The Lunchbox That's Not a Bento

At one point last month, Kelly made a post about bento (Japanese lunch boxes) and asked, "do you bento?" I believe that real bento making is an art form and that it takes a certain character type and appreciation for that art to really make the time and effort put into it worthwhile. I think many Japanese people find it gratifying because they find presentation to be just as important as the quality of the food.

When I commented on Kelly's post, I said that I make a boxed lunch, but not a bento. Even if I were inclined to take the time to make a real bento, it wouldn't be the sort of thing my husband would want to eat. He won't eat cold rice, potatoes, etc. and there's no microwave oven at his workplace. Also, he doesn't like his food to touch, so artfully cramming a lot of different food into the same box is simply not going to work for him. Finally, he doesn't like a lot of fruit and vegetables so there would pretty much be a limited palette to work with in regards to what was used to embellish the box.

In our case, the preparation of a lunch box is relatively utilitarian, but it's a bit beyond the standard brown bag or lunch in a pail in terms of effort. I make my husband's lunch 4 days a week both to save money and because it's better nutritionally than eating out. He eats out once a week for some variety (usually at Subway). The preparation starts with making my own high protein bread. I have to make this about twice every three weeks and keep it in supply in the freezer. The loaves are actually on the small side, so even though he is the only one who eats it (and it is only used for lunch), it doesn't last terribly long.

I also make espresso shots once or twice a week to prepare cold lattes to take in his cold thermos, and also make hot coffee for his hot thermos. If that weren't enough on the caffeine front, I also send along a Diet Coke wrapped in an ice pack and about once a week prepare two liters of Brita filtered water for him to drink at the office. His office used to have a filter on the tap, but they recently removed it so now he needs his own water (and we don't want to create waste by having him buy 2 liters every week).


The box itself looks something like this. Everything is in a separate container so that the food doesn't touch and contaminate the other food with various odors, wetness, or flavors. From the left on the top is a sliced apple (turning brown, though I know a bit of lemon would stop that, he doesn't care), fig newtons, and a rare inclusion of a white chocolate peanut butter cup on top of a container of pretzels. Usually, he takes baked tortilla chips, but this week he's having pretzels for a change of pace. On the bottom is a container of carrots wrapped in a wet paper towel to keep them from drying out and a baloney and cheese sandwich on the low carb high protein bread.

This particular box looks more put together than usual because the fruit actually fits in it. Often, he takes a banana, strawberries, grapes, or a bigger portion of apple that won't fit into the box and has to be taken separately. Often, my husband doesn't eat all of the starchy or sweet components that are packed here, but because he works 2 long days that start at 11:00 am and end at 10:00 pm (and 3 more "normal-length" days), and swims before work, he wants to have extra food on hand in case he gets hungry during the long day. Usually, I get this box back with 2-3 of the cookies still in it, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the pretzels or chips, and sometimes a portion of the sandwich as well.

He's not a big eater, and doesn't eat all of the carbs in particular. He'll almost certainly only eat half of that peanut butter cup, for instance, if he even eats it today at all. Sometimes he just takes it to work and leaves it there until he really wants it.

I've been making these sorts of lunches for him for quite some time now, and now that we're looking at leaving, I'm thinking that I probably won't be doing this sort of thing after we go back to America. It's not so much because I won't want to, but because our circumstances will certainly be different. For instance, I expect to work full-time if I can find a job, and he expects to be a student somewhere. Because of this, I'm immortalizing this process that I'll have undertaken for 6 years for my future reference.

Peach Oatmeal Bread

In what may be a vain attempt to eat better by incorporating more whole grains, I've been poking about for more recipes to try and came across a promising looking peach oatmeal bread recipe on a site called "Slow Like Honey". The recipe apparently originally came from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking recipe collection, so I had more confidence that it might not be a dud (as so many of my experiences with Internet recipes have been).

It turns out that those King Arthur people know how to use whole grains. In fact, after trying this recipe, I'm inclined to actually buy their recipe book. My only concern is that it might use ingredients that I can't get in Japan, but I'll almost certainly still get it anyway given the rave reviews of it on Amazon and the fact that this turned out really well for me.

I did change just a few things (Splenda, canned white peaches rather than fresh ones or yellow cling peaches) and made a small mistake. I should have baked it just a bit longer as you can see by the picture above were the center is a little dark. The center is slightly still "doughy". I think a full hour (rather than my stopping it around 53 minutes) as the original recipe stated would have done the trick.

My loaf looks more "rustic" than the one pictured on Slow Like Honey because she pureed her peaches and I just chopped mine up into small pieces of about half about the size you'd find in fruit cocktail. I also didn't use fresh peaches as they're too good to waste on baking and too expensive in Tokyo.

Peach Oatmeal Bread
(adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking)

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
¾ cup unbleached bread flour
½ cup granulated Splenda (or you can use white sugar)
½ cup packed light or brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats

Fruit:
1 can white peaches, drained and diced into small pieces

Wet ingredients:
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon almond extract

Directions:
Mix all of the dry ingredients together then toss the diced peaches in the dry mix. Whisk the eggs a bit then add the other liquid ingredients and blend thoroughly. Add the wet to the dry and mix until just moistened. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) for an hour or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

My husband, who generally does not care for whole grain foods, actually liked this but was unhappy with the texture inconsistency with the peaches. Next time, I'm going to puree the peaches to get a smoother texture. We ate ours with butter this first time out, but I think it'd be just as good plain despite not being incredibly sweet.

Whole Wheat Pancakes (that are actually good)

I'm guessing one of the hallmarks of a good pornographer is that they can hide all the flaws and grossness of the activities they are portraying and make it look like happy fun time with beautiful people. Well, maybe not actually "beautiful" so much as thin, copiously implanted, and shaven.

A good food pornographer similarly takes a subject which can look like slop and make it look appetizing. What is more, they can take utter failures and make them look like successes. One of my major pet peeves (which I've mentioned before) is that a lot of the recipes I find on the Internet look fabulous or are steeped in superlatives, but when I try the recipe, I get something inedible or lame.

Invariably, a lot of the best looking pictures with bad recipes have a bunch of comments under them saying, "it looks fabulous! I can't wait to try it!" They never have comments from people who have actually tried it. This irked me as the comments are relatively useless to those of us wanting to actually try the food rather than just treat it like a statue to admire, but I have finally figured out why there are no comments from people who make the featured item. I have posted comments on some of these failures and said in a polite way that the recipe didn't work out for me. Sometimes I've even asked for advice about where I may have gone wrong. Unsurprisingly, these comments are never posted. This goes a long way toward supporting my suspicion that people who post their glorious food porn pictures know that the recipes suck, but they post them anyway and hide the consequences.

I've made whole wheat pancakes on many occasions, but the results have been somewhat disappointing. Mainly, they're denser than I'd like, too flat, or too eggy. On the whole, they simply weren't fluffy enough to satisfy compared to the glory of cakes made with white flour. The truth is that whole wheat can't hold up to the decadence of white flour cakes. It never will because it has a different taste and texture due to the extra protein in them. The best you can hope for is something which is as good as it can be, but not so different from beautiful white pancakes as to disappoint.

