Bought bento and senbei

Mikasa is a place I like to visit a lot, not only for it's food but also when I'm low on ingredients it's the best place to go and stock. It's basically a japanese mart so I can find anything I need for my meals.
Also there is the fast food zone where I can buy almost anything, from sushi to daifukus. My boyfriend and I went for dinner and here's what we bought.


This is my boyfriend's california roll, he always picks it up so I'm no longer amazed he chooses it, the good thing is that they put some tampico sauce on top of each piece so it's a nice flavor.


This is mine, I've been wanting to get one of these for some time now, hence I got it. It's a bento and it has small portions of different foods to taste. There was a cucumber salad, fried pork, shrimp, salmon and some other things I don't know the name of but tasted really nice. And the best thing of this bento is that it had a small pot of camelia, a dessert I really adore consisting in coffee gelatin mixed with a sweet coffee liqueur sauce. d(>///<)b


Finally, I got myself a pack of snacks called senbei, these are rice crackers that are eaten just like chips are for us, they taste really great since they taste of soy sauce and the green dots over there are peas, toasted and with a twist of wasabi.

It's cheesecake time!

I wanted cheesecake so badly... It all started with a tv show I saw where a low calorie raspberry cheesecake was being made. A couple of weeks later I saw a magazine with a double crust cheesecake recipe. I love cheesecake and having such temptations right in front of was too much.
And so I started to work.

These are actually all the needed ingredients for the cake, except raspberries, looks easy even from start, right?

At first I wanted to prepare the double crust cheesecake but after reading the amount of ingredients, time consuming and calories I remembered seeing the low calorie one and searched for the recipe on the web. I made several changes, like having whole cream cheese rather than light and using sugar instead of artificial sweetener. The only thing that went "wrong" was the sugar part because I didn't use enough for the whole cake. But serving it with raspberry marmalade made the trick and helped sweetening it.
I liked the experience by itself, my child finished her homework really fast in order to help me do the cake, which was an unexpected plus, and I learned to work with some ingredients I had been wanting to use. I believe that the best part of this preparation was that it took me a fairly small amount of time compared to what a normal cheese cake does.

The cheesecake ready to go into the fridge.

I think some of my final notes about this recipe are: First, I definitely have to buy some Grand Marnier to do this kind of stuff, I used Curaçao which was what I had and the crust ended up green... it doesn't taste bad at all and I love the green/pink colour combinations (see blog here =P) but it's definately too much to have this kind of colour in a cake. Second, next time I must use more sugar, at least doubling this time's amount. And third; to be honest, the cheesecake has more of a mousse consistency rather than the thick creamy cheesecake I'm used to. However, I really liked the flavor.

Ready for the yum?

I shall put the recipe later, because I have to translate it to English first, the original is in Spanish.

Aki Matsuri

So this is it! The so much expected aki matsuri had come.
As we live in Mexico the festival is held on the mexican-japanese asociation and is like some sort of kermesse. There are booths where you can play and maybe win a price, food sellers, a stage and also a karaoke.
Needless to say, I went there with the single and purposeful intention of having a go at the food. As we have the Mikasa I can always taste some nice food but at the Aki Matsuri you can have some other things that are more difficult to find on a daily base, or at least ready to be eaten.

Here are the culprits of my current guilt. =P

One of those things were the odango. You know, those cute rice balls that are covered with different dressings. Mine were three, two of them had a shiromiso dressing that tasted salty yet sweet and was really good, I'm not sure of the dressing name so I think I'll have to go and make some research. The last one was of course a sweet anko covered dango. This anko was not entirely crushed and so you could bite some of the beans which was good. Thinking on how soft and deliciously sticky the odango are. I had them with some o-cha, though I'm pretty sure it was actually houji-cha and it was all good. The day was pretty cloudy and cold but everyone was having a lot of fun.
My daughter bought a bun filled with anko for herself and I got myself a daifuku, wich is currently in the fridge, because I had a lot of dangos and I'm afraid of gaining a lot of extra weight. =P

The close up. X3

We also got ourselves some candies and I already tasted the lichee one, it tastes great actually, it's a fresh flavor and the sweetnes is ok. I was afraid of it because Kasugai tends to put a lot of sugar... but it depends on the sweet I guess.

