October 2, 2013 the new red....

This week has been relatively uneventful, for me anyway. Gary has been working diligently on paperwork regarding this building we're hoping to rent for the church.

I have come to the conclusion that Japan is the inventor of paperwork! I confess to missing the days in Mexico when you'd just hand over a bundle of money and have a place to rent!  Here it is all paperwork and guarantors and "how much noise will you make?" or "Maybe, you can just quietly play a guitar for your church service."

Apparently, Japan doesn't understand the meaning of Pentecostal! Lol!   Oh well, needless to say Gary has had a "fun" week!

So, I haven't had a haircut in a year and Gary had seen a place that looked decent in Mitaka so I headed over there and amazingly the haircutting guy spoke pretty good English! That really helped! After getting it cut I thought I'd better dye all the gray out and as I had one package of dye I had brought with me from the States I thought I'd take care of it. Little did I know that Light Auburn Brown  really means RED!  (It's actually redder than it looks in this picture!)
                                               

    
                                                  
The weather here has slowly been changing, still warm during the day but only in the '70's now instead of the '90's. And it's much cooler at night so we haven't been needing the air conditioner any more, yay! I only purchased summer bedding when we moved here so now that the weather is beginning to change I figured I'd better get ready ahead of time!  I still haven't been able to find any flat sheets, apparently folks prefer to use fitted sheets and then a duvet on their blankets instead of flat sheets.  Also, for some reason blankets and sheets here are terribly expensive, I know I'll buy some sheets on my next trip to the States!
Fortunately, I don't anticipate needing as many blankets as last year since for some reason I'm just not feeling the cold like I used to... Lol!

On to food!

I've been feeling a little International this week and since the weather has been cooler I've been experimenting with some new recipes. I made Phillipine pork adobo one day. I just looked up a couple of different recipes online and kind of combined them so I don't have a recipe to post for it this time, but it was good and I'll make it again sometime!  Also, I guess we were hungry because I forgot to take a picture..it looked like this though. I've never had adobo before but Gary has and he says it was good!

Then I was watching some youtube cooking videos and found a couple for Irish Colcannon. So in honor of my smidgeon of Irish blood thanks to my great-great Grandma, I made this recipe but added a sausage with it like they did in a different recipe I saw.

Here's the recipe if you want to try it, it's nothing fancy but was tasty and filling!

Yesterday, I returned to Japanese cooking and I tried two new recipes from the newly in English, Cookpad site. I made rolled pork with sweet potato. The sweet potato and pork together was actually a good combination.
Sticking with the "wrap things up in pork theme" I  also made green beans and carrots wrapped in thin sliced pork and simmered in a sauce.  This was quite delicious and it's an easy recipe.


                                             Here's how they looked. 
                                              

     
Finally, Japan is famous for it's different flavored KitKat bars. In the States we only have chocolate flavor but here there are many flavors. Since autumn has arrived the new flavor is Kabocha. Kabocha is like pumpkin or squash. I love Kabocha because it has a much milder flavor and a wonderful creamy texture when cooked so I thought I'd give the new KitKat a try.

                                                      

 

Taste Test! Taste Test!