Gyudon

We love gyudon. I cooked slice of beef in soy sauce, sugar and sake fast. After flavor in to beef, I added slice of onions. When all cooked, I put it on rice. I like some slice of ginger on the top. I can eat lots of rice with gyudon.

Curry Udon

I cooked noodles in a curry soup today. I usually cook this on the day after cooking curry. I added some soup stock in the leftover curry to make curry soup. Then I boiled some udon noodles and put them in the curry soup. When I cook curry, I try to cook a lot of it because I want to make curry udon afterwards.

Teriyaki Chicken Bowl

Today's lunch was Teriyaki chicken bowl. I remember I tried it at a Japanese restaurant in Vancouver. The taste was very sweet. I remember thinking "Is this chicken or cake?". It is funny because I had never eaten teriyaki chicken in Japan. I think it is more popular outside of Japan. The ingredients are very Japanese though ... soy sauce, sugar, sake. I got an English recipe from the Internet and tried to cook it but I added much less sugar. It turned out well and was very easy to cook.

Cycling To Work

Andrew follows the lake shore by bicycle when he goes to the train station for work. After he left this morning, I tried to take pictures of him from our house. I waited some time and saw him.
I could get picture of him. He looked relaxed and enjoying cycling in the nice spring weather.
I've zoomed in on the previous picture...can you see him?

Potage

My hand blender is useful for making potage. I use it a lot during winter. I use the hand blender in a pot just after I have cooked some vegetables in it. I made spinach and taro potage today. I added some grated cheese on top of the soup.

Oyster Chowder

I love clams and oysters. Unfortunately, my husband doesn't like them so much but I think I should enjoy oyster chowder at least once a season, so I bought oysters today. You can buy them in a bag like this in the winter:
They were only 250 yen (about $2.80) and they looked fresh and juicy!
The chowder tasted great because the oysters' flavour could be tasted in the soup. I was very happy.

Ekiden

It was a beautiful day on Sunday and I felt spring had come to my town. When we were driving in the morning, we noticed something was going on.
We saw people were running on the road. It was Ekiden! (Road relay)
Some runners were running in front of our car. I drove around 20 km/hour just after them and tried not to hit them. All of the runners were in good shape and had good running form.
Local people were everywhere along the road. They cheered for the runners who were running around Hamana Lake. It was interesting to drive with Ekiden runners.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I froze some cookie dough when I baked these cookies last time. The dough had already been rolled into balls. I defrosted and baked them today. It was helpful that I had rolled the balls before I had frozen them.

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake

I baked a cheese cake again. My small spring form cake tin is perfect for making this cake. I usually like cherries or blueberries on top of cheesecake. This time I decided to add blueberries.

Blueberry Muffins

When I bake muffins, I use two spoons to put the batter into the muffin cups but it is always messy. I really wanted to solve this problem. Luckily, my parents-in-law gave me an ice cream scoop for Christmas. This is what I needed! I also got a scoop for cookies that is one size smaller.
It is so much easier to scoop and drop the batter. Thank you Margaret and Doug!
I baked blueberry muffins today. This is my favorite recipe that I always use. I added a little cinnamon crumble on the top of the muffins.
I put some muffins into some brown paper bags that I received from Robin. Thank you Robin!

Boiled Pork & Marmalade

I decided to use a recipe for boiled pork from one of my cooking books today. I tied up 1.6 kg (about 3.5 lb) of pork loin with some kitchen string. I played with the string and the meat for awhile but finally figured it out... I put the pork and some bay leafs in a pot and cooked them with some water for one hour.
There was only a little water left in the pot after the hour. Next, I added some salt, pepper and marmalade. I removed the lid and let it simmer until the sauce became thick and the pork was golden brown.
After removing the pork from the pot, I added some water to the marmalade and pork drippings to make a sauce. I cooked rice with some grounded carrots and put the boiled pork on top.
I sliced the pork and served it with the marmalade sauce on top. I liked the pork very much. The marmalade was great with the pork.

Colourful Case

I bought a colourful medicine case today. It has 7 mini-cases for each day of the week and each case has 3 sections for the morning, noon and nighttime. In case I am sick and I have to take some medicine, I won't forget to take it.

Shrove Tuesday

Today is Shrove Tuesday. We had pancakes as is the tradition. The pancakes are thin because you don't add baking powder in the batter. We squeezed lemon juice and sprinkled sugar on the hot pancakes and rolled them up. This is my husband's family's way. The taste was very fresh and lemony. I liked the pancakes a lot.

