Senior Life 2 My Favorite Food

My Favorite Food (female version)

 I eat breakfast with my husband at seven o'clock every morning.  

 He is a company employee.  He is fifty-seven years old.  He is a department head of a trading company.  He leaves home at eight o'clock every morning.

  
We usually eat bread for breakfast.  We eat bread with butter and jam.  My husband drinks coffee without sugar.  I drink tea without sugar or milk.

We also drink milk and juice.

  My husband likes tomato juice.  I like apple juice.

I also like eating yogurt with my bread, but my husband doesn't like yogurt. I like plain yogurt better than flavored yogurt.

On weekends, when my husband doesn't go to work, we have Japanese-style breakfast.  We have rice and miso soup.

  Sometimes I eat out for lunch at a restaurant with my friends.  We often go to a buffet lunch at a hotel restaurant.  We can choose whatever we like from more than 100 dishes and also many kinds of drinks.  We have to pay extra for alcoholic drinks, though.

  I usually eat one kind of meat dish, one kind of fish dish and a few kinds of fruit.

  Some of us drink wine.  I myself drink one or two glasses of wine, mostly one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine.
 
We chat a lot while we are eating.  Sometimes we forget to eat and talk and talk.  Then one of the waiters or waitresses come to our table and reminds us that the lunchtime is going to be over.  Then we hurry to the dessert table.  I like cakes and cookies very much. 

Recently when I take a bath, I am aware of the bulge around my waist.  It seems that I am developing middle-age spread.  I know I must be careful not to eat too many sweets.  

  However, when I see so many delicious-looking cakes and cookies before my eyes, it's difficult to try not to eat them. 

One of the members of our lunch group has stopped coming recently.  Her husband retired at the end of last March.  He stays home all day, and she has to fix lunch for him every day.  We know she is not happy about that.

  All of us fear that that kind of destiny will fall on us some day.  It's a disaster. I myself wish my husband will find a job outside even after his retirement and go to work every day.

When I don't eat out, I usually eat the leftover from the breakfast or the supper last night.

  On weekends, when my husband doesn't go to work or golfing and stays home, I cook either stir-fried rice or ramen with lots of vegetables as ingredients.

  My husband comes home between six and seven.

He seldom goes wining and dining with his colleagues or subordinates.

  I usually go shopping for foods at a supermarket twice a week.

  For dinner I cook Japanese dishes most often.

Sometimes I cook Western dishes.  However, they are not typical Western dishes, but Japanese-style Western dishes such as curry rice, hushed rice, chicken rice, pork cutlet, and croquette.

  When I was a child, I liked croquettes very much. My mother always cooked croquettes on my birthday.

My mother's croquettes are different from those served at the restaurants or sold at the meat shops and supermarkets.  The most popular kinds are white cream croquettes and meat potato croquettes.

  My mother always cooked potato croquettes, and used minced chicken instead of ground beef or pork.  And she didn't use the crumbs sold at the store.  She always kept the crusts of bread and dried them.  It was my job to make the crumbs from dried crusts of bread.

  Now I use a blender when I make the crumbs from dried crusts of bread."

  But when I was a child, there was no such thing as a blender.  I used an earthenware mortar and a wooden pestle.

  I put the dried crusts of bread in the mortar and ground them into the crumbs.  I sometimes used a grater and grated the crumbs into the fine crumbs.

  Now I'll show you how I cook croquettes.

 The ingredients I prepare are as follows.
3 potatoes
1 onion
50g minced chicken 
Pepper
salad oil for frying
flour in bowl
4 eggs
panko, bread crumb

First wash and boil potatoes.

Chop onion into small pieces and fry them with minced chicken.

Add salt and lots of pepper.

Peel the potatoes and mash them and mix the mashed potato with the fried onion and minced chicken.

I use a mortar and a pestle to mash the potatoes.

Form the mixture with hands into rounds or ovals, size of extra large egg.

Put flour in one of the bowls.  

Then break eggs into another bowl and beat them.  

Put crumbs on the shallow plate.

Put one piece after the other first in the flour and cover its entire surface.  Then cover it with beaten raw egg, and finally with bread crumbs.

Deep fry in wok until it becomes light golden brown.

  I like sushi very much.  Not many Japanese cook sushi at home.  We go to sushi bar restaurants or order sushi from sushi bars. Most sushi bars have home delivery service.  Sushi served at sushi bars are rather expensive.  There is no price on the menu and we don't know how much we are charged till we get the check.  We have to be careful not to order the expensive items."

  Recently revolving sushi bars are getting popular in Japan.  At revolving sushi bars, the plates with each sushi item rotate around the bar on a conveyor belt while you pick up the plate of your choice.

  Each sushi plate has a different color and you can tell how much it costs by the color of the plate.

  My favorite toppings are toro (choice tuna belly), shime-saba (marinated mackerel), tairagai (razor-shell clam), and uni (sea urchin roe).

  My husband likes inarizushi, deep-fried tofu stuffed with the vinegared rice. 

There is a very good Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood.  It offers a wide range of delicious dishes.  We often dine there for dinner.  

   We usually order a set meal for two persons.  The menu includes sweet corn and chicken or crabmeat soup, barbecued spare ribs, fried pork with cashew nuts, beef slices, sweet and sour chicken, and fried rice.  

   At the end of the meal, they serve a fortune cookie.  I love getting a good fortune at the end of my meal.  If it is a bad fortune, I just forget it.

My favorite Food (male version)

   I eat breakfast at around eight o'clock every morning.  I like Japanese-style breakfast better than Western style breakfast.

  I always eat rice and drink miso soup for my breakfast.  I like potatoes, pumpkin, onions, egg plants, taro, bean sprouts, short-neck clams and tofu as ingredients of miso soup.

