Ryu's Decadent Creamy Cinnamon Toast

When we got married, Ryu was really good at making coffee and Decadent Cinnamon Toast. Well, Jun calls it Cilalaman Toast, but we know what she means!

So, whenever I was under the weather, or we had time on the weekends, he would offer to make me this toast. This, folks is NOT like the Cilalaman Toast I used to make as a child. This is truly decadent!

Take a thick slice of white bread! We use at least the 6-slice per loaf here in Japan. Maybe close to an inch thick? Be sure it is not frozen!

Melt a BIG spoonful of butter in the micro. I'm sure Ryu uses close to 1/4 cup per slice. This is not healthy toast. It is decadent!

Drizzle the melted butter all over the bread. Letting it soak deeply into all the little places melted butter can soak into. The top 1/2 of the bread slice should be saturated with butter.

Sprinkle the bread with a Tablespoon or so of sugar. We use the packets that come with yogurt, but you can use any sugar. Make sure it is spread all the way out to the crust!

Take the cinnamon jar and really really powder that piece of bread up. Until it is nearly black with cinnamon. I heard cinnamon has healthy components. We should be fine from THAT disease - hopefully.

Then put it in the toaster oven or under the broiler, and watch it carefully. Toast it until the sugar on the top has melted, and is bubbling nicely!

Take it out, wait till it cools a bit, and enjoy with a big cup of coffee for a real sugar/caffeine rush! Creamy Cinnamon Toast!

Homemade Sausage II

I posted a while back about trying to redo a homemade sausage recipe to fit my hubby's tastes. Well, I have officially given up, and will post the original recipe with some of my personal notes.

This is great sausage because it tastes just like Jimmy's sausage - to me at least. And, you can choose the type of meat you use as well as the amount of salt (and other spices). Love the control!!! And Junnie at least likes it as much as I do. Sometimes, that is.

I got this recipe from Mary Jo, a fellow missionary, who now lives in Okinawa. She gave it to me in the late 1990's. I feel old. Here it is:

Italian Breakfast Sausage

1/2 tsp. fennel
1/2 tsp. savory
1/2 tsp. thyme
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Mix the above spices with 300 gm. ground pork. Make into patties and cook.

Now, for my notes, I prefer to use ground chicken, but find it makes quite a hard patty. So, one day, I decided to mix a handful of panko (Japanese bread crumbs) in with it. They were wonderful, tender, and yummy! At other times, I have mixed 1/2 ground chicken with 1/2 ground pork. This keeps the patties a little more tender than 100% ground chicken.

The patties freeze well, also!

Oh, I was able to find all of these spices in Japan, as well! At a fancy supermarket, but, still, in Japan!

Wild Blackberry Pie

I grew up in a house at the end of the road, kind of up a hill. If you looked out the bathroom window, you could see the dunes and coast way off in the distance.

Going up the hill a bit further, there were wild blackberry bushes. Prickly things! And, wild blackberries are really pretty small. But, we got our buckets out and picked and picked each summer.

This recipe is from the cookbook my family christened the "fall apart cookbook" Favorite Recipes of The Great Northwest published by Favorite Recipes Press, Inc in Louisville, Kentucky, in the year MCMLXV. Hmmmm. When was that? What is an L? (Quick Internet Search - 50). So, it looks like 1965 to me.

I always made this recipe because I couldn't and still can't be bothered to actually cut shortening into flour and make a simple crust. Maybe for Thanksgiving. Maybe not.

So, anyway, here is my favorite (only) recipe for Wild Blackberry Pie.
(Please adjust the sugar and butter amounts to YOUR taste. This was way way way too sweet for me this last time, but...I live in Japan right now, and we don't do SOOOO sweet here...usually.)

1/4 lb. butter or margarine (I used 100 gm.)
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 cups wildblackberries

(Note: A USA cup is 250 cc's)

Melt butter in baking dish. (I used a round deep cake pan.) Mix 1 cup of sugar, flour, baking powder, and milk. Pour over melted butter. (Right in the middle of it.) Cover top of batter with fruit. Sprinkle remaining sugar over top and bake at 350 degrees (176 C. But, if you have a tiny oven like me, adjust as needed.) until golden brown. (I added too much milk last time I made it and had to bake it for an hour. Probably 30-40 minutes?) Serve hot with whipped cream. NOTE: Other berries, cherries or pecans may be substituted for wild blackberries. Yield; 4-6 servings.

This was submitted by a Mrs. Roy Fotte from Reedsport, OR! Thank you very much, Mrs. Fotte! I love it!

Food Theories

I recently went to an international luncheon. We talked about food! Really! One woman was from Korea. Her husband is also Korean. A number of years ago, he became ill and had to have surgery. Since then, she has been very very careful about the food she makes for him. Two years and 8 months, no eating out, no salt for most of that time, etc. She talked about the microbiotic diet they were on. She has definitely thought and read a lot about food.

She read that people are healthiest if they eat the food of the country they are living in. Not the food of their birth country. Live in Japan, eat Japanese. Live in Korea, eat Korean.

I noticed back in the early '80's, when war orphans were returning to Japan from China to visit their relatives, that they looked NOTHING like their relatives. Of course their clothing and hair styles were Chinese, but even their faces and bodies resembled Chinese people of that time, rather then their relatives. I began to think about how our diet, rather than DNA affects the way we look.

Then, I read an article about babies who tend to like what their mothers' ate while they were pregnant with them. The study was about carrots. The moms who ate lots of carrots while they were pregnant, gave birth to kiddos who loved carrot juice much more than other kids.

This article interested me, because, Jun's birth mom probably ate a lot of Japanese food while she was pregnant. And, Jun really prefers Japanese food to western. Now, maybe it is as the study says, and maybe she likes the strong salty and sweet flavors of Japanese cooking, but...hmmm.

I also read something about food memories. Regardless of the junk we may eat during college and single years, most of us tend to return to the food our parents fed us during our growing up years when we settle down and raise our own families. I told one relative this and she looked at me, shocked. Her sweet girls were chowing down a bag of tortilla chips with root-beer! HAHAHAH!

How about you? Any Food Theories?? Bring them on!

Mamatouille

I have recently been enjoying the food blog, Mamatouille. Abagail is a wonderful person, and always answers comments. It has been fun to exchange ideas and recipes. She even takes and POSTS pictures! Please check her blog out and leave a comment for her.

Chocolate Truffles

Valentine's Day is nearly here! In Japan girls and women give chocolates to the boys and men! We don't get much, but those we give to have to give us a return present on March 14th, White Day. So, what goes around comes around!

A few years ago, when one of my students was in 6th grade, we enjoyed cooking together. She found this recipe for Truffles in a girl's magazine and taught me how to make them. Yum! Choose the sweetness or bitterness of the chocolate to fit your, er, umm, the man in your life's taste.

100 gm bar chocolate chopped very finely
10 gm butter chopped into small pieces. Add to bowl with chocolate.
60 cc. cream. Heat to boiling and add to the chocolate. Stir till chocolate melts. Then pour into a flat sheet pan and put in the refridgerator until nearly hard. Then shape into balls and roll in cocoa, powdered sugar, etc. Store in a cool place.

Variation: Truffle Sauce

I increased the amount of cream to 100 cc, and we poured the hot sauce over vanilla ice cream. Yummy.

Homemade Sausage

We are on a quest for a homemade sausage recipe. I have one from a friend and some from the internet that we are adapting to my husbands image of breakfast sausage. This is where country of origin plays a big part! The smell of one of the spices I've used so far reminds him of moth balls. Hmmmm. If at first you don't succeed, try try again!