The Ketchup Game

Hey!

Kristin wasn't lying. I did arrive safely in Japan! And I even have internet now. Well, sort of. Long story. Anyway, it's time to play catch up! One would think this post would be really long, but I kind of suck at cooking. I also blame:

 1) My fridge. It has been broken.
 2) People that keep making food for me. Japanese people are too nice. Really. I wish they were less so.

Anyway, here's a quick play-by-play of my culinary endeavors. All the recipes are from this (kinda mediocre) Japanese cookbook I found for my kindle. Fortunately, all the recipes are easy, have few ingredients, and produce good portions for someone living on his own. Thank you "Simple & Easy Japanese Summertime Recipes," and Kyoko Tanaka, for giving me food that is always perfectly good enough!

Firstly:

This is corn soup, cucumber salad, and rice. How healthy! It is fun to check out at the supermarket with a bunch of Japanese ingredients and see the cash register lady look impressed. Everything is cold, so it's perfect for summer!

Taste: 7/10 (good enough!)
Difficulty: 4/10 (the most difficult part was finding a blender in the countryside)

Next up!

  

This is cold udon noodles with some sauce, as well as cold simmered tomatoes! I love these two. The udon was supposed to be soumen (thinner noodles) but I don't like them as much. The tomatoes taste so summery and good. Both the tomatoes from this dinner and and the cucumbers from the last one were welcome gifts from my landlord!

Taste: 9/10

Difficulty: 6/10 (had to take the skins off the tomatoes ah!)

Both of these meals lasted several days, and I've made them multiple times. Lastly, here are some random, stand-alone things that I made:

The top is cold tofu with some simmered tomatoes. The best!

Taste: 10/10

Difficulty: 6/10 (it's really very very easy,  but I was impatient with waiting for the tomatoes to cool in my lackluster fridge)

The bottom is kind of a joke. It's meat-wrapped asparagus. So weird. I didn't have enough meat so it looks super stupid. 

Taste: 8/10 (surprisingly good considering the bad proportions)

Difficulty: 8/10 (obviously this was a challenge for me)

Woohoo all caught up! Soon I will be going to purchase a new fridge and the adventure will continue!

Martin

PotLuck

Martin and Debbie have arrived safely in Japan, and wont have internet for a little while, and I am on a month break from school and get to avoid preparing anything more difficult than a bowl of cereal! :D :D

I guess the blog's going to take a couple weeks hiatus. In the meantime, I leave you with some pictures from the potluck party I threw in my dormitory.

The good thing about potlucks is a lot of people bring food, and so you don't have to eat the food you yourself prepared for the potluck. The other people get stuck doing that. Ha ha! Plus, the added advantage of actually throwing the potluck means that you get to keep all the delicious leftovers.

Other people prepping food. That's what I like to see! Here we have pasta, egg plant, melting chocolate, and something green.

Mac prepares a spinach, strawberry, and fetta salad. OMG YUM.

Gorging on food. Sipping wine. Enjoying the Olympics. 

Kristin

Free meal!

Tonight I made myself sauteed kale and tomatoes with rice. Preparation was exactly how it sounds. Not hard. Not impressive. Very delicious. 

The brown rice I bought using my parents' credit card last month at Price Chopper.

The tomatoes I got for free at Stop and Shop because they were mislabeled and I complained about it.

The kale I pilfered late last night from the college community gardens.

Rating: 7/10
Prep time: Set the rice to cook in rice cooker 30 mins before sauteing veggies. Total prep time, 35 mins.
Difficulty: 3/10

Next time I'll cut up the kale into smaller pieces and not overcook the rice (I hope).

Kristin

Salad-y Malady

Once in a while I get a horrid wake up call to the disastrous realities that stem from preparing food for myself. Last night was one of these instances.

Who would think that hotdog, spinach, macaroni salad, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and onion would be an odd combination?

What I got from it was a nauseous feeling.

BUT, I'm not totally convinced yet that it was the combination of foods that made me feel a little sick. While preparing the food, I had to keep sticking my head in the fridge to take out some of the ingredients. Right now, our communal dorm fridge smells rank.

One of my housemates put strongly smelling food in there and it made everything else (even the freezer) smell like her food. Which is not pleasant. Then, my food began to soak up the not-so-savory smell.

SO, it could be the smell and not the food combo giving me this weird feeling. Thoughts? Does this salad sound na$ty?

***

Update (7/22) - The next day I went and ate the leftovers. I ended up taking the hotdog out. Nauseous feeling avoided!

Kristin

Dessert Weekend

This weekend I was able to get away from school (and my non-airconditioned 150 million degree room) and go to the lake with a friend. We made chocolate peanut butter bars, clafouti, and chocolate covered strawberries. Delicious weekend.

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 20 mins in the freezer)

Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 8/10
Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 1 hour in the oven)
Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Difficulty: 1/10

Kristin

why hello there

I'm Debbie, the third (and mostly invisible) contributor to this blog. I'm 21 years old, and up until now have never really had to fend for myself in the kitchen. Someone was always around to feed me, or at the very least stand over me to say It's so simple what is wrong with you just keep stirring. Now that I've graduated from college and am leaving my parents' home for a teaching gig in Hokkaido, for the first time in my life I'll be in charge of nourishing my body!

This coming year can only be a win-win situation. I will either a) discover an innate talent and become the goddess of homemade cooking or b) lose a lot of weight. Be prepared for my epic culinary exploits, guys! 

My real posts will begin in August. But here's a picture of what I ate last week. I didn't make it. I didn't even buy it. My mom bought it and fed it to me. When left to my own devices I tend to stick to cereal.

Kimchi jjigae (soup), seaweed, sausages, rice.

"Rustic" Buttermilk Biscuits

I haven't been cooking much recently, but this morning I was inspired by a surprise ingredient in the family fridge: buttermilk! My dad bought some to make avocado soup, and it was just sitting there waiting to be whipped into some delicious buttermilk biscuits. I had never made these before, but when you're baking for someone with low standards (me!), I find that all you need to do is get some ingredients kinda mixed and in the oven, and you'll end up with something edible.

I used a recipe I found at food.com entitled "Southern Buttermilk Biscuits" (http://southern.food.com/recipe/southern-buttermilk-biscuits-26110).  

It was really easy and required almost no ingredients. My only problem was that I cut the butter chunks too big, so then they were huge and the dough (batter?) was really sticky and hard to work with. Also I had no circle cutter. Ultimately they looked nothing like the picture but tasted great. Case in point: you don't have to get better at baking, you just have to expect less from the results!

If I look at this picture too long, it looks like they're crawling towards me

Rating: 7/10

Prep Time: The recipe says 22 minutes, but recipe writers are always trying to impress you with their culinary skills when they estimate these things. More like 30 minutes. But still perfect as an "afternoon quickie"!

Difficulty: 4/10