I’m getting to be a pretty good cook again.

Of course, not to toot my own horn, but I was a pretty darn good cook to begin with. But coming here, it’s been a bit of a challenge to find my cooking feet again. For instance, my apartment has no oven, but apparently my microwave has the capabilities to bake a cake… if only I knew which button to press. It’s that sort of thing.

Most of my shopping is based on the pictures on the box, or if I can see what’s in the container or not. Surprisingly, given the cost of raw ingredients and the fridge space available, it seems more cost effective to simply buy the 300 yen lunches from the basement of the train station (which are actually really good… there is a thriving and highly competitive deli-lunch-box business going on down there). But I really like cooking, so I keep trying.

Last night I decided to make teriyaki chicken. The teriyaki sauce is made from soy sauce, sugar, rice wine (mirin) and sake. I had no mirin, and the sake I had… well… I THINK it was sake. It smelled very very boozy, and had the right bottle shape and color, and after I had mixed up the sauce, well, it didn’t quite smell like teriyaki but it did smell like something I would eat! So I said “very well then”, and stuck the chicken in the fridge to marinate while I made the chocolate mousse.

The chocolate mousse was a very different story. I’m pretty sure I used the right kind of cream (at least, I’m POSITIVE that it was cream that I used) but the chocolate was iffy, as was the recipe itself. Also, I discovered too late that I didn’t have any measuring utensils. At all. Not even metric ones. But at that point, I was pretty dang determined to see it through.

Let’s just say that I’ve done better. It was edible, certainly. I will be eating it all (but not all at once… too many eggs for one sitting) and not just dumping it in the bin.

Tonight I’ll make spaghetti, or go visit a pizza parlor for which I have a free pizza coupon.

I think the most disappointing grocery experience yet is the discovery that ground hamburger is sold in tiny little boxes at high cost, and they only stock about 2 boxes at a time in the store. When it gets cold, I’m going to stock up for a week, and then make a pot of sloppy joes and rejoice in the splendor of heavy midwestern food.

Until then, I will gobble up noodles (soba is fantastically delicious) and sweet potatoes (famous in this region, and super delicious when they are batter-fried). I will eat okonomiyaki and learn how to make my own (it’s like a little pizza made out of flour-egg-cabbage batter, with mayo and veggies and meat and other sauces on top). Eventually, I will bake a cake in my microwave, hopefully, without burning down the city.

Oh! I almost forgot… one of the first things I made was Onigiri – japanese rice balls with filling, wrapped in roasted seaweed. I put little cherry tomatoes in the middle, and some pickled meat and veggies from the deli. When I showed up at school with this lunch, all the lady teachers were super impressed, and totally shocked to find out what I had put in the middle. We’re talking the “can’t find the words, calling over the other sensei to tell her about it” kind of shocked.

It was hard to separate the sense of “wow, you cooked japanese food!” from “you’re totally off your rocker to mix rice and tomatoes!”

Oh well, no matter. It’s my lunch.