Barbecue Season in Full Swing.

So we were eating dinner two nights ago and decided wouldn't it be a cool idea if we took a picture of it and then wrote a blog about it.  So here it is.

We had ribs recently when some guests were here and on Sunday evening we decided we would go for it again.  Slow cooked on the barbecue with baked potatoes and a slightly spicy curried vegetable stir fry.  Brilliant.

Then on Monday evening we had some friends over for burgers and sushi.  Not a classic mix but everyone enjoyed themselves.  Our friends brought a turkey potato salad which I am filling my sandwiches with today.  It was a really nice evening catching up and finding out about their trip to Europe.  Someday, someday.

Other major recent events include my mother making it legal with her live in lover 15 years into the whole thing.  It was a lovely day and I am glad to have been part of it.  

We also celebrated the life of Uncle Dave down in Oregon. 

 We had a great time getting together with family, sharing meals, going on extended golf/shopping trips and swimming the not quite boiling Pacific. It really was a magical 3 days and from now on whenever we want to be close to Uncle Dave all we need to do it head down to the Oregon Coast.

Love out, The Dunnets.

Is that Dinner?

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you.  It is a dinner post.  Amazing I know but true.  I am back.

Yesterday the delivery man made a stop at our house and dropped off our latest purchases from the foreign buyers club.  So we are back in the basics.  Yes, nacho chips, granola and lasagna noodles are the staples of my life.  6 bags of nachos, 8 packages of granola and 4 boxes of lasagna.  We also got some garlic powder, bay leaves, pickled jalapeno slices and olives.  Basically it is all stuff we cannot find here or we cannot find it at a reasonable price.  The chips won't last but the pasta should go a couple of months and the cereal should see us through the new year.

 So with all that handsome goodness on hand I figured it was time for me to whip up some dinner.  I am usually good for at least one dish every other night but tonight I took on the whole task.  First I made the Dunnet style guacamole.  I think I over did the yogurt but it was still good.  The avocadoness was very mild which was a small shame.  The salsa was pretty good and though it was a little spicy (very nice) the kids still  managed to eat some.  The best was when the guac and salsa were mixed together.  Freak-tastic ©.  The other finger food was the satsuma imo fries.  Satsuma imo are the purple sweet potatoes favoured in this part of Japan.  Sliced, oiled, and seasoned they were baked for about 40 minutes.  Awesome.  Next up was some Nasu Miso.  Now I know that I should have just done the nasu in the miso and been satisfied with what looked to be a glorious dish.  However, I had to go the extra yard and add some cubed fried tofu and some moyashi.  Unfortunately, I didn't scale up the sauce ingredients so though the nasu was flavourful the tofu was pretty mild.  The kids still gobbled it up.  This evenings main dish was hamburg steak.  Basically hamburgers without the buns.  Even I was impressed with the overall flavour of this evening burgers.  Minced onions and mushrooms along with pepper, salt, cumin, coriander, the previously mentioned just arrived garlic powder, three eggs and bread crumbs came together very nicely with the mixed ground pork/beef we had.  Fried in a non stick frying pan then ended with the nice crispy outsides and juicy rich insides that burgers so richly deserve.  I feasted on chips and dip and sweet potatoes before the burgers had even started frying so you can imagine how stuffed I was when all was said and done.  Haven't been on the scale this morning. 

Finally here is a shot of Yoshiteru watching some TV while I make dinner.  He enjoyed the snack food but in the end Junko had a fish dish ready to add to his dinner.  When you reach seventy you are allowed to be a little set in your ways.

Love out.

T- Minus 5 Days.

Well faithful reader, the landslide of detritus continues from our house. The thrift store, library and dump were the lucky recipients today. Most of the dump stuff actually ended up in the reuse center and was being put into other peoples vehicles as fast as I could put it down. It was pretty heart warming to arrive at the dump thinking I was going to make a serious deposit and then to only have a few fatally broken things end up actually ending up there. Gotta love giving stuff you don't want a second life. In our case it was a third or fourth life for a lot of it. Tomorrow is the couch and the second dining room table we have.

On the storage front we have probably filled about 500 of the 800 cubic feet of space we have been allotted. With three beds, four bikes, two desks (legs removed) a bar fridge and a barbecue left to store it is going to be close. Lets put it this way, if there is an earthquake I am not worried about anything falling over.

Now to get down to business. Though we have eaten a meal every night this week, this evening was a nice chili burrito affair, we have but one picture. It is the Thursday evening meal. I came home from work earlyish and the Mrs. took her break and went shopping. She arrived back with fixins for burgers and fries. I did the honours and I was truly honoured by how well those patty's cooked up. Once again we have to say that you can't beat the quality of meat at the Overwaitea up here. For those of you playing along at home, yes those are yam fries. Very yammy.
After dinner we all sat down to watch a movie in the rearranged house, computer is now by the kitchen, living room is pretty much empty. The kids settled in to the big chair together and ate their ice cream bathed in the blue electric glory of dessert and a movie. Good times.