I was poking around for a recipe for whole wheat pancakes and you'd be surprised how many included white flour. How can it be whole wheat if there's white flour in it? It sort of takes away the "whole" part. At any rate, I found an abysmal recipe which was just 4 ingredients - whole wheat flour, baking soda, brown sugar and milk. I was going to try it anyway because I though a radically different approach might work better. The next morning I had second thoughts and decided to heavily modify the recipe to include things I think should be in any pancake recipe. The results were surprisingly good.

Whole Wheat Pancakes:

Dry ingredients:
1 cup (regular) whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 semi-heaping tbsp. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt

Wet ingredients:
3/4 cup milk with 1/2 tbsp. distilled vinegar added (or buttermilk)
1 medium egg
1 tbsp. Canola oil
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder into a bowl. Scoop most of it up and sift a second time. Add the sugar and salt and mix up the rest of the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients until well-blended. Add the wet into the dry and stir until all of the dry ingredients are moistened. Don't overmix it or smooth out lumps. Mainly, you're just looking to make sure there's nothing dry in your pancakes.

Heat a skillet or griddle at medium-high heat. The pan should be good and hot, but not smoking hot. Add just enough Canola oil to coat the pan and let it heat for about a minute. There shouldn't be any pools of oil. You just want to add enough to make sure they don't stick.

Add the batter by the tablespoon. I used about two tablespoons per cake and they were not huge, but not small. It's very important to follow this next part when cooking if you want to have good, fluffy pancakes. You need to watch them carefully and flip them when the edges look dry and/or the very first bubble starts to form on the top. If you have the heat set properly, they will brown quickly as well. Only flip them once or you will have tough pancakes. You can test for doneness once they're flipped by pressing gently on the center of one of the cakes. It should feel firm, but be springy.


If you wait too long to flip them, they won't rise enough. You should also be able to tell if they're ready by the fact that they don't break apart when you attempt to flip them (and by the edges looking dry near the bottom). Essentially, the bottom should be cooked and the top still quite wet. If you look at the stack of cakes at the top of the post, you can see that they are uneven because they were flipped when top was still very moist and it splayed out a bit (bottom is smaller than the top). This is what you want.

These are very hearty tasting and undeniably "wheaty" in taste, but they have the right texture and look and feel like an real, fluffy pancake. They're actually better with things like jam and honey than the average white flour pancake, but good with syrup as well. When you add the syrup, the pancakes will be more "crumbly" than usual pancakes because those made with whole wheat flour isn't as gluey as those made with white, but they don't disintegrate.

My feeling is that the baking soda made a huge difference with the whole wheat flour because it acts much more rapidly than baking powder. I think it gave these extra lift, but it also means you can't make too many at once or save the batter for the next day if you won't want to use it all. My recipe made 7 medium-sized pancakes. I ate two and put the rest in the refrigerator for the next few days. I recommend cooking them all up at once rather than saving the batter because I think they'll lose all of their capacity to rise by the next day.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread (for ABM)

I've made a lot of whole wheat bread since I bought a bread machine about a decade ago. I haven't made much really good whole wheat bread though. Most of the time, it has come out relatively heavy and dense. I'd pour the ingredients into the machine and the brick of brown bread that came out was usually only about 25% bigger than the dough ball that had formed at the start of the process.

I used to think this was because of Japanese yeast or possibly because the bread machine didn't knead the dough well enough. Eventually, I just concluded that whole wheat bread was dense by nature and that I was never going to be able to make a loaf which was relatively light. This was pretty frustrating because I can buy whole wheat bread which has a pretty decent texture at Japanese markets, but it costs about $1.30 for 3 tiny slices. If food manufacturers can make whole wheat bread that is relatively light, why can't I?

After years of bread so dense I'm surprised it didn't form its own singularity, I finally stumbled upon what seems to make the difference, wheat gluten. If you add a couple of tablespoons of vital wheat gluten to the dough, it seems to puff up and make a much lighter whole wheat loaf. With a little help from a random recipe I ran across on the web and some experimentation on my part, I finally have a recipe for what I'd consider about the best bread machine recipe for whole wheat bread. For those in Japan, please note that you can get vital wheat gluten from the Foreign Buyer's Club.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread (for ABM):

• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1/4 cup Canola oil
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tbsp. vital wheat gluten
  
• 3 1/4 cups (regular) whole wheat flour
  
• 1/2 cup oatmeal (regular rolled oats - not quick)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. yeast

Place the liquid ingredients in your bread machine, then the oatmeal, and then the remaining dry ones (add the yeast last, making sure it doesn't touch any wet ingredients). For best results, allow the flour to sit in the bread pan and absorb moisture for about an hour. Set the crust color to light and choose the whole wheat setting. Press start.

If you use honey, note that bread will be a little dark even with a light crust color setting. Also, when you toast it, it will tend to toast pretty rapidly because of the extra sugar, particularly if you use a high setting on a toaster oven. I think it would be possible, however, to make this with sugar instead of honey, but you might have to make some minor adjustment to the amount of wheat flour because the honey is liquid and sugar is not. Also, I'm not sure if the yeast will be quite as effective feeding off of sugar as compared to honey. Using more "nutritious" oils and sugars tends to give me a better rise.

24 Cans of Chickpeas

Back when the CH and I first started buying from the Foreign Buyer's Club (FBC), they only sold food in complete cases and a lot of the items they offered were not available in Japanese markets. With access to food we hadn't seen for awhile came a lot of purchases of huge quantities of items. More often than not, canned items that we'd enthusiastically embrace at first would languish under our shelves for years until they grew rusty and outdated. I hate to imagine how much money we wasted on food that was thrown out.

These days, the need to buy an entire case of some food has been greatly lessened by the plethora of imports in run-of-the-mill Japanese shops and the FBC's changed shopping options which allow you to frequently buy single items. We try not to buy a case of anything unless we're sure that we'll eat it regularly enough to finish it off. In some situations, however, there is such a vast discrepancy between the cost of an item as a single unit in a Japanese market and the per unit price when buying a case from the FBC, that I'll leap in and buy more than I think I can make.

That is where this post comes in. When I decided to make hummus for some guests awhile back, I picked up a can of chick peas (garbanzo beans) for a whopping 400 yen ($4.39 USD). The hummus was a huge hit, and I wanted to make it again for a more reasonable price. I also wanted to be able to make Chana Masala occasionally, but not at such a high cost for something which is so low on the food chain and really should be part of a cheap, vegetarian meal. The FBC carries a store brand of garbanzo beans for about 160 yen a can, but you have to buy 24 cans at once. Before I allowed myself to buy so many, I had to make a commitment mentally to using them at regular intervals, even if it meant making a special effort and trying a variety of new recipes. The situation, incidentally, is complicated by the fact that my husband won't eat chick peas.

The first new recipe I tried was Butter Chickpea Curry, though I modified the original recipe a bit as it includes condensed tomato soup and I both do not have it available and don't like using pre-prepared food if I can avoid it. It turned out very well, but I want to make something other than hummus and Indian dishes. It's not that I don't like them, but rather that I'd like to use a variety of flavors.


I'd tried making chick pea patties once before with pretty bad results. They tasted okay, but the texture was gummy and unpleasant. This time around, I got a much better result, one that is worth keeping around and making again.

