Peanut butter cookies

Weather has been quite nice the past few days. It seems a little less humid and there's a pretty constant breeze. =) Our almost daily pigeon visitor came this morning and was cooing away outside our kitchen window. It's kind of relaxing in a funny way! =P

Tried a new recipe of peanut butter cookies last night. They're pretty nummy and turned out better than I expected for being cooked in the microwave. The bottoms of some of the cookies are a little on the darker side. It is definitely more time consuming as I could only fit about 6 cookies in at the time. Have yet to figure out how to keep the oven going after I open and close the door.. I keep having to turn it off then on again.. RAH! Made some more kanten jelly (made out of agar and water) yesterday as well to have with some left over kuromitsu (black sugar syrup). Was really nice to have after walking in the heat to go buy some bakeware.

Peanut butter cookies

Peanut butter cookies with salted peanuts

Fruit Anmitsu (this was the first one I made - didn't eat this one yesterday)

 Finally catching up on my kanji reviews (soo many like 700!!) with some iced coffee. I've gotten quite addicted to it. =P They don't have good iced milk tea - it is either too sweet or has some strange 'fragrant' taste to it. Bleugh! Tried this nummy coffee ice creams called Papico. They come in pairs, so Sam and I usually have one each for dessert. They do disappear quick though.. =( 

Papico - Ganache in Caffe Latte

The Papico family

Windy change

Since yesterday afternoon there has been some strong winds.. I have been mostly enjoying it. Was quite happy to sit in the house with the doors and windows open without drowning out the house in my sweat! (hahaha... that's quite an exaggeration!! =P) The wind does get quite strong so it does tend to blow things around if it's not very heavy.. Did a wash of Sam's shirts this morning and I'm a bit paranoid about them flying off the balcony!! Eeeep!!! Made myself a bento today with some leftovers.. Going to head out to get some ingredients to make some choc-chip cookies after our mat arrives.. Num num num...

Banana bread in the microwave

The microwaves here are quite interesting. Most have a 'toast' setting on them and ours also has an 'oven' setting. You are able to set the temperature you want and has an element at the top of the microwave. The size of the microwave isn't very big, probably one of the smaller sizes that you would see in Sydney.

Decided to try it out last week with some banana bread (as bananas are about the only affordable fruit). The loaf pan that was here luckily just fitted in. They don't have brown sugar here so I substituted it with black sugar (kurosatou) - the taste of the finished product was quite different to me. It took a very long time to cook... =( It seemed that the heat distribution isn't very even. Will try to bake some biscuits after I get some ingredients from the interanational food store - Jupiter. 

Black sugar banana bread

Banana Bread

86g (2/3 cup) pecans or walnuts, coarsely chopped - I prefer the taste of pecans in the bread
85g butter, melted (if unsalted add 1/8 tsp salt)
300g (2 cups) plain flour
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon) - Adjust to your taste
168g (2/3 cup firmly packed) brown sugar
390g mashed super ripe banana
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
90g (1/3 cup) natural yoghurt (about 3% fat)
Honey (optional)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius (160 degrees fan forced).

Toast nuts on a baking tray for a 3-5 minutes, until lightly golden and fragrant. Cool to room temperature.

Line a loaf pan (20cm x 10cm x 6.5cm) with baking paper.

Sift flour, bicarb soda and cinnamon into a large bowl.

Mix together mashed banana, eggs, vanilla, melted butter and yoghurt together. Stir in nuts.

Make a well in the flour mixture and add banana mixture. Gently fold ingredients until just combined.  Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for about 1 hour and 5 minutes to 1 hours and 10 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the bread comes out clean (no batter attached). - After about 1 hour I take the bread out and pour some honey over the top then return it to the oven to continue cooking - it gives it a nice shiny and honey tasting top.

Allow the banana bread to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool or eat it!

Just as I was posting our new floor chairs arrived! Comfy!!! =D Tomorrow our floor mat comes! YAY!

First attempt at inarizushi

I've been wanting to make inarizushi (apparently known as brown bag sushi) for a while now, and making it for Sam's bento today gave me a good excuse. Saw a recipe for it on my favourite Japanese food youtube channel - Cooking with Dog . It didn't work as well as I had hoped it would, but it is still quite tasty. It is a deep fried soy bean pouch (aburaage) filled with rice and vegetables.