Busy Burger Day

So we had burgers with fries this evening. The wife was in bread mode today and with the little bit of leftover dough she made hamburger buns. These were some filling quality hamburger buns so it made for a real meal. The burgers were grilled outside and they turned out perfectly. You acna see the stripes on the bad boy above. I did the fries in the oven with some salt, pepper and basil. Then wife-ola squashed up some avocados and made guacamole. With a bottle of Ma's 2009 Valpolicella it was a little piece of heaven here tonight. The con-noise-uers can snub their noses but for us simple folk it works just fine. And as with everything else in life the price was right. Below we have some reviews of this evenings meal.


The son is just loving that line. I don't know where he picked up sweet momma but it is coming out of his mouth left right and center. Oh I finally figured out where the "you're going to make me pee," line has come from. Po says it in Kung Fu Panda. Well there is a storm brewing in bathroom. I gotta get on it.

Later

Full day of Work.

That is what 8 hours of salsa making is. We are now 24 more litres of salsa to the good. Which should put us at 35 if I have done the math right. The first batch was a kids batch. Used one whole clove of garlic and a bunch of plums we got from a neighbour last month. No hot peppers but I did once again use fresh basil. The kidlets had some with their dinner and enjoyed it. This bodes well. The second batch was a classic hot batch. If I can get away with calling anything I do classic. Two apples, a zucchini, half a pound of jalapenos, 10 pounds of tomatoes and 7 pounds of sweet peppers. I also used two tablespoons of salt and six tablespoons of vinegar. This is how I usually make my salsa.

For the last batch I did not add zucchini or apples. I did however add in two habanero peppers. This really intensifies the heat. Right at the end I chickened out and added in two tablespoons of our applesauce to each litre jar. It tastes pretty good now so it should be real real good in a couple of months. I am of the opinion that salsa ages like wine. The flavours blend and spread if you give them enough time.

Had an interesting conversation with the daughter. We were talking about having a garage sale and she said we should sell salsa. So I said our salsa was too expensive. Then I told her it actually cost us about $1.50 a jar. But to sell it I figured it was worth about $20.00 a jar. Because we made it there are only 40 something jars of it in the world. We can give it to friends or eat it ourselves but selling it doesn't really make sense. She didn't seem to understand how profound I was trying to be. She just thought we could make some bucks selling sweet salsa on one side of the stand and hot salsa on the other. Tuck that lesson away for another day I guess. (Her lesson to me or mine to her, I can't decide.)

We had burgers for dinner. No picture as I was right in the middle of the second batch and what with barbecuing and slicing, dicing, boiling and spicing I just didn't get to it. However, the Mrs. pointed out, and I noticed too, that the quality of the ground beef we got was really good. Overwaitea up here definitely has the best meat. The beef actually tasted like beef. Best burgers we have made in a while. Also they were served on our home made bread so esthetics aside an alround delicious meal.

Still no burger.

The Mrs. just reminded me that the last time we had burgers I didn't leave it open faced and the fact you couldn't see the burger was mentioned. Well her timing is impeccable as I was already sitting here getting ready to type. You know cracking the fingers, doing the vocal exercises, snorting violently. Anyways it wasn't much to see tonight. Just ketchup and mustard with some sliced dill pickles. The nachos on the side were also rather spartan. Just melted cheese and homemade salsa. No guac. No lettuce or tomato. Didn't even put a slice of cheese on the burger. But the actual burger patty was great, diced mushrooms, onion and garlic, two eggs, some bread crumbs, basil, cumin, salt, pepper and some garlic powder all went into the patty mix. There are six in the deep freeze downstairs and once they are frozen they will be transferred to a freezer lock bag and we have another dinner ready for another day. Finally Friday here. Looking forward to a busy weekend. Now I sit down to rest. Ahhhh....

Full Friday

At least for me. I was out the door at 8:30 to take part in the union contract meeting mentioned earlier. We read through our almost complete contract for two and half hours. Mind numbing but informative. Then I bought some hockey sticks, look for hockey pucks in vain and brought home some boneless skinless chicken breasts for dinner.

Upon arriving home I found the family engaged in a movie and waiting for their dough to rise. They decided to make bread today. Interesting little buns of all sorts. Sticky Jam buns, chocolate chip filled buns and a wonderful cheese, garlic and dill number that was really awesome. The picture doesn't do it justice because we have already finished about a third of them. I really need an alarm that goes off right before I eat anything reminding me to take a picture.

