Friday, December 29, 2017

I managed to do a lot.

Iroiro dekimashita.

The New Year Holiday is only six days again this year. Haven't made a Holiday Goals list yet.

The first day was really great, though.

Got up at around seven, ate breakfast. Took the Pumpkin Princess to her test prep course, and then went to the local mall. I browsed around and then got an early lunch. I'd always wanted to try the noodles at Mister Donut, so I got the noodle set with coffee and a chocolate covered donut. The noodles were good. Not great, just good. The coffee was good too, with free refills. I wrote my nengajo (New Year's cards) while having my second cup of coffee.

I went alone and saw the subtitled version (the kids prefer dubbed versions) of the movie I'd wanted to see. It was long but didn't really seem like it. And the geeky Asian girl kissed the cool guy! How often does that happen? (Please don't say Harry Potter because Cho Chang wasn't geeky, she was dating the school rep for the Triwizard Tournament.)

Got home, made chicken stock from the bones left from the Christmas chicken (which probably deserves its own post if only as reflection to review before next Christmas), set some of it aside for my New Year zouni (soup with mochi) and used the rest for tonight's curry. Went grocery shopping and tossed the postcards in the mailbox on the way. Dinner was curry with rice and salad. Cleaned up, and tried to make some clothes for Tiny Vader, but couldn't. Hey, I figured out what wasn't going to work, that's a good thing!

Really, the only thing that would have made this day even better was if I'd woken up to my alarm and gone running. That has seriously lapsed, and I need to change that.

I saw a movie.

Eiga wo mimashita.

The short geeky Asian girl got lots of screen time. She saved the hero, got badly hurt in the process, kissed him, and told him that she loved him before passing out. The hero took her to safety and looked at her with a concerned, pained look as she lay in bed, very still. The prettiest girl, who had feelings for the hero and had kissed them in the previous movie, looked at them a little sadly as he did.

Actually, a lot more happened, but that was the part that made me happiest. That the short geeky Asian girl got to kiss the hero and more or less has his heart at the end of the story (or at the end of that one film, at least). If you can give me the title of one more big budget movie in which that happens, I will go watch it and I will also send you a token of my gratitude.



Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Made and saved

Tsukurioki

Super proud of myself today. I woke up and didn't go running, but instead of just fooling around on the internet like I always do, I got up and wrote 16 Christmas cards and addressed them and took them to the post office during break time. I haven't sent paper cards in, well, ages, and I felt really bad about it every year. But this year, I did! I think I missed some people. Let me know if you think you should get a card from me but don't get one.

Today's phrase is about cooking. The basic premise of Japanese cooking is that you have a bowl of unflavored rice, a bowl of soup (usually miso soup), and a couple of additional dishes. Ideally, it's ichi ju san sai (one soup, three sides). You'll have a main side (kind of like an oxymoron, but the rice is supposed to be the main dish, so your meat or fish dish is your main side) and a few additional side dishes (vegetables or tofu or whatever). Back when I'd try to cook after getting home from work, it would be ichi ju ni sai (one soup, two sides) with the main side something like chicken that had been marinating in a ziplock bag since Sunday night, and the additional side being something like a few slices of tomatoes.

So if I'd found this book back then, I would have been all over it. Actually, I found it last month, and I am all over it.
You cook all your side dishes over the weekend and keep them in storage containers. You eat the stuff that don't keep very well like salads and chicken  on Monday and Tuesday. Stuff that keeps longer like stir fried root crops, you save until Friday. You can also use these stored foods as part of your bento lunch. I tried this once last week, and it was no trouble just tossing three or four different items into the box and buying a convenience store musubi.

I think this works because of the way Japanese cooking works. If you have hot rice (compliments of the timer on your rice cooker) and soup, cold dishes in limited amounts can be forgiven, and if that's not the case, there's always the microwave. It probably won't work for American style meals where your main dish is a meat dish or a hearty soup and have bread or a salad as a side.

I don't fix four main sides and ten additional sides like the book suggests. It's more like one main and four or five additional. This week, I made a simplified version of Indian butter chicken, a salad, and a couple stir fries. I also boiled some broccoli. I know already that this is just not going to happen on busy weekends. And that's all right. You do what you can, when you can, to eat as healthily and cheaply as possible.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

There is only one truth

Shinjitsu ha hitotsu

(Scene: workplace party)

Distinguished-Looking older man highly respected in our field: So, do you have any hobbies?

Me in my head: I like to fool around on the internet checking Wikipedia pages about Hollywood Golden Age films. I have Star Wars dolls that I use to recreate Instagram accounts I hate follow. Oh, I also write really bad Mary Sue (fan) fiction that should never see the light of day. Really bad. I'm talking brain melting stuff here.

Me out loud: I like cooking and sewing, but I don't have very much time to sew these days...