"So, when you're in Japan, what do you cook at home?" #1

Progressing on from my last thought in my last post. Here is what we ate at dinner-time a couple of weeks ago, I guess photos would have been good, maybe next time.

Monday May 2 Tuna Mornay on brown rice with veggies. A nice easy meal, cooked from scratch.

Tuesday 3rd Slow Cooker BBQ ribs with vegetables and pan fried (heart-smart) potatoes. Mmmmm. Yum. This is a relatively new meal for us. Both because ribs are a pretty rare find in Japan (these came from Costco) and we're still fairly new to the slow cooker crew. The finely cubed potatoes only fried in 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil, but flavoured with pepper and with their skins on - they were yummy too.

Wednesday 4th Sweet and sour pork with brown rice and veggies. Also very yummy. This is a old favourite that's recently reappeared on our menus. I stopped cooking it for ages because of all the complaints about the capsicum (US = bell pepper, I think) and pineapple from the kids. However David and I love it. So now I cook the meat and sauce separately (and from scratch). So the boys don't have to have their meat contaminated by the sauce. The aroma from this meal cooking is scrumptious. Wednesday night is icecream night (along with Saturday and Sunday nights). So, no doubt that is what we ate.

Thursday 5th Chicken Paprika with mashed potatoes and veggies. This was a new slow cooker recipe. A bit of a failure because the chicken was so dry. Not sure how to improve this for the future.

Friday 6th Left-overs. Usually I only cook five dinners a week. One week night and Sunday nights are left-over nights. Love these meals. The boys do too, usually. Because they get to choose what they eat. Only rules - they must have some protein and veggie (the last one is usually no problem).

Saturday 7th Cheese and Tuna Quesadillas. I'm really glad I planned this meal for Saturday night because we left home at 6.30am to go to our 11 y.o.'s track meet and didn't get home until nearly 6pm. This was very easy and well received. Merely sprinkling grated (US = shredded) cheese and tinned tuna with tomato sauce (US = ketchup) on a tortilla (sourced from Costco) and plopping on on top, then put the whole "sandwhich" in a dry frying pan to brown and melt. The adults had a couple with Sweet Chilli Sauce instead of tomato sauce.

Sunday 8th "Catch" (or shake-the-cupboard-and fridge-and-see-what-falls-out). I think there were a few leftovers, perhaps we had some toasted sandwiches, I cannot clearly remember. Sunday nights are usually very relaxed. For lunch on Sunday (in case you think we never eat Japanese food) we ate Udon. A common, thick wheat-based Japanese noodle dish.

That's probably enough to digest (excuse the pun). I'll give you another week at a later date.