Chick pea (garbanzo bean) patties:

2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 small onion, diced
1 very, very small green pepper (piman), finely diced
1/2 large tomato, diced
1 15-ounce can of garbanzo beans/chick peas
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4-1/2 tsp. coarsely ground pepper (to taste)
1/4 tsp. cilantro
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. parsley
1 egg
1/2-3/4 cup dry, unseasoned bread crumbs
canola oil and butter for cooking

Heat enough canola oil to cover the bottom of a skillet. Saute the garlic over medium heat until softened and fragrant. Turn up the heat to high and cook the onions until softened. Add the peppers cook them until softened. Finally, add the tomato and cook the mixture until most of the moisture has cooked away. It'll resemble a coarse paste when finished. Stir the salt and pepper into the vegetable mixture. Keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't burn. Turn the heat down if necessary. The moisture of each added ingredient should keep it from burning.

Put the vegetable paste in a small bowl food processor and add the parsley, cilantro, and oregano. Drain and rinse the garbanzo beans. Add them to the food processor and process it into a rough mixture. You may need to scrape down the bowl a few times. Add the egg and process until the mixture becomes a wet, loose paste. Turn this mixture into a larger bowl and stir in bread crumbs. Mix in 1/2 cup at first and allow the mixture to rest for 5 minutes and see if it is firm enough to form patties. If it's still too wet, add another 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs. It shouldn't be sticky, but it should be soft and hold its shape.

Separate the dough into 4 parts and make a flat patty from each part. Heat butter in a skillet (use oil if you like, but it'll brown and taste better with butter) and fry each patty over medium-high heat on each side until cooked through and nicely browned.

I ate mine with fresh homemade bread and butter. I think that they'd be good with mayonnaise and mustard in a sandwich, too.

Absolutely Inauthentic Chicken Pulao

One of my favorite Indian dishes is chicken biryani. Prior to coming to Japan, I had never sampled Indian food because I was born in a rural area and there were no ethnic restaurants in the area during most of the time I lived there. In fact, there wasn't even a Chinese place within reasonable distance of my home until a few years before I moved to California and married.

I've had biryani at several Indian places in Japan and though it is often different, it's always been good. Unfortunately, it is also quite expensive, so I rarely have it from restaurants these days. Now that my income is about 1/3 of what it was when I worked full-time, I have to be mindful of these things.

I've been trying to create something close to the biryani I enjoyed at restaurants for some time and have been messing around with a chicken pulao recipe on Quick Indian Cooking for months and months trying to get it to come out somewhere in the neighborhood of the tasty dishes I've had from the kitchens of actual Indian cooks. I made the recipe pretty much as it was given at first, but I think none of the spices I can buy locally are fresh or potent enough to really do a good job. I've tinkered with it and finally come up with something I believe works with the quality and type of spices one can buy in Tokyo. By the way, the reason this is pulao and not biryani is that the rice is cooked with everything else. In biryani, it is cooked separately. If you're interested in authentic Indian cuisine, then I strongly recommend Quick Indian Cooking. The recipes are excellent and easy.

My recipe is quite good, though it certainly is not easy. This is probably the 7th or 8th time I've made this dish and this is the last version. I'm quite pleased with it. The tomato paste really brought something to it and I think this was the best mix of spices considering my limits in terms of freshness and options.

Absolutely Inauthentic Chicken Pulao

for marinade and meat:

• 2 cups low fat yogurt
• 1/4 inch fresh ginger
• 2 small garlic cloves (or 1 big fat one)
  
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. coarse black pepper
• 2 large raw chicken breasts (1/2 breasts, actually) cut into bite-size pieces
  

for cooking:

• 1/4 inch fresh ginger
• 2 small cloves garlic (or 1 big fat one)
  
• 1 cinnamon stick broken into 4 pieces
  
• 1.5 star anise (mine are fragmented such that all the points are broken off, so about 8 "tips")
• 2 small bay leaves (or 1 large one - though I prefer 2 small)
  
• 2 cardamom pods
• 2 tbsp. tomato paste (in Japan, you can buy this in individual packets with 1 tbsp. in each)
• 1 tsp. cumin seeds
  
• 1 tsp. turmeric
• 1/2 tsp. hot garam masala (use regular if you're sensitive to hot spices)
  
• salt to taste
• 2 large thinly sliced onions (or 3 small ones)
  
• 2 cups uncooked rice
• 4 cups chicken stock
• vegetable oil (any unflavored oil) or ghee (clarified butter) as needed (I used Canola oil - but I bet ghee would be tastier and give it that restaurant greasiness)
  
• 1 very small diced green pepper (optional)
• cashews (optional, as garnish)

Marinade instructions:
Put the yogurt into a bowl with a lid. Add the salt and pepper. Blitz all of the garlic and ginger in a small bowl food processor (or mince the garlic and grate the ginger). Add half of the ginger and garlic to the marinade and set the other half aside to use in cooking. Whisk the spices into the yogurt. Add the chicken, cover with lid, and allow to marinate in the refrigerator for 2 hours to overnight.

Cooking instructions:
Add about 1-2 tbsp. oil to cover the bottom of a large, deep skillet. Heat the oil over medium-high heat then fry the bay leaves, cardamom pods, star anise, cumin seeds and cinnamon stick pieces until they become fragrant. Create a little free space in the pan and add the ginger and garlic that you previously set aside. Fry the fresh spices until they are aromatic and lightly brown. Be careful not to burn any of the spices. If they start to cook too quickly, turn down the heat.

Add the sliced onions to the spices and stir. Cook the onions until they are golden brown and translucent. They should reduce in size to about half their original volume as you cook. If you want green peppers, add the diced peppers and cook them about halfway through the cooking of the onions. The peppers don't have to be soft, but they should be a little wilted before you move on to adding the chicken.

Push all of the vegetables and spices to one side of the pan. Move the pan off center on the burner such that the vegetables and spices aren't getting much of the main heat from where they have been pushed to the side. Add the chicken and yogurt marinade to the empty side of the pan. Stir the turmeric into the yogurt/chicken mixture. Cook with medium to high heat until slightly browned. A lot of the moisture from the yogurt will boil off, but all of it does not have to. Add the chicken stock, hot garam masala, and tomato paste. Stir these in gently and carefully until they are dissolved. Allow this to simmer for at least 15 minutes, longer is okay, but if too much liquid boils off, you'll need to add in some water to make sure there is enough moisture for cooking the rice.

Add the uncooked rice, stir to distribute the rice evenly and cook over medium heat until it just starts to bubble. Cover the pan and turn the heat down as low as possible while still allowing the dish to simmer. Allow to cook until most of the water is absorbed and the rice is tender. This should take around 40 minutes, but it depends on the kind of rice you use and the type of pan. You'll have to test the rice for doneness by tasting it or cutting it with a fork.

Note: You can salt this at any stage of the cooking or wait and add salt when you eat it. In my experience, it will need to be salted again at some point. The salt from the marinade will not be enough.

For serving, I usually take tongs or chopsticks and pick out all of the bits of whole spices just so we don't have to take them out as we eat or don't accidentally bite into a bit of star anise or a cardamom pod. Also, I don't want stronger spices permeating the finished dish in select spots (esp. the cinnamon) when the leftovers are stored in the refrigerator so I like to get them out before storing.