Inarizushi, broccoli, Sam's tasty meatballs,
Japanese potato salad, tomagoyaki, hijiki seaweed salad and a bacon wrapped meatball.

Bento... turtle.. bench.. happy..

Woke up early to make Sam's bento and to head out to the HIA building to apply for the Japanese course that they run. Got a little lost, but found it in the end. Found out when I was there that if there are too many people applying for the course they choose by lottery. =( So I'm hoping that there won't be many people applying.. =P

Had been hearing about a melon flavoured 'melon pan' from Sam for a while. Saw a green turtle looking melon pan at the bakery close to our local station. However, when i wanted to get one there weren't any left. =( That's the only bakery i have found that sells these mysterious melon flavoured melon pan. Bought one the other week and it was pretty good. It was definitely melon flavoured. Today I bought one again and it was a lot better. It has a melon flavoured custard, surrounded by soft fluffy bread and has a crunchy melon flavoured biscuit top! Num num num...

Got back with plenty of time before my much anticipated bench arrived. Have been waiting to get some extra bench and cupboard space. Our kitchen is a little strange for a pretty Japanese place. It has a low (even for me!) sink/ bench and really high cupboards. Can't reach the last half of the bottom level of the cupboards!

YAY!!! Bench!

Finally..

Finally set up a blog since coming to Kobe, Japan and finally getting internet! YAY!!! We have been here for almost a month. Time sure does fly... This weekend we visited Kobe Nunobiki Herb Garden and Ropeway, next to Shin-kobe station. There were cable cars / ropeway that take you up to the herb garden at the top. Don't remember the last time I was on a cable car, so I was pretty excited to go on it. Until... I got on it and it left the station and I remembered my fear of cable cars and heights! Nonetheless, we got to see an awesome view of the port below! We made our way down the mountain/garden seeing the many varieties of herbs, flowers and bushes. It was super hot and humid (as is everyday) so we got about half way and sad down at this Mint Cafe in the glasshouse. We had this tasty burger which had lots of herbs in the pattie and in the bun. It came with a teapot and you could drink as much tea/coffee as you wanted within an hour! =D Towards the bottom we found this recreation area near these lily gardens. There was a little garden maze for kids and this "snowmaker", which operated at certain times in the day. Luckily when we got there it was almost time for it to turn on. No snow... but strong cooling wind and an occasional hit of water. Would definitely like to go again in Spring/ Autumn to see the different flowers and trees.

Dam we saw from the cable car

Mint area with occasional spurts of mist

Lambs ears. These are seriously the softest fluffiest things! "It's soo fluffy I'm gonna die!"

So many different types of basil

Saw lots of the huge bees

Sweat patches from backpack

Unlimited tea for an hour!

Herb burger

Blueberry bush

Cool plants, reminds us of victory bell from Pokemon

Random one white leaf amongst the green

Huge hanging plants

Funny bean

Sam and the "snowmaker"

Random pink lily

After church on Sunday, we went for ramen at a place called Ippudo near Motomachi station. I was super excited to try it as it is my first ramen in Japan!! It was a little confusing when we were ordering as there are red and white bowls with different meat/soup. When you order, you specify the level of firmness you want your ramen to be! It definitely didn't disappoint! The noodles were thinner than the ones in Sydney, the softboiled egg was perfectly cooked, the meat was super tastey and the soup was good (the tonkotsu soup was not unbearably thick like some of the places in Sydney).

Headed over to Daimaru (a large deparment store) in Motomachi afterwards to pick up some desserts. The bottom levels of most large department stores just have food! It's awesome! There aren't any places for you to sit and eat like in David Jones' food level. I bought a creme caramel and something else - it looked soo pretty.. ahhhh....

The custard in the creme caramel had an egg-ier flavour than the other puddings we've tried. The caramel at the bottom was near perfect. The other thing turned out to be some apple cake. It had apple flavoured Italian meringue on the top, soft (maybe stewed) apple in the middle and some sponge on the bottom. Num num num... Will definitely go back to try more of their desserts. A few of the desserts I just want the container/cup! hehehe...