56 posts tagged “food”
After work, we had a drinking party, so I went in to work again after coming home to wait for people to be ready to leave. I was surprised to find, on my desk, a flyer advertising a "Canadian Food Tasting and Info Session", taking place my school on Thursday. I'm not sure who's in charge of this, but I think it may be the 2nd grade social studies teacher, as he'd borrowed my big japanese-language fact-book of Canada.
Now, this factbook has lots of stuff about history and geography and economy and stuff like that, but not culture so much, and nothing at all about food. As such, you'd think they'd come speak to the resident Canadian (yours truly) to fill in that information.
They didn't. This was the first I'd heard of it.
With trepidation, I looked at their list of foods.
1. Tomato, Bean and Bacon Soup.
Now, though I've not had this, and I wouldn't necessarily call it CANADIAN, it's not unlike soups I have had back home, and so I will give it a pass.
2. Salmon steak covered in shredded cheese and grilled.
WHAT. WHY WOULD YOU RUIN A GOOD SALMON STEAK BY PUTTING SHITTY QUALITY PRE-SHREDDED CHEESE ON IT AND BROILING It??? THIS IS APALLING.
3. As a beverage, maple syrup.
I hope I don't have to explain what's wrong here.
What the HELL. Why would YOU DO THIS TO ME.
The proper answer for this menu should have been:
-Cheddar Cheese Soup (they get a soup, they get their cheese, and as we know, Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup is as Canadian as Ketchup chips)
-salmon with a maple syrup glaze
but nope! They've fucked it!
Two years, and I've been front-paged! I frankly never thought it would happen, i don't write front-page worthy things usually, but I'm glad it was the Pork with Apple/Fig Compote post that made it to the front.
I was getting all these comments on it from people I don't know and I was like "uhhhhhhhh.... wait!" then I checked the front page. :) It's also on the culture [tig] page.
It is autumn. That means fresh figs, at least here it does! One of my teachers has a fig tree her father in law planted, despite the fact that no one in that family likes figs. This year, she decided instead of letting them go to waste like usual, she'd try to give some to me.
Now, when she said, "Do you like figs?" as a lead in to offering them to me, I had to say, "I don't know." This, of course, is due to the fact that, in my experience, figs were not a fruit that you could eat on their own; rather, they were merely the magically integral ingredent in Fig Newtons. Now, if you, like me, have had such a newton-bound upbringing, you don't know what you're missing, and I urge you to find fresh figs at your earliest convenience. You can eat them whole (except for the stem-bit), or if you don't like the skin, just eat the insides. There's lots of fig dessert recipes, and a single appetizer that you'll find everywhere (figs + goat cheese + prosciutto), but for more of a main dish thing, I suggest you try this recipt, my pork with apple/fig compote.
Ingredients:
* pork
* figs
* red wine
* apple
* rosemary
* olive oil
* salt, pepper
1. marinate your pork (i used a tiny tenderloinish roasty thing -- you could use chops or cutlets) in olive oil and salt and pepper for a little while.
2. sear the meat on all sides until it's brown and delicious looking; of course, it's still uncooked in the middle
3. wrap your meat in tinfoil. before sealing the package, add a sprig or two of fresh rosemary (or a sprinkling of dried leaves)
4. put it in the oven until it's cooked. if you have a meat thermometer, it's easy -- look up the safe temp for pork, and then check your meat every once in a while until it's done. I don't have one, nor do i have a real oven, so let's enjoy food poisoning roulette and low heats! (I'm cooking mine at 500watts for about an hour).
5. you can start on any side dishes you plan on having at this point. I, myself, will be having potatoes and asparagus. I'll cook the potatoes in toaster oven as well, in a foil packet, but to reduce cooking time i'm nuking them first using the directions found at wikihow. asparagus will be done later, and is even simpler
6. Next, let's make the fig/apple reduction. First, prepare your figs. If you want a clear sauce, and you plan on straining it later before serving (or glazing, as i think this would make a nice glaze as well), you can just chop the figs roughly, skin and all. I prefer a sauce with a texture, so I've just scooped out the insides, and broken them up. Same for the apple -- if you want to keep it in the sauce afterwards, feel free to chop them however you like, otherwise just roughly cut them up skin and all. A good rule of thumb is 2 cups of figs (about 475ml) and one apple. That makes enough for an army though, so I've scaled it down to 1/2 cup of figs, 1/4 apple. You can add a tablespoon of sugar (1/4 tblspoon in my case) if you want, but this should be sweet enough, and i've skipped it.
