experiments in japanese food!

[aimeekitty]

This is what I bought today at Mitsuwa! (thanks to Connie for the directions) :D
I'm very exited about the concentrated sauce that I bought. A lady was giving out samples of soba with a solution of this on it. It was AWESOME. (and can be used with many things!) Once I OCD about basic Japanese food, maybe I will graduate to Indian or Chinese (though I would get very fat if I learned how to make those steamed pork buns)

What a lovely day. It rained (pretty hard) and I went to Kyoei and Volks. The people who run both stores are such sweet people. Of course, if employees are nice, people are more likely to spend money, but these people I believe are genuinely good people.
Sometimes it's easy to get negative about people in general, and then you meet people like this and are reminded that really nice people exist. Whenever I leave one of these two stores, I leave feeling relaxed and cheerful.

Another person like that is the lady who is teaching me Chinese brush painting. She has a gorgeous house/studio in the hills in Burbank. She is so sweet. There's something about her that reminds me of my grandmother.

The lovely ladies at Kyoei (it's a kimono store) always wear kimono (and so stylishly!). Both of them had lovely charms hanging out from their obis today. One had a tiny purse hanging out like a charm from her obi. (smaller than a change purse, only big enough to hold maybe a few quarters at most) She was joking that she kept her money in it, so I asked if she was serious, and she opened it to show that, yes, she actually did have a few dollars carefully folded inside!
Both ladies spent some time helping me find some contact information for learning tea ceremony. They asked me whether I wanted a strict teacher or not (how should I know? I guess so?) Anyway, they are so sweet. I envy them being able to wear such lovely clothes to work everyday. I bought a few tatoshi to help store my kimono (but what I really want is a kiri tansu and I can't find one for less than $500 and local!)
suggestions for finding tansu are welcome!

I also had a Chick Fil A.

I really like my trainer at the gymn too!

Comments

[arletta.livejournal.com]

Oooooo...you HAD to say Chick-Fil-A, didn't you!?
*is hungry*

[kellyhime.livejournal.com]

Your brush painting teacher sounds like my tea ceremony sensei. She is 92-years old and everything one could possibly want in a sweet grandmother. Having said that, she is strict, but kind, which is the combination I would recommend. Most of the time, she is very encouraging to me, but I definitely know when I do something wrong. ^^;

とてもおいしいね！

[y2hecate.livejournal.com]

*random*
Have you tried Okinamiyaki? (I think that's spelled at least close..) They're little pancake pizza type things with special barbecue-ish sauce and Japanese mayo and fish flakes, with whatever ingredients you want (meats, cabbage, etc.). My Japanese teacher made some for our recent Japanese Club Sushi Night, and it looks like in the picture you have the same kind of fish flakes that we used, so it made me think of it. ^_^ SO tasty! I could eat Japanese food all the time.

I'm so jealous that you have all this awesome Japanese type stuff near you! Super lucky! ^_^ Especially that Kimono store. Those ladies sound so nice!

[akanepanda.livejournal.com]

Okay, I am obsessed with I-want-to-make-at-home-lots-of-Japanese foods-yet-don't-know-how-ness.
That said, what is the concentrated sauce for soba noodles?? I see three bottles, they say "goma", "mi(u)n", and "yamasa (bunch of kanji) tsuyu". If it's from the Mitsuwa close to me (on Centinela?), I can totally get that stuff! And I have soba noodles, yet no sauce, so that will be awesome.

By the way, I made those steamed pork buns when I was 16, and MELTED my plastic steamer. They were very tasty, alas, I will never make them again, because I am scared. Be warned.

Re: とてもおいしいね！

[akanepanda.livejournal.com]

そうですよねえ。

お好み焼きはおいしい！

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

this is what I bought:
katsuo bushi (shaved bonito flakes)
dried konbu (kelp)
mirin (cooking wine) (yellow bottle)
dried shitake mushrooms
sesame dressing (for salads)
Seven-ingredient red pepper powder (shichimi tohgarashi... small spice bottle)
macha (green tea powder - small green bottle)
soba tea
hot curry powder
bonito dashi bag (dashi soup is used for flavoring in almost everything... these are like tea bags with dashi in them for easy flavoring. Some of the other stuff I got like bonito flakes and kombu are also for making dashi)
and then some bread flakes for katsuchicken and tempura

so the larger brown bottle with red lid is the soba sauce. But I have no idea what it's called. :)

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

oh... the goma is the sesame salad dressing.

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

also, try this site I found:
http://www.justhungry.com/japanese/
she has some basic stuff you can try, that's what I'm going to do!

another I found (not sure on how good it is, but it has several recipes) is this one:
http://japanesefood.about.com/library/recipe/blrecipe_index.htm

[supinternets.livejournal.com]

Thought you might find this link useful:

http://scentofgreenbananas.blogspot.com/2004/12/how-many.html

It has a ton of links to different ethnic food blogs, mostly asian cuisine.