1. Making Friends, Oranges and Limes, 2. Fruit Salad, 3. Summer Berries Blueberries, 4. Spaghetti with Fennel Sauce สปาเก๊ตตี้เฟนเนล + Recipe

Yum!

My resolution for this week is short and simple: Eat Healthy!
I’ve been eating a lot of rubbish lately… it’s all been delicious, mind you, but not so great in terms of healthy variations/getting enough fruits and veggies. My apartment may be clean, but my stomach is not. Less pocky, more kiwis!

Japan has a pretty good variation of healthy foods and delicious things to eat, but when you’re new, it’s apparently really easy to just eat udon or curry every day until you die. I’m experiencing it, it’s true. Why bother hunting and gathering and cooking a well-balanced meal when I can turn on my rice cooker and take a 48-minute nap while it hums away? Besides, we’re all a bit overwhelmed with all the new choices we have to make, not to mention we’re learning from scratch with considerations to groceries and cooking japanese-style. It’s easy to base all your meals around one familiar ingredient and get a bit of a “freshman 15″.

As I’ve heard over and over, when you eat poorly, you feel poorly. Nice as it would be, I’m not in the mood where I want to just eat Raw and have loads of energy on half the sleep, not to mention the perfect skin and happy glow… ok, I lie, those things would be great, but I’m not ready for 100% raw food. But I am definitely in tune with the bonuses that come from good eating.

So… whee! Sayonara, endless boxes of curry! You weren’t that great anyway! Bring on the unfamiliar veggies!

In the above picture, it’s actually hard to find all the fruits.. except for the citrus variety. Tokushima is known for “sudachi”, which is a little golfball of a green citrus fruit. It appears as a garnish all the time when you eat at authentic food places. Also, did you know that the kiwi is actually the result of cross-breeding and folks playing God with gooseberries? Yum, kiwi.