrate. If only I was more multi-functional in the kitchen, but alas I am not, therefore I will focus on slightly simpler meals from now on.
And it was all because I KNOW that I was out of my league, trying to juggle so many chinese dishes, and was just buggered by the time J got home, so my patience was wearing thin, and I was tired and cranky. Sorry J. Better luck tomorrow, I guess

kinda chinese, quiche and cookies

Another couple of days of pure laziness - I left the camera in the kitchen, and couldn't be bothered getting up from Kotatsu to get in once I was settled (it is also getting harder to get up from the Kotatsu, lol)

So, in review:

Tuesday night Dinner
* brown rice/white rice mix
* Chinese style daikon and Chicken recipe, borrowed from Kel ;) I think I marinated the chicken too long, and didn't cook it long enough (tried to pre-cook the veges first, then chicken at the end as were out late at 29week check-up) as still a bit of sake flavour to the meat, but otherwise nice! (and it was even better the next day just on rice for lunch)
* Potato salad, with special guest, broccoli (another cookpad recipe); no tuna used but it was nice enough without!I don't usually go for potato salad so much, but it was ok. I think perhaps the egg in it made it nice.
* cabbage egg drop soup hmmm, average.Only did this as didn't have any spinach to make a spinach egg drop soup (which I think would have been nicer)
* big salad! daikon, carrots, avocado, tomato
and * left over fish from the other night.


oh and for dessert - bread and butter pudding, made in the bread maker (steam setting), served with honey YUM!

Wednesday night Dinner:

Although I had said that I was lucky I didn't have to faff around in the kitchen making a bug dinner, as J had to go out for work (someone's retirement) I actually ended up faffing around like crazy in the kitchen, making a quiche (bacon, mushrooms and spinach) with the pie crust left over from Aust. Day pies (it was easier to handle after having been frozen, and I used a whole heap of flour when rolling it out this time).

FMOI (for my own info, the quiche was 3eggs and 1cup milk, and it was the perfect amount for the small oval pie dish - must remember that!)


I also tried some innovative/fusion cooking, and put the remainder or the daikon/carrot/chicken dish into a small pie crust and it came out quite nice, a surprising match. (I don't think I would make it from scratch like this, but it definitely gave the daikon dish a new life, lol!)


As for the faffing, I figured since I already had the oven on, I should bake cookies, the almond cookies from my to-try list. They came out really nice, despite my failed attempt at creaming the butter and sugar (butter was still too cold, so all that happened was it kept on getting caught up around the beaters. I need to be more patient). Also, I have never really made biscuits before, so I wasn't sure what kind of consistency the dough was supposed to be, and was a bit surprised (scared) when it was so crumbly - what did I do wrong?? But after letting it settle in the fridge for a bit, it came together better, and I was able to cut out heaps of cute patterns with the cookie cutter. We gave some biccies to Jiji and Baba today when they came over as a Valentine treat from K, and even gave some to 3 of J''s friends he has gone out dinner with (they are discussing their up coming wedding, where J will be MC at the 2nd party), and still have enough for me to have a pig out on the tomorrow, so yay! I really liked these biscuits, not too sweet, and the almond taste was good. Will definitely make again!

you can even just see little "swiper`s" fingers trying to swipe the cookies (Dora reference - we have been watching it too much, K is obsessed!!lol) She has also spent the afternoon saying "Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!"
Thursday Dinner:
So tonight K and I cleaned up the quiche - she doesn't even baulk at the mushie or spinach in it, yay. We ate out at the yakiniku joint again and enjoyed a big bowl of 石焼ビビンバ and heaps of 焼肉 so I really shouldn't need too much for dinner, lol.

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.

fresh bread for breakfast

yuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm! freshly cooked out of the bread maker bread for breakfast. I don't think there is anything better.
There were even a few slices left for K's cheese s/w for lunch.

PIL dropped by this evening with a box of mikan (they had another 18boxes in the car, to give out to people, like a mini-o-seibo I guess). As we had only about 15mins notice, there was nothing for dinner, so J suggested the new Chinese place down the road, beside the 焼き豚 place. He rang up and booked, so we got in (lucky as by the time we left at 7pm there was still a line up of people trying to get in).

But it was very dissapointing - we won't be going back. Expensive, small serves (even for Chinese) and just average taste (should have heard MIL go on about how the 酢豚 was too sour, haha. And all we ordered was:
* subuta
* chicken and cashew nuts
* fried rice
* prawns in sweet sauce
* mixed entree (which had pieces of chashu pork, 1 pitan egg cut into 1/4s, about 5 slices of tomato and some shiitake mushroom slices and cost 2300yen!)
* and a 焼きそば
and it came to nearly 9000yen (no drinks as we were PIL were driving home)
Very dissapointing.

Feels like we are on a chinese food boom, but it was just random, and last minute that the PIL came. I am guessing we won't be having chinese for a while now.

Anniversary meals

J took the day off work (unbeknowns to me) for our wedding anniversay....We did some fun stuff like banking in the morning, then went out to lala port for a look around, since we haven't been there before.

We had a yummy and filling buffet lunch at a chinese restaurant - the 酢豚 was yummy! And the tapioca dessert good too.

A bit of a look around the shops - J bought ties for work, I bought a maternity/nursing top, K cracked a wobbly when we tried to leave the amusement centre "conveniently" located next door to Akachan-honpo - honestly(rolls eyes)

Dinner is going to be いくら丼 with マグロ - J's choice. And K nearly ate half a tunafish the other day, so I am guessing she will devour it again tonight, raw of course!! Dinner will conclude with some cake to celebrate 4 years of marriage!

****edit******
Dinner was 漬けマグロ、イクラ、アボカード丼　with なめこ汁 and 玉子焼き (using 4 eggs). j makes his egg roll with dashi and sugar and a touch of salt, and it was very ふわふわ。 I m gonna try to 真似 the way he makes it (although I prefer a more savoury egg roll, made with こんぶつゆ, but I did like the way it was really fluffy)

almost chinese

I had decided that I was not going to go to the supermarket to supplement for the rest of the week, even for something small - only gonna use what is actually in the house!

So, with a head of cabbage and chicken thigh meat, what does one make but "Cabbage and Chicken saute" which turned out to be a poor effort at a Chinese chicken chop suey dish. I have been dissapointed before when using English languge/western recipes for chinese meals. They just never seem to "cut it", seem to be missing something. This time was no exception. Actually, at first I really didn't expect the recipe to turn out as a Chinese meal......although I guess my take on it, using しめじ, 長ネギ and 鶏がら soup as the "mushrooms" , "onions" and "chicken stock" helped on the way to a chinese feel. I also cut back on the garlic - surely 5 cloves of garlic is just wrong, no matter how you look at it???????

Anyway, it was nice, but not ground breaking, and I won't bother using this recipe again. I will look for a Japanese language chinese food recipe next time I have cabbage and chicken to use up. How weird is that? lol.