Flat Fanta Marinade

I'm mostly putting the following "recipe" up for my reference only, but feel free to use it as you please. We had some orange Fanta left over from a party and it had gone flat. I decided to use it in a chicken marinade. As always, I didn't measure a thing, so your guess is as good as mine.

Here we go:

• Orange Fanta
• Salt
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• Paprika
• Ginger
• Kimchee flavored sesame seeds (probably not necessary at all, but I like them)

I sliced one onion into rings and had chicken which was pre-cut into 1-inch chunks (roughly). I let both sit in the marinade while I dealt with a salad for dinner (as well as a failed attempt at taro root....which I like, just not my recent attempt).

I heated some canola oil in a wok and put the chicken and onions in it, keeping the marinade in my bowl. Between stirrings of the chicken and onions, I added some chicken consomme powder and a little corn starch and stirred them in well. After the chicken and onions were finished, I added the rest of the marinade to the wok and stirred the chicken and onions into it. As soon as it thickened (which was not long), I dished out the chicken and onions.

-Thoughts after finishing the meal:

The elements of today's dinner didn't match each other at all. A salad felt a bit alien next to the chicken. Perhaps if it were a chicken breast, instead of chunks, it would have felt more natural. I feel broccoli would have been more appropriate for the meal. Perhaps stir-fried with the chicken and onions. Neither Nat or I are fond of cooked green peppers, but some people might enjoy those with this marinade also.

The taro root was a failure on my part. I overcooked it, I think, and it got too dry. I also think it would have been much better in a miso soup than a side dish of its own. Either way, we didn't end up eating it. We had bread, which we used to soak up the leftover sauce! Mmmmmm! But really, bread is somewhat lackluster for the meal unless you turn the chicken into a sandwich. Oooh! That's an idea! .... Anyway, I think I'll use rice (my suggestion) or tortillas (Nat's suggestion) in the future. Maybe both.

Using flat soda-pop in cooking is definitely an idea for cost-cutting, though. I don't know many families who didn't let a bottle of soda-pop go flat at some point and since it failed it's first use, why not offer it a second? Just be careful what flavors you use with what dishes.

Adventures in Pudding

Lately, I've become excited about making fruit-flavored puddings. It's mostly the fault of a medieval cherry pudding recipe I got from The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. I've made the cherry pudding a few times now and got to thinking, "What would other fruit puddings taste like?"

So, when we had some friends over last week, I tried orange pudding. It tastes quite a bit like orange juice as a pudding. There is probably some way to get it to taste more like an orange creamsicle (which was what I was hoping for) but I liked the end result.

Orange Juice Pudding
Adapted from The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy

Ingredients:

• Oranges (I used 7 "Stealth" oranges, which are roughly tennis ball sized and taste like navel oranges - if you end up with too much juice, just add more bread...and probably more sugar; alternately, you can use orange juice, but I don't know how much you'd be using)
  
• 5 fl. oz. white wine
• 4 slices of dry white bread, crusts removed (though I usually use frozen, non-dried bread and that works fine; you may also need less bread depending on how thickly yours is sliced - we get ours sliced thin (10-slice, for those living in a country that sells bread like Japan does))
• (MORE THAN) 1/2 cup sugar (or honey; I used the original scant 1/2 cup of sugar for the cherry pudding recipe and added orange blossom honey until the mixture wasn't sour; using honey instead of sugar may require more bread)
• A dash of nutmeg
• zest from one orange
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. butter (less might be okay; I don't strictly adhere to this measurement)

Instructions:

1. Juice oranges and strain well using fine sieve or cheesecloth.
2. Cut bread into a small dice
3. Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan.
4. Bring to a boil.
5. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. As the bread swells and breaks apart, the mixture will begin to thicken into a creamy pudding.
6. If you are like me, you may need to add more bread or sugar around this point (depending on how thick/sour your pudding is). A few more minutes won't hurt, but do keep an eye on your pudding and take a potato masher to it if any new bread you might have added isn't breaking down as fast as the pudding is thickening. (optional step for spazzes like me)
7. Place into a serving bowl, cover and chill well.
8. Serve (should serve 5 - maybe more, maybe less depending on what you consider a serving)

Today, I am attempting watermelon pudding. I expect this one to be strange. I'm using a blush wine and less sugar. Also, roughly five or six slices of bread (filling the blender with small chunks of watermelon may have been more than enough). It is looking very orange. Hmm. Interesting. Nat's not going to like this one because WATERMELON! So I'll have to make a mango or pineapple pudding sometime in the future. I have a feeling the mango will be more appreciated.

