26 hours, 1 hour of sleep ~ Part 3 May 9, 2008

It’s been a while since my last post.
We’ve been running around for 3 weeks straight that the exhaustion has finally caught up with me. We have been staying in for 3 days now because of my cold.

Any who, let’s finish the 26 hour trip.

After the 13 hour flight we finally arrived at Tokyo Narita Air Port, which is not really in Tokyo. It’s actually in Chiba, which is about an hour out of the city of Tokyo.
There was a mom with 2 kids, a 3 year old boy and a 1 year old girl, sitting in the row in front of us on the flight. The boy was extremely active (kind of hyper), and I don’t think he slept at all. He kept bouncing on the seat, wanting to walk around, and throwing things at our seat. Having a 1 year old, who is trying to sleep, and can’t because of the unfamiliar surroundings, and the awfully impatient son, I felt so bad for the mom, I almost offered her the Benedryl I broughtto knock the boy out for just a little bit. The mom looked exhausted after the flight. I hope I never have to experience what she had to go through.

At the airport, we picked up our luggage and tried to find a place that sold a pre-paid SIM card. No one knew where to get one. Since we had 20 minutes to catch the bus to Tama Plaza, where my mom was picking us up, we had to rush to buy the ticket and find the bus stop. Although I speak the every day language pretty fluently, there are a lot of words I don’t know. Since it’s been a while since I’ve been in the world of Japanese people, it was a bit hard to understand the explanation of where the bus stop was. They just talk so fast, and the Japanese business language (proper language) is not commonly used around me, it’s hard for me to understand. I ended up just followed the pointing.

I finally slept on the one and a half hour bus ride to Tama Plaza, in Yokohama. John got to see the out skirts of Tokyo on the way into the city from the Inaka (country side) of Chiba.
From the Tama Plaza station, we drove another one hour to get to Shizuokaken, Susonoshi (on Mt. Fuji), where my parents now live with my 87 year old grandmother.

After a long, long 26 hours of traveling, and a quick stop at the super market, we have finally arrived at our destination at 7:00 pm Japan time (6:00 am Eastern Time).

Our first meal, super market bought Sushi and Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken). Compared to the sushi you can buy at the super market in the US, this was like going to Nobu or one of those expensive sushi restaurants. It was really good.
So, I will share my sushi rice recipe & Karaage recipe.

Sushi Rice:

• 2 cups of short grain rice (half white half brown)
• About 5 cm (2 inches) of Dashi Kombu (Kelp)
• 2 and a half tbsp of sugar
• 1/2 tbsp of salt
• 3 and a half tbsp rice vinegar

Clean the rice and let it sit in a strainer for about 30 minutes. Then add the Kombu on top of the rice and cook in a rice cooker, with the appropriate amount of water (about 2 cups).

Meanwhile, combine the rice vinegar, salt and sugar.

When the rice is done, place the rice in a large bowl and add the vinegar mixture. Combine well.
The rice may seem very wet, but as you combine the rice with the vinegar, the rice will suck up the vinegar and will start to get sticky again. Constantly mix the rice until sticky.

Now you have the perfect sushi rice to make your own sushi.

Karaage:

• Boneless chicken thigh meat (recommended with skin), cut into chunks.
• 1 knob of ground ginger
• 1~2 knobs of garlic minced
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 tbsp sake
• Pinch of salt & pepper
• Potato starch or corn strach for batter

Take all the ingredients except for the potato starch and combine well to marinade the chicken for about 10~30 minutes.

Heat oil to about 350°F.

Take the chicken and cover with the potato starch batter. Fry for about 5 minutes each. Batter may look white in parts when done, but that’s just fine. It’s actually tastier that way. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt, and enjoy.

Our long travel ended with us not even finishing our sushi dinner.  I was exhausted…

26 hours, 1 hour of sleep ~ Part 2 April 21, 2008

4:30 in the morning we are dropped off at the air port with 3 bags to check, 2 carry on bags, 2 personal bags and a stroller. 3 check in bags are on wheels. 1 carry on is on wheels, 1 is a duffel bag, and we had the stroller… Wait a minute. We have 2 adults, and a 2 year old. Who is going to pull the 5 things on wheels and carry the half asleep toddler? We should of listened to Johns friend and got one of those carts to put all the bags.
Oh well, so I push the stroller with the toddler, carrying 1 personal bag, the duffel bag, while pulling the other carry on and John tried to push and pull 3 big bags on rollers. That’s my man. (hee hee hee)
We get to the check in counter. All of our bags check in at under 40 pounds. Oooooh, I’m good…

On to the next hurdle, “Going through Security”.

