December 23, 2015

Not lunch at all today: Made tourtiere using Mom's recipe. Posted here for the record. Note to self: pie crust from the grocery store in japan is kinda sweet. Still tasted good.

gluhwein; tourtiere.

Tourtiere (Best Recipe Chatelaine - Mom's Recipe)
1.5 lb (680g) ground pork
1/2 c (120ml) water
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp cloves
2 medium potatoes
1 egg
pie crust (s)

Combine meat, seasonings, water, onion, garlic in large, heavy saucepan with lid. Bring to boil, cover & reduce heat. Cook for 25 mins, stirring to break up meat. Do not drain.

Boil potatoes until tender. Mash and add to cooked meat.

Fill pie shells. Whisk egg with 1tsp water & brush on top crust. Bake at 375 F (190 C) for 35-40 minutes.

December 22, 2015

Belgian butter cookies; Cabbage salad with roasted sesame seed dressing; Bacon-tuna melt; 200ml Hokkaido Milk

This one is, quite obviously, taken at my house, not at school. Monday was the final day of classes for 2015, so there won't be any school lunch photos until mid-late January. I may still post on here infrequently with other stuff.

Hope you all have a great Christmas!

December 21, 2015

Fukujinzuke; Japanese curry; chocolate pudding (background); clementine; white rice; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Small portion today. It sucks when the kids like everything, I can't go chow down on what they didn't eat. Also got some cookies and a weird soda-fruit salad thing (the elementary class had been in the home ec room)

December 20, 2015

Special weekend edition: posted mostly because we ordered the weird assortment.

Me: "mixed sando" which apparently meant a salad on one, and pasta/egg/ham on the other. taste 2/5

Ayumi: a giant parfait, the best way to start off any day.

Byron: "banana pancakes", which included 3 pancakes, 4 slices of banana, and copious whipped cream/chocolate sauce.

I was in asahikawa this weekend to buy snowshoes/snowboard boots/watch star wars. I finished all three tasks successfully, several 万 円 poorer. I'll end this with a quote from my new snowshoe packaging:


You feel wildness like a bird.
You play with the wind like a bird. 
Our brand was born in the north ground
for such a great outdoor life.
We hope you all can have a exciting holiday...

December 19, 2015

Special weekend edition: Recent Healthy Dinners

Yakiniku (monbetsu): ¥2800 (~$35) include two beer. Raw chicken necks; raw beef tongue; raw pork belly with spicy sauce; raw chicken cartilege.

With Yakiniku, you recieve raw meat and you then grill it at the table. The chewy chicken cartilege was very high quality at this shop.

Soup curry Samurai, Sapporo: ~¥1300 ($15). Coconut base soup curry, level 6 out of 10 spice, with assorted veggies, rice with charred cheese and karaage.

This soup curry shop was really delicious. The burdock root in the soup curry was amazing.

Miura Karaage Teishoku (Monbetsu): ¥800 (~$10 at current exchange). Rice, pickled daikon, absurd quantity of white meat fried chicken, cabbage salad, miso soup with wakame and tofu. If you're lucky, tea afterwards.

Somewhere in  Sapporo: ¥1200 (~$15) Tempura Don/Soba bowl combo. Tasty but super greasy. Conbini woulda been better.

Somewhere in Yubetsu: ¥850 (~$10) Karaage Teishoku. White rice with grated umeboshi (sour salt-pickled plum); pickled daikon and carrot; cabbage salad with tomato; chawan mushi; reasonable amount of karaage; miso soup with wakame, tofu, green onion.

I've been eating out a bit more than normal i guess. It's all delicious and not very healthy (at least in terms of the number of calories I'm eating).

December 18, 2015

White rice; 200ml Hokkaido milk; salty katsuo-sesame rice flavour packet; steam spinach, ham and bean sprouts in salty vinegar dressing; egg; miso soup with cabbage carrot and tofu.

Standard lunch, delicious.

December 17, 2015

White rice; weird pork-onion-carrot-green onion stuff in sauce; fried white fish; simple miso with potato and onion; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Typical meal, feels pretty healthy to me.