I think this would also be good if about a handful of raisins were added at the same time as the rice, but my husband doesn't like raisins in these types of dishes so I've never tried it (though all of the biryani I've ever had in restaurants has included raisins). Also, the pictured version does not have green peppers in it, but I have used green pepper in this dish before. It's good, but you have to be careful not to overdo it or the green pepper flavor will be too strong and dominate the dish.

Finally, keep in mind that my spices are crap. I think they're old because most of them are not typical in Japanese cuisine and spend a lot of time on store shelves before being sold. If you are using better quality spices, you may need to scale back to avoid making things too intense.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Scones

I've been meaning for quite some time to start making whole wheat bread, but I had to wait for summer to end before buying a 10 lb. bag of whole wheat flour. I could buy a smaller bag, but it costs a great deal more. In fact, it can cost the same size for 5 lbs. as for 10, depending on what you buy and where you buy it. However, I don't have a refrigerator big enough to hold 10 lbs. of flour. Hell, I don't have a refrigerator big enough to hold 10 of anything except maybe grapes or pine nuts. I also didn't want to leave a paper sack full of flour in the summer humidity and heat so I held off until this week.

Now, I've got a ton of whole wheat flour to use and I decided I'd start with trying to use it in some scones. Whole wheat can be pretty tricky because it doesn't hold together as well as white flour. For pastries, it's hard to get a tender, light texture when using whole wheat, particular when it's not pastry flour. Keeping this in mind, I ran the WW flour through the food processor to make it finer before making these scones. I'm not sure if it helped, but I can say that the results really pleased me.

The main benefit of whole wheat flour over regular flour is that it's supposed to be less likely to cause blood sugar spikes. Of course, when you're talking about a recipe with sugar it in, being worried about that seems a bit silly. Beyond it being a little healtheir, it also adds a heartier, earthier flavor to baked goods. Many people don't like the taste, but I do.

The scone recipe I made is a modification of several different recipes. I wanted to make the recipe a little sweeter so the scones could be eaten plain and so my husband would like them. If they seem too sweet for your tastes, you can just skip the brown sugar topping. I'm sure they'd be good without it. The texture was surprisingly light and satisfying.

Scones:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. cloves
• 6 tbsp. cold butter
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
• 1.5 tbsp. heavy cream
• 1.5 tbsp. milk
• 1 egg
• a little extra cream or milk for brushing the tops

Brown sugar topping:

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 /4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tbsp. cold butter

Making the scones: Blitz the whole wheat flour in your food processor for about a minute to make it finer. Thoroughly mix all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients. It should resemble little flaky crumbs and appear rather rough, but with no balls or globs of butter or large amounts of completely dry mix. Whisk all of the wet ingredients in a separate bowl until completely mixed. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and carefully moisten everything using a spoon or spatula but do not mix anymore than necessary or stir things up. It will seem that there is very little liquid for the amount of dry ingredients but that is okay. The dough will have bits of dry flour and seem not to want to hold together once everything is roughly moistened. Pat the dough together with your hands working it as little as possible to get it mixed together and formed into a long rectangle which looks like a flattened log. Don't worry if there are some cracks in it. Set the bowl aside and allow the dough to rest for about 10 minutes or so (longer is okay). Make the brown sugar topping (below).

Place the dough on a clean surface. The dough will not be sticky so you don't need to use flour. I prepared mine on a plastic cutting board.

guide for cutting triangular scones.

Finish shaping the dough into a long, thin rectangle. Cut the rectangle in half, then cut each half into thirds. Diagonally cut through each square to make a triangular scone. Place the scones on a cookie sheet (not greased) leaving enough room for them to increase in size by 50-70%. Brush the tops only with cream. Pile on the brown sugar topping (the scones are very tiny, but will grow as they bake so you need to liberally cover the tops so that there is a good cover of topping when they rise and spread).

Bake at 425 degrees F./220 degrees C. for 20 minutes. The scones will not brown much because they are whole wheat. Allow to cool until comfortably warm to the touch before eating. The texture will be a bit clumpy if you eat them hot, but they will be light and tender if you let them cool awhile.

Making the brown sugar topping: Mix together the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Mix the butter in with a fork or pastry cutter until you get little oddly-shaped balls.

I made a lot and froze all but 2. I think it's important to freeze them while fresh. For breakfast, I wrap a frozen scone in foil and put in in the toaster oven on high for 5 minutes. After the timer goes off, I usually let the scone rest in the toaster for another 5 minutes then have it with coffee. This brings back some of the fresh crispy exterior and makes the interior very light and tender.

Guests and Gifts

Because of serious back pain, it's hard for me to get out and visit people in their homes. I can do it, but it's something I have to plan out carefully to minimize walking and ensure rest stops as well as mentally prepare myself for the pain and the stress that comes along with the experience. People who can just walk out their front door and go anywhere they choose have no idea how liberated they are compared to the likes of me nor can they understand how I envy what they can take for granted.

Since it is so difficult for me to get around, I invite my friends to come to me and I really appreciate it when they make the effort. I know that it is time consuming and tiring to go to someone's house relative to having them come to you. Of course, there is preparation for guests coming to my place as well like cleaning and at least some food preparation, but I'm more than happy to do that as it's something I don't mind and I can operate in controlled circumstances which allow me to manage my pain.

Getting back to my kind guests though, because I appreciate their coming to me, I like to try and prepare a little something for them to take home with them when I have the time and energy to do it. Last time I had guests, I sent them home with some homemade brownies. Darryl (my former boss) came by yesterday and I decided to go for something a bit less sweet for him. He's not so into the overwhelmingly sugary stuff, I believe, though he is a fan of my peanut butter cookies. ;-)


I decided to revisit my sweet potato scones recipe after a very long absence so I could send Darryl off with a few of them (and toss some in the freezer for future breakfasts for me!). These are definitely the kind of thing that I can't make often because they are labor-intensive and require both boiling and baking. The hardest part of making them is forcing the cooked potatoes through a mesh sieve to make the mashed potato fluffy and airy. It's very difficult and messy, but I tried to make scones from sweet potatoes by just mashing them the quick way using a mixer and it produced scones with a less than desirable texture.

Sweet potato put through the mesh strainer looks like small bits of saffron rice but is very light.

I had two large potatoes which I steamed and peeled and forced through the mesh. My hand really hurt afterward, but it was actually enough potato for 3 batches worth of scones so I tossed the rest in the freezer for future goodness without the hand cramps. One lesson I did learn though was that it's a lot easier to mush up warm cooked sweet potatoes than cold ones.


I decided to modify the recipe I linked to because Darryl doesn't do artificial sweeteners. I upped the brown sugar to a half cup and I also decided to apply an egg wash this time so that the top wouldn't rise and would be shinier. The results were excellent with a crispy outside and a tender interior when they were fresh. Tiny bits of sweet potato are interspersed throughout the scones adding moisture and a good distribution of sweet potato flavor.

Unfortunately, the crispy top disappeared overnight as is often the case with baked goods, but the crispness may be revived by wrapping the scones in foil and giving them a little run in the toaster oven.


Darryl one-upped me (unintentionally and in the spirit of pure generosity) on the baking front though by bringing along 6 delicious and moist banana blueberry muffins. The CH was especially taken by them and I hope that Darryl will share the recipe with everyone on his cooking blog (drop by and leave him a message to encourage him to post it... this is my way of forcing his hand and getting him to blog as I already have the recipe in my in box). I was compelled to order some whole wheat flour from Tengu Natural Foods so that I could attempt to reproduce his fantastic muffins.