Take off the shoes, take off the jackets, take out the 2 lap tops and put them on separate trays, fold the stroller down, take out both of the 7.5 by 8 baggies with our 3.4 ounces or less liquids, and the other zip lock bag for the toddler with all of her 2 packs of 8 oz Organic Milk and 1 pack of 8 oz Soy Dream + 2 fruit cups (which may be allowed on board but must be declared to the TSA at the security checkpoint for screening.), have toddler put stuffed animal to be screened as well.
We got our bag on rollers checked because of our camera, but everything else went surprisingly smooth.

Before getting on the flight I get a mocha and a bagel and take my echinacea. The flight from Detroit to Newark was very rocky. I got air sick for the very first time in 31 years of traveling. I’m regretting the Mocha I decided to get before I got on the plane. Thank GOD it was a short flight.

Newark Air Port is HUGE. We got out, started to walk, John calling T-Mobile to tell them to unlock our phones for the ???teen time before we leave the country and end up not having a phone. Yes, they can unlock your phone and you can buy a pre-paid SIM card in the other country and use your PHONE!! (I do recommend you on doing this maybe a month ahead of time to avoid what we went through. We just found out that Japanese cel phones don’t use sim cards though… So can’t use the phone anyway for other countries that do have sim cards.)
Any who, we had to walk a bit and then catch the little People Mover to go to the next terminal, where our plane was taking off from. We had to go through security again. (ugh) This time the TSA stopped me and told me that I couldn’t bring in that much milk. I told him that I knew that you could bring that amount for my Toddler as long as I declared it, do to the information on their web site, he let us go. And he thought I had no clue… (But just in case they give you a hard time, make sure you bring a print out of the airline carry on restrictions so that you have proof.)

It was about 11 am, so we decided to get some subs before we board onto our 13 hour flight. As some of you may know, I thought we were only going to get a lunch on this 13 hour flight so I thought about eating and packing as much food as I can before I got onto this plane… Turns out I was a bit wrong.
During this 13 hour flight we got lunch, a snack of pretzels, dinner, breakfast and even ice cream. I’ve always hated food on the plane, especially the meat and fish are gross! So I called ahead of time and ordered a special needs meal for Zu and myself. We are vegetarian for this flight and Zu, because of her chronic constipation, is Vegan. Our meal turned out to be surprisingly good, but one of the bad things was, is that they only got Zu’s special needs order, and not mine… (sob) That’s okay though, Zu ended up sleeping through the Palak Paneer dinner, which was pretty good, except for the fact that Continental doesn’t know what Vegan means, or they don’t know that Paneer is cheese. And during lunch, she wanted the chicken nugget like patty that was in my Chicken sandwich, that the flight attendant said, “Sorry for not having your Vegetarian meal, but we have chicken or fish, would you like that instead?” Vegetarian…, chicken…? fish…? I had no idea those were vegetables. Well, I went for the, vegetarian meal substitute, Chicken and Zu liked it. Breakfast was a more curry like dish.  Zu was sleeping so I ate it for her.  Apparently all vegetarians are Indian, or Indian lovers to have some sort of curry in all 3 meals of the day. Oh, did I forget to mention that the veggie burger served for lunch had a hint of curry and coriander to it?

So in honor of my pretty good Vegan (Indian) flight menu, here’s a recipe for the Continental Vegan.

Chicken Tomato Curry:

• 400g of Boneless Skinless Chicken Thigh Meat
• 1 onion
• 1~2 carrots
• 1 can of black beans (drained)
• 1~2 knobs of garlic (minced)
• 1 knob of ginger (grated)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 1 large can of crushed tomato
• 1 cube of chicken bullon
• 1/4 tsp galam masala (if available)
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp basil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 a lemon
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• a dollop of plain yogurt for garnishment

In a large Le Creuset pot (or large pot with lid), on medium heat, brown the chicken with 1 tbsp of the butter. To the same pan, add the vegetables with the rest of the butter and saute until tender. Add all other ingredients except the yogurt and mix well. Cover and turn heat down to simmer. Cook for about an hour. That’s all! Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and eat it with your favorite Nan or rice.

