a full day

This blog has mainly listed out dinners, as I know that I am not (what is the word I am looking for here??) enough to upload what we eat at each meal, each day, however recently I have been trying to make sure that L, and K for that matter, get a good balance of food, so I am gonna try to upload our full daily menu to analyse our eating habits/diet.

(does that paragraph make sense? brain not working, ready for bed...)

Tues Feb 15th
B'fast: spinach and cheese muffins (gee, they really are good!!)

Lunch: Chicken mince, onion, grated carrot, grated pumpkin, tinned tomato* "mac'n'cheese"
Well, am guessing it was like a mac'n'cheese, as I have never had it.
Simply fried up the chicken mince, onion, carrot and pumpkin in olive oil, then added half a tin of tomatoes, then cooked fusilli pasta then mixed in grated cheese.

Dinner: Seafood Thai curry with tumeric rice
Scallops, prawns, abalone, lotus root, carrot and young corn (It makes me laugh that I had all these ingredients in the house, lol!)

The kids had つるつるわかめ, fried potatoes and salmon-rice (L also tried out a corn, but I don't know how much of it he ate ;)


* I didn't intend to put tinned tomato in - still had a bit of tomato puree (in a glass bottle) which I threw into the chicken/vege mix, only to look at the rim of the bottle and see MOULD!! eeewww!! I was this close to throwing the whole thing out, but had nothing else for lunch, so I threw out the bits that had sauce on them (luckily I had tipped the sauce all in one spot, so it was easy to separate) and then used the small amount of un-tainted mix to make the new pasta sauce with tinned tomatoes.

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!

Sat 27-Wed 31 Mar dinners

Trying to keep standing in the kitchen time down low with meals that require close to zero prep:

Sat - easter picnic (store bought bento lunch), dinner was

Sun - lunch K and J had noodles, while I was out to it with a headache. Dinner was yummy 肉じゃが, rice, pickles, thanks to J.

Mon - 肉じゃが leftovers, rice, HUGEなめこ and tofu in miso soup, salad, salmon and ひじき煮物

Tues - Pork 西京焼き steaks, 冷奴、nameko-miso soup again, grilled asparagus spears, salad,ひじき煮物, and にら玉 with あんかけ

Wed - and tonight we are having Pad Thai.

My parents get in from late tonight (after dinner) so will see how our menu changes ;-)

I'm too boring for this blog

I have been very lazy and boring with cooking the last few weeks. I feel like I have lost interest in food and cooking, and seem to randomly throw something basic together at the last minute, with no forward planning. I have seen how this has affected the fridge - leftovers have increased, and this has led to food being thrown out on rubbish day - もったいない!

J is away from Wed this coming week, so I hope that by the time he gets back, my cooking mojo will have returned too. Until then, it will probably be simple meals for K and me for a week anyway, hopefully using up some pantry and freezer goods, so I don't have to buy too much in the way of groceries, as there is no much left in kitty for this month either....

Anyway, here is a round up of the last few days of boring dinners. The weekend was full of noodles, starting with Fri night dinner.
Fri 12th
* Nagasaki ちゃんぽん
* Gyoza (frozen)
* spinach おひたし


Sat 13th -
Lunch くら寿司
Dinner 中華18番 (880yen set menu dinner, I had 八宝菜, J had マーボー豆腐set, K had ラーメン)

Sun 14th - Lunch
*corn soup （市販）
* pasta　with cabbage and sausages (J made)



Dinner:
I had left over corn soup
J had そうめん
K had a bowl of natto rice (with carrot and spinach hidden in there, lol) AND a bowl of そうめん This kid is gonna have noodles for legs!

Mon Feb 15th -
* shiso in egg roll
* spicy pork and cabbage, with green capsicum
* salmon
* rice
* miso soup (wakame and tofu)
* salad
* しらす in daikonおろし


And a photo with everyone's hands and K's dishes in it too, lol!

Simple meals while K is sick

Last night was simple wa and bits. K has been sick, I was starting to feel not so good last night either, and although I had thought of Chinese for dinner, J told me at lunch that he was off for 500yen chuka lunch - who can beat that?!? So I simply threw together some pieces like:

* salmon 西京焼き
*shiso, cuc, tomato salad : it is from my "to try" list, but I just realised I had already made last year, and thought the same thing again "would be better with more vinegar in the dressing" lol.
* leftover salmon roe, squid, egg roll, avocado
* miso soup
* rice

and I had 梅干 on rice - am a bit taken with this at the moment, and since I wasn't feeling too hot, didn't want the fish, it did the job for me.
K had miso soup and rice with furikake, keeping it simple for her while she is under the weather too.

Really don't feel like making a big production number tonight either, so maybe just a simple spag bol or the likes. Might put some bread on to go with it while I remember.....

cleaning out the fridge before the weekend

And that is what our dinner amounts to - frugal friday I guess:

* Salmon
* spinach egg roll - I am gonna try this one out, see how we go!
* tofu - still haven't actually put it out once this week, as keep on forgetting at the last minute! Tonight is definately 冷奴
* asparagus spears sauted in butter
* some inari-zushi I bought for lunch but didn't eat
* noodle soup (just from a packet)
* salad, of course
* left over eggplant and mince stuffing, probably gonna give this to K with rice
* pickles
* eda-mame
I think that is about it, hope I remember to put it all out. Nothing exciting, but hopefully the number of different foods will make up for the lack of volume in each. And of course, we need to leave room for MR. Donuts for dessert anyway!!

first wa in a month

First dinner back home on Thursday night:

salmon
rice
egg roll
wakame miso soup

How Japanese can you get? I also know realised that I have to learn to cook everything again.....our new house has an IH hot plate, so things like the egg roll turned out pretty average, since I am used to making it over a gas burner. Also couldn't work out the griller menu, so it was taking forever to cook the salmon, until J came home and showed me how to work it (set it to "cook fish"). *sigh*

I am gonna sound all Japanese here, but I was kinda looking forward to a meal with rice, after a month away. how sad is that. K shoved it into her too, hehe.