carbonaramara: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

other June food (3/3)

bacon!

smoked brats

vanilla ice cream with mangoes and bananas

beef sinigang

lemon chicken using Connie Veneracion's recipe
(click the photo)

nasunog na pancake :(

Gusto night again with the boys
top: Ronjie's roasted chicken
bottom: my order, parang mushroom-flavored arroz caldo

pork tinola

I used a recipe from homecookingrocks.com. This tinola has white cucumber again, pechay instead of sili leaves, and potatoes (even if the recipe didn't call for any).

pork okonomiyaki

canned coconut juice from Thailand

during dinner at Kuya G & Ate R's home

green tea pastries from George

it's good!

Milano biscuits from George, too

instant noodles (it tasted like it was hoisin sauce-based)

easy lunch for 1

clockwise from top-right: cherry tomatoes, instant miso soup (just add hot water), rice, lettuce slaw (using lettuce left over from the tacos we had), cookie cutter origami--pang-design lang 'to! hindi nakakain! (based on a Jo Nakashima tutorial), drinking water, microwaved canned tuna

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Cheerful Park

I just realized that I hadn't blogged about this yet. Anyway, I discovered Cheerful Park while I was going around downtown Atsugi one sunny afternoon. It's a pocket park in Hon-Astugi, almost the same size as our apartment's floor area. It was nice to come across it after some minutes of walking, just when my feet and legs were starting to tire. I rested for a few minutes and people-watched a bit.

tourist for a day

A good friend from high school was visiting Japan this week and happened to be staying with some relatives who lived in Kanagawa too! So, of course we met up! Ronjie & I took the train to Ebina today to have lunch with George, a high school classmate whom I had not seen for 10 years! (Thank goodness for Facebook which keeps us all connected despite the physical distance!)

We picked an okonomiyaki place because George had not tried Osaka-style okonomiyaki yet. (She's tried the Hiroshima-style.) The restaurant was similar to another restaurant Ronjie and I ate at just a couple of weeks back, where you cook your food. For today's lunch, we ordered okonomiyaki, yakisoba and monjayaki. (Monjayaki is like okonomiyaki but more liquid-y.)

June 26

Ronjie and I spent Sunday at home. :) Well, we went out in the morning for mass and our weekly grocery date, then spent lunch and the rest of the day in the apartment.

didn't forget to say hi to Mr. Owl after mass
(the flowers are starting to crowd him)

passed by some pansies on the way to the supermarket

Ronjie cooked lunch! ♥
I call this 'Ronjie's mix-mix' - shrimps, mushrooms and assorted veggies, boiled together with some spices.

then for dinner we had homemade tacos :D

yum!
(notice the tiny cheese cubes; no grater so I made do by cutting it up)

I hate that I eat tacos so messily. Neat taco-eating is a skill to be mastered.
(we use junk mail as placemats)

dessert: vanilla ice cream with chocolate cubes + milk cookies crumbles

(6/30/11) P.S. For the beef, I combined the recipe at the back of the taco spice mix pack with this recipe from tacorecipes.net.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Glee and more

Prior to coming to Japan, I had not seen a single episode of 'Glee' (except for a few minutes of Season 2's 1st episode, where Charice debuted, just because a clip of it was shown the the local evening news). Now I'm hooked! Season 3 starts in a couple of months. Looking forward to that! :)

Since coming here, watching videos has been one of my pastimes (along with reading the newspaper, online window-shopping, and origami, among others). Our next order from Amazon will include books (I miss old-fashioned reading) as the bookstores here (the ones I've been to) don't carry English ones.

Leaving you with the other day's Calvin and Hobbes strip:

110622

Have a good Friday!

P.S. I hear there's a typhoon in Metro Manila now. Praying that the rains stop already and that the situation doesn't reach Ondoy level. I hope everyone's dry and safe there.

origami

I'm cooking lemon chicken for dinner tonight! :) Photos and details of the cooking experience will be in another blog post. In the meantime, I'm going to show off my recent origami masterpieces. Been busy with origami the past week. :D

These flowers (I blogged about them before) were made with the help of my friend Ria who gave me a link to instructions on how to make them. Then with 12 flowers, I was able to make a flower ball (which now hangs in the middle of our spare/leisure/office room in the apartment). :)

I made this magic rose cube for Ronjie for his birthday.

I also gave Ronjie a terrier similar to this one, but in gray and better made. Of all the dog breeds, his favorite is the Scottish terrier--mine is the dachschund--because one of the markers in Monopoly is a Scottie. Cute!

Will be making more in the coming days. I'm getting addicted to Jo Nakashima's origami tutorials.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

my thoughts exactly

Mutts 110621

*swat!*

Monday, June 20, 2011

other June food (2/3)

zunda mochi Kit Kat

ready-to-eat lunch from the supermarket: salad, chicken katsu & roasted chicken

salmon, mushrooms and potatoes in garlic-lemon sauce
(click the photo for the recipe--from homecookingrocks.com!)

pork sinigang using Knorr Sinigang na may Gabi mix
(used really thin slices of pork for this one, they ended up breaking apart :-/ lesson learned)

french toast, take 2!
(used a different homecookingrocks.com recipe for this, click the photo)

_____ fish fillet and asparagus with spicy Japanese mayo
top to bottom: Ronjie's plate, my plate, Ronjie's 2nd serving
(dunno what fish I used, this is based on another homecookingrocks.com recipe, click the photo)

chicken cordon bleu
Nainggit kami sa kinain nila Joanne, Arn & Wenna, so we decided to have chicken cordon bleu too.
(for this I used a recipe from French Cooking for Dummies, click the photo to link to it)