Not sleeping yet…

26 hours, 1 hour of sleep ~ Part 1 April 17, 2008

This could get long so I am splitting this story in several parts.

It’s been 8 years since I’ve been in Japan, and our first trip as a family to Japan.

Flying with my daughter has always been surprisingly fabulous. She sleeps, hangs out in the seat, and just chills. But this time it’s not that 4~5 hour flight to San Diego, it’s a 1 hour flight to Newark, 3 hour wait until the next flight, then a 13 hour flight to Narita (Tokyo, Japan), 2 hour bus ride, then the one and a half hour car ride to Mt. Fuji. A lot longer.

Our day started at 4 am (Eastern Time) and ended at 6 am (Eastern Time) = 26 hours.

10:30pm, we go to bed. An hour later than when we really wanted to, but we had to get all of our bags to weigh less than 40 lb. I’ve been packing and getting ready for this trip for a week! Making sure I had everything I need and not more than what I need. Packing for 2 months is kind of hard. Luckily we are flying to a country that has everything, if we forgot anything.
Packing carry-on for toddlers takes a lot of thinking. Let’s go over my list:

1. Laptop with toddler games (Sesame Street), DVD’s in a small CD case, and head set.
2. Playdogh (pack of 3, $1) with plastic knife and fork (disposable, just in case they lose it, it doesn’t matter)
3. Crayons and coloring book. Compliments of the Mazda dealership)
4. Stickers, to stick anywhere. Thank you Whole foods for all the free stickers!
5. Lots of small snacks, salty to the savory. Not too many sweets or they will be so hyper that they won’t stay in their seats.
6. Sweatshirt for the cold flight.
7. An extra set of clothing. Just in case of an accident.
8. Night time diapers, so you don’t have to freqent the bathroom to change them.
9. Ear Planes. For air pressure relief. & a echinacea sucker for strengthening immune system and pressure relief.
10. And a secret life saver. One fun toy that you don’t let your child know that you bought, and bust it out when you ran out of everything and you need something. I got her a few pets from the Pet Shop collection.

That’s all that was in Zu’s bag for this flight.
Our other carry on (since I read the itenary wrong and thought they ONLY served lunch on this 13 hour flight), we packed grapes, bananas (you can buy fruit at the airport but they tend to be over priced), sandwiches, a couple onigiri, snacks, candy, neck pillows, eye mask, ear plugs, thick socks, poncho (can be used to wear or as a blanket), books, sudoku (get a gel pen, they usually don’t explode on flights), plug adapter for laptop (most of the time you need a EmPower adapter, you can find one at Target for about $40 in the electronics section), camera, and toiletry kit.

Our alarm clock went off at 3:30am. John (my husband) tells me that we have 30 more minutes until we have to wake up. So Not True!! We had to leave in 30 minutes to check in for our flight at 6:40am. He’s lucky I’m one of those people who can’t really fall back asleep after once waken up.
We get ready, Johns friend comes to pick us up. 3:50am get Zu (our daughter) and put her in the car. We packed most of the stuff in the car the night before. Smart way to travel if your leaving on a Red Eye or some thing super early like our flight. We got out of the house with practically no delay.

Now here’s a menu for some carry on food that I packed.
Onigiri (rice ball) for 2+toddler

• 1 and 1/4 cup frozen rice nuked.
• Salt & pepper
• Tuna
• Vinegar (you can use tuna, but I don’t recomend it for long flights)
• Sugar
• Soy Sauce
• Scallions finely chopped
• Sea Weed

In a bowl mix 2 tbsp tuna or salmon, 1/2 tsp vinegar, 1/2 tsp soy sauce, 1/4 tsp sugar, scallions and salt & pepper to taste.
Take 1/2 cup rice, make a little ball wrapping the 1/3 of the tuna mixture. Wrap with sea weed.
Repeat with 1/2 cup rice, and finally with 1/4 cup rice for toddler.
Very yummy and very satisfying for a small snack. Here’s a link to How To Video.

This is all for prepping for that International flight. This is pre-”Wrestless in 26 hours”.

Continues….

Recipe for Changing Weather April 4, 2008

I have a soar throat. I don’t know if it’s because we are going from upper 20 degrees weather to 50 degree weather, but I have this sucks.
I can take vomiting, sitting on the toilet, running a feaver, or a stuffy nose, but I can’t stand having a soar throat! You can’t swallow anything, talking is painful, and soar throat medicine is probably the worst because it just numbs other parts of your mouth that don’t need the numbing…

So here’s are some recipe’s for my swollen, soar throat.

