Chicken rice

We had friends over for dinner last night... and i decided to make chicken rice =)

Using the pack of Singlong chicken rice mix we bought, i managed the yummy rice quite easily.

Chicken was simple too! Cheated a little with the microwave.

With 2 pie

ces of boneless chicken thighs

rubbed with

1tbs sesame oil

2tbs soya sauce

1tbs sake

2 sprigs of spring onions topped on it

Wrapped, popped in the microwave for 9 min at 600W.

Left it on to stand its own for 5min.

Thickly sliced and topped on rice.

Voila~

And then we tried the new pack of drip coffee from our darlin Ken,

Yea, Ken probably didnt know Suzuki coffee existed.

But ive heard of this 3 yrs ago in stewardess school that we serve this onboard.

So anyway, i had all along thought (ok i think everyone thinks so too), that this is Japanese

coffee.

But lo and behold...

couldnt stop laughing when we saw this.

No wonder Jun hasnt heard of this brand before.

Anyhow, on this hot hot day, since J was on leave, we had our big plate of cold ramen somen (thin ramen style rice noodles) topped with vegetables of the season. Grilled eggplant, edamame and red peppers, some chicken

bits plus a whole lot of our favourite sesame seeds.

and spent the afternoon drying out our ume (sour plums)

This is what we bought last month

Fresh sour plums from Wakayama

Removed the little stems from the top of the plums and rubbed with 400g salt (basically 20% of the weight of the plums. the plums weighed 2kg)

Placed in a clean bucket

And lastly, placed 2kg of bricks on top of them plums

Weight was reduced to 1kg after a week.

Left them alone in a dark corned of the house and jet off to Singapore for a month.

This is what we get after a month...

Plums soaked in its natural acidic juices (called plum vinegar).

In fact, after a week of the bricks weighing down on the plums, this vinegar would have already been expressed out. So basically this salty vinegar was what preserved the plums the whole time it was in the bucket.

In Japan, before the hot hot summer, there will be a rainy season. But to dry out the plums to get umeboshi, you need the hot hot sun right? So when we came back and found the rainy season almost over (it rained a little today), we figured it was a good time to start sunning the plums.

These plums have to be dried for 3 days, but they have to be taken into the house each evening.

Todays the 1st.

So watch out for photos on wednesday =)

Dinner was what we were craving

Salt grilled kamasu, miso soup, steamed pumpkin and WHITE rice

Happy tummies =)