scrubbing the decks

literally.

PIl are over today - well, only FIL actually. I thought they were both coming, but MIL had some other 用事. We haven't seen them since getting back from Oz, oh well. So FIL is helping J in the backyard, landscaping, and I have just scrubbed the front balcony. Have never done that before, always having lived in rental places, the balconies are so crappy to start with that it was never even worth going out on them, let alone trying to get 50years of crud off them. But of course, in your own home things are different (and the housework list just keeps on getting longer, it seems!!) so after all the wind and rain the last couple of days, the balconies are looking worse for wear, so out with the scrubbing brush (on a long handle). Am taking a slight reprieve after the living room balcony, before I do the bedroom balcony - it is hard work, and I am feeling all ぽかぽか despite it having turned cool yesterday.

So I am at 14weeks at the moment, but I have to say that I think I am not as feeling as good overall this pregnancy as I was when with K. I seem to be in a constant state of headache, crampy, which I am thinking is round ligament pain (well, that is what google came up with anyway) and just blah, though not actually nauseous. Although, in a strange twist of events, I actually threw up for the first time ever with morning sickness on Sunday morning.....as we were out at home centres again looking for kitchen cabinets. K had to go to the toilet, and as soon as I got there, I had to hug the porcelain bowl. I guess at least the timing was good. I hadn't been feeling well all morning, sitting down and resting on various lounges, dining chairs etc in the furniture shop, but still the throwing up part did take me by surprise.

And, thanks to my husband being so lovely and bringing back yummy macaroons and chocolates from his business trips, I have put on a bit too much weight the past 2 weeks. I think 2kg - gasp!! I hadn't put any weight on at 12weeks, so overall it is not that bad, but I know that 2kg in 2 weeks is not the best - and I have to curb that before I explode! Generally my body is pretty good at letting me know when I have stepped over the line, before I get too far out of control. So I am going to hide the (very few) remaining chocolates and try to eat more healthily. I have also been lazy about food the last couple of weeks too, what with J away, and well, lots of other excuses I am sure, hehe. Now we have the bigger fridge, I am slowly building up stock, so hopefully I can start being more creative and healthy in cooking meals from now on too, and stop relying on fall-backs.

Okay, feeling somewhat refreshed, so going upstairs to do some more deck-scrubbing.

failure and 焼き立て success

A quick trip to Donkey Hote for some butter this morning (to re-make the cake) ended up in me somehow spending 5000yen....on "essentials" (a-hem) I came back with cooking oil, 2*konbu tsuyu, 3*butter, 1*margarine, 2kg of brown rice, AND a new pair of pjs, 5 pairs of socks and 2*onesies for K that we bought at the Nishimatsuya on the way home (since I was out in the car anyway, may as well make a day of it, right!?)

We got home about 11:30am, so I quickly threw some rice in the cooker to have a simple lunch of natto-gohan (K's absolute fav! she loves Natto; and Vegemite for that matter!). There was some rice in a plastic bag lying around that I think was the left over from the rice J took camping - he cooked it up at the campsite, so I didn't know, but when I opened the rice for lunch, I realised that it must have been 新米 because it was super soggy, as I had added the normal amount of water to cook it in. Ooops! Failure!!!

But the average lunch was well and trully made up for by the yummy banana cake that I did make this afternoon (supposedly during K's nap, but since we all got woken up before 6am when J left to go to Narita for his 2day trip to Hong Kong, and then K and I actually fell back asleep and didn't wake up until nearly 9am, with a phone call from J saying he was about to get on the plane! haha). Success (thanks to using butter that had been left out for a while before mixing)!! Although I did cut the amount of sugar I put in by half, and found it to be a bit plain tasting(K didn't seem to mind the less sweet cake), so I sprinkled the freshly baked banana cake with cinnamon sugar for me to make up for it. Went down lovely just now with an afternoon glass of cold milk for us both. Ooh, it would be nice with some vanilla ice-cream too, hehe. I can see me gaining another 3 kgs this weekend polishing off the cake now!!

success and failure

Saw this recipe (in Japanese only, sorry. If anyone wants an English version, I can put it up, but can't be bothered with it right now, lazy me!!) for "Chicken soboro on steamed pumpkin dumplings" on daytime tv the other day, and it looked so nice, I managed to scribble most of it down. I made it up last night and you know what? it turned out just delish!

