foodie thursday & friday

My Aunty emailed me today to tell me that I must be slipping because there isn't anything new on my blog...as she would say, "hold your horses, will ya?"

Anyway,yesterday Satoshi was off, but had to go to a funeral, so I had dinner by myself--Some chicken wings which I bought at our shopping arcade, delicious asparagus, leftover carrot salad, several olives with feta cheese and corn..oh, and a dark beer. But, I was a bit disappointed by this corn.

When I bought it, it looked really fresh and sweet (look how big it is too about 10 inches long, they even had it packaged to show off the nice, plump kernels), but after steaming it, it wasn't sweet at all. I think it may be a bit too early for corn here. (I wonder if it was the area that it was grown in? I usually buy Hokkaido (Northern Japan) corn, but this one was from Kumamoto (Southern Japan).)

This morning, I went chocolate shopping in Kyoto. After finishing "The Chocolate Connoisseur", I realized that a LOT of the chocolates I've been eating were not in the author's eyes "true chocolate". And that a lot of chocolate that say 70%, sometimes have other "not so good" ingredients in them, just to make a sale. So, I went to seek out some of the recommended tastings that were listed in the book. I hope to learn more about tasting so that I can be a bit more descriptive than just saying something was "good" or "delicious".

Whenever I go to Kyoto, one of the places I sometimes walk through is Nishiki Market (I don't always go because this place can be at times really chaotic!). This place is the best place to find fresh foods and veggies and they give LOTS of samples! After seeing HwnPake's post on tsukudani, I decided to pick some up. Tsukudani is anything that is preserved by boiling in shoyu (soy sauce) and sugar. I bought two types.

Kurumi-chirimen (walnut-whitebait)--this one is on the sweet side, plus the walnuts give it a nice crunch.

Chirimen sansho (whitebait-Japanese pepper)--this one is more on the salty side and the sansho gives it a nice zing.

I also picked up some tonyu (soy milk) donuts. I only wanted one, but they only sold them in tens...I gave half away to my friend Kazumi at our lesson this afternoon. These donuts are really light and fluffy.

Lunch was at Mlesna Tea House. They are apparently a Sri Lanka tea company and have a tea house in Kyoto. I had their vegetable curry set, which came with a salad, choice of hot or iced tea and petit four (the little plate with a cookie, meringue & chocolate covered almond). The iced tea was an apple flavored tea and was great without any gum syrup in it. Unfortunately, I was facing the kitchen and saw the guy open a package of pre-made curry and add in the veggies....

Tonight, Satoshi has a party to welcome new staff, so I'm alone for dinner again. I bought some fried aji(horse mackerel) with veggies and a sweet and spicy sauce. I ate up the rest of the carrot salad and leftover asparagus.

Hope you have a nice weekend....enjoy the post Aunty!