The visit was just like old times for us. Even though I quit 3 years ago, it's just comfortable with the three of us sitting around gossiping about things back at work and catching up. I only miss my former job when I think about how much I enjoyed working with Darryl as he's a jewel of a person and an ideal boss for the gaijin in Japan. I'm hoping we can manage to synchronize our schedules and get together more often in the future.

Whey Au Gratin Potatoes

When I posted about making my own cottage cheese, Tess mentioned that I should save the whey for other purposes as it can be used for things like soup stock. Given that whey has attractive nutritional properties, and smells like cheese (and that is always good), I threw the whey from my paneer-making session into the freezer with the idea of making good use of it rather than tossing it down the drain. I didn't have a concrete plan for using it, but considered that I might try substituting it for chicken stock next time I made au gratin potatoes.

Given that cheese is getting more and more expensive, I wanted to add more of a cheese flavor without upping the amount of actual cheese. I also wasn't happy about buying a liter of milk, extracting the curds, and tossing out the rest. However, before I was willing to pour whey all over expensive cheese and potatoes which I took the time to peel and slice, I had to make sure the whey wasn't going to taste funky and almost certainly ruin the dish.


For those of you who didn't look back at the cottage cheese making post, I've re-posted my picture of the collected whey. It doesn't exactly look appetizing, does it? It's not the kind of thing you are just itching to start spooning into your mouth, especially when it's stone cold. Never let it be said that I won't be adventurous in the name of food research. I tasted the whey and "it passed the first test, I didn't go blind" (that line is for the geeky sorts out there who recognize it). It tasted like it smelled, like cheese water. It wasn't something I'd knock back on a hot day, but I couldn't see how it'd spoil my precious potato dish.

The end result was very tasty. I couldn't tell if it was significantly cheesier tasting than usual, but it was certainly good and I'm hoping the protein and blood sugar maintenance benefits of the whey remained intact through the cooking process. I think I used too much whey though as it took 2.5 hours to cook properly. However, I'm not sure that that is necessarily a big drawback. The result was tender potatoes in a creamy cheese sauce. Here's the recipe:

Whey Au Gratin Potatoes

• 4 very large potatoes peeled and sliced
• 2 cups grated cheese (I used a mix of Gouda and cheddar)
• 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• **whey extracted from 1 liter of milk (about 3 cups)
• 4 tbsp. cream (or milk if you don't want to make it too rich)
• thyme to taste
• salt & pepper to taste
  

Toss the flour with the grated cheese. I usually use blocks of cheese which I cube and pulse in the food processor until it's like tiny pebbles. I toss the flour in while processing the cheese. This gives a very even distribution of flour which then thickens the sauce.

Place one layer of potatoes in a lightly-greased baking dish. I recommend glass because it's easier to clean. Sprinkle with cheese, thyme and salt and pepper. Repeat for two more layers. I recommend going light on the seasoning, especially the thyme. You don't want to overwhelm the dish.

Whisk the cream with the whey and pour over the potatoes. Bake at 350 degrees F./175 degrees C. uncovered for 2.5 hours until the potatoes are tender and the sauce is thickened.

**While this is what I used, I think it might be better to reduce the amount of whey to 2 cups. This will significantly shorten the baking time as the water won't need to be reduced so much or take so long to heat up and cook the potatoes. Next time, I plan to use less whey.

I would have preferred to make more at once and freeze the remainder, but my baking dish is on the small side (as is my oven). If you want to scale this up, you can just add 1/2 cup of grated cheese (not packed down), 1/2 tbsp. of flour, and a 1/2 cup of whey for every extra large potato you add. I think 6 potatoes and 3 cups of whey might be better than my 4 potatoes and 3 cups.

Forming a Bond With Your Farmer

In one of my posts on the Japanese Snack Reviews blog, I noted that the Japanese tend to put the faces of ordinary people on products in a way which I don't recall happening back home. In the U.S., we put fake figureheads (Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima), famous people (Paul Newman), or company figureheads (Mrs. Fields) on packaging, but we don't tend to see average Joe Smith.

I generally don't buy fruit or vegetables at the local market because they're more expensive, but tomatoes have been expensive at the green grocer and they were more reasonable at the supermarket. The package of 6 small tomatoes above cost just a little under $3, and yes, that was pretty cheap. There were a wide range of choices in choosing similarly-priced trays. Some had three large tomatoes, others had four medium ones, etc. All of them had little pinkish slips of paper with the pictures and names of the farmers who were offering us their bounty.

As near as I can tell, this sort of information is included with peppers or tomatoes sold by members of the Marukyo agricultural group. On its web site, this group has all the normal fluff you see surrounding Japanese food companies about producing healthy, attractive food which is cultivated in peace and harmony with the earth, but it also claims to try and do all of this at a reasonable cost. Given the cost of red and yellow peppers in Tokyo, I'm not inclined to believe the cost part, but I'm sure they do their best. Chances are they are more about fixing prices than about keeping them low, but I may not know of what I speak.


The farmer and his wife on my slip are supposed to be conveying a message to the customer. I have had different farmers pictured on other tomatoes I've bought in the past, but I never paid attention to the messages. Therefore, I don't know if the phrases are all the same. Given the vague, bland and oh-so-Japanese message on this (' we do our best to earn the customers' trust...we work hard...we take great care...blah, blah, blah'), I'm guessing that it doesn't matter if the phrasing is different on these messages. I'm guessing the content is essentially the same.

Cinnamon Rolls (reposted from my former blog)

This is recipe from my former blog which I'm reposting at Lulu's request. I hope others give it a try and post their results on their blogs!

Dough for Rolls:

1 T. dry yeast softened in 1/4 cup lukewarm water for 5-15 minutes
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter cut into small pieces
1/4 cup scalded milk + 2 T. cold milk
1 large egg
3/4 t. salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

In a mixing bowl, whisk sugar, butter, salt and scalded milk. Cool then add egg, 2 T. cold milk and yeast mixture. Gradually add the flour until it forms a stiff dough. You may need a little more or less than 2 cups. Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is smooth and satiny (about 3-5 minutes). Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for about an hour in a warm place. The dough should double in size.

After it has risen, divide the dough in half (use a knife to cut it). Roll out thinly (about the thickness of a tortilla) into a long rectangular shape. Spread filling (see below) over the dough. Roll up lengthwise and cut into pinwheels slightly smaller than the height of the pan you'll be baking in.

Place the about 9 pinwheels in a 9" square pan or 12 in a 9" x 12" pan. There should be about 1-2 inches between each. Cover each pan with plastic wrap and allow to rise again for an hour or two. The dough should rise enough such that the rolls nearly touch each other in the pan. You can let it rise for longer than a few hours if you like (I just let them sit when I'm too busy to deal with them right away).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. or 175 degrees C. Remove the plastic wrap from the rolls and bake for between 20 and 30 minutes until the tops are golden. Be careful not to overbake them or the filling will get hard and the bread will dry out. Baking time is affected by the size and type of pan. Shallow, thinner pans need less time than deeper, thicker pans. Glaze if desired.

Cinnamon Filling:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
4 T. cinnamon

Cream the ingredients together and set aside. Soften the butter if necessary to make it spreadable but do not melt it!

Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. of vanilla
~4 tbsp. whole milk

Scald the milk (heat to near boiling) then stir in the sugar and vanilla until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cinnamon rolls. You can use less milk and make a thicker frosting rather than a glaze. Usually, I just add in sugar until the glaze reaches the consistency I want.

This recipe makes rolls that are very light and tender. They are much less heavy and bread-like than most cinnamon rolls. They also have a very strong cinnamon element so you may want to reduce the amount of cinnamon in the filling if you like a more subdued flavor.

The rolls also freeze well though it's better if you freeze them without icing and glaze them after they've thawed. Usually, I end up freezing at least half of them since my husband can't eat them quickly enough.

The basic dough can be used for endless varieties of rolls. You can fill them with any sort of thing you like.

The $25 Challenge

In the U.S. right now, some people are attempting to eat for a week on $25. This challenge is meant to simulate the lifestyle of a person living on food stamps who has to feed a family on $3 per person, per day. I learned about this challenge via the web site The Kitchn and read some of the blog entries by people accepting the challenge. If you read the linked posts, you'll note that many Kitchn readers smugly assert they can do it nutritiously with no problem and that they have already done this because of their judicious shopping at "farmer's markets" and great cooking skills. I'm sure one could do it for one week with luck and shopping coincidentally with harvest seasons and good sales resulting from said harvests, but I don't think it'd be so easy to manage year-round.

If you're not American and don't know what food stamps are, they are the means by which the U.S. government helps people on public assistance ("welfare", "the dole") while ensuring that they spend the meager amounts of money they're given on food rather than on ale, whores, and crack. I add that last bit sarcastically. Food stamps can only be used to buy food while cash can buy anything, so food stamps are a way of controlling behavior. Note that they can't buy other necessities. If you're on welfare and need toilet paper, over-the-counter medication, or new underpants, you can't use food stamps.

I grew up around people who lived on food stamps and my family spent one exceptionally painful Reagan-era year on them. That year was due to my father getting kicked off of his disability payments as his situation was "reassessed" by the fine Republicans who thought he was faking partial left side paralysis, left eye near blindness, crippling headaches, and a blood clot that could kill him at any moment.

Using food stamps is a humiliating experience. Clerks at the markets treat you differently than people who pay in cash. One of the CH's and my friends used to work as a cashier at a supermarket and she made scathing remarks about people who used food stamps to buy soda or junk food. She felt that, if she were assisting in footing their food bill, she had a right to judge how and what they ate. Never mind that she had lived with her parents all her life and never worked any job but low-paying dead end ones. If she weren't getting free rent and subsidized food, she'd find her perspective on life rather different. I daresay she'd need some public assistance herself if she were to live on her own.

My grandmother worked for many years of her life at a tree nursery. After she could no longer work there, she lived on public assistance because she wasn't strong enough, skilled enough or able-bodied enough to do more work. She lived in a trailer with no running water and used food stamps. The amount of cash people receive on welfare is paltry and she was "lucky" to own a plot of land and not have to pay rent. You can't live on welfare and afford real rent. You have to live in special low income housing or have your rent subsidized. You can imagine the wonderful quality of home you're likely to get as a part of that deal.

To get by, my grandmother worked "under the table" for a well-to-do woman who lived on a large plot of land and couldn't care for her own property. Sometimes my grandmother would pay one of her 8 grandchildren (my sister and I plus 6 cousins who were lying, thieving, drug-using hellions) to pick up sticks or rake leaves for her on this woman's huge property. The woman paid her in cash so the welfare people didn't know about the money. We'd also sometimes go with her to pick strawberries for 25 cents a quart. It was hot, hard work for pocket change. These were the only ways she could get by, though I didn't realize her hardship at the time.

Getting back to the challenge though, I found myself wondering what an equivalent amount of money would be for dealing with such a challenge in Tokyo. I have wondered in the past about the lowest amount of money you could spend and eat healthily in Japan. When you're forking over at least $1 per bit of fresh fruit in many cases, and sometimes more, it'd be awful difficult to keep numbers down. For Tokyo, I think 500 yen a day would be a doable, but difficult challenge. That would be about $35 a week, though I don't think that would be too hard if it was "per person". Covering one person alone would be much harder than doing 1000 yen a day for two people or scaling upwards for more.

It's a little harder for me to get a good handle though on what a reasonable low amount is for someone in Tokyo for two reasons. First of all, my husband and I buy in bulk and are drawing food from our stores of items bought from Costco or the FBC. We have determined that we probably are "spending" between 5000-6000 yen a week because of food we're using from the freezer or pantry. I spend another 4,000-8,000 per week on fresh food purchases from around the neighborhood depending on prices and eating habits. That means I'm spending about 12,000 a week in general for two people. The other reason I can't easily conclude anything about food prices in Tokyo is that our diet is pretty Westernized. Neither of us is much of a seafood fan and I'm not about to make tofu or beans for one. My husband is decidedly a meat-eating person.

If anyone who reads this post is eating a more Japanese-style diet and has some input on the type of numbers it requires, I'd appreciate hearing their thoughts. Sometimes I think a Japanese diet would be cheaper, but I'm not entirely sure. Rice is certainly a good buy (and I do make dishes with rice on occasion), but other things less so. I'd especially like input on whether or not 500 yen a day is an equivalent challenge to the U.S. $3 per day challenge or if it's too much or too little.

Refried Beany Goodness

I've often pondered whether or not I could become a vegetarian if I really tried and I'm pretty sure I could if my husband could as well. One thing about being in charge of the vittles for two is that you really don't have the time, energy, or motivation to cook two separate meals (and the CH working 48 hours a week and my working 10-15 hours most weeks means I very much do not expect him to cook for himself). I do the two separate meals thing on occasion when he has a steak. I hate steak and can never understand the appeal of a big, bloody slab of it.

For me, the path to vegetarianism is blocked mainly by the prospect of double labor and losing the possibility of eating chicken. I really like chicken. In fact, I daresay that in the ultimate test of whether you're a hypocrite about meat eating, dealing with chickens would be a test I could pass. To me, that test is whether you would be able to do the dirty work yourself to eat the meat you enjoy or if you're only able to consume it as long as someone else snuffs the animal, cleans it up and offers it to you in convenient packaging. I'm probably less squeamish about dealing with birds because my family had chickens at one point and Henny Penny and her rooster boyfriends occasionally went on the chopping block so I saw their demise on occasion. Of course, I also saw deer butchered during hunting season and had the misfortune of eating squirrel and rabbit when times were hard. Poor folks have to do what they have to do to get by.

Getting back to vegetarianism, I do tend to eat vegetarian meals for lunch when I have the ingredients and the time to prepare them. Since the CH is usually chowing down on sandwiches of ham or the radioactive pink "fancy salami" (really, baloney) I can buy at a local markets, I'm free to leave a lesser impact on the environment and to leave some poor animal spend another day among the living. Often, I grill up a cheese sandwich because that's quicker than a more elaborate dish. It's also always a winner with a side of tomatoes and some nutritionally suspect Japanese powdered corn soup.

The makings of tasty, beany goodness.

If I'm really ambitious and have chick peas around, a far better deal is Chana Masala (on Mallika's excellent Quick Indian Cooking site), but garbanzo beans can only be purchased at shops that carry certain imports and I keep forgetting to have the CH check for them at Costco (where he can get a whole case). What I have remembered to have him pick up a case of, however, is refried beans and there's a really fast and easy way to make them into a nice lunch that takes them from having a canned taste and smelling like dog food to being fresh and tasty.

