Milk stew with summer vegetables

If you are too tired to cook every day, why not prepare a special lunch or dinner once a week? Set up nice dishes and interior goods and enjoy the slow food's feeling with your family or/and friends. Or even by yourself.

It's always fun to eat out at a beautiful restaurant but you can reflect yourself more by home-cooking. You can work together with your company and take your time, being away from the busy world.

Also adjusting your usual diet by home-made cooking is important. Ex. if you had a lot of protein on weekdays, then try to take much vegetables with less salt and butter!

Ingredients:

capsicum

carrot

onion

bacon

milk (2cups)

consomme soup (1cup)

butter

flour (1tbsp)

bay leaf

salt & pepper

1- Cut the vegetables and bacon into about 2cm pieces.

2- Heat the butter and stir fry the bacon and vegetables.

3- Add the flour and stir well. Pour the soup and bay leaf in and mix all well.

4- When the ingredients are cooked, add the milk and adjust the taste with salt and pepper.

Itadakimasu.

German style fried potato

The rainy season has arrived. It feels that the cold time came back again after summer as it was hot last week. They said that the rainy term is growing shorter because of climate change and we will have more squalls instead.

Even though this season makes you feel a little depressed, it has taken an important role for nature, the agricultural system and some Japanese culture. So we should be worried if we are losing it.

Ingredients:

potato

onion

bacon

salt/pepper

dried herbs

garlic

1- Boil or microwave the potato until it is softer (not too soft). If the potato skin is thick, please peel it.

2- Cut 1, onion and bacon. Fry it together with some garlic, salt, pepper and dried herbs.

This simple cooking style can accent every ingredient's taste. Why not try it out?!

Itadakimasu.

Chinese cabbage and bacon

Hi, everyone.
What sports do you enjoy in winter? In Hokkaido where I grew up, the main winter sport was ice-skating on the eastern side and skiing on the western side. That's because it snows a lot on the Japan sea (western side) but the east is very cold and a bit drier. My hometown is found on the eastern side, so I enjoyed ice skating all the way through primary school and also junior high school. That's 9 years in total...

I remember that my father used to go to the school at night time to make the ice-rink with the other kids' parents and teachers. They had to make the basement, then spray water, polish the ice and sweep it, if it snowed. This was a long process and it looked like a hard job!

Talking about ice makes you feel like something warm doesn't it? Let's eat a lot of Chinese vegetables that are in season in the winter in a really simple way!

Ingredients for 2 serves:

Chinese cabbage

bacon (2)

consomme stock (powder/solid)

1- Fill up the pot with cut Chinese cabbage, as much as it fits.

2- Put the cut bacon on 1.

3- Close the lid then heat the pot slowly.

4- When some soup comes out from the Chinese cabbage, add consomme and some salt.

It looks too simple but tastes very good and you can eat a lot of Chinese cabbage easily. Please try it when you feel cold!

Itadakimasu.