お久し振りですね!

And a little over a year later, a new post! Gasps can be heard around the world!

By now, most of you are already aware that we are still alive and mostly unaffected by the Tohoku earthquake and surrounding incidents. As such, this will probably be the only reference to it in this blog.

Last we left off, Will was on his way to Japan. He has since arrived and returned to the States and Natalie's second school year began. Our friends, Katie and Ben, also visited last year (and we went to their wedding in October). We did other things. Ate some things. Had a lot of snow over the winter (more than usual for the region - also, it is not unusual for thunder to accompany gently falling snow here). Spring arrived and a new school year began, which brings us to now. That's a heavily abridged version of events, so I will try to fill in a few details with photos (click on them for to make them larger and clearer!

Here's Will and Nat in Asakusa (in Tokyo). Most of the cherry blossoms in the picture are actually fake. Whether they were just decoration for the upcoming Cherry Blossom Festival or placed around for photographers not happy with the already extravagant number of natural cherry blossoms around, I don't recall. Our hotel was right beside the gate to this temple, so it was the first big sight we took Will to see.


Randomly, there was a wedding going on at the Shinto shrine next to Asakusa temple. The bride and groom were able to take advantage of the rickshaws at the temple (and a few other tourist attractions in the city, I imagine, but I've only ever seen them in Asakusa - at least in Tokyo).


Randomly, there's a small amusement park tucked into the city just near Asakusa.


This bird was just hanging out in a tree branch, staring at all the crazy humans only two feet away while we all clamored to take advantage of this perfect photo opportunity.

Leaving Asakusa, we noticed this udon restaurant sign. Nat took the video.

We visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which just so happened to be in the midst of its own Cherry Blossom festival. Delicious festival food was everywhere.


(this photo was taken by Will)

Then we saw another wedding procession when we visited the Meiji Shrine. It must be awkward having your wedding in a prominent tourist site, what with the random foreigners and strangers snapping photos of you all over the place.


Then, we went on to Kyoto! It promptly snowed the night we got in.


The following morning, we set out to visit the Kinkaku-ji (or the Golden Pavilion Temple). The pavilion is covered in gold leaf. We also visited Ryoan-ji, but we've got over a year to cover here and I've barely gotten through one week.

Besides, isn't this video of a fountain in one of the Kyoto Station shopping areas more interesting? Perhaps not, but it's still pretty darn interesting.


We then visited Nijo Castle (not pictured) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (partially pictured). The Fushimi-Inari shrine complex is huge and connected by tunnels made of torii gates donated by businesses all over Japan. It covers an entire mountainside and I have yet to see it all. For a time, we wandered away from the torii tunnels and followed a path through a bamboo grove. It was pretty, but ultimately led us further away from civilization than we were willing to aimlessly wander (at least when we had a bus to catch).



After Kyoto, we brought Will to our home in Yosano. We visited some of the sights. This is the gate to one of the local Shinto shrines, reportedly one of the best cherry blossom-viewing locations in town and a view of the bay.

We also visited Nariai Temple (haha, try reading that Wikipedia page!), a nice spot with a scenic view of the Amanohashidate (and our town!), Ine whaling village and a local history museum (where we live used to be part of the Tango Kingdom!)

At the end of Will's stay, we took him back to the airport where a television interviewer asked him why he visited Japan and what he thought was "cool" about the country. A few weeks later, Natalie's students and coworkers mentioned seeing us on TV. National TV! Will is, apparently, good luck to have around.

I may share more photos from Will's trip in other posts, but not today.


On to August, when Katie and Ben visited and we hit a couple Morning Glory festivals (which are, generally, less exciting than Cherry Blossom festivals, but morning glories are my favorite flower, so I was pretty excited). This photo is from the Fushimi-Inari Shrine.

For the most part, when Katie and Ben visited, we went to a lot of the same places we went with Will. We traversed a bit more of the Fushimi-Inari Shrine until the summer heat and endless stairs broke down our will to live and we stumbled back to the bus.


While in Kyoto, we took a day trip to Nara, where they have a giant Buddha in a temple and wild "tame" deer which roam the streets and eat anything they can yank out of your hands or purse. Collecting tolls for being the city's protectors, perhaps? Vendors sell crackers to feed the deer. As soon as you purchase a bundle, the deer crowd around you impatiently.

