lifestyle – Bored Sensei…

30DWC Day 21: Greek Chicken Recipe

Published on February 5, 2018February 8, 2018 by boredsensei10 Comments

*I am writing this on Thursday but I will publish it to cover my three days backlog on My 30 Day Writing Challenge. Gomenne.

Monday

I finally got the chance to cook some decent food, I’ve been eating out a lot recently so I decided to cook something plus Mondays are busy days so to keep me energetic and full the whole day, cooking is a good option rather than just eating convenience stores onigiri. I only have some potatoes and chicken in my fridge so I decided to just cook adobo. But I ran out of soy sauce, I only found out later when i was about to pour vinegar and soy sauce on it. I panicked and I decided to just google recipes on the internet and I found this Greek Chicken recipe.

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
2 lemons, juiced
1 (4 pound) chicken, cut into pieces

Directions

In a glass dish, mix the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and lemon juice. Place the chicken pieces in the mixture, cover, and marinate in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.
Preheat grill for high heat.
Lightly oil the grill grate. Place chicken on the grill, and discard the marinade. Cook chicken pieces up to 15 minutes per side, until juices run clear. Smaller pieces will not take as long.

BUT

I didn’t follow the directions stated above, unfortunately I don’t have an oven at the moment so what I did is just cook it on the stove, I put an extra 1/2 cup of water after I stir fried the chicken and put all the ingredients.

I ate some for brunch I really loved it, I wasn’t so sure of what would it taste like because I haven’t tried cooking any Greek recipe before but I do love it. I brought some at school for dinner and ate it with a cod roe soup pasta I bought from 7/11.

This is going to be my first recipe review and living alone in a foreign country really forces me not just to learn the basic of cooking but also hundreds of ways how to cook adobo, nialag and tsamba recipes I learned when I was in college.

Have you tried cooking something you haven’t done before and ended up being your favorite recipe? What is it?

Bored Sensei.

Grocery Day: Meat Prices in Japan!

Published on January 21, 2018February 28, 2019 by boredsensei37 Comments

Every day off, I schedule at least an hour or two of my time to buy some groceries I could eat for the next few days. I am not that kind of person who would make a grocery list nor plan my meal for the whole week, I ain’t got time for that. I just get what I see and feel of eating for the week. And last night, I was craving for sinigang. And as ran out of meat, I decided to buy some and to give you an idea of the normal prices of meat here in Japan, here are some images of the meat I usually buy in the grocery store.

There are things that I feel (or every foreigner) that are overpriced in Japan such as taxi fare, rice, fruits, movie tickets, meat and PIZZA!

I am not complaining tho because I know the quality is all worth it. Let’s take a look 🙂

Pork strips, great when you’re craving for nabe or shabu shabu. Average price: 200 JPN and up.

Gizzard, chicken legs and chicken breast. Average price 150 JPN and up.

If you see the red sticker, it means the item is 50% off, so instead of paying 575.54 JPN, you’ll only be paying 287.77 JPN.

Be careful with the prices, 533 + 8% tax (42.64) = 575.64 JPN

Pork chop average price: 300 JPN

Pork chop average price: 300 JPN up. Why? Because of trade barriers.

And here’s the reason why I can’t cook sinigang, the kind of meat I need is very expensive.

Don’t worry because they always have sale, usually an hour before the store closing time, they put stickers on the items and you are done for the day 🙂

This beef original price was 1544.40 down to 500 JPN. You saved 1000 JPN.

These are ready to cook meat. My favorite one is the chicken wings curry, they didn’t sell it today, but this pork with white sesame is also good. The original price was 1058.40 down to 500 JPN, it’s just strange because the item above has 50% off sticker but the item below doesn’t have one. So if I’m going to buy this, I would choose the first one, I will save almost 700 JPN (please don’t judge my mathematical ability lol).

As for fish prices, it always depends on the kind of meat you’ll be getting. I usually buy salmon since it’s cheaper than galunggong, I came late so there were no more salmon left for me. If you would notice 2 sticker in the item, it means 20% off, if it’s 3 it means 30% off. We just learned that recently after asking someone from the store.

Tips:

Look for discounts and compare prices per net weight
There’s always a big discount an hour before the store closes
Some stores have LINE and you can receive updates on the sales item for the week
Grocery stores has general sales days for fresh food (my favorite grocery store is on Tuesdays, they sell everything for 88 JPN!)
You should also know the day your grocery store closes every month (mine is every last Wednesday of the month.
Check the expiration date of the item and if it near the date, ask for a big discount
Always add 8% of the price on your calculation or just have extra cash with you at all time 😀

Bored Sensei.

Update:

Kyoto MATCHA-rap!

Published on December 23, 2017December 26, 2017 by boredsensei25 Comments

Konnichiwa!

The weather is good, the sun is inviting, but it isn’t warm enough to eat ice cream. But I can share my matcha stories in Kyoto.

Matcha has been gaining popularity abroad for the past few years and different countries are making their own matcha flavored recipe like frappe, cake, ice cream, tea etc. And if you are going to try matcha while traveling in Japan, the best place to go is Kyoto. Kyoto is home to Uji, a small city famous for producing matcha.

December 03, 2017

As we finished visiting Fushimi-inari shrine and some shrine close to it, we passed by this restaurant and what caught my attention is their matcha ice cream burger. When I was a kid, once we hear the familiar sound of our favorite sorbetes vendor (ice cream vendor) we would ran fast and shout out “teka lang po! bibili po kami!” to stop him from walking. So I asked them if they wanted to eat but to my dismay they were all full (we just finished eating sushi and some street food) but then I looked at Claudia’s shining eyes while looking at the burger. I blink slowly twice at her, nod slowly and we went inside together. But WAIT. I remember we don’t have any money! Claudia and I left it in the car because we were too excited to walk around. We went out again and saw the boys smiling “naze? you don’t have money?” and we all laughed. They lend us enough money to buy some and waited for the burger.

The place was good and the matcha ice cream burger too. The bun has matcha flavor in it too. I could say that the ice cream tastes like the ordinary matcha ice cream you could buy at convenience store but what makes it unique is that they mixed it with red beans and whipped cream and the combination was really good. Thumbs up. I feel nostalgic while eating it because I miss eating ice cream in a bun when I was a kid with my sister and brother. I also miss eating ice cream with boyfriend, we usually go down our unit (condo) to buy some ice cream at Family Mart which is at the ground floor of the building. (sob)

Price: 550 JPN

We also tried Taiyaki or “baked sea bream”, a Japanese fish-shaped cake with red bean paste inside made from sweetened azuki beans. It has other common fillings you can choose from like custard, chocolate, cheese or sweet potato but if you like unique ones you can try taiyaki with okonomiyaki, gyoza or sausage inside (I haven’t tried yet tho). Since we were in Kyoto, I tried the matcha taiyaki and it was good. I would definitely try it again next time, I’ve tried looking for a matcha taiyaki in Hamamatsu but I couldn’t find one. It’s definitely a must try.

Price: 110 JPN

And last but not the least, the Starbucks’s Matcha Tea Latte. You can buy it even at convenience store tho. It was good (everything for me is good btw lol) and I paired it with an Onigirazu, it is onigiri kinda thing but with different fillings. If you love Hawaiian Spam, this is for you. It is a rice with spam and egg fillings and wrapped with nori sheet (seaweed). You could also try making one at home since it seems easy to make one. You don’t need to form a triangle like the normal onigiri lols. It was good and easy to eat. It is good for picnic or simply snack anytime of the day.