Yakisoba

When I don't have time to cook or no idea what to cook, I cook fried noodles. I brown some meat and some vegetables, and then add some noodles and a bit of Worcester sauce. This is the easiest meal for me to make.

Lemon Marmalade

Since I finished all my orange marmalade, I miss it a lot. I love marmalade even though it takes a long time to make.
I made lemon marmalade today. I found an interesting recipe. First, I boiled lemons.
These lemons were soft and dents could been seen after boiling for one hour.
I cut up these lemons and cooked them with brown sugar until they were thick. (lemons 1,269g, sugar 1,000kg)
The marmalade is not a beautiful yellow colour because I used brown sugar. I didn't have any white sugar today. I can't wait to have toast with the marmalade soon.

PC Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies

I tried some of Andrew's favorite food when we went to Canada last time. One of his favorite cookies is the PC Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies. I wanted to bake the cookies for him for Valentines' Day. I couldn't find a recipe so I tried a basic chocolate chip cookies recipe. I added twice the amount of chocolate chips than the original recipe because the PC Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookie's first ingredient is chocolate chips.
The cookies were very sweet because there are tons of chocolate chips inside the cookies! The cookies were good with a glass of milk.

Valentine's Day Pancakes

On the morning of Valentine's day, I cooked raspberry and chocolate pancakes. I melted some chocolate chunks into the pancakes. It was very nice.

Chocolate Bonbon

I bought this chocolate for Andrew. The chocolate has Sake inside. I guess it is difficult to imagine the taste of sake with chocolate but they are really good together.

Tea Time

Around 3:00 pm today, we decided to have a break. I enjoyed choosing some jams and marmalade that we have. We finished the last bottle of orange & lemon marmalade that I made last May. And we opened a jar of jam called Apple Pie in the Jar that I received from Barbara. We liked both of them.

Indian Vegetable Curry & Naan.

I cooked an Indian vegetable curry today. Making naan was fun even though I had to bake them in my small frying pan.

Blueberry Pancakes

These days, I have been eating pancakes every morning. When I wake up, I boil the water for tea and squeeze some mandarin oranges. At the same time, I melt some butter and mix an egg, sugar, salt, milk, baking soda, whole wheat flour and some blueberries in a bowl. When the tea is ready, I start to fry the pancake batter in the frying pan. I make two pancakes for Andrew and one for me. After I enjoy eating them, it's time to leave home for work!

Tandoori Chicken

Before I cook the chicken, I marinated it in yogurt and seasoned it with tandoori masala for a couple of hours. The chicken was hot and good with rice.

Sandwiches & Soup

It was cold today, so I had ham and a cheese sandwich and celery and bean soup.

Purple Soup

I cooked some soup today. The ingredients are sausages, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and some cabbage. When the soup had finished cooking, it had turned purple. I was surprised and remembered that I had used purple cabbage instead of green cabbage. It was a shocking failure but I enjoyed the taste of my uniquely colored soup.

View while driving

When I drive to work, I look up at these trees from my car every morning. I can feel that the seasons have changed when look at these trees. I see them full of pink flowers in the spring. The leaves change color quickly from new green leaves to green in summer. After lots of leaves fall down at the beginning of fall, I can see the clear sky between the branches during fall and winter.
On the way home in the evening, I sometimes see a beautiful orange sunset over the lake. I like the nice view around here so much. I will miss this when I stop driving this route.

Steak

I don't eat steaks often at home because I am not good at cooking them. Recently though, I went to a Brazilian store and found some good meet there. I asked Andrew to cook it since he knows how. He cooked it with some Montreal steak seasoning. I cooked mashed potatoes and I made Camembert cheese salad with mushrooms and broccoli. It was all very delicious.

Setsubun

Today is Setsubun. Setsubun means the division of seasons and this day is the end of winter. On the evening of this day, we throw roasted soybeans inside and outside our houses while shouting "Oniwa-soto, Fukuwa-uchi!" which means "Devils out! Good luck in!". As the beans are thrown, it is believed good luck is invited in and bad luck is driven out. It is also customary to eat as many roasted beans as your age plus one. It is a charm against ill luck for this year.

We did it of cause.

Fukuwa-uchi!

Rye Bread with Caraway Seeds

Andrew set our bread machine up last night. So that we can eat fresh bread for breakfast this morning.