After two weeks, we took Katie and Ben back to the airport and saw them off.

(photo by Len)

Sometime last year (probably around this time, so I'm screwing up the timeline here) our Japanese professor from college visited with a class. We met up with them in Kyoto along with our college friend, Len, who also teaches in Japan (there was also another former student there, but I didn't know him and I forgot his name! I'm appalled with me!). We were all really excited.

Sometime last autumn, Nat had a conference in Kyoto. I tagged along and went to see a few things while she was busy. I walked to Sennyu-ji Temple (technically, "temple" is redundant there, but that's how it's written in the brochure) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (again) and returned to Kyoto Station to do some shopping before meeting up with the others for dinner at Harvest, an all-you-can eat organic food buffet (for relatively cheap!)


The next day, I decided it would be wiser to take the bus. That and my feet ached from the non-stop walking the day before. I visited the Sanjuusangen-do, the Heian Shrine and the Kyoto zoo. I also wanted to visit the history and art museums but the history museum was inexplicably closed for the month and the art museum was having a special event that scared me away. Unfortunately, I don't have any exciting pictures of the Sanjuusangen-do, as it was forbidden inside the hall. But I have this nice picture from the garden!

I wandered a bit more after the Sanjuusangen-do, trying to find another sight, but almost walked onto the campus of a women's college. Note: bus and train maps are not good pedestrian maps. Note 2: if you notice that, suddenly, there are only women around, you may have stumbled onto a women-only region of the world.


There were a lot of interesting animals at the Kyoto zoo. It's a small zoo, so it had the basics (zebra, giraffe, elephant, flamingo...) and a few other interesting species (such as this vulturine guineafowl - the colors!). It was mid-afternoon and a fairly warm day (for autumn) when I got to the zoo, so most of the animals were asleep. The hippo was nothing more than a lump in the water with a nearby child yelling at it to wake up. There was also a young child there with her grandfather who would occasionally roll her face in the dirt, despite protests, until she got a very light spanking.


It was close to closing time for the Heian Shrine, so I didn't get to see the gardens (which are, supposedly, very beautiful). The buildings were really pretty, though.

That brings us to last autumn. After that, most of my photos are random textures I took for art purposes. Hopefully we'll be more diligent in keeping up with this blog in the future!

OhhhhhhHHH FREAK OUT!

Okay, that title is just to make my mom laugh.

Seventy-six hours until my brother is here to visit! YAAAAAY! I'm excited. Today after school I'm going to get the tickets for Alex and I to take the night bus to Tokyo. It's an overnight bus trip and it's much cheaper than taking the trains. Then we'll be spending a few days in Tokyo, a few days in Kyoto, spending some time at home, before heading back to Tokyo to drop him back at the airport.

Then we've got to bust home on the shinkansen because I have school the next day. Whew!

Today is the last day of classes at the junior high. I had one English class in the morning, and for the rest of the day I spent time with a boy who doesn't usually come to school. He usually studies alone in a room, and I suspect he's bullied and doesn't do well around others, but he's really the sweetest kid. I talked to him about comics and movies and we studied cursive together (it's been a while for me too! He laughed at some of my mistakes) for about two hours or so.

At the end, the lunch bell rang and he said "Thanks for coming to talk to me. It's lonely studying by myself all the time."

It's like a little oasis in the stress, you know? I hope I can help him come to school more often.

From Shogakko to Graduation

Allo! The last few days have been particularly busy. Thursday was shogakko's mass 'birthday party', Friday was my last lesson of the school year at the other shogakko, Friday NIGHT was a big ol' potluck party at our apartment, and today was the graduation ceremony for our middle school third graders. Let's go in order, shall we?

Oh wait a second. First I have to do some stuff I promised to do a long time ago.

The English classroom is on the third floor of the school, and it falls to me to decorate it, which is cool, because I enjoy doing stuff like that. When summer changed to autumn last year, here's what I put up for my first wall decoration attempt.


Yeah, Nightmare Before Christmas! That's Jack, Sally, and Zero if you've never seen the movie, which would be tragic.

Except you probably wouldn't like it, Mom.

Please ignore the "Micky (sp) has more Easter Eggs than Minnie" over there. That has nothing to do with fall or Halloween. I just forgot to take it down before taking the picture. Eh heh.