I don't know if the photo does it justice or not. They steamed the pumpkin dumplings in the fry pan, after rolling the mix into balls and wrapping in glad-wrap. It was so cool!

I made the pumpkin dumplings without nuts for K and she just gobbled them up too!

Thought I was on a roll, until I attempted to use up the excess bananas we bought (got a bit carried away when we saw them on the shelves and bought 3 hands the other day...) in a banana cake using this recipe..... If you check out the first comment on this, it says what to do to avoid what happened to me, which meant that I had to chuck the butter/sugar/egg mix out because I didn't cream it and mix it properly. I would have started again, but we had no more butter. I used to be an ok cake maker too, and now I am stuffing that up, lol. Oh well. Might try again tomorrow.

Also bought some apples cheap so I want to make stewed apples tomorrow. Seems like I have got a busy day ahead of me.

forging ahead on the cleaning front (maybe)

Well, despite my best intentions (honestly) to spend Sunday cleaning up, we (being me and K, because J is still o/s in Las Vegas, probably collecting his winnings as I.....)had to drive over to the PILs place to drop something off (only an hour each way, rolls eyes). They weren't supposed to be home, so I didn't even take anything for K, just strapped her into the carseat about the time of her a/noon nap and prayed that she would sleep on the way there and back. When I had done the business, I rang the PIL just to tell them I had dropped the stuff off, and mil said that they were nearly home - just 15mins away so I should wait because they had stuff to give K (some slippers they bought her coz she is going through her Imelda stage at the moment). So we waited, and rubber arm that I am, ended up staying for dinner. Didn't get home until 8pm, at which time K crashed after her big day of playing with "jiji" and "baba" (which she can now say!)
Since J gets home today, I wanted to at least get rid of some of the junk around (you know, throw it in the cupboard so he can't see it, lol) so I did a bit of a "martha on speed" last night. Ended up making some niku-jaga for tonight's dinner, ironing some shirts, folding AND PUTTING AWAY the washing (you go girl!) and that was about it, but it was enough to get the place looking ok again.
Today, I was supposed to go out for a play date, but it got cancelled due to rain, so, in my new improved state of being a good housewife, I DID NOT simply spend my time on the internet or the couch, but I got in to do the tasks that were left over on my to-do-list.
You know, it is amazing how many things you can find to do to clean around the house when you actually write them down. I would never think to just get up and clean the airconditioner filters before. But today, I sat down and thought of things that I could do, and it was one of them! Hmmm. I am sorta liking this list business.
I also took some time in the kitchen today, cleaned the grill (ガスコンロ), tidied the area above the sink, decluttered basically. It looks good! And writing it down, means that I know when I did it last, so I can schedule when to do it next time (I am a big fan of scheduling, oooh, and excel sheets.......now THAT might be an idea, or is that procrastinating again??)
Anyway, I am taking a break now, because all work and no play makes T a pissed off mummy, and that is not nice, so I am about to join Nora Roberts on the couch for some hot and steamy stories about people named Rainbow and Storme and Victor, most likely. Will probably just get into when K wakes from her nap (lol!)

sooooooooooo

I bought the sewing machine today.

It is still sitting in the box at the front door.
It may never see the outside of that box.
I haven't the faintest how to use it.
I vaguely remember the apron we had to do in grade 8 (Mrs Trudjian, our home ec teacher, and yes, the name fits the image of her.)

I need to hem a dress of k's and take up a pair of pants I bought. So I bought the cheapy sewing machine to do that, basically.(The ones at the local janome store had too many extra zeros in the price tag....they could probably cook up a roast at the same time as overlocking though. Well, they would want to for the price!)

I am not having second thoughts, just letting it sink in for a while.
I mean, I bought an iron earlier this year, and now a sewing machine.

Since when did I become so Martha???

to sew or not to sew

THAT is the question.

