Octopus!

When Nat and I started learning Japanese, we were jokingly warned to be careful if we were to ever order tacos in Japan. The reason for this is that "tako" is Japanese for octopus.

Today, I re-armed myself with octopus recipes and picked up a couple tentacles at our local grocery store. While you can buy octopus raw at some grocery stores in Japan, our store sells it pre-boiled, so you don't have to worry about pre-boiling it yourself (it can take a while). Also, it's much easier for the store to cut up an octopus that has already been cooked so that they can package it according to serving size (most people living by themselves will not be able to eat a whole octopus). The pre-cooked octopus at the store comes with one tentacle and a small piece of head per package.

The recipe I was following assumed that the cook would be using a raw octopus, so I still had to do some pre-boiling to get some of the juices of the octopus into the sauce and some of the seasonings into the meat, but that just made the octopus that much more tender. For those curious about the recipe, it's here.

It turned out really good! I accidentally misread the amount of cinnamon and doubled it, but that's what I get for reading the recipe from across the room. It was still good, though. This is definitely a recipe I'd be willing to repeat.

Tomorrow, we're probably going to eat mabo tofu from a boxed mix. Fridays are my easy meal days.