The Cooking Chronicles: Part 1

We have been to a few different restaurants here with other people in Shimonoseki. One thing that we really enjoyed was a chicken with a light breading. When browsing in the grocery we came across several packages that looked like a similar breading. We purchased one of the packages and got cooking. 

As you can see the instructions are in Japanese so we had to improvise and did the chicken similar to how you make chicken parmesan but with breading we had purchased. 

After cutting up our chicken into nugget size pieces we put them into the batter and put them in the skillet with some olive oil. Chicken is one of the least expensive meats that we have found. Especially the big boneless skinless chicken breasts or the tenderloins. Most of the meat is beef or pork and it is cut into very thin slices or small thin pieces to eat with chopsticks. Also fish is very inexpensive. 

David always does a great job cooking. I am glad that he has more time to cook here.

The chicken was great, this has become a regular meal in our house now along with rice or potatoes and corn.

Below is a photo of the package of the yummy potatoe seasoning mix we found. For those of you who can read Japanese the photo is upside down and I don't know how to rotate it :)

David cooking the potatoes before the seasoning was added.

We purchased a large bottle of olive oil from Costco. We just refill our little bottle that we purchased before we made it to Costco when we first moved here. I just love cooking with   olive oil. This 5 liter bottle of olive oil was 1,528 yen was a little over $19.00. 

Japanese fruit is very good. It is very expensive too. One of David's students gave us a basket of plums. I don't know how much they were because they were a gift. 

There was one seed inside each plum. I wish I had a backyard to plant the seeds and try to grow plums!!

The fruit below is called a Japanese pear and it is so good. Sweeter than a regular pear and less grainy. It is also very juicy and watery. It looks like an apple. We have seen these for about 130 yen each (about $1.70). I bought 2 when they were on sale for 100 yen each (a little over $1). 

If any fruit is on sale either individualy or in a bunch for 100 yen or less I try to buy it because it is rare to find fruit for that inexpensive. I recently found a bag of 4 medium size oranges for 100 yen each bag and we bought 2 bags.  

Stay tuned for more Cooking Chronicles!!!