7. Put them in a frying pan on medium heat, with just a touch of olive oil, and heat until they just start to release their juices. Then, add 2 cups of red wine (port is apparently best; i don't know what that is or how to find it in japan, so i just grabbed a $6 bottle of Italian red) (i'm using 1/2 cup, of course), bring to the boil, then reduce heat so it will simmer. Stir occasionally, and watch as it reduces to about 1/2 it's original volume.
8. When you think the meat is finished, take it out and check it, either with your meat thermometer, or the old 'stick it and see if the juices run clear' routine. if it is, wrap it back up and let it rest for 5 or 10 minutes out of the heat. this will let the juices be re-absorbed by the meat, so (1) you don't get a puddle of meat juice on your plate and (2) you have luscious juicy meat.
9. cut the meat however you like (I've done slices -- if you're doing a chop or a cutlet, you don't need to cut it, really -- the eater will do that, not the cook), and plate it along side your side dishes. drizzle the sauce (i left the fruit in... does that make it more of a compote?) on the meat. take a photo if you're that kind of foodie. 出来上がり！ It's finished! Enjoy your meal.
For Halloween, there's limited time Caramel Flan flavoured Kit-Kat, and each individual bar has a little inspirational or whatnot phrase on it, and I thought, because I can, I will share some of them with you.
夢は大きくて、いいんだよ。
It's good to have big dreams.
あきらめないで、夢を終わらせないで。
Don't give up, don't cause your dreams to end.
どんな時も、ベストを尽くすこと。
Do your best at any time.
ほんとうに好きなことを、見つけよう。
Find something you really like.
ハロウィンは、子供の夢を応援する日。
キット、願いかなう。
Surely, wishes come true.
One does wonder, however, which of these are of any use to a fatty gorging on imitation chocolate?
The title? Referring to today.
Of course, with a hyperbolic title like that, you'll be thinking "OH WOW WHAT BIG WONDERFUL THING HAPPENED TODAY?!"
Nothing. Nothing big happened at all.
I woke up, I had some tea for breakfast (I'd been sick, and not taking breakfast, so I had no food in the house for that purpose). Sat and checked e-mail, read some things. Got up, stretched and warmed up, then did a 4 minute HIIT set, which I didn't think I'd be able to do. In the end, though my final sprint interval was a bit sluggish, and I was wheezing pretty damned good, I finished, and felt good. Human.
Hopped in the shower, got dressed, headed to work.
Did a couple classes in the morning with kids who don't try because their teacher doesn't try. I tried to rile them up, make them angry enough to react instead of sitting there resenting English. Seemed to work, at least a bit. Needs more work though.
Chilled in the staffroom for a period, drank a vitamin drink. Was interrupted at about 11 when the delivery girl stopped at the school with my new V6 CDs that I had to sign and pay for. How did she know I was there! They've never brought stuff to school for me before - always tried my apartment, then left the card for me to call them and arrange. That was pretty cool that she came.
Came home for lunch, chilled, started my blip.fm set, had a coke (a real coke, because there wasn't any Zero in the neighbourhood).
Headed back to work, marked some papers, and suddenly a feeling not-unlike euphoria overtook me. I was happy! I was grinning ear to ear! The sun was shining, bright and warm on my back; the cicadas were singing their last song of the summer; the breeze carried a gentle scent of early autumn blossoms; and I was happy. Not just HAPPY, but ecstaticly, uncontrollably happy.
I cannot, for the life of me, remember the last time I felt like this. The weird nostalgia flavour to the feeling suggests events from high school, or here but four years ago, but I can't place anything specific -- it's a vague, undefined feeling of nostalgia attached to definite feeling of awesome.
I decided to make the most of my good mood, just in case it didn't last (as they never have before), so I wrote postcards to some friends I haven't talked to in a while (postcards which, serendipitously, I had put in my bag at lunchtime). While writing, HMT popped over to ask me how I was feeling, and was pleased when I told him I felt fantastic, though possibly not as pleased as I was that he'd come to talk to me. I smiled wider.
