Continuing my series on what we eat at home in Japan. This week I've been more organised. I've taken photos of our meals (before they disappeared). We did eat some unusual meals this week, so I cannot say it's been a particularly typical week.
On Monday we had Tandori Chicken with Naan. The tandori paste came from a local import shop. I always enjoy tandori chicken when I'm out, so I wanted to try it out at home. It was a bit dry, though. I don't know how to fix that for next time. The naan comes in large packets from Costco and freezes beautifully.
On Tuesday we had a Japanese dish, Yakisoba. Always a great source of amusement in our house because it is correctly prounounced "Yucky Soba". The Soba being noodles; Yaki, meaning to cook. This dish is called "Fried Pork and Noodles" in my English cook book. And that is a very good description of it. We had less complaints than usual about this meal. It has cabbage, sprouts and shallots in it - enough for boys to make complaints! They'd rather plain noodles with tomato sauce. It is, however, quite a cheap dish to make with local ingredients, so I like it for that.
Wednesday brought the biggest experiment of the week, maybe the month. I am a bit of a meat and carbs girl. I prefer to cook with meat. But in the interest of budgetary constraints I tried a Vegetarian Tofu Curry in the Slow Cooker. I'm not a Tofu fan, but it does have the advantage of being cheap in this country.
I didn't have a good emotional day on Wednesday and when I found that the potato and sweet potato were still hard at 5.30, it was fuel to the fire of my pessimistic mood. I threw it all in a saucepan and cooked it for another half an hour. I have to say it looked terrible. Like something someone threw up at bedtime and I didn't anticipate it being tasty at all.
As I predicted the boys didn't like it. Especially the younger two. I was surprised that it didn't taste all that bad. I guess when you are in a pessimistic mood you guard yourself against disappointment!
The bonus for us parents was that Wednesday night happens to be icecream night. Sometimes I deliberately cook a less-than-favourite meal on Wednesday just so I can use the leverage of dessert to get the meal eaten. Didn't have such foresight this week, I just got lucky.
Thursday brought one of my favourite meals. Fish and Chips - home made, of course. Fish Cakes and potato wedges with the skin on. All baked in the oven so very healthy! I'm going to have to make more fish cakes in the future - no left overs from this meal. One fun addition to it was chilli flakes on some of the potato wedges - spiced the meal up considerably.
Friday I came home from the Elementary Field Day with an awful headache. It's days like that that I'm really happy I write a menu plan. I had at least been able to predict that I'd be too tired to spend much time in the kitchen. On the menu? Leftovers - another favourite meal! Biggest surprise was how hot the Tandori chicken had become after sitting a few days in the fridge.
Saturday we went a games night at friends. Such an unusual thing to do in Japan as houses are so small (and our family so large and rowdy). Yet, it felt so normal, harking back to our lives in Australia when inviting people to your house for a meal is how you get to know them. We took a green salad, brownies and some juice. The hosts provided battered fish (also pretty unusual here in Japan) and other friends provided fruit salad. I think we had something like 20 people there, a mixture of Japanese and foreigners speaking a mixture of English and Japanese. And kids from 5 months to 12 years of age (plus a couple of teenagers who board there and showed their faces for the food only). Great night!
Sunday lunch we had our traditional noodles - either udon (fat Japanese noodles) or instant ramen (two minute noodles). Followed by fruit and then Cadbury chocolate (a remnant of the many bars which arrived in Care Packages in December). Tonight is the usual "catch" meal. A combination of leftovers and whatever else we can scrounge out of the fridge and cupboard to fill hungry tummies.
So that is our week of dinners this week. Not a typical week, but then what is? I try to mix it around a bit so I don't get bored cooking and they don't get bored of eating what I cook. Mix around old favourites with less popular meals. Mix up meat meals with cheaper meals. Mostly it works well. Is it what you'd expect? What are you most surprised by?
2 comments:
That's really interesting Wendy, but not all that different from the sorts of meals and ideas I might use here. We are down to a family of four now at most meal times, and probably only three next year, so I'm finding scaling down interesting too. I like leftover nights as well! I note you are an excellent planner - that's a big help when you're very busy. Thanks for the insight into your day-to-day life.
Judy, thanks for dropping by. That is one point that I was making with this post - that our diet isn't that different to what we'd have in Australia. A few tweaks here and there, but not a great difference. I don't cook much Japanese food because it is very fiddly and time consuming.
You are right - being organised really helps with efficiency. I'm not so good on planning for grocery shopping here, though. Because I usually shop on my bike I cannot do a whole week's shopping at once. Often I find myself shopping almost daily, which is frustrating.
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