A sample of the bunch we bought.

Mikafé

Y bien, el sábado pasado Kei me llevó a pasear y a tomar algo al Mikafé. De entrada no puedo dar muy buenas opiniones sobre el aspecto exterior del local ya que la calle donde se encuentra está en construcción. El interior es muy pequeño, aunque está bien arreglado, sus paredes son naranjas y tiene paneles de pvc rectangulares con imagenes de anime en las paredes.
Algo interesante es que tiene una gran variedad de revistas japonesas acomodadas en unos racks, fue interesante tomar una de ellas y hojearla, me hubiera gustado ser capaz de llevarmela conmigo.
Como era media tarde y acababamos de desayuno-comer no teníamos mucha hambre. Así que pedimos un té para los dos, takoyaki y un tampico roll.

El té en realidad se trataba de una infusión de jengibre fresco cortado en julianas largas. Lo pedí frío pero seguía tibio cuando me lo llevaron. Tenía un buen sabor aunque se sentía mucho el picante del té, afortunadamente le habían puesto bastante azúcar y era soportable.

De todo lo que nos sirvieron, el takoyaki fué lo más sabroso. Era crocante y tenía salsa agridulce, cebollinos, hojas de bonito seco y mayonesa encima. Estaban calientitos y de hecho estaba tan rico el plato que poco faltó para que me lo terminara sin haber tomado una fotografía antes.

El tampico roll estaba... 'bien'. Por no decir menos, a la salsa tampico le faltaba el chile y el arroz estaba algo seco, aunque el rollo en sí estaba bien hecho y no sabía mal. Kei y yo descubrimos que de hecho las piezas sabían muy pero muy rico aderezadas con la salsa agridulce de los takoyaki.
Nunca antes había estado en este lugar, fue mi primera vez y creo que está mucho más padre para ir en bola (aunque el espacio del local impide multitudes). A menos claro que vayas a comer algo en serio y quieras disfrutar un rato con tu pareja. Otra cosa que lamento es que no tenían luz en el local así que no pude comer postre. Quería un pan con crema pastelera pero no tenían donde calentarlo.
En fin, para pasar un rato con Kei fue una experiencia divertida, pero creo que tendremos que volver en un momento en el que ya no tengan problemas de electricidad y el pavimento haya sido colocado para poder dar una revisión.

My first bento!

My daughter is always picky when it comes about food. I try my best to give her nice looking food but one way or another she always ends up not eating the whole thing. Mainly because she plays so much she forgets to eat (or so she says).
Last wednesday I did a small bento for her and weirdly enough I had the feeling inside telling me 'Today is the day!' and so I took a pic of the succesful winner on beating Mariana's uneven feeding.
It's nothing elaborate, but she ate the whole thing so right now I feel quite glad and self-satisfied.
The bento consisted in a sadwich roll, made with a flattened slice of integral bread, cream cheese and ham; garnished with a couple of baby spinach leaves. On the second tier I placed some aliced apricot for her.

As you can see, it' not as big as it seems.

A close up so you can look better.

All about stickers.

I don't know why but I really love food related stuff, and when you add the 'kawaii' adjective before it it becomes even more desirable. So I bought some really cute stickers the other day that came all the way directly from Japan and currently am feeling so spaced out for them. Can't stop looking at them. XD
I also bought a small memo pad and a mini note. But right now I fell like just sharing one part with you all.

I don't know what to do with them though... XP

First Post

I want to make this an all-food-related blog and so I might just start with a few pics of my memorable encounters with food, I hope That everyone enjoys what they see and experience here.
Also I hope I'll be able to start making some bento for real.


I can't help to eat inbetween meals, sometimes it's a cracker or something like it, sometimes I just have some tea, but this time I wanted so mucho to eat some of those delicious strawberries, I ended up preparing some.


I love sushi, and my daughter loves it too, I just wanted to make something artsy and different for us to enjoy a bit more the experience. Next time I want to make some hanamaki. I bet she'll be truly impressed. X3


The older pic, I remember I went having lunch with my boyfriend this particular time (thought back then we still weren't a couple yet. I miss the daifuku for tea, I gotta go get some soon.