December 16, 2015

White rice; black poison seaweed salad with pork; fried white fish; miso soup with matchstick daikon and onion and cabbage; 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Wednesday school in a non bread mood. good stuff.

December 11, 2015

Green apple jello. White rice. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Fried Monbetsu beef with mushroom and onion in some kinda delicious sauce. Simple egg drop soup with green onion.

Not much to look at, but it was quite a treat to get beef, let alone local beef from monbetsu (hamanasu-gyuu from "hamanasu dori" [central entertainment street in monbetsu] and "gyuu" [cow])

Sorry not to get any of my pictures up this week til now. no excuse except procrastination :)

December 10, 2015

White rice with nori paste of some kind (blue packet on right). 200ml Hokkaido milk. some kinda fish. Tuna-onion salad. Soup with potato, green onion, pork, tofu, udon noodles.

Thursday school overcompensating for the lack of protein in my Wednesday lunch. all quite good.

December 9, 2015

Indian-spice spaghetti (not spicy) with veggies. Sweet hotdog bun. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Yaki-purin-taruto (baked pudding tart).

Wednesday school pulling no punches. The spaghetti was bizarre but quite tasty. The pudding tart was super delicious. reminded me of something but I can't quite place it ... maybe like a less sweet butterscotch pie.

December 8, 2015

white rice. 200ml Hokkaido milk. some kinda mackerel. steamed mushroom/spinach/cabbage. Miso soup with tofu and green onion and carrot and pork.

December 7, 2015

wakame rice. bizarro fish soup/stew. 200ml hokkaido milk. quick-pickled cabbage and cucumber

hopefully my last picture from this phone.

December 4, 2015

white rice. fried chicken. cooked carrot, cabbage and bean sprout. miso soup. 200ml hokkaido milk

late post

December 3, 2015

Veggie soup with a bazillion veggies and fried tofu. Wakame rice. Saba. Pork, potato, onion and rice vermicelli!? 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Other than the inclusion of rice vermicelli, this was a standard lunch

also comments are now enabled for your pleasure. hope there aren't too many spambots.

December 2, 2015

white rice. fried white fish with sweet sauce. daikon, carrot and pork with sauce. miso with daikon, fried tofu, carrot. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

almost identical to yesterday. topped off the soup and veggies post-haste

December 1, 2015

200ml Hokkaido milk. White rice. Boiled cabbage and spinach. Fried white fish. Miso soup with wakame, tofu, and enoki.

Tasty. Immediately following the picture, I added japanese tartar sauce to the fish, and filled my soup bowl up to the brim.

November 30, 2015

Curry with pork, onion, carrot. White rice. Mikan (orange) jelly. 200ml Hokkaido Milk.

Good simple lunch. japanese curry.

November 28, 2015

Bit of a special weekend edition here. We went out today to gather some wild wasabi from a family-secret location our friend was willing to share with us. We cleared the snow and managed to dig up a half dozen small-medium wasabi. 

Freshly unearthed wasabi root

 Next, we decided we would put it to use. First, we gave some to his family since they shared the location with us. Then, we picked up some scallops (hotate), salmon (syake), and tuna from the grocery store. Whipped up some sushi rice. Cleaned and grated the wasabi, sliced the fish.

All the fixins for a sushi bowl. Sliced avocado. Minced tuna. Sliced salmon. Raw scallop. Bottles of Shoyu (soya sauce) and su (vinegar). Grated wasabi mixed with shoyu. White sushi rice mixed with su.

Finally, assembled some bowls.

Assembled sushi bowl.

delicious.

November 26, 2015

200ml Hokkaido Milk; miso soup with fried tofu and greens; fried fish; marinated pork, daikon and carrot; yamamori (mountain of rice)

Had lunch in the teachers room today, because it was a test day.

Also it is full-on winter here, snowed 20cm Tuesday, and it stuck around. snowing again now. Hoping to pick up some snowboard boots this weekend...

the hill in the background is the ski hill in monbetsu. not huge, but only 2.5km from my house. I've seen them testing out the lift etc so they might open soon....

