fun

I saw this on Facebook and had to try it.

Take an oblong shaped tomato.

Cut it at an angle.

Then flip one side around and create a heart.

You can keep it together with a toothpick if you wish.

Perfect for bento and a nice way to brighten up a rainy day.

falafel

You know whenever I make something, I'm a bit greedy and try to use the ingredients to make many different things instead of a lot of one thing.

For example, I made falafel yesterday. I used half the can of garbanzos for it and with the other half I made my favorite chickpea salad.

Since I used half an egg for the falafel, I plan to use the other half to make a small batch of oatmeal cookies.

Is it only me or do you do that too?

Getting back to the falafel, they were really easy to make and delicious, better than the ones I tried over the summer.

Here is the recipe I used, I left out the salt and pepper, and added some egg (1/2 an egg).

Falafel : About.com

1/2 can garbanzo beans, rinsed
1/4 onion
1 clove of garlic
fresh parsley, leaves only
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 an egg (optional)
1 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon oil

I whizzed everything except the flour in a food processor, then mixed in the flour.

Instead of deep frying them, I put 1 tablespoon of oil into a non-stick pan and pan fried them.

The mixture is quite wet, but when you cook them, they do firm up a little.

I served this with a mint cucumber tzatziki.

For the tzatziki, I mixed some mint, and cucumber with some yogurt and pepper.

NOTES: I ended up with 9 falafel, I think the amount you end up would depend on how big or small you make them.

They cook up pretty fast and had lots of flavor.

I'm definitely making these again. They are perfect for our meatless weekday dinners.

past couple of days

From Thursday to Sunday, Satoshi was away on his company trip to Bangkok.

Here's what I did while he was away...

Thursday, I had my annual physcial check-up. It feels like I just had one, but I looked at my archives and it is about a year.

This year, I went to another hospital and my appointment was at 3 in the afternoon.

Can you imagine fasting until then?! At least I was able to eat breakfast, but no water (or food) until 3...

I had the barium test again.

This year, the doctor was really old with a jet black pompadour hairstyle (the Japanese call this type of hairstyle a "rezent", dunno why).

While I was on the machine for the barium test, he would bark out orders over a mic which I couldn't understand, it reminded me of that teacher on "Charlie Brown". "waa waa waa".

At one point, I looked at him through the window and said "what?!" in English...then the assistant came in (snickered a bit) and positioned me the way the doctor wanted.

Throughout the test, you could hear the doctor sighing, because I wasn't doing exactly what he wanted me to.

There was even this part of the machine that looked like a fist that he would "jab" into my stomach, well, he even "jabbed" my ribs with it. I'm sure he enjoyed doing that...

No bedside manner whatsoever.

It'll be a couple of weeks before I find out my results, but hopefully everything will turn out okay.

Linner (Lunch & dinner) was pizza and beer (and ice cream) that night.

Friday, I went to catch the early show.

A Japanese romance comedy shot in Paris.

The story itself was so-so, but I enjoyed seeing different areas of Paris.

Saturday, I made a batch of ginger syrup. This time I used agave instead of honey. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks good.

Sunday, I went walking and came across this R2D2-ish building.

The past couple of days have been kinda warm 24C (75F).

What have you been up to?

cacao sampaka

The other day I tried Cacao Sampaka's A lunch...1500 yen.

It started off with a salad topped with Jamon Serrano & a special chocolate vinaigrette, which tasted like it had balsamic vinegar as well as some dark chocolate in it.

The main dish was a pasta tossed with vine ripened veggies (tomatoes, zucchini & yellow bell peppers).

It looked like a little but was quite filling.

To end, a grilled cheese sandwich.

Havarti cheese and their tomato chocolate jam....savory dessert, different, but yum!

I wrote about their tomato chocolate jam before here.

Their lunch was delicious though a bit on the high end.

soup weather

Wednesday, it rained all.day.long.

Perfect soup weather.

I made a batch of Kim chee chige (minus the pork), using up what veggies I had in my refridge (a little kabocha, carrot, kinoko (shimeji & maitake)).

I think it may have been a bit too salty for Satoshi but it really hit the spot.

Is it soup weather where you are?

sunset

Thursday, I had thought the sunset wasn't gonna be too spectacular since it had been cloudy and drizzly all day, but then I saw pink on my curtains and looked out.

The sky was "on fire" as the sun set...awesome, yeah?!

Boy, the week flew by, have a great weekend.

it's back

It's been awhile since I have seen the rubber duck. Apparently it was back in Osaka last year, but I missed checking it out.

This year they had the rubber duck as part of a festival. Since Osaka has many rivers running through it, they wanted to showcase the rivers and had an event with many areas lit-up as well as areas along the river to picnic in the evening.

There were many food booths and food trucks too.

Besides the duck, they also had this...

A huge kokeshi doll.

I think someone said it is 10 meters tall (about 32 feet). It was inflated but would've definitely been more impressive if it were made of wood like the kokeshi dolls are.

Too bad Satoshi couldn't meet me for dinner near the water, still, I'm glad I was able to get out and see these.