A long while ago, I had a get-together with a few co-workers and I served up some Tex-Mex including beans prepared in this style. One of my co-workers said he always hated refried beans before he tried them done up this way. The main point of this is to get some fresh vegetables in there to undercut the overly beany nature. This isn't so much a "recipe" as just a form of preparation. You need a food processor, hand mixer (everyone should have a hand mixer!) or blender of some sort, or be willing to mash and mix stuff with your own powerful arms.

• 1 can refried beans
• 1 tomato
• 1/4 white onion
• 1/2-2 tbsp. of taco seasoning (to taste)
  
• salsa (to taste)
  
• shredded cheese (optional)
• chopped green onions (optional)

Core the tomato and cut into 4 or so wedges. Slice 1/4 of the white onion and cut the slices into quarters. Place in a blender or food processor and add 1-2 tbsp. of taco seasoning (I use 1.5). Process in pulses until it's half liquid and half pulpy bits. Spoon in the refried beans and process again until everything is reasonably mixed in. Put a portion in a microwave safe one-serving size bowl, top with salsa, and sprinkle with cheese. Microwave until hot then garnish with chopped green onions. Serve with tortilla chips, a flour tortilla, over rice, or eat as is like a thick soup.

I especially enjoy this over Tex-Mex style fried rice with jalepeno sauce instead of salsa (like Tabasco only green and distilled from a different pepper), though it is incredibly filling with rice, and decidedly more effort because you've also got to make rice. For lunch, I usually just have it with Guiltless Gourmet tortilla chips which we tend to have around for the CH's lunch boxes.

Those in Japan can get refried beans in Japanese stores that stock other Mexican food items, but they're a lot cheaper at Costco or through the Foreign Buyer's Club. You can also pick up a big canister of organic taco seasoning at Costco (which will last you ages, but cost less than a handful of the packet stuff at a Japanese store). You can top it with Japanese mixed (real) cheese, but it's better with a nice cheddar.

Pancakes for Breakfast

My sweet and adorable CH works really hard. For 4 of the 5 days he works, he has to get up early, get some coffee in him and have a quick bite before heading off to work or for a pre-work swim. The only morning when he has anything resembling a real morning with time to wake up and eat at a reasonable pace is Friday. Since he's relegated to such a slapdash start to the day most of the time, I like to try and do something a bit better than ask him if he's like a slice of banana or pumpkin bread from the freezer on Friday mornings.

The ideal special breakfast is pancakes, but the summer is so hot that it's almost impossible to tolerate making them in the morning, especially since I always wake up feeling hot (all year round) anyway. Since the weather is mellowing out, I've been trying to get in more mornings with this nice breakfast treat. Unfortunately, I believe I have fibromyalgia and I wake up feeling like I was run over by a truck the night before so it's hard to motivate myself to get it all together.

The way I've worked around my morning limits is to set up as much of my own homemade "pancake mix" as possible the night before. Doing this and presetting the coffee machine makes it far easier to do a labor-intensive breakfast. While there are pre-made pancake mixes sold in smallish boxes in Japan, they are over-priced for their volume and not especially good. Homemade pancakes can be made for a pittance and are excellent. You can also make your own syrup to avoid the incredibly expensive syrup, though that only works if you're not a dedicated consumer of maple syrup.

The recipe I use is a modification of one from "The Joy of Baking". It's altered mainly to reflect a desire for fluffier, thicker pancakes as well as to streamline the preparation process. The original recipe is here and I'll type my modification in this post. These are the type of pancakes that are built for pleasure, not for nutrition. I have another variety that I make with oats which is a little better for you. The recipe for those is back on my old blog.


To make it easier in the morning, I mix all of the dry ingredients in a plastic bowl with a lid the night before. This avoids all the tedious measuring and half of the mixing. I also set up the oil, a whisk, measuring cup and spoon and a bowl for the wet ingredients to be mixed in. I've also been known to put the pan on the burner to remove that tiny step as well. When morning comes, I only have to reach for the eggs and milk to get the show on the road. It's worth noting that all of the dry ingredients could be made in bulk and set aside for just making pancakes any time. If you did this, you'd probably need about 1.25 cups of "mix" to make a batch of pancakes in the future.

Dry ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. white sugar
  

Wet ingredients:

• 1 medium or large egg
  
• 3/4 cup milk (use up to 1 cup if you like thinner pancakes)
• 2 tbsp. Canola oil
• dash of vanilla (optional - it depends on your syrup or topping)
  

Add all of the dry ingredients to a container with a lid and either shake or stir up the night before. In the morning, whisk all of the wet ingredients together and add to the dry. Stir until incorporated, but not overly smooth. There shouldn't be any big lumps, but you shouldn't overmix it just to smooth it out or you'll end up with tough pancakes (because overmixing works up the gluten in the flour). Just mix enough to make sure that no little white spots of unmoistened dry ingredients don't end up in your pancakes.

Pre-heat your skillet over medium-high heat. When it's good and hot, either melt some butter or margarine in it or coat it lightly with Canola oil. It's important not to oil the pan up too much or your pancakes will deep fry around the edges. Drop a tablespoon and a half of batter per cake to make medium-size ones. Fry until the edges are dry and bubbles start to form on the top then flip and finish cooking. This recipe makes 8-10 medium pancakes.

(Not) Taking Things For Granted

Imagine that you could only have ice cream once every three months. If you don't like ice cream, consider having some treat that you enjoy a lot in the place of ice cream. If you could have it only once in awhile, it'd be very special when you did have it and you'd really appreciate it.

One of my students is studying sociology and she had to write an assignment answering one of a number of questions. The question I recommend she consider was how social status affects your life. As we discussed the topic to help her flesh out an answer for her essay, she mentioned that her mother and husband, who are both physicians, often take gifts and acts of kindness for granted because they receive them so easily and often. I told her that this was an excellent example for her to use in her essay since doctors have high prestige in most cultures and this showed how their status both changed the way they interacted with others and others interacted with them.

While English teachers have far lower status than doctors, they do have rather personal relationships with their students and, Japanese people being the generous sorts that they are when it comes to gifts, they often give us nice things. One thing I can definitely say is that neither my CH nor I ever take the gifts we receive for granted no matter how often we receive them. Mind you, we don't get them nearly as often as doctors, but it is a steady trickle of generosity.

So many goodies, such weak willpower. The student who gave these cleverly put the Ho Ho's and Ding Dongs ("Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong, yo" - if you know where that comes from, here's a geek star for your forehead) in the Lipton green tea box to protect their delicious junk food integrity.

If you go back to my original example, imagine you can have something you love only about once a year or less. With that level of frequency, you are really going to enjoy that treat when you get it. Recently, one of my CH's students gave him the lavish assortment of goodies you see pictured above. I'm sure to people back home this is just a random assortment of goodies they can get any time (well, maybe not the See's candy which is a super incredible box of decadence and joy), but, to us, it's a rare parcel of fun from the U.S. that someone kindly procured for us. Suffice it to say, we do not take it for granted and are always very appreciative when students do such things for us.

Making a Colbert Special

A B.L.T., heavy on the T. and L.