I am thinking of buying a sewing machine. It is the 2nd time I have seriously thought of buying one. Last time was when I was pregnant with K, and had delirious ideas about making baby clothes. HA! This time I hold no such dilusions. I will use the machine for hemming only. I already have several items of clothing (and some curtains too actually) in need of some hem work. But since I know NOTHING about sewing, I have been shying away from buying a machine. I just don't know what to look for. But, I happened to see one at Donkey Hote last night when we went for a family excursion after dinner. It was a "Jaguar". A quick search on the internet and I realised that the price at Donkey was actually higher than the rrp. Gasp. So if I buy, it will be from Rakuten.
Anyway, another search for an English site brought me to this fantastic piece of work. From what I could gather before my head exploded from the tremendously badly designed home page was that Jaguar is actually a Japanese company. And they have sewing machines that are good for overlocking (something I have heard of, but am yet to fully understand the concept of). But basically, I really don't understand ANYTHING that they are saying on this page. Soooooo I figure if I buy the cheapy one for beginners, it will probably still do more than I can, so I can't go too far wrong. I am gonna keep looking around a bit - there is actually a Janome store 150m away from my house. Hey, I wonder if I take the clothes that need hemming into the Janome store, and pretend that I am looking to buy a sewing machine, if I could somehow swing it to "practice" on the machines in there.........then I wouldn't have to buy at all (ahahhahah!)

the quiche is looking good!

I am getting better each time, this brocolli bacon& onion quiche was delish but still need some work on the crust. Anyone got any hints for the perfect pie crust?
No comments required abt pathetic side salad, haha!

go goya

"go goya, go goya, go goya" (to be sung a-la-Ricki Lake "go Ricki" style)

So I braved the goya again tonight. We visited to PILs on the weekend, as we hadn't seen them since the cherry picking trip. They have a grand little vege patch in the area that was where the granny flat that J and I lived in when I first moved up to Tokyo was (they pulled it down when we moved out when I was pregnant and decided I didn't want to bring up a baby with the rats, haha!) They have tomatoes, spinach, okra, eggplant, shishito (not sure what that is in English? are they just green capsicum??) red and yellow capscicums, and the mother of all goya vines running up the house to the 2nd floor balcony!! So we came home with a pile of fresh veges, including one very big goya. After my last failed attempt at goya champuru earlier in the summer, I was not too keen on trying again, but I took on the advise of Illahee and cut the goya really really thinly. Sooooooo thinly that I got cramps in my hands and up my arms from holding the knife for so long - one goya goes a long way when it is cut that thin, haha! Actually, after I scooped out all the seeds and flesh, I salted the goya then poured boiling water over it. I let it soak like that for a few minutes, and I must admit that this time, it wasn't too bad! (despite the fuzzy photo, it did look and taste yummy)

I think THIN THIN THIN was the key for this goya champuru success story. Whenever I thought I was cutting it thin, then I started to slice it even thinner just to be sure.

In other news, K has started telling me pee-pee when she has done a job in her nappy. Sometimes I catch her all quiet in the corner, and manage to get the nappy off and her butt on the potty just in time to catch the no 2 jobs. But she still hasn't done a No1 on the potty yet. But it is cool to see that she seems to understand a bit now about what it all means. We are reading "Hitori de unchi" which means "I can do poo all by myself". It is a flip-the-page book. It goes like this:

"Koro the dog is going 'aarrrrgggghhhhhh'"
(flip the page)
"Oh look, he did a big healthy poo!"

....................Seems to read nicer in Japanese, for some reason.

We both sit there grunting as we read it at bedtime, hehe. (yes, it is her bedtime book choice this month! I keep on trying to throw in a "Hop on Pop" or something, but she puts up a fuss, and knows that she wants the unchi book - let the kid have unchi!

I had hoped to have her toilet trained this summer, but that seems pretty impossible (I am pretty lazy about it all too, I admit). But hopefully we can get serious about it when we go home for Xmas, and come back to Japan with a (near)nappy-free K!

all martha-ed out

my two days of visits went well, and it was so nice to have people over. Anyone ever in the vacinity, please drop in!

K had lots of fun playing with friend's daughter R-chan(or is it L-chan? transliterists, what are your thoughts? Can i choose as i see fit? I go for L-chan on this one) on Tuesday, although since they got here at about 11:30am, K was having soooo much fun that she forgot to nap. So when they left about 4pm, it didn't take long for K to get grumpy. She ended up falling asleep in my arms as we were skyping my folks just before 5pm. Classic. I decided to let her sleep (like I really had any say in it) and took R for a walk, with K in the ergo, then put her on the bed for more napping. She woke up after about an hour, but was still obviously sleepy, so I thought a shower would freshen her up, and tide her over at least until normal bedtime, which it did. She was still a bit tired today though, so I put her down earlier than normal for a nap, at about noon, then she slept a good 2 and a half hours, waking up just before our friends came over for a cuppa this arvo.