Anyway, the kids really liked this. There were a bunch of the pumpkins, but the first graders stole/dismembered/destroyed a bunch of them, so.

Oh hey look, the winter decorations! As you can see I put a bit more work into these. Two of the penguins and most of the snowmen have become tragic casualties of the ichinensei (first graders).

But eh, middle school kids, whatcha gonna do.

I had a lot of fun making the snowflakes, and a lot of the kids were like, "How did you DO those?" For being Japan, the home of origami and papercrafts, I was really surprised to find that paper snowflakes were not a standard art form like in American elementary schools. But hey, that's cool! I'll teach them, someday. Mwaha.


This is the door to the nurse's office.

Apparently we get outbreaks of headpidgeons fairly frequently, and here you can see many little anime children of various hair colorosity waiting in line to have their headpidgeons cured by our sweet school nurse.

Bonus points if you get the reference. :D

Anyway, so the party on Thursday. The fourth graders were celebrating their collective tenth birthdays! The previous time I had told them that, in America, the tenth birthday party was a big deal. And we have parties of various types, etc, etc. They liked the idea of a theme party, and so they decided on their theme....

Princes, Princesses, and Samurai. Epic precious.

This is exactly as awesome as it looks. I caught this kid mid-conversation and it looked like Junior Hamlet.

See all the crowns and capes and stuff? They made those themselves, along with little samurai swords and broadswords, and little magic wands for the princesses. It was AWESOME.



Also, I taught the kids how to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, hence the above video. If you listen, you can hear the kids yelling directions to their friends - "Migi" means 'right' and "Hidari" means 'left.' At the end of the video when you hear them yelling "Hai! Hai!!" they're volunteering to go next.

Here's a good shot of most of the class sitting together. One of the little princes has a red cape. It was supercute. SUPER CUTE.

There was even a girl samurai. You'll see her later though.


Then we all ate apple cake! The teacher, (standing in the middle) Aiko-sensei, asked me for a Michigan type of recipe, maybe with cherries.

But cherries are really, really expensive in Japan, so I went with something cheaper that also is really popular in Michigan - apples!

It was darn good cake. The kids all made it together. I was proud of them.

And now our different costume sets! First we have the Princesses.

Yep. They made me a crown.

This is probably the dorkiest picture of me that ever made me look like a dork, but I LOVE IT SO THERE.

See their magic wands and necklaces? They made me a little star necklace covered in foil, too. I will treasure it for ever and ever, or until I lose track of it which I do all the time.


And here we have the handsome and valiant princes! The one kid is determined to keep his sword in front of the other kid's face. I don't have any pictures of them where he's not doing this. It's kinda funny.

They all had so much fun with this. It was adorable.

And there are the brave and steadfast samurai! (with a prince stowing away in the picture in the back.) I thought it was so cool that one of the girls wanted to be a samurai, too! I was proud of her.

These guys had fun too with their ACTION pose.

I love my elementary school kids.

So then, on Friday, I had the first graders at the other elementary school!! They were so precious! I got totally mobbed though. That's always fun. We played musical chairs (which was easy for them, since it's really close to fruits basket, a traditional Japanese game. Also, musical chairs is really flipping easy, and I'm pretty sure SOME kids play it in Japan) and since I have all sorts of Super Mario Brothers music loaded on my iPod, that filled them with epic glee. And, they really know how to tell me what colors they like now! "I LIKE BLUE!"

Then I ate lunch with them in the lunchroom. Usually the lunchroom usage swaps between grades and classes, since there's only one small lunchroom for a huge school. The other classes eat lunch in their classrooms. The unique thing about Japanese schools is the students themselves serve lunch....even the first graders.

They all wear aprons, head-kerchiefs, and face masks, serving lunch to their classmates.

Everyone waits patiently (or impatiently) until everyone is served, and then the day-leaders stand in front, and yell "Be quiet!" repeatedly until everyone else is quiet.

This usually takes a while.

Then, everyone says "Itadakimasu!" (I humbly receive - kind of a secular grace that is rigidly followed in Japan) and is free to eat. Eating before 'itadakimasu' is a heinous offense and will result in several squeaking, peeping students suddenly bursting into a cacophony all around the offending party. It's adorable.

