Omnomnomables

I can't exactly remember how I survived in Japan last time I was here in terms of food. I think I mostly made weird western/Japanese stuffs that tasted strange and lived off that for a year...mostly tomato based stews with various vegetables in them.

But this time I swore I would learn how to cook Japanese food properly! And so far Wes and myself have been working pretty good at balancing the labour for cooking and have been working on a number of Japanese foods. It does mean we have to go food shopping everyday to get fresh meat but we have enough time to do that and means we get a lot of discount stuff that needs to be used right away.

Our breakfast has probably been the hardest to work out because dairy and wheat products are more expensive then what I'm used to, and we just don't have time to prepare rice and stuff every morning before class. So breakfast consists of bread, jam, yoghurt, a fried egg and a cup of tea. We've started taking bananas to school too cos we both get the munchies.

Classes finish at about 12:30 so we're often both starving and have to resort to either onigiri or pot noodles for lunch. I'm liking the pot noodles cos they're only 50yen (30p) which saves a fair amount of money during the week.

Dinners are the big ones and here's what we've made so far (and what it starting to turn into our weekly food stuffs)

Salmon and carrots with miso and salad (we didn't have any rice the first 2 days)

Fried chicken with mushrooms, rice, miso and salad

Udon in miso with broccoli and mushrooms, and rice with chicken

Curry with salad (Curry is so amazingly cheap to make here, out of half a pack we get enough curry for 2 meals each! Curry is now a weekly thing)

Katsudon (Pork fried in bread crumbs, cooked in soy sauce and onions and egg over a big bowl of rice.)

I got my recipe for this from cooking with dog

Salmon with rice, miso and salad (this is a pretty cheap and healthy meal so will probably be added to the weekly menu)

Yakisoba (stir fried chicken and noodles)

Nikujyaga (literally meat potatoes, a meat and potatoes and veg stew, very nommy)

Wes and I have both slowly been learning how to improve all these recipes and fingers crossed by the end we'll know how to make even more nomable Japanese food than this.