Kara age

Deep-fried chicken "Kara age".

Kids and Men love them. Also nice for lunch box.

Seasonings are soysource, Sake, ginger.

Everyday is really hot and humid. And today we enjoyed catching crowfishes. Kids are excited sooo much.

We've got maybe around 20 crowfishes.

Not for eating...just for joy of summer. :)

Midsummer

Now Japan is hot, humid.
It's too hot to come up with what to prepare. :(

Today's are easy.

Boiled corns
Tofu with ginger, Japanese basil, soysource
Roasted Japanese eggplants (with same herbs of tofu )
Rice

IRI DOFU: Cooked Tofu

IRI DOFU: Cooked Tofu, tuna, eggs, and leek. seasoned with soy source, black pepper, and salt.
Boiled green vegitable with sesame
Cooked Beens
Rice

Sashimi again

Sashimi of sardines. with ginger, leek, Japanese basil.

Yesterday, I've bought a knife for fish.Since I've felt stress with using cheap, multipurpose knife for preparing fish.

This new one works well especially for cutting backbones. Awesome.  :)

Here is Kappabashi, Tokyo. Famous strip for kitchen tools and gadgets. I've found fish knife here.

Really interesting for walking and browsing.

Steamed chicken with Leek sauce

Steamed chicken with Leek souce
Salad of NAGAIMO (Japanese yam) and SERI (Japanese parsley)
Stir-fly of Lotus roots
Rice

Cooked sardines

Cooked sardines (seasoned with soysource, sugar,  and Umeboshi (salty plums))
Cooked vegitable
Rice

Sashimi

I've bought these fresh sardines at fish market. And tried to make them Sashimi for the first time in my life!
It took much time...however, tastes good. :)

Stir-fry

Stir-fried pork(thin-sliced pork belly), Eringi mushrooms, and bean sprouts
Boiled vegitable
IKURA (Salmon roe, was put in soysource and Sake)

Yakisoba

Yakisoba for lunch

Cooked rice with beef and ginger

Cooked rice with beef and ginger
Vegitable soup

Pasta for lunch

Pasta of garlic, olive oil, Shimeji mushrooms, Spinach, and Japanese leek :)

Chirashi Zushi

Chirashi Zushi

Cram Miso Soup

March 3rd was the day of traditional girl's celeblation called Hina Matsuri.

People make traditional dishes for this day and celeblate & wish girl's helthy growing up.

I tried to make the most important dish for this day with my sister.

This is Chirashi Zushi which is a kind of sushi mixed with some ingredients.

Ingredients are cooked dried Shiitake, shredded carrots, dried Tofu, dried squash.... and so on.

And eggs and snow peas are on top for making them colourful. 

This is my 2nd time to cook. (For the first time, my Chirashi Zushi was not so good....tasts thick, and wetty. Even though it took long time to prepare. :(  )

This time, that's fairly nice! So happy.

They are HINA dolls.

People display these dolls wearing very classic-style Kimono for Hina Matsuri.

These are for wishing girl's healthy growing up, too.

These dolls are my mother in low's. Her mother had bought them for her.

Her mother has passed away, but every year dolls reminds us about her wishes for her daughters and we miss her so much.

Dolls are older than 60 years old! They never look like that.

UDON

UDON with chicken, mushrooms, and KOMATSUNA (NA means green vegitable).
The red powder is Japanese common spice mix. It's a mix of 7 kinds of spices like Chili pepper. Sesame, Mandarin peel, Hemp seed, etc.

Crab Sandwich

A lady who is really really good at cooking kindly gave me a loaf that she made!

The loaf looked beautiful, so I wanted to try to make something tasty and cool with that. What I tried is  Crab Sandwich. Using can crab meat, it was really delicious. :)   Ingredient is easy. just mix drained can crab meat, chopped onion, Mayo, lemon juice, black pepper, and dill. You can adjust the taste using lemon juice.

Appreciate her so much! And her blog is here.

Meat source pasta

Meat source pasta made from Meat Loaf and Tomato source.
Easy and tasty. :)

Meat Loaf

Our new year's dish was Meat Loaf.

Meat Loaf
Pasta Salad
Vegitable Soup
Steamed Rice

KONPEITO

These tiny star-like shaped sweet is KONPEITO that my mother in low sended to us from Japan.
It's Japanese traditional sweet, and, hard, sweety, made from sugar.
I found out that some web sits told that the word "KONPEITO" came from Portuguese word "Confeito" (means sweets made from sugar), and it came to Japan with Portuguese missionaries at the 16th century...That's new and interesting to me, too(@_@)!

Happy Tiger Year!