With food prices going up, people are constantly going on about not wasting food and how much food is usually wasted in developed country. I read that about 1/3 of all food in the U.K. ends up being thrown out for various reasons. I'm sure that the statistics are similarly high in the U.S.

Some wastage of food is hard to avoid. During transport, things are damaged, rot, or are infested. It's impossible to avoid wasting some food on the production end. A lot of food is also wasted by restaurants and markets because of the higher standards and early sell-by dates they have to deal with. It's only on the consumer level that waste can be more actively avoided as we only need to apply our own standards and care to make sure we use things up before they go off.

I try to make sure to never waste food because it's so expensive here. Sometimes I can't keep on top of things which ripen faster than expected, especially in the summer, but I do try. The worst situation though is when meat spoils because it's so high on the food chain that you know that you've just damaged the environment for no benefit whatsoever.

Generally speaking, meat never spoils in our home with one exception and that's bacon. The main problem is that we can't eat it fast enough once a one-pound package is defrosted and opened up. I'm not a huge bacon fan and my CH is not a big eater so we tend to get through half the pack on the weekend and then it becomes a struggle to incorporate the rest of it into meals during the weekdays to finish it up before it gets nasty.

The only way to make sure it doesn't go to waste is for me to try and eat some of it for lunch. Up until Stephen Colbert reminded us that a B.L.T. is his favorite sandwich, I hadn't even considered using bacon in this way. It's one of those things which may be common enough back home but you forget is an option when you've been away from the food culture for awhile. I'm guessing some people would say that's probably a good thing since this isn't exactly a richly nutritious lunch. That being said, I think people are sometimes a little too hysterical about bacon. Yes, it's bad for you, but a little now and then won't kill you.

So, if you're not the hysterical type and you've got a taste for a B.L.T., I've got a few sammich-making tips for you.

Point 1: Toast the bread and leave it to cool in the toaster oven.

If you toast the bread and put it on a plate, it'll get "toast sweat" on the underside and get soggy on the bottom. If you use it while it's still hot, your mayonnaise will melt into it.

Point 2: Shake the grease off the bacon, but don't blot it on paper towels.

This may be slightly controversial but I believe it is best to use the little bit of bacon fat left on the slice after a few good shakes to act as a "dressing" for the tomato and lettuce. The acidity of the tomato and the oil from the bacon combine very well.

Point 3: Salt the tomato slices.

Even though bacon is salty, the sandwich is going to taste bland if you don't salt the tomato. Tomato can hold up to a fair bit of salt so I salt the slices normally and don't factor the bacon's saltiness into the equation. I also advise using very thin tomato slices to keep the sandwich from getting unwieldy.

Point 4: Apply mayonnaise thinly to one slice of bread and place it in contact with the lettuce.

The general rule with delis and sandwich-making is that mayonnaise must come in contact with the meat. However, since the bacon is oily and the mayo is oily, it just makes a slippery sandwich. Of course, you can just eat it on dry toast, but what fun would that be? Also, the mayo forms a thin oil-based barrier between the moist lettuce (though you should try to dry it as well as possible after washing) and the bread won't get soggy.

Point 5: Don't overdo the bacon.

The bacon should be just enough for flavor. This isn't a bacon sandwich, it's lettuce and tomato enhanced with bacon. I use as many slices as needed to cover the bread with about 1/4 inch gaps between the slices. If the bacon slices are touching or overlapping, you've got more than you need and the bacon flavor will overwhelm the vegetables. A really nice balance is more like a bacon salad flavor than a bacon sandwich.

The Art of the Oven Fry

If you visit any of the popular food porn sites (e.g., Food Gawker, Tastespotting), you'll notice that certain choices tend to spread like that annoying Faberge shampoo commercial where someone tells two friends and so on and so on. If you're too young for that commercial, it's on YouTube here. That is to say, once a popular and approachable dish shows up on the food porn sites, you see a small explosion of more people making it. And if you don't know what a food porn site is and you've got visions of nubile, naked babes lounging amongst grapes and bananas seductively, think again.

About two or three weeks ago, the big fad among food bloggers was eggs in the hole or whatever you grew up calling cooking an egg in a hole in the center of a piece of bread. That mundane recipe, which was an old camping favorite due to the efficiency with which it cooks both the egg and bread in one pan over a camp fire, showed up again and again in tasteful shots by food bloggers who jumped on the bandwagon. Each one carefully wrote out a "recipe" and a description and took an artful picture for something which is essentially 'poke a hole in a piece of bread, break an egg in it and fry in butter.'

Though the "explosion" has been far smaller, oven fries seem to be the new mundane recipe that everyone is making and showcasing. Unlike my bland plate of boringly horizontal fries pictured at the top, their fries are artfully arranged (usually vertically or with a few of the sexier fries sticking out at odd angles) and look like the real deal, the ever appealing french fry. They also attempt to put a new spin on the recipe by using different spices or different types of potatoes, but the method is pretty much the same - fries tossed with some sort of oil, seasoned, then baked in the oven.

While I don't presume to know all there is to know about "perfect oven fries", I do know a few things that I've learned which don't seem to be reflected in the "recipes" I've been seeing. Here are a few pointers:

• Don't spray the cookie sheet with non-stick spray and place the fries on them or put the fries on the tray and drizzle them with oil. Unless you have good non-stick cookware, they're probably going to stick a bit if you do this. I get better results by heating the tray during the oven's preheat cycle and placing the fries (which have been tossed in a bowl with oil) onto the hot baking sheet. As Jamie Oliver has said in his cooking show, heat stops things from sticking (if the food already has oil on or in it) so you don't need to grease up the sheet if you pour the fries on a hot sheet. For the record, most Japanese ovens come with cookie sheets that are custom fit to the ovens size (not the standard oven racks you get in the U.S.) and they are not non-stick. My first trays were enamel-coated metal and my current ones are ceramic and my oven fries always stuck (even when both the fries and sheet were oiled) before I used the "heat the ungreased tray" method.
  
• Soak the raw fries in cold water for awhile first to remove some of the outer gum. This is less important if your potatoes are new, but most of what I get in Japan is clearly not freshly dug up. Soaking makes the texture better though it does leach out the potassium which may be a good or bad thing depending on your diet.
• The type of potato you use matters a lot, but so does the type of oil. In my experience, Canola oil browns better, but olive oil imparts more flavor. I usually use olive oil and settle for paler fries.
• Always dry the potatoes very well, coat evenly in oil and then salt and season. Never salt then add oil as the salt will leech moisture out of the potato and make it harder for the fry to be evenly coated. It also increases the chances that the potato will stick to the pan you use. This was a mistake I made for a long time.
  

The potato has gotten a bit of a bad rap since the Atkins low carb revolution, but they're really quite nutritious (and tasty). They're 80% water so you get a lot of satisfaction for the caloric content and they're cheap.

For those of us living in Japan, the main problem is that most of the potatoes are tiny, and russets, which are highly desirable, are almost unheard of in Tokyo. It's a lot of effort to peel a lot of little potatoes compared to one big fat one. I usually pre-prepare them earlier in the day when I have time and just keep them in cold water in a sealed container in the refrigerator until I'm ready to use them. If you're got the time and energy, it's really worth it and a nice variation from rice-based dishes which are so often de rigueur in Japan.