November 25, 2015

Yogurt with fruit (pineapple, mandarin, other stuff). Udon with chicken, cabbage, green onion. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Hotdog bun with sweet peanut flavour sugar.

Only have two days of school lunch. Lucky for you, dear reader, one of them was my Wednesday school with a peanut-sugar hot dog bun.

September 4th, 2015 (from the archives)

From the archives (had no school lunch today):

Large rice. Two spring rolls. Japanese style shepherd's pie (carrot, potato, and ground pork in a gelatinous sauce with the strong flavour of christmas spices - cloves? nutmeg? i don't recall). Miso soup with wakame and tofu. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

This one was interesting. The slop at the top is kind of a japanese take on shepherd's pie. Uses ground pork as the meat, and has quite a bit of gelatinous sauce. The most interesting part is the spices - it reminds me very much of the spices in Tortiere, which I think is cloves.

Another interesting thing I'll touch on is the miso. It is often made with contrasting ingredients - this day's combination (wakame and tofu) is quite common. The wakame floats, while the tofu sinks. Other times it will have a contrast in textures (something chewy like fried tofu with something that falls apart easily like maybe potato?). It's kinda cool!

November 20, 2015

200ml Hokkaido milk. boiled beansprout carrot and spinach. Miso soup with wakame and matchstick daikon, Pork stir fry with onion and green pepper. White rice.

Tasty lunch. At my Jr High schools, I get my lunch tray from the staff room and take it to a random student classroom to eat. This works out quite well usually (I keep my visits more or less fair, but when a class is being really slow to get the lunch dished out I go to a different one to ensure i have time enough to eat). But occasionally I have significantly more food than the students and I feel bad.

November 19, 2015

White rice. Nori packet. Potato pork mash. fishy fish. Miso with cabbage and fried tofu. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

so much rice ugggghh my belly

November 18, 2015

200ml Hokkaido milk. Fried potatoes, carrots and hot dog slices. Two pieces of zangi. Hot dog bun with "chilled chocolate" -chocolate cream. Soup with mochi, spinach, pork, daikon.

Classic wednesday school.

November 17, 2015

White rice. Mackerel. Boiled cabbage and spinach. Pork soup with wakame, mochi ball, green onion, daikon, and carrot. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Decent lunch. Ate with the first/second grade (combined class), everyone ate everything but there were two kids who wouldn't finish their rice. Also one of them wasnt good with chopsticks and he dropped rice down his sleeve. Another one blew a bubble with the mochi ball from the soup.

Coconut base soupcurry with kabocha, chicken leg, veggies, cheese, and quail eggs. White rice.

Bonus food. Had this for supper on Sunday, at a soup curry place in Kitami. Soup curry is maybe my favourite Hokkaido specialty. I should try out a few home-recipes and see if I can find one that's comparable, so people in canada can enjoy too.

September 3rd, 2015 (from the archives)

One from the archives - I havent posted much recently so I thought I'd throw this one out there.

Miso soup with daikon and green onion. Some kinda fish, skin on, in sauce. Hijiki (black seaweed), daikon, carrot and chicken salad. Large rice. 200ml Hokkaido milk

This was a good one. first time I had hijiki salad, thought it was quite good. salty and chewy.

Interestingly, the food government agencies in Canada, the US, and the UK all advise against eating hijiki. It has high levels of inorganic arsenic apparently. Oh well, it tastes good and the other 150 kids at lunch ate it.

November 16, 2015

Soup with pork, bean sprouts and spinach. Pasta salad with ham and carrot. "pilaf" with shrimp n stuff. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Pretty good lunch. only my second time at this school - and the first time was my first day teaching. It went much better this time for some reason.

November 13, 2015

Fukujinzuke on white rice. Plain sweetened yogurt. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Chicken curry.

