Cooking at home

My father was a very good cook and I have many memories of him cooking and baking. Yes, baking! He made great scones, cakes, biscuits (cookies), pies, etc.

But one thing I had almost forgotten is that he rarely used pre-packaged foods or seasonings. I guess one reason is that there were not so many choices 30 years ago, and another was that my father had more time to cook.

I've been trying to make more of my own foods from scratch. (That is, from the beginning.) Here are some examples:








Gyoza dumplings and scones. Actually, I bought the gyoza wraps (kawa) so I didn't make them 'from scratch'! ;)








Simple pizza plus a cinnamon brown sugar bun made with the left-over pizza dough. I divided the topping into thirds - 1/3 was tomato paste, fresh basil and mozarella cheese; next tomoato paste onions, eggplant, anchovies and cheese; last tomato paste lotus root (renkon) and cheese. Lotus root is really delicious on pizza!


Pumpkin muffins cooked in the barbeque. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I've also cooked bread in the BBQ because mine has a lid so it becomes like an oven.




And lastly, I bought chicken bones from Marugen Meat to make my own chicken stock. The chicken is brand name chicken from Iwate and tastes great! I didn't add any salt or other seasonings, but put in one large onion and half a carrot. I simmered it for about 1 hour, skimmed the skum (aku) off the top, let it cool, then put it in the freezer.

This stock tastes WONDERFUL and was so cheap! I bought two chicken carcasses (gara) at 157 yen each. The onion was grown by my mother-in-law and the carrot was from Polan. Now I have about 2 liters of stock in my freezer to use for soups, curries, etc.