Seafood Corn Chowder Soup

• 1 or 2 slices of bacon cut into small pieces
• 1 tbsp. Buttery Sticks
• 1 clove of garlic minced
• 1 Yukon Gold potato
• 1 celery stalk
• 1/4 cup carrots
• 1/4 cup yam
• 1/4 cup green pepper
• 1 cup frozen whole corn kernels
• 1 & a 1/2 tbsp. flour
• 2 tsp. vegetable Better Than bouillon
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup organic 2% milk
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp. parsley
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 cup Kani-Kama (immitation crab) or real crab if you have the money to spend.
• 1 cup of frozen seafood blend. (I get the one from Trader Joe’s that has shrimp, bay scallops, & calamari pieces in it)
• salt & pepper to taste

Brown the bacon pieces in a 4 qt. Le Creuset pot (or any other pot with lid). Dice all the vegetables (not the corn) into small pieces, about 1/4″ cube or less. Add butter into pot, with the vegetables and cook for about 5min. lid closed until vegetables are soft.
Sprinkle flour over vegetables, using a sifter and stirring constantly to coat everything. Add the water, bouillon, cover and cook on low for 10min. stir occasionally. Add the frozen corn, cover and cook for another 5 min. Add milk and cook for another 5 min.
Add Kani Kama and frozen seafood and cook for another 7~10 min. Until seafood is cooked through. That’s it!

You can sprinkle it with some Sharp Cheddar & paprika. Serve with some crunchy bread to those who don’t have a soar throat, and you can have the soup over rice. Japanese style! (We put everything over rice)

So now comes the dessert.
A soothing gelatin treat to satisfy my sweet tooth after dinner.

Milk Kanten (Agar Agar)

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup organic 2% milk
• 1 tbsp organic Fat Free Milk
• 3 tbsp organic cane sugar
• 20 grams of Kantenko (agar agar) about 2~3 tsp’s
• 1 can of sliced mango

Put 1 cup of the water in a sauce pan and sprinkle the Kanten (agar agar) on top. (Do not put it on the burner yet) Let it sit for 5~10 min.
Mean while, dissolve the powdered skim milk in 1 cup of 2% milk and set aside. Turn the burner on medium low and wait until simmer. Stir for 2 min., or until the Kanten has disolved. Add sugar, the skim milk + 2% milk, turn the burner off, and stir.
Line a 6″ by 8″ glass storage container with the well drained mango pieces and pour the liquid milk Kanten over them. Let it sit aside until cool and then put in the fridge until firm. (about 3 hours)

It’s sweet and cold to sooth that soar throat. Yummm!

Earth Hour March 28, 2008

This is a very important event, coming up this Saturday.
I am just a messenger…

“On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.

What will you do when the lights are off? We have lots of ideas.

Join people all around the world in showing that you care about our planet and want to play a part in helping to fight climate change. Don’t forget to sign up and let us know you want to join Earth Hour.

One hour, America. Earth Hour. Turn out for Earth Hour!”

There is also an event that has been going on called GAIA Summit.

http://www.do-summit.jp/en/

People in Japan will be turning off their lights for 2 hours from 6pm for the next 100 days starting this Sunday, March 30th, counting down to the Hokkaidou GAIA Summit. I found out about this event just in time, we will be participating in this event from Sunday. I guess we can combine the 2 events and start together Saturday! Start buying those candles!!

“The Group of Eight (G Summit is an annual meeting attended by the leaders of eight countries-Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America-and by the President of the European Commission. A “summit” in the strict sense is a meeting of heads of state, but it often refers also to meetings of foreign ministers and finance ministers prior to meetings by heads of state. In these years, non-G8 countries are also participating in the G8 Summit. For instance, the so-called emerging countries such as Republic of South Africa, Brazil, China, Mexico and India have participated in the 2007 Heiligendamm Summit held in Germany as well as many African nations and international organizations.”

Please join me with millions of people around the world for this wonderful event!

My Okayu (rice porridge) March 25, 2008

This past weekend, I have gotten the comment, “That’s gross. If that’s what I have to eat, I would never be Japanese!” This is about the Okayu.

