Cook

I woke up rather late.  Had rather late breakfast.  Rather late lunch - Konbiini (convenience store) lunch.  Salad and chicken nuggets!  And I ate the rice I cooked yesterday.  And then rather late dinner.

I left TPU to catch the 6:50pm bus, and got down at AT (Atsugi Trellis, pronounced by the Japanese as Atsugi Turelisu, and where the 100-yen/Daiso store is, and where the grocery store is), and bought...  salmon, pechay, and carrots, and a few other grocery items.  I bought some sushi! :-D

I also bought 2kg rice grains and bread (for breakfast)... and two 1.5L bottles of juice, one orange and the other - I wasn't sure yet if it was watermelon or apple juice, and I was hoping it was apple juice because if it was watermelon juice, I could've just had water and sugar...  Well not really...  Anyways, good thing it was apple juice!  Cost of each bottle is approximately $1.37.  Not bad.  The cost of a 500mL Coke bottle from the convenience stores or vendos is $1.50, approximately!  I didn't buy milk anymore, because I think it is the reason for...  Let's just call it "liquefaction" in the morning.  :-D

So I got home a little past 8pm.  And...  I had steamed salmon, pechay, and carrots for late dinner! :-D  I still ate the rice I cooked yesterday.  The leftover rice is still good for two more meals.  I learned from Coy, my friend who I met up with last Sunday in Tokyo, that it is more cost-effective to cook, if you can cook one whole week's worth in one sitting, and then you just heat, heat, and heat. That's what I did with my rice.  The steamed stuff - I don't think I can cook them now, and then just heat them later, it just won't be the same.

Anyhow, the salmon I bought - I don't know if it was edible by itself - like in sushi - I tried to chew it but, I don't know, maybe it's not cut as thin as it should be for sushi so I wasn't really able to gulp one chunk down, and so that's why I went on with steaming it.

Ah, maybe it's now my specialty: steaming.  Haha.  I like to steam fish and veggies, not only because it's easy enough to do, but also I think it's healthier than frying and tastier than boiling and so possibly overcooking the veggies.  When I had a one month stint in Singapore, I did a lot of steaming.  Of course, steaming then and now is just a consequence of not having a stove.

Soon I want to cook Sinigang, my favorite Filipino dish.  And "Pork Steak," Filipino style.  (It's like the Filipino-style "Beef Steak" or "Bistek," except you use pork and lots of onions, caramelized in soy sauce and tropical lemon or kalamansi).

By the way, I ate the steamed fish and veggies with Kikkoman all-purpose soy sauce.  I like that Kikkoman is not so salty (though I'm sure it still has a lot of sodium), so it went well with the steamed fish and veggies.  I forgot to put some salt on the fish before steaming!  But, I think it turned out well even without the salt.

And that's my day.  The rest of the day I was in front of my computer, doing work ("researching" stuff), reading a book (studying), and organizing my personal electronic files (pictures, documents, etc).

My first time to "cook" is the only new highlight of my day here in Atsugi.  It is a holiday, still.  Tomorrow is still a holiday as well.  And so anyways, I received a reward for cooking.  Upon getting back to the school, there was Mara online!  Yahoo!  I'm chatting with her right now.

Until the next blog post, then! :-D