Yesterday I made a quiche using this recipe for the pie crust, and this recipe for the Brocolli filling (although I did add mushrooms and bacon). The filling was very very yum-yum, but I failed miserably on the pie crust. My symptoms - crumbly crust, which apparently means I overworked the dough. I also think it may have something to do with the fact that I can't work out the US measurements (yes, I realise that you can change the units on Zaar Recipies but then you end up with something like 15.67ml of blah blah blah), so I might have added too much butter to start with, then ran out of flour when I realised I had added too much butter, so couldn't even tweak the dough. Oh well. I am having another attempt this saturday in my quest for the perfect quich pie crust. Did I really just write that - god my life is boring.

Today I made lasagna for dinner - I know, I must be going through a yo(洋)phase this time. I used a recipe off the internet very loosley, with mince, onions and mushrooms in a jar of pasta sauce, but made my own white sauce (the only thing made as per the recipe), and used red cheddar cheese and mozzarella cheese, as well as some parmasan for sprinkling on the top. (gaijin wife...I will still accept your lasagna recipe if you ever want to send it my way!) and I thought it tasted good, but J said it was lacking a bit. He *always* says that though (rolls eyes) , so I just told him that just because all Japanese food tastes like soy sauce, doesn't mean that western food needs to have an overbearing flavour to it, and he should learn to appreciate subtle flavours (or starve - his choice really, hehe).

tomorrow we are going out to play - have to be out of the house before 10am to catch a train. God help me. In this heat, I can barely even sleep at night, and that is WITH acey on in the next room (not in the room we sleep in).

and finally some great news - I got two fantastic packages in the post today. One was the book LOSING KEI which I won on Nay's blog, (yay, I finally got it...bit of a mix up at this end, oops, with not realising the postie has tried to deliver the book while I was out one day, as the message card they leave was tossed in amongst some pizza-la campaign fliers so I almost lost Losing Kei, but all is well now, and I am really looking forward to reading it - thanks Nay, and Nay's mum for sending it!) and a friend from home send over a care package of magazines! yay! So I can find out now that Brangelina are expecting a baby - ok, the mags might be a *bit* old, but hey, English lit. Gotta love it!

Paprikosh (no I am not swearing at you)

An old family favourite...yum!!

For some reason, I always forget the recipe and end up having to ring mum every time! So I decided to put it up here for ME to check out everytime I get the urge to eat paprikosh, like I did tonight because:
a) J is off on a business trip out to the sticks, and only just got home
b) we have piles of potatoes after going out to Gunma 2 weekends ago for cherry picking (I keep on meaning to post about this too.....)

So, all about Paprikosh
Ingredients: 8-10 potatoes, 1 tomato (or can of tomato), 1 large onion, paprika, 1 stick of kabana

Actually, tonight for about 4 servings of paprikosh, I used 6 smallish potatoes, 2/3 tin tomato, 1 onion, 2 packets (which was only 10!!) of "morning sausages" those teeny-tiny frankfurt looking things.

What to do: cube potatoes into about 1-2cm square size; dice onion; dice tomato; slice kabana/frankfurts into about 1-2cm size slices.

Put all ingredients into a pot and simmer away on very low heat for about 40mins - 1hour, stirring constantly (or else it sticks on the bottom - you can start off with a bit of oil in the bottom of the pot so the onions etc don't stick at first.) After a while, the potatoes will start to loose their form, and get mushy. This is good! Keep stirring, and add as much paprika as you need - I usually add a fair bit. Once the potatoes are all cooked through and mushy, add the kabana and keep simmering on very low heat until kabana is heated through. Voila - paprikosh is served!!!

And that is it - how can I forget it everytime? I have no idea!!

Will have to take a photo of it next time I cook it too!!

Apparently it is a Hungarian recipe. No, my family is not Hungarian, but mum and dad knew a whole extended family of Hungarians many years ago, and that is how they got the recipe.

bitter sweet (only not sweet at all)

note to self - don't be fooled by the 100yen goya! There is a reason why it is cheap - goya is goya, and even following this recipe for Goya Chanpuru it was still as bitter as anything. Oh, and I realised after I put everything out on the table that I forgot to put the egg in the ゴーヤチャンプル, so I hastily added it afterwards. Which is good, cause I ate everything around the goya!!

