Saturday, September 26, 2015

豚肉ときのこのお弁当 - Pork and mushroom obento

ヤット新しい弁当箱買えました!!これで、お昼全部ひとつの容器で済む。ヨシ!We finally bought a new bento box!! So, now I don't have to put my son's rice in a separate container (yay!)

Today's bento was grilled pork with shimeji mushrooms, broccoli (I wonder if my kids eat too much broccoli sometimes...) and rolled omelet (with black sesame seeds), with vegetable furikake (a kind of dried flake topping that you can put on rice) mixed with rice.

本日のお弁当は、豚バラ肉とシメジの炒め物、ブロッコリーとゴマ入りの卵焼きの少々手抜きのお弁当でした。ご飯は、野菜ふりかけのかけたご飯でした。



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Monday, September 21, 2015

Things that happened a long while ago...

I often take photos of things that I would really like to share, but then get so busy that I never get around to posting...at some point I start to wonder if it makes sense to post such things any more and usually eventually delete such pictures or save them for my own picture books. This is one of those things, but, as I would really like to post it, please endure.

I attended the opening of my friend's exhibit at the Canessa Gallery (Canessa) at the beginning of August. It's title was "Time". It was a series of photographs that detailed my friend's journey of handling the loss of his dear brother. It was truly a beautiful exhibit. The opening was attended by his brother's widow and child. I really meant to post this quite a while ago. Unfortunately the exhibit ended at the end of August. Here are some pictures from it however.





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Saturday, September 19, 2015

Chicken & Nori (seaweed) (チキンのお弁当)

Today's J-school bento was chicken. ....hmmmmm....well I'm really running out of creativity on these. I've tried hard not to repeat bentos...but it's tough. In the name of spontaneity, I put nori (dried seaweed) in today's rolled omelet. ^_^;;;...weeeeellll....it doesn't look too impressive, but my kids (even the baby) loooove nori. So. Much. This omelet was kind of a success. Although I should figure out how to make the nori form a lovely swirl through to the middle of the omelet.

飽きないよう、卵焼きに海苔を入れてしまい、見た目はともかく、海苔好きの我が子にとってはグッd(TヮT;;)らしいです。
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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

GG Park Japanese Tea Garden 日本庭園でのお散歩

My family and I took a stroll through the Japanese garden at Golden Gate Park the other day (Here). It's a nice size, although a bit expensive for what's there, I feel (SF residents are $6 and non-residents are $8. They charge $2 for children from age 5 to 11.). I guess, this not being Japan, they are able to charge in accordance with its rarity? For instance, the garden at Meiji Jingu is very big and beautiful and only carries a JPY500 (about $4.15) "contribution" (I always pay, but maybe you don't have to?) for maintenance of the garden, but the garden in Golden Gate Park provides a nice stroll. It's a good size for small children (my 1 y.o. was able to walk the whole thing without problem). Also, there are squirrels, which basically are never in Japanese gardens in Japan, so that was exciting. We took a snack at the tea house there. The matcha and snacks are complete decent. It also serves fortune cookies because fortune cookies are actually a Japanese creation brought to America. It's interesting because here they are almost exclusively found in Chinese restaurants here...^_^;;;

先日、家族とゴールデン・ゲート・パークの日本庭園に行ってみました。割と広いですけれど(それでも1歳児でも歩ききれるぐらいの広さですが)、ちょっと高い気がします。アメリカは、こうゆうガーデンが珍しいからかしら…?園内のティーハウスでおやつをしたが、写真をとる前に子供はもう食べかけてしまいました。お菓子などは、以外と食べられ、普通においしかったです。↓の紅色のお餅は、なぜか強いイチゴの味がして、びっくりしましたが!

園内は、フォーチュン・クッキーが食べられます。フォーチュンクッキーはアメリカですと、よく中華料理のお店で出されますが、本来、日本からアメリカに持ってきたものなんで、ここで食べられるのがとてもいいと思います。

View from the tea house. ティーハウスからの眺め。
Food at the tea house (my kids starting eating before I could take a picture) -- the pink mochi was surprisingly a strawberry flavor (this is not the flavor of pink mochi in Japan)!

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Saturday, September 12, 2015

Obento come-back

Japanese school has started up again. Which means...bento-making is back as a part of my Saturday morning routine. This bento consists of a hamburger patty (ground beef, onions, panko bread crumbs and egg; after grilling it with the cover on the pan (so that it also kind of steams itself), it spends some time in a "sauce" bath -- I think I've written about Japanese "sauce" before, but it's something like Worcestershire sauce. Well, usually my kid doesn't like any sauce on his food, but I'm trying to break that a bit), grape tomatoes, blueberries (they weren't very sweet, so I rubbed them in some sugar -- gah! I know, but US fruit is sooooo hit or miss -- probably because the seasons are sooooo long (the market near me has had blueberries every time I go since April...)), burdock root (cut and simmered in cooking sake, mirin, soy sauce, salt and sugar <--the holy grail of all Japanese cooking) and a rolled omelet.

さあ、補習校の秋学期が始まったので、お弁当作りにまた挑戦いたしまあす!息子のあんまり気に入ったないソースのものですが、なんと全部食べてくれました!ヾ( ̄∇ ̄=ノ バンザーイ♪

ソースに煮込んだハンバーグ、グレープトマト、
ブルーベリー(甘くなかった(アメリカだから)ので、お砂糖をかけて)、ごぼうと卵焼き。

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Thursday, September 10, 2015

Texas hotels (テキサス州のホテル)

I had planned on making a post on my stay at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas the other day (by which I mean about a month ago, after my first visit)...but then I was busy, as I usually am, and then it just never happened. So here is a review of the Mansion, at which I have now stayed multiple times, and the Omni in Fort Worth (which, btw, is sooooooo far away from Dallas), at which I have stayed once. お待たせいたしました。やっと約束したテキサス州のホテルのレビューです。ローズウッド・マンション・オン・タートル・クリーク(ダラス市)はもう何回も泊まっているホテルです。オムにホテル(フォートワース市)は一回しか泊まっていません。ちなみにフォートワースはダラスの近くにありそうで、実はものすごく遠いのです。

-- And just now as I started writing this, I received a package from the Mansion, which basically speaks to why I love them. I forgot my suit jacket in the closet of my room after my most recent stay, and the FedEx'd it to me right away. Really nice service there. --

Anywhoo...

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Gone again!! またまた旅立つ。。。

Off to Texas again on work!! Well, this is looking to be the last time for a while though. As a small-town girl, I will tell you that traveling (by which I mean getting on planes) and staying in hotels is rather exciting (even though I've lived in NY, LA, Tokyo and SF :P)...but I have started getting a bit tired of SOOO much traveling. I've basically been gone four days a week, every week for the last month. My poor kids were so happy to see me a bit more last week, but now I'm off again. I will be plenty relieved to settle back down once this stint is over.

また仕事でテキサスに行ってきます。今回はしばらく最後だそうですが、本当だといいけど…や文句ゆうけんど、実は、田舎育ちのアタシにとっては、普通は、トラベルってすんごく楽しいと思います。飛行機に乗ったり、ホテルに泊まったりすると未だにわくわくする気持ちでいっぱい(大人になってからはニューヨーク、ロス、東京、サンフランシスコに住んだことあるが、まだまだ田舎もん^^;;)。が、KONNA NI 出張するとちょっとしんどくなってしまうんです。だって、この一ヶ月は、毎週、週4ぐらいで出張で家にいないのです。先週はより家にいられて、子供が大喜びでしたが、またまた今日出かけちゃいますね。今回が終わったら、ちょっと家にいられるのを大事にします。

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