Midnight "Snack"

My friends sent me a box full of American food for my birthday! Included was a bowl of apple jacks. Hence I ate cereal for the first time in over six months. And there were some "Exotic Vegetable Chips," which were a really good excuse for eating potato chips. A little harder in consistency, a little tastier, and very colorful. I always liked those.

There was also a big jar of Nutella! I have long loved Nutella, but in Okinawa, it has been a long lost love. I made a delicious nutella and lilikoi sandwich on toasted brown bread. The tangy kick of the lilikoi and the crunch of its seeds were the perfect offset to the heavy, creamy, chocolately, cloying nutella. Would definitely do that again! Sorry, I scarfed it down before I thought to take pictures.

...and then I was still hungry, because I was up late watching cooking videos from vahrehvah.com. I've decided that Indian food is the best food to eat out, because it's so complicated to prepare (and OH SO TASTY). I will be frequenting Indian restaurants more often (in the states, where they exist).

SO, I made some carrots and onions with pineapple, inspired by the Indian use of many many spices. This did not turn out very deliciously. Will probably not do this again--something is missing. Perhaps protein?

3 carrots
1/2 onion
1/4 of a pineapple
olive oil (should've used butter)
maple soy milk
thai sweet chili sauce (you know the one--red with the rooster on it)
cumin
coriander
cardamom
garam masala
tumeric
cinnamon
nutmeg
clove
allspice
1 cube bullion

I first sauteed the onions with some of the spices, then added carrots, then milk, then steamed it for a few minutes with the chili sauce and bullion, then added the rest of the spices, then the pineapple at the end. This particular pineapple was a bit too sour for me to eat plain, but it stayed sour in this concoction. I'm eating it anyway--there's so much of it!

Anyway, all that food made for a very large midnight snack!

BLT in Okinawa, with extras

This is the first time I've been in a rush to cook dinner. This is also the first time I realized it may be possible to make my favorite American home foods in my Okinawan kitchen. I'd just picked up some lovely produce from JA, and I decided I needed to eat some uncooked vegetables. They're harder to chew, and they're not as mellow, but they're (supposedly) better for you because the cellulose walls, vitamins, and nutrients haven't been broken down by cooking heat. I disguised them with the clever ruse of bacon, cheese, and eggs. Not that I don't love these

Micro Cherry Tomatoes (see chopstick for size comparison), a big bag of cuteness of

One of my schools gave me fresh butter lettuce from their garden!


Here's my version of a BLT in about ten minutes:

• cheese
• tomato
• 1 slice bread
• bacon
• lettuce
• egg
• salt, pepper, basil flakes

First, to sate my appetite (or maybe stimulate it--tangy things will do that!) I ate a lilikoi. As one Kauai adventure tour guide once said to a ten-year-old me, a lilikoi is nature's juice box! Also known as passion fruit (ポッション　フルツ）, lilikoi is one of those extraordinary flavors you usually don't find in a grocery store. Fresh ones are hard to come by, and ones as big as my hand for 100yen each were too good to pass up! I cut off the top and eat the lilikoi out of the "cup" with a spoon:

Meanwhile, fry bacon on low heat to make it extra crispy. If you use high, or even medium heat, the bacon will curl up and the fat won't dissolve. It'll just get soft and burn quickly. Bacon = low heat! It's worth the extra time. Bacon in Japan does exist. It comes packaged in 250g packages of neatly arranged half-slices. This is about half a pack:

About 10 minutes later, when brown and crisp, remove from pan and set aside.

Prepare your cheese! I love the taste of smoked cheese. Heck, I just love cheese. Cheese in Japan is very expensive, and comes in bite-sized morsels wrapped to resemble candy. And, all of it, no matter what, is simply called "cheese." There are no varieties of cheese. I am very disappointed in this. However, this cheese is a close approximation to smoked gouda, in miniature. Mini cheese:I sliced a few pieces to melt onto my bread:


Then I popped the bread into the "fish grill" part of my stove. This is a wire rack with flames that broil from the top perimeter. It's very useful (and FAST) for toasting bread. My cheese didn't appreciably melt, but what the heck, it's Japanese cheese, right? I halved some micro cherry tomatoes and added those: (notice how MINI everything is! Oh, Japan)

In the unwashed bacon pan, crack an egg. Sprinkle on some salt, pepper, and basil flakes. By the time you're done, so is the egg!
Slide the egg on top of the bread cheese tomato bacon layers:
Add lettuce as the top layer. I like open-face sandwiches, because I don't especially like the dryness of bread. This one required a knife and fork. I ate it with some fresh pineapple, a very good choice. Whoever invented the ham and pineapple pizza had the right idea!

After I'd mangled half of it:


Of note: this brand of preserves labels their stuff "Blueberry Jam," but actually puts blueberry JELLY inside the jar!
jelly, not jam (but I'm not complaining too much)