Cozy night in

I ended up skipping taiko practice tonight in favour of spending a quiet night at home. I went grocery shopping and--for the first time in ages--cooked dinner for myself rather than eating out or buying a pre-made meal from a convenience store/supermarket.

Since the weather has gotten cooler lately and I just happened to get eggplants and tomatoes today from the Kirita vegetable patch, I decided to make tofu lasagna. I also had some dashi in the fridge (made using the super easy Just Bento method) so I made miso soup (with tofu and wakame) as well. To round out the meal (and to use up the veggies before they went bad), I also threw together a salad with apple dressing and baby leaf greens (from within Aomori), and cucumber, yellow peppers and mini tomatoes (all from local Towada farms). 

All in all, it was a very nice, comforting meal for a rainy night at home. ^_^

I also made banana chocolate chunk bread (the recipe was actually for banana chocolate chip bread, but chocolate chips are relatively expensive here so I usually just substitute them with cut up chocolate bar chunks ) using hot cake mix and my rice cooker.

Yes, my rice cooker.

affectionately nicknamed "Jiro"

One of the main reasons I decided to buy a new rice cooker with only a year and a half left in Japan was so that I could try out the "rice cooker hot cake mix bread" recipes from a magazine I'd bought not realizing that it was only meant for IH (induction heating) cookers.

I've tried out other recipes from the magazine (potato & bacon bread; kiwi steamed bread; sweet potato sesame honey bread) but the banana chocolate bread has definitely been the easiest and tastiest one I've made so far.