The same group of people were also making fun of my Organic Loving, Tree Hugger lifestyle.
So, for those of you living in the woods, who have never learned about Global Warming and is just gaining those tons of pounds from your hormone injected, 3 times faster growing animals. Please stop reading this blog. I don’t think this blog is right for you. You may just want to keep idealizing this and not come back to my page. Oh, and I recommend you to buy this.

Any who, after the venting, I am coming back to introduce to you the delicious recipe of my Brown Rice Okayu.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 30 grams soba (buckwheat noodles) - optional
• 8 cups water
• 1 tsp Chinese Dashi (chicken broth)
• 1/8 cup Daikon Radish (or any other radish or carrot) sliced into small bite size pieces. Oh, Nappa cabbage is good too!
• 1 knob about 5 slices of ginger
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• small piece of leftover salmon (optional)
• 5 cm of long onion (garnishment)
• pinch of toasted sesame seeds (garnishment)

Rinse out the rice with water and leave it in a large pot with 6 cups of water (covered) for at least 30 min. (If you don’t have time, just leave it in hot water while boiling the soba) Meanwhile break the Soba noodles into small pieces and boil it in some water (2 of the 8 cups) for 5 min. Drain Soba, and set aside.

(I’m cooking with my 2&3/4qt. Le Creuset pot.)

Put the pot with the rice & water on medium heat and start adding the Dashi, Daikon, Ginger, Salt, and Soy Sauce. (You could add a piece of chicken leg or wing, that’s really good!) When it starts to simmer, cover and turn the heat down to LOW. Cook for about 40 min. Add the Soba, and cook for another 10 min. Turn heat off and let it sit for 15 min. with the lid on.

Garnish with the salmon, thinly sliced long onion and some sesame seeds. Yummm

This recipe is very healthy, great for dieting, and fantastic for your digestion. Make a lot and you can freeze 250 gram portions (160 Kcal) & have it for breakfast every morning!

Or just don’t eat it because you’re afraid to be healthy and turn into someone who is JAPANESE!!

Fear of the Poo~ March 22, 2008

I hate training my toddler to go to the potty. I don’t think I have the patience for it. But we have been trying since last August and it’s starting to NOT work… It really sucks.
I even made my own training pants, thinking that some cute pair of polka dot pants would actually get her enthusiastic to wear them. SO Wrong.

On top of that my daughter has developed a mild case of chronic constipation, because she doesn’t want to poop in the toilet. She holds her poo in so that she doesn’t have to go. But when she does go, the poo is so hard that it is ginormous and hurts to come out. She even bleeds…
I’ve been told to change her diet, stop potty training, eat prunes and drink prune juice, & all the above. There seems to be no short cuts for this one.

Here are a few ways that I started tackling this poo.

Changing her diet:

• More fruits that have more water in them. (clementines, grapes, berries, water melon, cantaloupe, pears)
• Lots of dried fruits. (raisins, prunes, dried blueberries, cranberries, cherries, Fig Newmans) Don’t give too many prunes, or it gets messy. Not fun… Try half a prune a day. Other dried fruit, can be consumed in 1/4 cup portions, I think.
• Orange juice, pear juice, prune juice. We always dilute 1 part OJ, 1 part Vruit, 1 part water. Always dilute your Toddlers juice to about 30~40% water.
• No white rice. Sad news for a Japanese person, but we changed my favorite white rice to all brown rice. This was a gradual process. 1 part white rice/1 part brown, to 2 part brown/1 part white.
  Brown rice is tricky. If you cook it the same way you cook as white rice, it turns out a bit hard, and kids don’t like that. If you have a rice cooker that has the brown rice setting, you are in luck. For those with who don’t, just leave the brown rice in water over night, like you do with beans and then cook the following day.
• More high fiber. (beans, whole wheat, multi-grain, broccoli, kale, spinach, brussele sprouts, etc.)
• Eat less dairy. We changed our butter to vegan butter, and my daughter doesn’t like cheese that much, so that’s easy. Biggest obstacle is that she needs her milk, morning, noon and night. Three 8oz. bottles a day. I guess it’s supposed to be about 16oz. of low fat milk a day, so I am starting at 90% of 2% milk mixed with 10% soy milk or water. It will be a gradual process for us.
• Avoid bananas, most dairy, chocolate, red meat, cooked carrots, and french fries.
  Red meat is hard for anyone to digest. Quit red meat for a couple of months and it will do a number on your stomach when you try it again.
• Raw vegetables. Thank you Wonder Pets for helping my daughter like celery!