I also eat some kinds of grilled fish and pickled vegetables.  My favorite grilled fish is salted salmon.  I also like grilled mackerels and dried horse mackerels. 

As for pickled vegetables, I like eggplants, cucumbers, turnips and daikon radishes.
 
When I was a child, I liked flavored rolled eggs very much.  I also liked raw eggs in miso soup.

But recently I try not to eat eggs too often, because my cholesterol level is a bit higher than normal and eggs contain lots of cholesterol.

My blood pressure level was also higher than normal.  It was 140 over 100.  Now after breakfast, I take pills, which are to treat hypertension.  My blood pressure is lowered to 130 over 80.  My home doctor says I have to keep taking pills for the rest of my life.

I also try not to eat salty and fatty foods too much.  I try to eat foods high in potassium, such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, soybeans, pumpkin, salmon, and mackerel.  Potassium helps to get rid of sodium from the kidneys and then reduces the sodium in the blood vessels.

I also try to eat apples, peaches or bananas as desserts, because they are the fruits high in potassium."

 When I was working as a company employee, I ate udon or soba at noodle shops for lunch almost every day.  After retirement, when I am home at lunchtime, I like eating udon or soba.

 When I am out at lunchtime, I go to noodle shops and eat udon or soba.  I eat udon more often than soba.

My favorite kind of udon is miso nikomi, udon cooked in miso soup.  Somehow I don't eat miso nikomi for lunch.  I like eating miso nikomi for supper.

In summertime, I like eating hiyamugi or somen.

Somen is thinner than hiyamugi.  I like somen better than hiyamugi.  Both hiyamugi and somen are served cold.  I like eating fried eggplants with somen.

A kind of udon called kishimen is a specialty in the Nagoya area.  It is slightly thicker and wider than the standard udon.  Somehow I don't like kishimen cooked in miso soup.   "

 When I was working, I often went wining and dining with my co-workers or subordinates after a hard day's work.  When I wined and dined with my colleagues, we split the bill among the party.  When I went with my subordinates, I paid the bill for the whole party.  Since I was a section chief, I often paid from my entertainment expenses.

  We usually went to Izakaya.  Izakaya serves a wide variety of foods at very reasonable prices.

Here you will see the menu of a big Izakaya chain and the prices of the foods.

Yakitori, a skewered grilled chicken, is one of the most popular foods at Izakaya.  We also went to Yakitori stands or restaurants specializing in grilled chicken.

  Izakaya is always crowded with groups of young people.  They talk in a loud voice.  We also had to talk louder to have ourselves heard above all the noises.

After retirement, I seldom go to Izakaya.  I eat supper at home almost every day.  

  I seldom cook.  However, when we have sukiyaki, it is my job to prepare it.

  First I go to the supermarket to buy beef.  It is very important to choose good beef for tasty sukiyaki.  The best beef for sukiyaki is well-marbled beef with thin streaks of fat, shimofuri-niku in Japanese.

  The next important thing, when you cook sukiyaki, is to choose a good skillet.  Nowadays more and more families prefer to use an electric skillet.  I have a good skillet inherited from my mother.  It is a thick cast-iron skillet."

  We eat sukiyaki at the table.  So I set the skillet over a table burner on the dining table.  I preheat it for several minutes.  When I can see that it is hot enough, I put in one or two pieces of suet with long chopsticks and melt them in the skillet until the bottom of the skillet is well greased.  

  Then I put two to four slices of beef in the skillet, pour in a little soy sauce, and sprinkle the meat with a little sugar.  I cook for a minute, stir, and turn the meat over.   

  If we are hungry and can't wait any more, especially because of the good smell of the meat being sauted in the soy sauce, I serve the meat to whoever wants the first service.  Then I put in more slices of meat.

I repeat the procedure and then, if everybody is willing to wait for the next service, I put the meat to one side of the skillet and add tofu, scallions,  mushrooms, shirataki, greens and konnyaku in more or less equal amounts, sprinkle them with a small cup of sake and cook for an additional four to five minutes. 

Now everybody can transfer the contents to an individual bowl.  When we eat sukiyaki, we put a raw egg in a bowl, beat it and dip the ingredients in it.  After everybody has had enough of the meat and other ingredients, we cook udon in the remaining thick broth.

  In case you entertain the guests from the Western countries, there are two things you must take care of.  That is you should take care not to use sugar and not to serve raw eggs.  Many Americans and Europeans don't like sugar because they think sugar will make them fatter, even though they love sweet cakes and other sweets as long as they don't see the sugar in spite of the fact these sweets contain lots of sugar.  As for raw eggs, they simply don't have the habit of eating raw eggs.  It is OK to eat sukiyaki without raw eggs, but the sukiyaki cooked only in soy sauce without sugar will be very salty.      

  What should we do? As you know, you can buy pre-sweetened soy sauce at the supermarket.  If they don't see the sugar, they don't care and they will love sukiyaki cooked in sweetened soy sauce. "

  
Sometimes I entertain my guests at an Italian restaurant in the next town.  The owner of the restaurant is a couple of a Japanese wife and an Italian husband.  The husband works as the headwaiter.  

  The restaurant has a good selection of Italian wine.  The husband often goes back to his native place in Italy to buy wine directly from wine farmers.  He welcomes guests and seats them.  He fixes cocktails and serves wine.

  I always order lamb chops.  I always like my lamb chops medium-rare.  They serve an excellent choice of desserts, dolce in Italian.  I have a weakness for Tiramis.  

  I always drink Capuccino fixed by the husband.  His Cappuccino is almost a work of art.  "