There you can see their school lunch. Fish and vegetables (The fish was full of bones!! No way would they get away with that in America! Some kid would choke and people would get sued and we'd only be able to eat pureed Fish Product or whatever. Still, I thought it was amazing!) along with a tofu-vegetable soup, a bowl of rice, an orange, and a carton of milk. No, you can't choose between white and chocolate here like ...well, like the schools I went to when I was a kid. But it's been a while since elementary for me so probably that was more of a middle-high school thing.

Then that night was the potluck party. I made spinach-artichoke dip and Alex made homemade pasta. Both were awesome. The rest of the conversation group brought stuff too. Really, really good stuff....in fact, too much, and way too much variety. I ate way too much and the next day I was like "UGGHGHGHGHHGH." It was unfortunate. But soooooo worth it.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Then, today was graduation, and I bawled. But only because everyone else was bawling, even the male teachers. I'm going to miss the third graders. It was a big formal affair. The principal did a speech, the mayor of the town (wearing a kimono) did a speech, the new student council president (one of next year's third graders) did a speech, and the graduating student council president (a really sweet kid) did a speech. Lots of speeches. And songs. And tears and sniffling. But it was a good time.

More foods

For starters, I bought these mushrooms I had never seen before and decided to try cooking with them. I should know better than to try cooking a mysterious ingredient without a recipe in hand or at least an idea of what the ingredient tastes like. Luckily, this turned out well. I neglected to take a picture of the mushrooms, but if you want to do a Google image search for "nameko mushrooms", you'll likely come upon some tiny, yellow, slimy mushrooms. That's what these were. Tiny. Yellow. Slimy.

To be honest, I just stared at them after bringing them to my kitchen and thought, "Have these gone bad?" I had never eaten a slimy mushroom before. I had read about slimy mushrooms, but I couldn't recall anything about edible slimy mushrooms. I probably should have researched for details (as I did just before beginning this blog, so that I could tell you the name of this mushroom), but I decided to throw caution to the wind and make a food.

I cut up some chicken and half an onion, put them in a bowl with the mushrooms and added a marinade (soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar and oyster sauce). After a little while, I dumped it all in a pan, added a little water and cooked it all until the sauce thickened. We ate it with rice. It was rather good, and was really only slimy in appearance.

We've also been eating wasabi-green salads. That's the vegetable in question on the right. They have a mild flavor and just taste good. Mostly, the salads have consisted of wasabi greens, tomatoes and a special, super-thinly sliced ham that the Japanese use just for salads. I've also added shredded carrots and sliced cucumbers. I typically dress the salad with oil, vinegar, grated parmesan and herbs. Not an incredibly exciting salad, but we like it.

I also tried my hand at tempura. For those who don't know, tempura is a Japanese form of battered and deep-fried food. For my trial hand at tempura, I used eggplant, shrimp and na-no-hana (also known as "rape blossoms" - because they are the flowers of the rape plant). Na-no-hana are a popular spring vegetable and really, really good when deep-fried (not when lightly boiled or steamed). As you can see, the vegetable isn't actually in bloom, just yet; only budding. You can sometimes find bunches with flowers on them in the grocery store. As it is, it looks a bit like broccoli or broccoli rabe. It tastes nothing like broccoli. When tempura fried, you batter and fry the whole thing, leaves and all. Even with one tiny Japanese eggplant, one tiny package of shrimp and one tiny package of na-no-hana, we had two piles full of tempura-fried food by the time it was over. We ate a little bit and left the rest for the next day.

On a related note, since most Japanese households do not have central heating, during the winter some people will keep food in a room that does not have a space heater. Prepared foods are "refrigerated" just by sitting on the spare room table. They are always wrapped or lidded, of course. That's how we saved our leftover tempura; we left it in a cold room through the night.

Today, I was feeling ambitious. We've been getting together some kitchen supplies, like a rolling stick and a larger cutting board. Today, I made noodles. I used the basic directions laid out in Joy the Baker's blog. I made a huge mess, but I also made noodles! I'm proud of me. I added some red wine I kept around for cooking in hopes that it would turn the pasta purple. Instead, it turned imperceptibly grayish. They still taste good, though. The recipe made a lot of noodles, though, so we're probably going to have them at our potluck this Friday and maybe pass some out to the neighbors.

Oh my gosh.

I just received a handmade book, tied with a ribbon, full of post-it notes with well-wishes from one of the classes of the graduating third graders.

One boy wrote "I like you forever!"

I seriously think I'm going to cry.