So following some of this diet, how about a menu.

Breakfast (All Served with a 50% OJ)

• Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal
• Whole Wheat Toast with Mixed Berry Jam and Prune Puree
• Brown Rice Okayu (Rice Porridge)
• Whole Grain Cereal (Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, Clifford, etc. )

Lunch (Served with sliced Tomato’s & Cucumbers)

• Tuna on Toasted Whole Wheat with Celery, Raisins and Green Apples
• Lentil Soup with Whole Wheat Toast or Whole Wheat Pasta Shells
• Vietnamese Pho made with Harusame (Bean Noodles)
• Soba Noodles with Kamaboko (Fish Cake) and Wakame (Sea Weed) or my daughters favorite with Natto (Japanese fermented beans). If your Japanese, you will understand.

Snack Time (serve with 50% juice of your choice)

• 杏仁豆腐(Annindoufu: Skim Milk Gelatine with Seasonal Fruit)
• Sliced Apples with Peanut Butter and Whole Wheat Crackers
• Whole Wheat Fruit Danish
• きな粉クッキー(Kinako Cookies: soybean flour cookies)

Dinner (serve with diluted kids tea with no sugar)

• Baked Fish Taco’s with Whole Beans
• Whole Wheat Shells with Meat Sauce & Tomato Salad
• Miso-Mayo Salmon with Vegetable Miso Soup
• ニラ餃子 (Nira Gyouza: Chinese Chive Pot Stickers) with Daikon Soup

Dessert (I don’t really recommend giving sugar after 3:00)

• Just Plain Fruits could work if you need any.

So now, all I have to do is give her a routine of sitting on the toilet and having her try to poop at the same time every day, which is right after lunch. Zu (my daughter) is still scared of pooping, tries to poop in the toilet once a day. Not yet successful, but we have hope! They say it takes about 6 to 12 months to correct this whole thing. Agh!!

We started to change our diet drastically 2 weeks ago, and we are already seeing results. She is not in pain when she is having a bowl movement any more, and she’s been going 3~4 times a week now instead of 2~3.

The only bad thing out of this whole thing, is that potty training is still a pain in the A, for me. I’ll keep you posted on other dishes I come up with. I will be uploading these recipe’s when I get the chance and link them to this page, so keep checking.

So here I go! March 18, 2008

My first post!

I guess I should start out with a short introduction of myself.

I was born in Japan, grew up in the United States for most of my life.

I’m a mom, a wife, an artist, a cook. I love the idea of reducing my carbon footprint in this world, so I try very hard to have our family be as green as possible.

I cook with mostly Organic ingredients, because I believe that it is healthier for my family and I also think it tastes better. But there are a lot of obstacles, being green. One of the biggest hurdle for me is the amount of green (money) you have to dish out to buy things that are supposedly GREEN. Organic food is a bit more pricey, so I mainly concentrate on getting all dairy, meats, and eggs organic, but the rest I try.

My daughter is almost 3 and it’s awesome to be able to stay home and raise her to speak Japanese. English is my first language, but I do speak Japanese fluently as well. My husband is American and his Japanese is not as good as my daughters. It is very important to me that she grows up bilingual. I really would like her to know her heritage, language and all.

Being an artist, taking care of a baby-toddler, took away one of the most important thing in my life, which is being creative. We decided for me to stay home because I wasn’t comfortable in leaving my child with a stranger, after interviewing an at home day care that the owners husband was arrested for child molestation charges the year before. I’m sure there are plenty of good day cares out there, but if the first one you interview is the one I did, you would do the same.
Anyway, being crafty with a little one is not easy… Actually it can’t happen. So I started cooking and baking A LOT. This turned into my creative outlet, plus we are a single income family, so we have to cook at home every night. $100 feeds the 3 of us for a week( lunch & dinner). I will have a lot of these recipe’s and menus on the site to inspire people to eat at home.
Now that my daughter is a little bit bigger, she gives me time to relax now that I’ve just started to sew a bit again. Which is so exciting!

I had really bad postpartum depression, that I finally just started to come out of at the end of last year. I did not take any medication, and I feel that I have truly kicked this depression at the core. My husband is the greatest. I can’t even express in words how grateful I am for how supportive he is through all of this. I’m so lucky.

So, this is who I am in a nutshell. Through this blog I will be sharing things and thoughts that I find that help my life be happier.

Enjoy! ようこそ(welcome)