Cooking #2- Dumplings :)

Today we made dumplings :))
apart from that, we practiced a song for our little "performance" day, which someday to be here.....

And more and more reviewing on
"in" "on" and "under"- they seemed to be pretty sick of it already, but repetition is the best when it comes to kids- ^^


The big sis. is learning  Piano  from me too in our 90 min. class- so i decided to teache her the song she can actually perform with her little bro. who is really good at singing- because they have never learned english before, it is had to teach them a song with many words so I picked
"Days of the week"  and "Mary had a little lamb"
They come to see me only once a week, sothere isnt much time to practice singing- but they are really excited and today we did our first session, they loved it!!!!!!





Big sis coating Dumplings with Kinako (Soybean flour)

I lover her serious face! so cute.


We tried making 3色団子　3 color dumplings
(green, Pink, and white)
but since we couldnt find cherry blossoms for the pink (its not the season)
I tried coloring the flour with strawberry tea leaves, but we failed.
So, we did white, green(using Green tea powder), and kinako dumplings.
Kids loved it :)



I gatta do more lessons on Phonics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Would it work?

I saw something interesting on TV the other day.
A woman who is known as カリスマ主婦　"Carisma" housewife says
she only spend 6000yen a week and still can have wonderful, delicious meal, (they showed what she actually cooked and it looked amazing)　 家族四人　6000円以下でおいしくて素晴らしい料理ができる方法

As a foregin exchange student from China once asked me
" Why do Japanese TV always talk about food? there are quiz shows particularly about food, and so many commercials features food."
I answered... "because we loooooooooove food and we love it to be delicious and still reasonable."　

I admit, we love food. we love of course,  the eating part, cooking part, and even "growing vegis for the ingridience of varieties of dishes" part.

日本人は、食べるのが好き。作るのも好き。
　おいしいものを食べるためにおいしい野菜を育てることさえも好き！
　

There are so many blogs and websites made by "house wives"- on "how to make delicious meals -for only less than 6000yen (about 50 dollers) for a week, for a family of four" some blogs got so popular it even got published recently. 　
最近では、そういうカリスマ主婦たちによる料理のブログが増えて本に出版されたりもしています。
"Everyday meal @ Takahashi's"
If I were a full time housewife, I dont think i can put my 100% commitment to housework like cooking, looking after the children, cleaning and writing a blog about how good my dishes look.

　　もし私が主婦なら、掃除や料理など家事に対してそこまで一生懸命やれないと思う。

 but these days there are so many Japanese women who decided to share this wonderful cooking skill with others.
Because a lot of women quit their jobs after marriage, I am sure, they have been dealing with the feeling of anger and frustration for having no choice but home making every single day- maybe at first it's great to take care of precious baby and cook dinner for a wonderful love of her life- but when noone knows how hard they work and get nothing in return? It's sad! 
So one stood up to brush up this wonderful skills and decided to share with people through blogs- which i think is great- some end up making money :)

日本人主婦は、頑張りすぎ？
育児や家事に追われて　誰からも褒められたりしない時が続くときっといらいらしたり悲しい気持ちになってどんどん閉じこもりがちになる人って多いんじゃないかな。　でもそんな人の中でも自分の料理は素晴らしいし、こんなに安くおいしいくできるのなら他の人にも見てもらいたいと
立ち上がって行動に移す人が増えてる。


So as Mrs Fujiwara revealed her secret on economizing the cost of gloceries-
買い物は週に一度だけ
Glocery shopping-only once a week
↑ well, thats pretty much what i call "Indiana Style" hehehe

In addition, discuss with your family what you wanna eat the following week and make a shopping list, only get what you need.

Now, THAT is extremely rare for Japanese housewife since local supermarket has special offer on certain items like every other days- it attracts customers to always want to come couple times a week, buy food for few days and come back again for some more. So you just go shoppin, then if fish happened to be on sale, then you kinda decide you will have fish for dinner that day of the next day. (In fact, at my local supermarket, Today was パンの日　"bread day" and all kind of bread was really cheap. tomorrow is "egg" day, sometimes there are fish day, fruites day, just one of the marketing strategy i guess)

i dont know well about other places in US and also maybe it was only
"my" style when i was in college- maybe people do shop every single day, but i found it more reasonable and useful to do glocery shopping every week, not every other days when i lived in インディアナ州　Indiana (my second home :). in Japan most gloceries are sold in small portion- especially vegis, you buy one of this and one of that to make something particular, but in US everything is so much cheaper when you buy in a box, a package etc, so i would buy a lot and shared or just freeze everything- the room is so much bigger, and the fridge.

だから私は今日1週間分！と思ってたくさんの買い物をした。
so I went to the supermarket today for one week gloceries!

Here they are -


it WAS around 6000yen. So let's see if we don't have to go back to the store any more this week and cool delicious food! and, no dining out!!!




and tonight menu was THAI CURRY, fried chicken, salad, and eggs :)
 

Yum Yum!