Before the buns went in the oven we put the hockey sticks to good use and played some hockey outside. We also did some slalom skating and had another snowball fight royale. With all the plus 3 and plus 5 days recently the ice seems to be getting a little thin. If winter doesn't return in full force we may not be skating much longer. Some leaves that were frozen into the ice managed to melt holes from the warmth of the sunshine. However, if it gets nice and cold I am sure I can keep the sheet solid for another month or two. Post skate we came back in and watched another movie. The kids had been snacking on buns [ed. no the time line doesn't work but live with it] so they didn't really need lunch. Around five I started chopping up the last three potatoes. No one mentioned we were down to three when I said earlier that I was making fries so that was what we had. It all worked out and no one that was hungry for fries went without. The chicken breasts were sliced in half, soaked in soy sauce and sugar and then fried up in the fry pan. Instant Terkiyaki chicken burgers. The tomato and lettuce that were purchased with the breasts filled out the burgers nicely. Everyone else snacked on them seperately but I had a proper burger. Now we are fed and ready for another movie. I believe it will be Underdog. Good times.

Vacation: Day 1

Well, it is official. I am on vacation. It feels very nice. We managed to even get a couple of things done today which is always a good feeling. Between errand running and what not we did not get onto the ice until about 1:00. But we were lunched and had all been to the bathroom. Asides from me not having all the sleds and such on hand it was great. I only had to put on my skates three times which in the big picture aint bad. The boy even managed to get up on his own a couple of times and his gliding is much improved. I pulled him around while he held onto the end of my hockey stick. I am dieing for him to be self sufficient on the ice but it will take time. They both have helmets now so I am feeling a lot more comfortable about them being out on the ice and taking spills.


Post skating we came back in and watched a video. Both the son and I fell asleep. Great. When I woke up the daughter pointed out that we were supposed to make gingerbread, so we did. The parts for the house are all baked and we have done two separate sets of cookies. Icing and decorating is planned for tomorrow so stay tuned. The daughter also has some prequel ideas for the original gingerbread escapes movie. Should be real good.
As for dinner we were treated to some mom made burgers and some dad made fries. The burgers were served on pumpernickel as the bakery was out of both buns and sour dough by the time the wife went back to shop. Still a nice evening meal with no threat of going in to work after it. Life is grand. Now if this video would just finish up loading life would be great.

We are trying

Every night as I lay back after eating the daily feast I sigh and relax and then say, "the picture!" It is just not clicking with the meals for us. The meal above was taken at the great grandmother's house and was made by my mother in law. She makes a wicked liver dish, which though it still tastes like liver is really quite good. She also turns out dish after dish when she cooks so you never know quite when to start eating. This was just another fine meal. This is a picture of Lilo, daughter and Tagami Ba-chan. 2, 7 and 90. Quite the spread. These next pictures are of the day at the aquarium. We have also been to the beach, the pool twice, did a whole day of shopping to buy a sweet new rice cooker and have had assorted other adventures like watching fireworks.

These hats are for borrowing to take just such a crazy picture. Can you believe this boy is the same boy as the ring bearer from our wedding seven years ago, crap I forgot our anniversary. Just realised right now, the only saving grace is that the wife has forgotten as well. We were talking about it two weeks ago but I am sure it has slipped her mind as well. Otherwise she would have reminded me before now. Anyways back to the blog.
We actually made quite a big contribution to last nights dinner. I made a kids guacamole/salsa, an adults salsa, and an adults guacamole. The wife made hamburgers, thus the picture of the mustard bottle, and the daughter made miso soup.

I only have the before and after pictures as I got into the beers early and was having much to good a time by the time everyone was settled down to remember to take a picture.

The oldest nephew leaves for a ten day camp today and we are planning a little side trip to Nagasaki next week. We have a big beach day planned for tomorrow with one of my old co workers and her sister, b in law, neice and nephew. I am having a wicked time as I mentioned to the wife yesterday. Bought a yoga mat and have managed to get some runs in. The weather is incredibly hot and humid but what else should I expect from a tropical vacation. Contemplating renting a surfboard for the day and learning to surf. Pretty good break about 10 minutes from where we are staying. Sorry about the length of time between blogs but we don't get into the city much. I will do my best. Love to all and talk to you soon.