Japanese curry is tasty, very savoury, and not spicy at all (at least, to my western tastebuds). According to Wikipedia, it was introduced to the Japanese by the British - kinda amusing. it's super popular

November 12, 2015

White rice. Spinach, bean sprout and bacon salad. Deep friend white fish with sauce. Miso soup with green onion and mozuku seaweed. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Good lunch today, the bacon is the first I've had in japan that seemed to be smoked/cured western-style. Usually it is just ham cut into bacon form, without any of those delicious delicious nitrites.

November 11, 2015

Wakame rice. Tofu, carrot, and onion in some sweet and savoury sauce. Piece of mackerel (sanma) I think. Egg drop soup with garlic scapes?. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Forgot to check the menu on this one, so i'm not sure of exactly what it was. pretty good though, no bones in the sanma. Bonus points because it was my wednesday school and i didnt have to eat a hotdog bun.

November 10, 2015

Miso soup with tofu, carrot, daikon, and spinach. Fried salmon with 2 bones. Salad with raw cabbage and bean sprouts. Wakame rice. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Very good school lunch today, a nice shift from eating far too much conbini food over the past week. My brother and sister in law were visiting. We were travelling around a lot, and that meant eating a lot on the go - not the healthiest. Only got two bones in my salmon, and found em before biting into them! successful day.

November 4, 2015

spaghetti with onion, cabbage, sausage, pork. Caramel sweet portatoes. Bean sprout, spinach, and ham salad. Hotdog bun. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Good ol' Wednesday school assortment.

Won't have any posts for a week or so. My brother and sister-in-law are in Hokkaido, so I'm taking a couple days off school.

November 2, 2015

napa cabbage, carrot, green onion. Broiled chikuwa. Rice with chestnut. Soup with tofu, green onion, and kamaboko. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Chestnut rice pretty good. other stuff okay too.

October 30, 2015

Curry and rice: white rice; chicken and beansprout salad with peanut sauce; Japanese curry with ground meat and veggies; 200ml Hokkaido milk

Good lunch today, only ended up having about 9 minutes to eat though. difficult.

October 29, 2015

Udon soup (kakeudon) with tofu, pork, potato, carrot, mushroom, green onion. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Large fishstick with teriyaki-like sauce. Marinated cabbage and onion. White rice with noritama (seaweed egg) flavour furikake (rice topping).

The topping is a pretty regular occurrence. kinda fishy, sweet, salty, crunchy all in one. Nice change from the white rice. Not really sure whether or not it's healthy - but the package did mention calcium.

October 28, 2015

Egg drop soup wih wakame, green onion, carrot, shiitake. White rice. Pork and ginger stir fry wih carrot. Marinated saba. 200ml Hokkaido milk.

Pretty good, just the saba (a type of Mackerel) is annoying - had to split it in half and pick out all the little tiny bones. i liked the strong ginger in the stir fry

October 27, 2015

White rice. 200ml Hokkaido milk. Fried tofu, pork, green beans, potato, daikon, and carrot. Fried squid rings. Miso soup with cabbage and wakame.

Back to normalcy after the excessive lunch yesterday. Very tasty.

October 26, 2015

Top: cold barley tea, miso soup.
Tray: half kiwi, strawberry jello cup.
Plate: fried rice, fried fish, fried chicken, fried shrimp, french fries, Hamburg steak, edamame, tuna salad with corn, vanilla cake, match cake, chocolate cake.

Today's lunch was unique - "biking style". Meaning viking style. Meaning buffet style. Someone wanna look up the etymology and explain it to me? I was told because it is Swedish format, therefore viking. I don't trust the source.

So yeah, it was a lot of food, very good, but very fried. The kiwi and the strawberry cup were highlights. The matcha (green tea) cake was quite good too.

October 23, 2015

Wakame rice. Milk. Sweet egg omelette with soy sauce. Potatoes, carrots, onion and ham with cheese in curry cream sauce. Miso soup with fried tofu and butterbur (kinda like celery).

Very tasty lunch today. Happy Friday. Drove to kitami last night for supper and to buy a sweater, 2 hours each way. I'm sleepy.