Sri Lankan Beef

After being away from Canada for over one year, I can now officially make my favorite dish from my favorite restaurant “Ceylonta” in Ottawa. I finally found the recipe for Sri Lankan Sauteed (or Roast) Beef. I’m so happy that I no longer have to just dream about eating it, I can now make it whenever I want!

For anybody else who’s interested you can see the recipe here.

Friday Night Lights

On my last post about television viewing I had mentioned watching the HBO series “The Wire”. Well I finished watching the entirety of that series, so I was hunting for a new series to watch. Trolling through NeoGAF message boards I noticed many people mentioning the series “Friday Night Lights”. I thought I would give it a try, and discovered it was as good as everyone was saying. The basic story premise is about a small Texas town football team, and the drama surrounding it. The show has a kind of realistic quality to it (which I found out is because it allows a lot of improvisation for it’s actors), and has a lot of really likeable characters. Anyways give it a shot, it’s pretty damn good.

Grow Your Own

Yesterday we went and got some plants for the garden. It’s the best time of year to plant vegetables and such, so this year we decided to try growing some stuff.

So far we have some arugila, rocket, red pepper, rosemary, spearmint, and some Italian parsley. Not pictured is chili pepper, normal parsley, green pepper, tomato, basil and cucumber. Hopefully lots of stuff will grow. I like the idea of a garden growing food, and not flowers.

Abukuma Caves

Yesterday we took a drive down south to Fukushima to see the Abukuma Caves. It was really cool, they had two routes the normal way and the “adventure” course. Some of the normal way was pretty tight so I would be terrified to see what the “adventure” course is like. Anyways I took some picture I will share with you now.

The cave was all lit up with different colored lights, it was pretty spectacular.

There was lots of strange shaped rocks, including the one below that looked like a huge mushroom.

The rock in the cave is mostly limestone, and it was pretty damp, so there was tons of stalactites and stalagmites

Here’s a final scene with some cool lighting.

Thanks go out to Squampton’s blog post a while ago for letting me know about this natural wonder.

Karamucho

One of the best snacks in Japan in my opinion is Karamucho. I love the normal stick variety, as opposed to the potato chip version. Lately however they have had a couple new versions available, like “Mustard Mayo”.

I didn’t enjoy this flavor that much. The mustard was really overpowering. Another new one is the “Gion Shichimi”, which just means spice flavor for the neighbourhood of Gion in Kyoto.

This one is pretty good, and is an interesting alternate to the regular Karamucho flavor. It get the thumbs up for sure.

Panson Bakabon

I got a couple Panson Works styled Bakabon figures at 7/11 for super cheap since they were trying to get rid of them. Unfortunately I got two very uninteresting ones. Like this one.

Hmm not so good. I was hoping for one of the main characters. This however is much worse.

Why is it the special mystery collectors version is just the same as the normal figures, but without paint. Why is no paint better? It’s a mystery. Anyways here’s the rest of the set as pictured on the box. You’ll notice that I got the worst ones.

Local Food

Here’s a couple of the local grocery stores in Kakuda. The first is a really common chain all of Japan, York Benimaru. It’s owned by the same company that runs as 7/11 in Japan.

The other is smaller and a lot less common. I’m not even sure if it’s even anywhere outside of Miyagi. It is however my favorite in Kakuda. It’s called Itochen.

The reason I like it is the meat there is so much cheaper than York. Actually almost everything is cheaper. It doesn’t have as much selection as York, but the cheapness and close proximity to my house more than make up for it.9

Doritos Air

Here’s something rare, a snack that was actually available in Canada first. I’m talking about “Doritos Air”. The puffed up version of the normal chip. These were actually out a couple years ago in Canada, and aren’t sold anymore. They taste exactly the same as back then.

Curry Learning

I love curry! Not just Indian curry or Japanese curry, but all of them from around the world. Which is why I was happy to find this bi-lingual book at the book store all about curries from around the world.

Just by reading it, I’ve learned a lot about curry. Did you know that curry power was invented in England, and that Japanese curry is a variation of English curry, not Indian. The book has lots of recipes from India, Sri Lanka (my personal favorite), Indonesia, Vietnam, UK, Japan, Thailand and Nepal.

I’m looking forward to making some of these in the near future.

Interesting Beer

Here’s some interesting beers that the wife found at Seiyu. She’s really quite fond on the Yona Yona Ale. All of them tasted really good. A bit of a warning though, they are a little bit expensive compared to the prices of the big brewers in Japan.