Summer Begins

So with today being the last day of work and the first day of summer I think it fitting that I get a little slack for not posting last nights meal. There were no pictures taken and I was off gallivanting with friends so I cannot complain. Anyways, we had a great day today and from here on out it will only get better. We had friends over this evening for dinner. The same friends who had us to their house for a pool party. Note to siblings thinking about rearing children. The best baby sitters are children the same age as your own children. They have intimate knowledge of what will interest your children and keep them occupied. Back to dinner. You see I was a little enthusiastic getting into my dinner and took a whopping bite before remembering the picture. It was a great burger and in spite of what my mother says about improving my odds of getting cancer I like the blackened charcoal exterior. The overexposed white stuff is a home made garlic/dill dip dressing. We had a tangy green salad with crunchy noodles on top. There was also a potato salad but I couldn't get it onto the first plate. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I have learned never to have seconds with potato salad. Unfortunately, my learning curve is pretty shallow. The mildly over full feeling I have leads me to believe that my whole eating responsibly thing isn't working out. Tomorrow is another day. On a different note, our guests seemed to enjoy the meal and they brought wine which was enjoyed by all. Well most of the kids only had half a glass but that toddler man he can put it away. Good conversation ranging far and wide followed dinner and no one left till it got dark. A perfect start to what hopefully will be an awesome summer. I will try to take some garden pictures tomorrow, after the massive weeding session I have planned. Everything grows in the sun.

Farewell Reiko

We had a farewell dinner for a student that had been studying in Grand Forks for the last three years. She is Japanese and had come to our house quite a few times in those years for dinner or to babysit. She finally graduated and this was her farewell dinner. We actually had six adults and three kids for dinner so it was a fairly elaborate production. Burgers were the main attraction with me only realizing as I was flipping them that one of our guests was a vegetarian. To my wifes credit she has put together two salads, two types of french fries and enough vegetable toppings that the veggie guest had a veggie sandwich and seemed satisfied. One of the salads was the lettuce and mandarin affair that I learned about at my previous school. It is always nice. The coleslaw made a come back, second day is always better. Yam and potato french fries, baked not fried. There was also carrot cake with lemon flavoured cream cheese icing. My first piece was a little healthy but the second and third pieces were delicious. None of the pieces were overly large so I can say that I ate quite conservatively this evening. One burger, one helping of fries. Seconds was only salad. I did drink a beer but only one and I had a whole bunch of water. There was 7.3 k of running before dinner so I think my scales are balanced this evening. Four work days till summer. Gotta keep my eyes on the road.

Fish cakes with Kick

Post 6 year-old birthday party and with Harry Potter number two twirling in the VCR I vaguely see through the afternoon almost nap my wife busily baking bread and whipping up home made fish cakes. Upon coming to an hour later there are four enormous fluffy loaves and a frying pan of home made fish cakes ready in the kitchen. So for dinner we had fish cake sandwiches. The bread was still warm and oh so fluffy, forcing us to cut thicker than usual slabs. The fish cakes, a mixture of mashed potato, salmon, lemon, chives and dill were a flavour explosion. I was caught completely off guard and even made the unfortunate mistake of trying to add a condiment that shall remain nameless. The lemon did not come with a full frontal assault but rather attacked from all directions once my defenses were down and it was safely in my mouth. The fish cake sandwich was also overwhelming with the fresh warm bread complimenting the fish cake. The sliced tomato and cheese covered cauliflower played the role of the garnish this evening. They played their parts well but they were definitely supporting players. The black covering on the fish cake you can see in the picture is sesame seed. It added a distinct variation but the strength of the seeds somewhat diminished the impact of the lemon. Nice but not quite as good as the original. Looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

Friday: April 4th.

Well seeing as it reached 15 degrees this week we figured it was time to Barbeque. Silly us. Not that the hamburgers weren't great but we woke the next morning to find a few centimeters of snow on the ground. Will this winter never end. On a gardening note, the carrot and spinach seeds that I have under plastic in the garden are doing absolutely nothing. Apparently good intentions have absolutely zero effect in the actual world of raising vegetables. Back to dinner. The baked potatoes were great. I have recently improved my wrapping technique. I use the Long thin strip and go diagonally. Anyways, it makes me happy and I am sure I save fractions of a penny, which may no longer be in circulation soon, on every potato. At this rate I will save at least 2 cents in tin foil yearly. Of course I do such a crappy job with my garlic bread wrapping that I probably give back ten times that. Penny wise and Pound foolish. Damn... thats me. Once again back to dinner. We forgot to buy burger buns so they were served on toasted bread. Delicious but the sauce sort of oozed through. The real treat was the Moyashi (bean sprout) salad that the wife whipped up. It had this amazing blend of ginger, vinegar, and sweet. I must of seemed slightly crazed as I raved about it because she was giving me the, -- did I really marry this guy -- look. Anyways it was good. We also finished of the pork miso soup. As my flu extended to the fourth day I was a little disappointed I didn't have more of an appetite.

Tomorrow: Ebi Chili. Tune in to find out what this is.