I usually make this once a year, then I remember how bad it tastes. So until next year, not more bitter gourd, I guess.

Side dish of eggplant with soy sauce and ginger garnish, 春菊(shungiku chrysanthemum leaves - the left over from nabe the other day)with ponsu which was a surprisingly nice little dish and some tuna sashimi. Looks like we are still in our "wa" phase.

another "wa" dinner...

After a week of J away for work, I had almost forgotten that I was supposed to prepare dinner....it was already 1pm when I frantically pulled open the freezer to see if I could scrape together a meal out of frozen goods.... found the 紅しゃけ　(red salmon) we bought at Costco a few weeks ago. perfect. Add to that a great menu idea from gaijin wife - 豚のネギ塩焼き which I then found on the Orange Page website (how exciting - I didn't know they had a website!!! Means I no longer have to borrow last year's Orange Pages from the library for inspiration!) So there was dinner. Once again I got a "yum, looks good" comment from J. cool. Forgot to take a photo of it though, as J called up at 5:30 to say he finished work early and was on his way home, and to meet him down at the Softbank shop so we could get new phones...we had the old ones for about 1 and a half years, and they were starting to lose it - turning themselves off unexpectedly, answering machine function not working any more, etc etc. So after choosing our new phones, I ran home to slap together the meal, added in some steamed greens and a small salad and we chomped into it straight away, so no photo!!

still trying to make some space in the freezer(must. use. mince.)
, so tomorrow night is going to be spag bol. Works out well, coz tomorrow we are going to trapse across to our old playgroup (which is now about an hour away by train. it is a long way to go at 9am with a very genki 1 year old, but we wanna see everyone again, so I am psyched up to do it!! ) so dinner tomorrow night it going to have to be a slap-it-together dish, as I expect to be buggered by the time we get home tomorrow afternoon.

last post for the day, I promise

so this is what we had for dinner. I think I am going through a 和 phase!
★豚の生姜焼き
★ひじき煮 （ひじき、豚肉、人参、こんやく、油揚げ)
★大豆とキュウリの大根和え
★筍と豆腐の吸い物
★アスバラwithマヨネーズ
★ご飯
j looked at it said 美味しそう - he never says that、 so Iwas chuffed! Only problem was the 吸い物 was a bit lacking flavour. oh well. the hijiki was just right though!

K`s dinner

Change of game plan - cause we were having ひじき for dinner as one of our 小鉢, I decided to give it to K as well...she loves it! I never even realised that Hijiki is actually a seaweed. For some reason I thought it was a "mountain vege".

So here is what K had:

rice dressed with ひじき
pumpkin
tofu
and a cup of milk!

Wierd mix, hey!? lol but she ate the lot, and came back for seconds - some of my rice!

筍

So I attempted to do something with the takenoko bamboo shoots, following the instructions on this page.

This is the bambo shoot I bought.

There wasn't that much left after took all the peel off it...

I wonder if I took too much peel off? Have a look at what I threw away!

I prepared the big pot for simmering the bamboo shoots. It might have been a bit of an overkill. (sorry, don't know how to flip the photo as I sent it from my mobile - still can't get my camera to upload photos to computer.....maybe the 2G memory stick was not such a good idea after all?)

So apparently I let this simmer for like 40minutes or something.

I think I might try to make this recipe for 吸い物 out of it, IF it works, lol

oops I did it again!

did I mention the ゛great pumpkin pie debarcle゛? A few months ago J bought a tin of pumpkin mush（!?) that you use to make pumpkin pie、 and asked me to make it up. Having never made it before、 I followed the recipe precisely, except I added GARLIC instead of GINGER （yuck!) Well this time he bought a pack of cornbread mix, all I had to do was add 3 ingredients, an egg、milk& oil, easy, right? hmmmm, so I forgot to add the oil! Realised just as the oven beeps to tell me the cornbread is ready! oops. actually the bread seemed ok in spite of the missing ingredient. Bit sweet though、 more like a cake than bread. I wonder if thats what its supposed to be like or if the oil will make it more savoury?