Friday 22 February 2008

How to Live to be 101

The other day, there was a TV programme called "Horizon"on BBC2. It was about "How to Live to be 101", and Okinawa was featured!!! I was proud of that. Even though many people don't know much about Okinawa (some have never heard of the name), it's a good sign that we get to see and learn about Okinawa on television. Click here to watch the programme, which is available for 4 more days.

The two doctors who were talking about Okinawa on the programme are the ones who wrote the book called The Okinawa Program : How the World's Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health--And How You Can Too . In the programme, they were cooking Goya Champuru, which is one of my favourite dishes! One of the important ingredients in our stir-fry dishes (champuru as we call it) is tofu. We eat tofu a lot. It's different from Japanese one, and we love our tofu.

If you would like to know and learn how to live long like us (to be specific, the old people in Okinawa), this is the book. I've got a copy of this book as well.



Saturday 9 February 2008

Dinner on 06/02/08

Menu: vegetable curry and rice

Did you know that we have our own style curry in Japan? It's one of the popular dishes in Japan. Unlike the other types of curry (Indian, Thai and so on), our curry has a milder taste.
I hear that curry was introduced to Japan by the British.

A ready-made curry sauce mix is commonly used in Japan, which makes it extremely easy to make. Japanese-style curry was the first dish I made as a kid (I was six at that time.) It's a polular camping dish as well. I remember making it when I went camping on one of the school trips. It's so easy to make it as long as you have the sauce mix and the ingredients.

Well this time, I made the sauce from scratch. It wasn't that hard to make it. I cooked finely chopped onions, garlic and ginger until they were brown, and then put in some flour and curry powder and mixed well. Finally I added soup stock little by little, stirred quickly and let it simmer until it thickended.

This time I used onions, carrots, potatoes and green pepper as ingredients. I added some grated apple as well.

I'll write a recipe for it, hopefully, some time soon.