Simple Home in Paradise: Birthdays and Food at our school

It's a Sunday afternoon and the girls are playing a board game with Geoff at the kitchen table so I thought I would take the time to write a blog post. We are busy here everyday so time seems to fly by.

My birthday was on the 15th and Hana's is this week on the 26th. In our extended families we have a lot of January birthdays and always have family parties to celebrate everyone. It was sad to miss out on those this year but it was nice to be remembered with cards, packages, emails, phone calls and Facebook messages!

A super fun birthday present from my sister and brother-in-law. Thanks, Ashmans!

I felt very loved. Geoff insisted we celebrate my birthday on the 15th on Friday for the Japanese time zone AND Saturday for the 15th for the Utah time zone so it was 2 days long this year. Geoff and the girls went into town and got me so delicious dark chocolate treats. (The food in Japan is just amazing and these were no exception!) I especially loved this one in the picture. It's dark chocolate squares with "biscuits" (cookies) on the bottom.

Also, one of our students made apple pie and another student made chocolate cake for my birthday! They were both delicious and I appreciated them so much. Thanks Genya and Keina! We had a movie night at the school and ate those with popcorn while we watched The Lego Movie. It was great!

Earlier in the day on Saturday we went to Costco! It is about a 2 hour drive away but after comparing prices at our very limited grocery store options in our little town we calculated that it was well worth the extra gas money and time to go every once in awhile to stock up for the school. The savings on meat alone was huge! Most Japanese people shop several times a week because the kitchens, refrigerators etc. are tiny so you don't have room to store more than that but we are lucky to have a big school and kitchen so this is a much more economical way to shop for 20 people.

Check out the awesome Tetris skills used to pack all of our Costco purchases into the back of the van!

Jedi fighting with pineapple and a frying pan

Aya with one of our awesome students, Ryohei
I was amazed at how packed this Costco was! I've never shopped in a bigger crowd before. Luckily everyone was polite as we maneuvered around each other.

Also, it is an amazing drive through scenic mountain forests, rivers, winding roads and sleepy towns that make you feel like you stepped back in time. I adore traditional Japanese houses and buildings so I love this drive.

And Costco shopping brings me to one of my favorite topics, cooking and food! Here at our school there is currently about 20 of us when you count students, staff and staff family members. We cook lunch and dinner in the school kitchen week day and eat together. On the weekends we have dinner together on Saturdays and lunch together on Sundays. The other meals and breakfasts are eaten at everyone's own apartments. Geoff and I have a budget and are in charge of planning out the best way for all of us to buy and cook the food needed for all the meals. All of my time spent teaching my cooking/meal planning/grocery shopping classes in Utah have really come in handy! Several of the students are excellent cooks and all of them are super helpful with grocery shopping and cooking so things have been going well. We plan out a menu with everyone of what meals we want to have, then make up a shopping list of all of the ingredients needed and decided who will cook each meal. Everyone helps wash dishes and clean up. I've been introducing the students to foods they will encounter in America so they'll be prepared to cook when they go to college.

Some of the "American" foods we've made are: soft tacos, Hawaiian Haystacks, spaghetti and garlic bread, hamburgers and pesto Alfredo pasta. They seemed to really like these meals though there was so hesitation about the black olives and guacamole with the soft tacos and raw carrots in the salad (Japanese people typically only eat carrots cooked.) We usually eat Japanese meals and we have had some very delicious food! Some of my favorites have been: sukiyaki, miso soup, tempura udon, ramen, curry, yaki niku, nabe etc. And the rice in this region of Japan is amazingly yummy. Needless to say, we are well fed.

Hana and Aya love the Japanese bread, (especially toasted) juice, fruit, snacks and candy. Hana loves all the noodles, especially ramen and can't get enough of the nori (seaweed.) Both of them have had to try a lot of new foods and we're working on helping them eat better!