When hometime came, I got my things together and headed out; when I got outside, and felt the breeze, and smelled the air, and saw the beautiful autumn sky, and the sunlight sparkling off the water in my bottle as I took a swig, I was overcome. It was too beautiful. Everything was in sharp, distinct focus, every sense. It was as though I've been living my life in a nondescript woolen sock all these years, and suddenly, clarity came. It brough tears to my eyes, to be quite honest.
I was going to take a picture of the sky, but decided that no, this was one of those things that needs to live on in my memory, so that it can't be cheapened and diminished by my lack of skills, or the low quality of my tools.
I went to the 100yen store, and bought some CD boxes. Found a shopping bag that has ridiculous Engrish on it that I'll share another time. Headed to the supermarket next, bought proper Chiquita bananas for breakfast, and some things for supper. Was greeted by several people I didn't know. Stopped in the garden centre, and saw the cutest little fern for 300 yen that I just had to have. It's like someone just went out into the forest and ripped a part of the forest floor out and put it in a pot. This, I decided, will be my memento of today, in the event I don't feel like this again for a long time. Just in case.
Came home, made supper (a mushroom rice beef thing), listened to music, finished my blip set, finished some post cards, ripped my new CDs, and just existed.
It was awesome.
A perfectly ordinary day. Nothing extraordinary, just the norm. Oh, and that small thing of me being the happiest I've ever been. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was altered in some way -- my meds affecting my mind, the spirochetes burrowing into my pleasure centers, or something. I don't care to understand why I feel this way, really -- I just know I do, and I want to feel this way for a long, long time.
I recently joined the Flickr Group Roulette group at Flickr (spot the redundancy? make a report to the Department of Redundancy Dept.). It'll be fun for a while, though it'll mean I'm camwhoring a bit. (shrug)
Today the theme was mostly covered faces, so of course, I had to go for the shirt ninja look.
For supper, I had Chili Garlic Tiger Shrimp with Scallops. It was good, but not as spicy as I'd hoped (I used a pre-bought spice package -- the same brand as the kung-pao chicken I had a couple weeks ago). It was good, but needed to be spicier. I was gonna kung-pao again, but the chili garlic stuff only has a few days before it expires; it's either very old, or it has a super short shelf-life compared to kung-pao chick and indonesian fried rice spice packs (they were bought at the same time, and are good until november 2k9). I think I may have undercooked the scallops (some of them anyway) a bit. They were mushier and more tender than most scallops I've had, though maybe that just means I cooked them right and no one else ever has?! Just what I need, shellfish poisoning on top of whatever the hell else is wrong with me. -_-
<FLASH>
GOOD CHRIST WHY IS IT ALL WHITE YOU STUPID THING.
Whatever, next time.
A few things:
In other news, new V6 single this week! The B-edition of the single had this video on the bonus DVD, and it's delightful, so I am sharing it with y'all.
Still sick. Headache kicked in around 11, got gradually worse. Just after supper, it was so bad I couldn't stand it, and had to go get ibuprofen (I somehow didn't have any in the house). Took my temp before I went out, and I had a 38/100.4 degree fever, which was batshit insane, as I didn't even have a fever that high when I had a crazy infection last year.
Had pho for supper, with delicious roast pork. Followed it up with ice cream, cuz hay, i have a fever ! The crunchy bit on the outside wasn't actually crunchy, but oh well, it was still good. Fever has gone down a bit, and headache is gone, so that's good, I guess. Watching NCIS, which is much more hilarious than it ought to be, you know, like House.
Anyway, here's a video of a Yamanote Line train arriving at Okachimachi Station and leaving again.
I'm sick. I have a cold. I hope it goes away quickly, as two weeks from now I'll be somewhere over the Pacific, and I HAETZ TRANSPACIFIC TRAVEL, SO I CAN ONLY IMAGINE HOW FUCKING TERRIBLE IT'LL BE IF I AM ALREADY SICK >:|||
But anyway (shrug).
I made pad thai tonight. It wasn't GREAT (I cheated -- I used instant pad thai -- noodles, spice mix, veggies, eggs, shrimps), but I made it better by adding fresh shrimp, scallions, shallots, and egg, and tofu. It was filling and delicious. Needed more spice to clear out my head, but it was alright.
Anyway, here's a video taken at my desk at work. FEEL THE AMBIENCE.
